Flowers in the Dark:Reclaiming Your Power to Heal from Trauma with Mindfulness

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In Flowers in the Dark, she brings together her lived experience as a survivor, certified MD, and ordained Buddhist teacher to offer a body-based, practical approach to healing from life's most difficult and painful experiences. As a somewhat poetic-minded lover of literature, I had often talked about flowers bursting into bloom; I had sung songs about them, written poetry about them, and mentioned them in Dharma talks, cleverly using the metaphor to make my points.

She says, “The ‘mud’ and mess of our most painful experiences can become fertile ground for the blossoming of our understanding and self-compassion. They are fighting with their wigs, fighting with their out-of-season winter hats, fighting with the help of their friends or moms or daughters. Every time we’re in touch with the experience of suffering, we believe we can’t bear it, and we stuff our feelings and memories deep down in our unconscious mind. And then you carry your child back to the pile of blocks on the floor and notice how cute she looks in that hand-me-down sweatshirt from her cousin.I’m driving over the Golden Gate Bridge one morning on the way to the infusion center for my medicine. More acerbic lyricism comes from NYC rapper Billy Woods on Apothecary, a murky and restless jazz-hop cut that has an echo in Hutchings’s guest spot on the forthcoming Woods LP under the name Armand Hammer. Our aspiration is to contribute to collective insight and awakening, bringing about a more joyful, healthy, and compassionate society. And then, after a pause: “Well what do you want me to do, just sit across from you and watch you get the chemo? In fact, people from many faiths or no faith at all can follow them because Buddhism, at its root, is not a religion but an art of living and a practical approach to life.

In this accessible and insightful work, Buddhist nun and former physician Dang Nghiem ( Healing) outlines an approach to healing from trauma by using Buddhism-inspired mindfulness. Picture the patients seeing their visitors over their ventilators, trying to say hello and goodbye with their weary eyes.In my case, my body sees some of these microbes as intruders and sends white blood cells to fight a battle with them. From their perspective, of course, flowers are nothing more than advertisements for bees and other pollinators. Poet Anthony Joseph lends eloquent righteousness to By Now (Accused of Magic), a percussive broadside in which Alex Hawkins’s piano trades off against Ross Harris’s flute.

At the hospital, a man at the reception area directed me to her room, then stopped me before I set off to find it. It’s nearly impossible to believe that wellness is a reality when you are very sick, just as it’s hard to access the sickness when everything’s okay. Healing is an extraordinary story that takes the reader from the rice fields of Vietnam to the peaceful surrounding of Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery in Plum Village where Sister Dang. In Buddhist psychology, we often talk about the Five Faculties, which with practice develop into the Five Strengths—trust, energy or diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight or wisdom. I suddenly noticed his baggy jeans, how his belt was cinched in and buckled into a newly punched hole.At a deep level, we can always tap into our own embodied wisdom through practicing mindfulness in our daily lives, which brings about the deepest transformation and healing. As on airplanes, I usually wait until near the end of my time there, in case the person is overly eager to talk. The inner child practice Thay teaches is just one exercise among many in a holistic system of activities his tradition offers to the world for transforming pain and suffering and generating peace and joy.

At one point, I went out to talk to the nurses, but there was nothing about his care that needed discussing.The Five Strengths are powerful friends on the path because they are the antidotes to their opposites. A victim of some horrible car accident, or a kind college student who stopped at the bloodmobile on her way to economics class? Flora works at the infusion center, and is almost always there to take my vital signs before I settle in to start my medicine. The practice of meditation is not meant to be a substitute for therapy with trained professionals, but if followed correctly, this path transforms suffering into true peace, happiness, and freedom.