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You may be drawn to the Bamboo Flower if you've recently experienced:
If you’re drawn to the Bamboo Flower, you’ve likely been living a modern, fast-paced lifestyle where it’s normal to have a subtle, yet constant tension in your muscles. Overthinking is common. At times you see a mountain of work before you that needs to be done. Your to-do list is endless or arduous. You want to climb the mountain, so you force yourself to climb.
Your body might be tense, or feel hard, rigid or stuck at times. You might wake up with aches and pains, or experience them later in the day. As a result of an excess of ‘doing’ and ‘making it happen’, you feel burnt out and exhausted. Your lifeforce energy reaches the floor at times and you might find it hard to stop because: “one more thing, one more thing”. And then you get so tired that you end up scrolling on your phone and crashing, falling asleep with your phone in hand and the lights on.
Your circulation and lymphatic system may be suffering due to tension and lack of soft, fluid movements like dancing or tai chi.
Whereas the Bamboo shoot is strong and masculine, powerfully shoving its way through the dirt (and anything in the way for that matter), its flower is delicate and soft. It quivers in the breeze with more of a feminine aspect, dissolving the need to control things and inspiring us to open to the unknown.
Rather than the surge of energy needed for karate, it’s the slow, soft & steady energy of tai chi. We can be nourished and build our resources at the same time that we’re engaging in effortless action, a continuous gentle lifeforce that does not fatigue.
Working with the flow of air and water (feng shui) in our bodies and environments, we don’t need to resist, control or manipulate anything. We can dissolve attachment, clinging and fixation on the past/future, while embracing freedom and working with the energies of the present moment.
Bamboo Flower helps us allow everything to keep moving forward. We’re aware of the continuous cycle of time. We experience the richness of the present moment and we’re content putting a drop in the bucket each day, knowing that one day the bucket will overflow. We’re able to maintain constant effort – with efficiency – so we don’t drain or tax our adrenals. We make a big impact with continual drip-drops and micro movements that add up to something big.
Our willpower transforms from ‘force’ and ‘push’, to a soft strength, confidence and trust in ourselves and others. It strengthens our presence: softness is strength. It amplifies our ability to delight in the present moment. We can hold more capacity for effortlessness and effortless action in our bodies. And it’s a feeling that's just so luscious and enjoyable.
It’s like wei wu wei, the action of non-action, or effortless action. You're floating along in the river; the river is helping push you along and you're allowing the natural energy and flow of situations to guide you. You’re absorbing energy from the activities you engage in, just as much as, or more than the output of energy to complete the action. It’s like action without ‘efforting’, embodying the power, fluidity and flexibility of water, with the blissful, soft continuity of a gentle breeze.
The essence of Bamboo Flower might be best articulated by Bruce Lee. ; )
There are over 1500 species of Bamboo. Found all over the world, it grows most prolifically in Asia. It is said that there used to be a huge diversity of Bamboo in North America, until the last ice age, which left us with only three surviving native varieties. A foraged food source for Indian bison, Asian elephants, red pandas and giant panda bears, it has a nutritional composition similar to hay. It is grass, afterall, not a tree.
To see Bamboo flowering is extremely rare and auspicious. Some varieties only bloom every 100 or so years; other varieties bloom every decade. In either case, it’s rare and considered a sign of positivity, good fortune and prosperity. When it blooms, every bamboo of that same species around the world, also flowers, known as gregarious or synchronous flowering.
A significant transformation takes place when Bamboo flowers. In order to flower and go to seed, the bamboo is required to utilize energy stored deep down inside its roots, which can often lead to the death of the plant. This parent plant gives all of its nutrients and lifeforce to its seedlings by dying, making space for sunlight and growth and acting as mulch for the seedlings in a grandiose display of the natural cycles of life and death.
What exactly triggers the synchronous flowering around the world is still an unknown mystery. The mass flowering of bamboo is an intriguing and rare phenomenon to be celebrated. The bamboo flower essence that we collected was grown and nurtured by my spiritual teacher for multiple decades, and bloomed in the fall of 2024.
Bamboo is considered a supportive plant during the Year of the Snake (2025).
MAGNIFIES:
DISSOLVES:
Love & flower petals,
Katie
