Stopping to smell the roses

On April 27, Donna Salerno, 46, a reiki master, mindfulness educator and medium visited the Baldwin Public Library with a dozen flowers to teach the Baldwin community the importance of meditation and relaxation through flower meditation. Teaching to a nearly packed class, she discussed the importance of healing yourself through positive affirmations that promote self-love, manifesting goals you want to accomplish and listening to what the earth wants to communicate.

“Flowers have a healing purpose, all flowers have a message, all you have to do is gaze and look,” Salerno told the class of 12, “there are signs [and] intuitive messages if you look around you; every flower has energy attached to it.” Salerno said anyone can tap into their environment, and if they find their purpose in life, they can start to get a better idea of connecting to your own energy.

She said most purposes people have start with the word “to” lead by an action, such as “to-give” or “to-teach.” Getting attuned with your personal purpose and speaking what you want into existence through repetitious pronouncements will help to accomplish goals she told the class. In addition, the repetitious nature of statements to yourself in the mirror every day such as “I am loved” or “I am enough,” will change mindsets overtime and lead to more confidence and happiness overall.

“Sometimes the pursuit of more that consumerism leads to has us asking for more and more, but flowers are able to connect everyone to a simpler time,” said Salerno, “They remind of thinking back on our childhood making mud pies and our own inner child.” She pondered a second and continued, “I guess that’s what flowers are to us, just a very simple way of connecting and getting back to nature.”

She asked the class to briefly meditate with the carnations given to everyone and see what messages naturally came to them. Then going around the room to cleanse the energy of each person in the room by running a carnation in proximity to attendees and throwing the negative energy back into the ground where it’ll be dispersed.

Mother and daughter Caitlin and Laura McCaffrey attended the workshop together. “I’ve been interested in it for a while,” Laura said, “I feel a lot better after she did the [cleansing] I might do it at home now.” Laura, her mother said, “anything therapeutic is good [and] I’ve always been interested in the meanings of flowers.” She also spoke on how nice it was to be back in-person at the library, “I am thrilled that we are able to be back in person because I missed it.”

Debbie Banahan, another workshop goer and flower enjoyer got a more in-depth look at what flowers can do for people. Saying she mostly saw flowers as something to take a picture of not interact with: “Talking to a flower as a healing energy...is very therapeutic.” 

So proclaimed that, “People need to connect to the positive, inner peace and the inner child in order to be positive in their every-day life and deal with stress and relationships with other people.”

Banahan came with her friend Cathy Aliano who said it was an interesting workshop, “I never really knew a lot about the healing power of flowers, and I feel like after this workshop I’m going to use flowers more in a therapeutic way in my life, not just as a pretty ornamental thing to decorate my home with.”

Salerno has been practicing mindfulness and other therapeutic techniques since her early 20’s, she’s seen that since the pandemic, “I think that in this point in time people are looking for something that will make them feel good and whatever it is that they need to connect they need it now more than ever. “