Wisdom of Ikebana: Let Your Body Do The Work.

In ikebana, the principle that I believe is most important is to "let each and every flower live". While you are doing ikebana, you keep trying to figure out how you can make each flower shine. Where should this flower be put? How tall? Which angle? Should leaves of the flower be removed from or remain on the stalk? You ask these questions to the flower and decide where and how the flower should be arranged based on the voice of the flower.

Adding to this "let each and every flower live," equally important thing in ikebana is to "create harmony as a whole". This cannot be realized if you just focus on the beauty of each flower. Even if each flower looks beautiful by itself, it is possible that the end result, your ikebana work, does not have balance or harmony in it. Actually, without the harmony or balance, each flower stops shining and looks less beautiful. Whole and parts should be aligned.

So every time you are about to put a flower in kenzan, the special ikebana device to fix flowers, you have to ask this question: "How can I arrange this flower in a way to make it look beautiful as well as to bring a balance and harmony to the entire work?" You need to see parts and the whole altogether, like an orchestra conductor.

How can we do this? My answer is, "Sense, not see".

As we have only two eyes, it is very difficult to see parts and the whole at the same time. You would try so hard to see them both. This focus on seeing would activate your brain and your brain would start telling you so many things, which would prevent you from listening to the voice of flowers. In the end, you would get confused and eventually lost.

By shifting your focus from your vision to your body, your brain is put in a nice sleep mode and your body sensor is on. With the sensor being activated, your body is able to receive the information both from each flower and the entire work simultaneously.

I often feel that this interaction between my body and my ikebana work happens beyond my thoughts. It is like my body knows where each flower should be arranged to realize both its own beauty and balance as a whole. It is like my body reacts to the flow of the work and fixes it if there is any unbalance or distortion. So if I let my body do its own work without any direction from my brain, the whole and parts are naturally aligned. It may be a bit like Jedi feeling the Force.

You cannot do this right away, of course. You need practice. The more you practice, the stronger your body sensor becomes, and the more you can sense. And after some time, you will find yourself aligning parts and whole without even thinking. It takes me almost 20 years to get this body thing right and I am still learning it.
Ikebana is visual - it is something visually beautiful. But at the same time, ikebana is quite physical. Sometimes, it is better to let your body, not your eyes or brain, do their own work.