In Which A Young Lawyer Takes Up the Ancient Art of Flower Arranging

Lawyers aren't normally known as terribly creative people (other than when it comes to "creative" contract phrasing or statutory interpretation). However, I've found that the truth is that many lawyers are actually aspiring artists, writers, dancers, and singers who, rather than pursue their dreams, decided to do the "smart" thing and take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to do something they didn't really find all that interesting in the first place. Personally, I always wanted to be a writer.

To back up a bit, my name is Nina, and, if you haven't guessed, I'm a lawyer. During law school, I took up meditation as a way to manage the stress and anxiety that accrues from three years of doing 100s of pages of reading on less than 6 hours of sleep a night. I started meditating with the Tibetan Buddhist chaplain at school and then began to attend meditation classes based in the Shambhala lineage upon moving to NYC.

Meditation has helped me find an enormous amount of peace in my life, and I highly recommend it, if you haven't tried it. Meditation isn't necessarily sitting around and chanting "Om" for hours (although it can be that -- I can touch on the value of chanting in a later post). Instead, meditation can be as simple as just sitting quietly, taking a few deep breaths, and trying not to let your stream of thoughts drag you away from the present moment, like high tide. It is kind of like when you were put in "time out" as a kid, except this time you are putting yourself there.

My meditation practice has led me to want to get back in touch with my creative energy. This summer, I did a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share that included a bouquet of farm fresh flowers each week. I got really into photographing the flowers and appreciating their transient beauty. So, when a  local meditation center announced that they were holding a flower-arranging class, I jumped at the opportunity. One three day retreat later, I've decided to start a regular practice of arranging flowers to supplement my meditation practice.

In Kado (or Ikebana, as it is known in Japanese), flowers aren't just arranged willy-nilly. Rather, the arrangement is supposed to contain and reflect the ordering of the universe. I'll discuss a bit of the theory behind the practice in a later post.

In the meantime, enjoy this photo of my first-ever kado arrangement!

Form: Basic Upright Left