No Better Way to Say I Love You
I risk sounding like a 1-800-Flowers ad when I say, there’s no better way to say I love you than with flowers. Okay, maybe there are better ways, but flowers are one good way at least. Flowers are such an easy way to invite beauty into our lives. Plus we can easily give them to ourselves and receive the gift of their beautiful color and scent.
And for those of us who live in the city, they are an instant reminder of our inherent connection to nature. I love picking up a bundle of flowers at the farmers’ market, because I know they are fresh, local and handpicked. It’s always a lovely treat to see what’s in season at each particular time of year. Sometimes, the farmers will only have lilies. Other times, just anemones. Recently, lilac season peek-a-booed her brief and pretty head.
At IO, we always make sure there are fresh flowers in a glass bowl below each massage table, so that if you happen to open your eyes during a treatment, you zone in on their simple loveliness.
We borrowed this idea from the tenets of Indonesian ceremonies. Indonesians revere flowers and make a place for them in all of their abundant rituals. The art of honoring flowers as a symbol of love and devotion is second nature to their culture, and it’s one of many foreign traditions we could all do well to co-opt.
I believe in flowers as a simple and wholesome way to reconnect to the natural beauty inherent in all of us. Tying back to a recent blog I wrote about the power of yin energy and our life-giving, feminine side.
Try it… buy yourself a bouquet of your favorite flowers (splurge a little even), put them somewhere in your house where you will see (and smell) them every day, and let me know if it isn’t a lovely reminder to admire yourself a little more.
Flower power,
Amy
