With striking beauty and alluring fragrance, flowers have long captivated the senses of humans. Throughout history, they’ve held a special place in countless cultures, often evoking elevated feelings of love, joy, and hope.
Recognizing the potent energy of flowers, ancient Taoists sought to understand these delicate yet powerful members of the plant kingdom. By looking carefully at how flowers interact with their environment, Taoist practitioners were able to harness great wisdom and joy.
In this blog, we discuss how you can apply the principles of Qi Gong to harness the energy of flowers. We also share a guided meditation to help you channel their gifts in your own life.
The Energy of Flowers
During springtime, flowers participate in one of the most visually striking examples of transformation and synergy. If you pay attention, you can learn how to embody these gifts yourself…
When a flower seed is planted, it finds a new home in the soil. In the beginning, it’s just a tiny little seed. From an “outsider’s” perspective, it would seem that the seed is completely helpless on its own. However, seeds are masters of transformation.
Within the soil, a flower seed absorbs water and nutrients. As it sprouts forth from the Earth, its tiny leaves learn how to absorb and make good use of sunlight. By blending minerals from the soil and light from the sun, young seedlings are able to quickly grow into radiant flowers. While this feat of transformation is certainly impressive, it’s still only the beginning of a flower’s life.
As flowers bloom, a host of pollinators come to enjoy their sweet offerings. Attracted to their colorful petals and an unmistakable scent, birds, bees, and butterflies find their way to the right flowers, where they spread pollen and perpetuate the circle of life. The pollinators are rewarded with a tasty meal, and in return, the flowers are able to effortlessly spread their pollen. It’s a true, synergistic “win-win” in nature.
Flowers Are Teachers of Transformation
To the Taoists, flowers are the ultimate teacher when it comes to understanding the power of transformation, synergy, and creativity. Even though humans don’t have roots or leaves, you can still apply these principles to your own life.
To harness the transformative and creative power of flowers, it’s important to find flow with the world around you. Instead of fighting against your environment, seek to find synergy and cooperation. When you’re able to truly relax into the natural rhythms of the universe, it becomes easier to experience joy, abundance, and peace.
Qi Gong is a practice that ancient Taoist practitioners used to cultivate these qualities. By blending slow, flowing movements with meditation, they found ways to experience ‘effortless flow,’ just like a flower.
Below, we’ve included a brief guided meditation to help you harness the energy of flowers. We suggest reading the instructions once or twice before beginning.
Guided Meditation to Harness the Power of Flowers
While you may never grow flower petals, you can still embody flowers’ many gifts just by taking a few minutes to meditate. This brief meditation is designed to help you cultivate joy and vitality throughout your entire body.
Start by sitting comfortably in a chair with your feet on the ground. Take a few deep breaths as you seek to relax your mind and enter the present moment.
Heart
Once your mind is at ease, put your attention on your heart center and imagine a beautiful red flower blooming. As the flower blooms and becomes larger, feel love and joy flowing from your heart. Let it spread throughout your entire body and emanate out into the world. Continue breathing as the energy of your ‘Heart Flower’ becomes fully encompassing.
Lungs
After a minute or two, bring your attention to your lungs. In the space where your lungs are, imagine a radiant, white flower starting to bloom. Perhaps it’s a white lily. As your white “Lung Flower” blooms, imagine a feeling of mental clarity and physical vitality flowing throughout your body. With each passing moment, the white flower continues to bring energetic strength to every cell within you.
Liver
When your Lung Flower is in full bloom, move your attention to your liver, where a small seedling is sprouting into a young tree. Although trees aren’t quite flowers, they still embody many of the same nourishing qualities.
As your inner tree grows, pay attention to the feeling of resilience, creativity, and vision for the future. Imagine this feeling circulating throughout your being, charging up your mind, emotions, and physical body.
Kidneys
Once your tree has grown strong within you, turn your attention to your kidneys, where a blue flower is beginning to bloom. Your kidneys are located just below your rib cage on either side of your spine.
Imagine this blue flower peeling back its radiant flower petals and emanating blue light throughout your body. This blue flower has a feeling of wisdom and effortless flow. Feel this energy pulsing from your kidneys and spreading throughout your other organs and limbs.
Spleen
After your “Kidney Flower” has fully bloomed, imagine a yellow flower opening up in your spleen. As your “Spleen Flower” blooms, visualize a feeling of groundedness and emotional stability flowing throughout your body. This energy instills the feeling “that everything is completely okay.” Let your yellow flower fully bloom within you.
As you continue to breathe, feel the energies of all five flowers blending harmoniously together. Get in touch with the positive qualities of each flower—love and joy, clarity, resilience, flow, and stability. Breathe slowly and smile at each of the flowers that are blooming within you.
When you’re ready, open your eyes and take that energy with you into the rest of your day.
Learn More Practices to Harness the Energy of Flowers and Spring…
Want to discover more ways to cultivate joy, resilience, and vitality this spring?
We have a special, on-demand workshop called “Qi Gong for Spring.” Like all of our workshops, it’s taught by master Qi Gong teacher, Lee Holden.
In this workshop, Lee teaches powerful practices designed to help you harness the qualities of transformation, resilience, and creativity. Just as a flower uses the season’s abundant resources to create colorful flower petals, you too can harness the power of springtime in your own life.
Click on the banner below to discover how Qi Gong can help you call in the transformative energy of spring.