Box Breathing and Flower Picking Brings Zen

Sometimes, it seems, you just have to box breathe and pick flowers to find your zen.

Well, if you’re me. Or, I need to take a class in this:  “how to not give a shit, yet not take shit, while not losing your shit and stop talking about your shit”.  I checked into the local library - there’s no comprehensive book on this exact subject. And no course I can take. 

That leaves me with no other choice but to pursue other options. 

Hence the box breathing and flower picking.

I’m always on the hunt for new and different ways to find my calm in my chaos. I’ve tried meditating and have yet to reach a place where I can focus on calm and balance. I seem to get tangled up in what’s for supper, what I have yet to plant in my flower garden, did I pay my gas bill….. pretty much anything but soothing my mind. For me, at this stage, meditation equals a racing mind. 

It was while I was having a meditation conversation (see, that sounds very cool), that I was introduced to box breathing. Inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, inhale for four…. Repeat until you feel calmness seep in. Surprisingly, it seems to work for me. My thoughts begin to slow… my focus shifts to my breath….overthinking and over analyzing pause long enough for a reset. Does it “fix” my situation? No. But it eases me - hushes my mind and my emotions that simmer gently quit bubbling. 

My other new discovery on how to find peace is wandering through a upick flower garden, snipping blossoms to curate a bouquet. This shouldn’t be a surprise - I enjoy gardening at my home. I like to weed, plant. I love deadheading spent blooms and cleaning up plants. But truthfully, I leave the blossoms on my plants. While I love fresh cut bouquets in my home, I don’t like to cut flowers off the plants in my garden. I prefer to keep them on, enjoying them when I’m spending my time outside. So if I want a fresh bouquet, I need to purchase one. It’s a luxury I choose sparingly, about three to four times a year.

I felt my soul begin to stir, just a bit, the past while, longing for the beauty and brightness that a fresh bouquet would bring to my home. July has had bumpy moments - my day surgery (and waiting for the results), my Father In Laws funeral, busyness at work. Life. Not all bad, of course, but a fresh bouquet to remind me of the beauty of the world was in order. But instead of popping in to a grocer or a florist or even a gas station and picking up stems, I investigated going to a upick flower farm with a girlfriend, cutting my own blooms and curating my own bouquet. 

Off we went, driving dusty gravel roads deeper into the countryside. A little travel, a few turns and we found the sign for Fern’s Flowers Garden. We pulled up and parked near a mature wooded forest, eyes wandering over a beautifully manicured lawn and coming to rest on a garden of flowers, color as far as my eyes could see! 

We got out, met Fern, the owner, and after a short orientation of how to cut the flowers (leave the Momma stalk alone!) we went out into the gardens with a bucket, snips and each other. Immediately, I felt calmness enter me. Just looking at the rows of flowers, the colors, the foliage… all I could think about is that Mother Nature never gets it wrong. I had put my phone on silent, content to chat with my friend when we met, content with the song of the birds, content with listening to the sound my feet made walking on the straw that laid on the dirt pathways. I smiled at the sound of my snips as I cut a stalk that had a flower with colors bursting with beauty. 

For the time I wandered the gardens I did not care about anything really. I was present, in the moment, enjoying the experience. Whatever else my day needed to be would wait. There was only this time, these moments. Nothing else. 

It might sound odd that I found peace in a place where I could hear other humans - their chatter, their laughter. But it was simply background noise. What I heard above it all was my heart. What I felt was my soul. 

Its hard to put into words how and why I got “there” by being “there”. After trying so many things to find temporary quiet I don’t know why this works. But, it does. And I’m grateful for all the moments I find. 

Of course the experience was made complete by sharing it with a friend who knows how to be gentle when she knows I need it. Her presence added to my experience-  her kind, gentle heart connecting to me with a smile, no words needed.

As I keep trying to figure out life - who I am and what I want to be when I grow up - I know that these moments and these experiences become more and more valuable. The world is a different place - I am a different person- and I don’t bind myself only to traditional ways of creating calmness in chaos. I’m forever grateful for the guidance that brings me to new discoveries.