History of Flower Essences Flower Essences have been used for thousands of years by cultures around the world. Philosophers and indigenous healers from many traditions have understood the significance of the spiritual energies of flowers and plants, preparing and administering them in variety of ways. The very first form of flower essences was found within dew, readymade by nature. Drops were sipped and gathered from the cups and petals of flowers and used for medicinal and beauty purposes. Dew has come to represent Spirit in the form of nature’s own alchemical elixir of life. It contains universal life force energy that is called Qi (chi) in Chinese, Prana in Sanskrit, and Mana in Hawaiian. All dew is encoded with information about the ecosystem, celestial configurations and the plants, flowers, and rocks it happens to fall upon. There are records of flower essence use by Ancient Egyptians on papyrus scrolls. The Egyptians knew how to extract both the oils and vibrational essences from flowers, a favorite among them being the sacred Blue Water Lily (Nelumbo nucifera) that grew along the Nile. Flower Essences have also been used in Asia, Europe, South America and by Australian Aboriginals and Native Americans. Hildegard von Bingin, a 12th century German abbess and mystic integrated herbal medicine with spiritual knowledge. She instructed her nuns to lay muslin sheets outovernight on flowers. In the morning, the dew that had collected onto them was wrung out to treat people with various emotional issues. The alchemist Paracelsus of the 16th century collected dew from plants on plates of glass during the times he believed were aligned with certain astrological configurations. This dew was gathered to treat emotional imbalances. He coined the term “Doctrine of Signatures,” which is based on the idea that a plant often resembles the tissue, organ or disease for which it is remedial or nourishing. There are several types of signatures or signs of what a plant or flower may be useful for, of which shape, color, habitat, and growing habits are considered by many herbalists to be the most important. These attributes create patterns that tend to express the healing qualities that each plant offers. According to Native American medicine, the most powerful medicinal plants are those that resemble the shapes of animals. These plants and flowers are believed to possess some of the spiritual energies of the animals themselves. A few examples of this are Osha—aka Bear Root with its fuzzy nutrient dense roots, Black Cohosh—aka Black Snake Root (the flower essence of which help drives out poisonous energies and assists in transformation) with its thick rhizome, and Staghorn Sumac with its antler-like projections. Korean or Red Ginseng, prized as one of the world’s most powerful adaptogenic herbs, sometimes resembles the shape of a human. This root is frequently used in traditional Chinese medicine for strength, endurance, resistance to stress, libido, and longevity. The flowers of ginseng may not appear as magnificent as its gnarly roots but they too have medicinal qualities and are made into teas because of their detoxifying and highly nutritive value. The flower buds are collected and dried, and are believed to quiet the spirit, brighten the eyes, and enlighten the mind, bringing wisdom. About Dr Bach Flower essences were first prepared in England in the 1930s by Dr. Edward Bach. Bach was a visionary healer who recognized the soul-spiritual dimensions of healing, decades before this awareness gained public acceptance. Bach was trained in conventional medicine, but knew that the physical symptoms he treated were intimately related to the emotional and mental conditions of his patients. He sought a natural, non-toxic method of addressing inner levels of human experience. Although widely recognized as an outstanding bacteriologist and homeopathic medical doctor, Bach left his practice to develop a new healing modality derived from the fresh blossoms of plants. During the time the world was suffering from the Great Depression, Fascism and Nazism, Bach developed a set of 38 flower remedies which could help the human soul overcome fear, despair, and depression. After Bach’s death in 1936, the preparation of the flower remedies was continued by his devoted assistant, Nora Weeks. She directed the Bach Centre, and dispensed Dr. Bach’s remedies to a small but dedicated group of practitioners around the world. Nickie Murray began working with Nora Weeks in 1962, and was trained in essence preparation and selection, including the identification of proper plant species and habitats. In 1978, Nora Weeks died, giving responsibility for carrying out Bach’s work to Nickie Murray with the help of her brother John Ramsell. Nickie Murray left the Bach Centre in 1988 to pursue spiritual service, and subsequently died in 1997. In 1988, Julian Barnard, who learned the preparation of Dr. Bach’s remedies from Nickie Murray, began his own separate company, Healing herbs, to prepare