Yesterday, my siblings and I co-taught  part 4 of our Learning from Nature’s Resilience workshop series. This time we took inspiration from the surviving trees and other flowering plants that have recovered and started to bloom, and some are even bearing fruit again!!!

Our participants were homeschooled teenage survivors of difficult situations traveling all the way from Northern Cebu.

My brother Joel Lee, Permaculture and Aprotech Solutions educator, facilitated the warm up laughter yoga and encouraged its regular practice as a way to health and relaxation. 

My sister Eddy Lee, a conservation educator and ecotherapist,  led the tour of the sanctuary’s food forest, higlighting the effect of Typhoon Odette on the fruit trees that were bent, and broken and uprooted. They noticed how the trees are starting to recover because the leaves have sprouted back.  Some of the surviving trees, including a few mango trees, are even flowering. The meditation and vegetable gardens have also recovered and are blooming.

Before starting the expressive arts segment of our Learning from Nature’s Resilience workshop I distributed the flower quotes below for the participants to discuss within their groups:

“Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.” -John Harrigan
Flowers grow back even after they are stepped on, so will I!” – Author Unknown
“Nothing in nature blooms all year. Be patient with yourself!”
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms.” – Zen Shin

The instruction for the expressive art session was :
Your life is God’s gift to you and what you make of it is like a bouquet of flowers that you give back to God, the earth and humanity.  What kind of blossoms will you bear?
 As you create your floral bouquet portrait focus on your pesonal resilient trait and be ready to share this with the group.

How to Make Your Floral Bouquet Self-Portrait

1. Use fruit slices provided: (okra, cucumber, eggplant and balimbing aka starfruit, carambola,) and watercolor to make prints on paper of flowers.
2. Practice with your stamps and layout on scrap paper provided before doing your final layout on the artboard provided
3. Allow work to dry completely before adding design details with ballpen and pencil crayons. Feel free to do freehand drawing or use some of the stencils available to add details to your work.
4. Prepare to share your work and personal resilient trait with the group.

MONA -Museum visit

Thank you for joining us for a fun learning adventure at the Sanctuary. We hope you will apply the things you learned here today – Care for the earth, care for each other, care for the future and care to laugh, lots! And believe that you are resilient, you have the capacity to bounce back from the adversities life may throw your direction.