This art lesson makes a beautiful flower mandala. It’s a meditative practice where we arrange a piece of art with petals, take a photo, and then let it be. We practice embracing the beauty of impermanence, letting go and being in the present moment.
Spending time in nature can bring a sense of peace and relaxation. Nature can help calm and slow down your mind. Gathering flowers and looking for beauty will provide our active meditation.
Go for a walk. Look at the exuberant color that is bursting this spring. Gather flowers that speak to your soul. Small moments of beauty. They can be delicate. This can involve pebbles, flowers, leaves. Don’t take too many but think about creating an arrangement with what is readily available.In making your mandala, start in the center. Start laying out the flowers around it in a circle.
What I love about this practice is its ephemeral nature. This is something that I need to embrace more. Appreciating the value in something in the short time it exists and being ok with its impermanence. I’m learning to value beauty when I see it, and try to minimize expectations for the future or regrets about the past. Even now, during quarantine, I’m thinking of the past and the future rather than sitting here in the present. I need to absorb it and appreciate it better. Somehow these practices, slowing down and having patience to arrange a mandala flower by flower, petal by petal, are helping me with the present.
STEPS
Take a moment + write down in a notebook several words that describe your current state of mind. Notice the pace of your thinking, moving, walking.
Then go for a walk for an hour. Put away your cell phone for that one hour, so you won’t be distracted by anything other than where you are.
Look around you.
What colors do you see?
What shapes intrigue you?
Pick up little treasures along the way that attract you: a twig, a flower, a leaf, a piece of bark, stones. After an hour, notice how you feel.
When you’ve gathered up enough materials, find an area you’ll feel completely comfortable and at ease to make your mandala.
Start from the center and build outwards. The mandala can be a circle, square, diamond, whatever suits you! Keep building or changing the design up until you're completely happy with your beautiful creation.
When the time comes to part ways with your mandala, you can leave it for strangers to enjoy, return all of the little treasure back to where they came from or make a flower offering. The choice is yours!