flower remedies following the traditional methods of Dr. Bach. In 1991, the homeopathic company A. Nelson & Company, Ltd. (Nelsons), took over bottling and distribution of the Bach Remedies, and formally acquired the Bach Centre’s business in 1993. Nelsons sells the flower remedies through their subsidiary NelsonBach, using the trade name “Bach Flower Essences.” What are flower essences in the simplest terms? Flower essences are the energetic imprints of flowers and their environment, preserved in water and a small quantity of brandy. Each flower has its own particular characteristics and hence its own unique imprint and information about its environment recorded in the essence. They are nature’s gift to our healing. What can Flower Essence Remedies do for you? They can assist you to: Cope with every-day life challenges calmly and with clarity Empower who you are in the world Heal past hurts and hidden emotional patterns that limit your personal growth, health and vitality Ease dealing with day-to-day challenges such as stress, grief, anger, self- worth, relationships and abundance Address unconscious & conscious emotions and fears Release memory vibrations held at cellular level Become balanced in your heart center offering improved expression of feelings. How do Flower Essences Work? Flower essences bring about mental and emotional balance by primarily influencing our body’s energy systems. According to Gurudas, "Flower Essences and Vibrational Healing" and "The Spiritual Properties of Herbs", flower remedies are assimilated into the bloodstream when ingested or absorbed through our skin. The remedies create an electromagnetic current in the circulatory and nervous system and activate the meridians. They amplify and balance the chakras, the body’s energy centres, under the Indian energy system. The chakras in our physical body correspond closely to our body’s endocrine system, which governs all hormonal activity, and catalyses many of our mental, physical and emotional functions. The flower essences influence our body’s energy system, which include the chakras, meridians and aura through the principle of resonance. All living things in nature influence each other by "tuning in" or vibrating in harmony with each other via resonance. For example, we are able to tune our radio to a particular station because we are tuning the crystals in the radio to resonate with the frequency that the radio station sends out. If you were to put two mechanical grandfather clocks together, with their pendulums swinging at different points in time, they will soon swing in accord through resonance. Similarly, flower essences coax our body gently and powerfully to harmony by influencing the energy patterns in our body to vibrate in health and harmony with them. Although flower essence societies and researchers have collected thousands of case studies that show flower essences successfully relieve people of their mental and emotional blocks, standard scientific experiments have had little success in proving or disproving the effectiveness of flower essences. That is because there is still has no technical means to research the "active ingredient" of flower essences, just as there is has no real technical means to measure life force. This makes the task of establishing why wild flower essences have a positive result an issue for modern medicine to solve. It is important for all of us that wild flower essences do work and only of interest to a minority of people why they work. Vibrational Medicine Flower essences also belong to a branch of energy healing called vibrational medicine. The field of vibrational healing is increasingly recognised as the medicine of the present and future. All things in nature have energy that vibrates or pulses at specific frequencies. Vibrational healing uses the frequencies of nature such as light, sound, magnetism, and flowers to influence our bodies to vibrate healthily. In fact, all our cells have vibration. Pulsing together, they create a field of energy or aura. When all the cells in the field vibrate harmoniously together, we are healthy. When they pulse in discord we become ill. Our thoughts and feelings also hold they own energy frequencies. If we are stressed or in pain, such discordant energy creates energy blocks and illness within the body. Thoughts alone can maintain good health, cause disease, or even death. A most extreme example of this is when Australian Aboriginals "point the bone". Aiming a bone at some- one is said to cause death and even young healthy people die for no "logical" reason, be- cause their belief in this curse is so strong. Even without such dramatic examples, there is scientific evidence to show the power of the mind to influence our good, or ill health. Flower Essences & Self-Healing Flower essences can profoundly heal our thoughts and emotions. Flower essence actively catalyse our intuitive wishes, clarify consciousness, intensify creative abilities and help us regain balance and peace of mind.