flower essences?

[Yoda]

My father in law just bought some Five flower Rescue blend of Bach's flower essences. As I'm interested in mellowing herbs, I tried some and it seems to do something to me, but Mrs. Yoda says that it isn't as effective as Tao in a Bottle. I can't get anyone else around here to test drive these things. I always noticed that Winn sells flower essences, but I've never experimented with this sort of thing before aside from a fling with Km in the early 90s.

[Lozen]

Rescue Remedy rocks!!

 

You can get specific flower essences for your emotional condition, too. But yes, they are mellow--very subtle.

[Yoda]

Lozen,

 

The weird thing about it is that I can feel it in 10 minutes, sometimes within seconds. combined with Tao in a Bottle and meditation, I'm going to be quite the stoner that I've intended to be in 2006.

 

cool.

 

I don't have any experience with homeopathy... is this the same thing? this seems much stronger than the flower bitters that I've tried in the past.

 

It works so fast that I'm thinking it would be a great pre-practice thing to dose up on like Winn does in some of his classes to raise everyone's vibration. Has anyone tried Joyce's flower essences?

 

Yoda

[Lozen]

If you feel Rescue Remedy right away, it is probably because you are stressed out. It's a combination of five essences... Clematis, which is great for spacing out (I made clematis flower essence use it in all my warrior formulas--a good warrior is a present warrior), Star of Bethlehem for shock/trauma, Impatiens for impatience and irritability, cherry plum for basically being on the verge of a breakdown, and Rock Rose, which is good for panic and freaking out basically. I usu. feel RR right away when I take it, if I need it. Otherwise I feel nothing. Anyways, it is perfectly safe to take no matter what and won't work if you don't need it (unlike homeopathics!!) but if you find yourself needing it all the time for weeks on end, you probably need to practice more stress reduction techniques. People usu. have very different imbalances and use RR for high stress days.

 

Flower bitters? You mean like Swedish bitters? Those are to help tonify liver and to help digestion but don't really have that kind of effect. Flower essences are purely energetic. They are just an imprint of the plant on water. I can tell you how to make them if you're interested... but basically you put ONE flower in a huge glass bowl of water and then remove the flower, and mix the "energized" water with brandy. It is merely the energetic imprint of the plant. Then you dilute it (very important with datura essence!!!) and use it.

 

I actually have flower essences--rose essences--for all the different chakras. And btw Bach essenses and Five flowers are virtually the same except Bach costs twice as much. I've also used Desert Alchemy, some of the semiprecious stone essences, and want to use Australian Busch...but mostly I just make my own. It is amazing though looking through the books in the store how attracted I am to pictures of plants and then find out what imbalances they are for and it usu. connects. Desert Alchemy was formed by 3 people who meditated next to each flower they used, and saw where their experiences were the same. Actually the healer I met when I had tea with Ken Cohen studied with Desert Alchemy.

 

I do know though that at some point flower essences just aren't strong enough and the issue needs to be dealt with directly--physically. As Eliot Cowan says, flower essences are very much about intent, but you need more than intent. I think Plant Spirit Medicine is a nice midway point between flower essences and scientific (eclectic) herbalism. Ever tried drop dosing tinctures, though? Very similar to flower essences.

 

Well I could go on and on, and I have! but feel free to ask more questions. I'm sure Karen could expound better than I about the differences betw. flower essences and homeopathy. I don't have much experience with homeopathy.

 

Lozen

 

P.S. There is also a Rescue Remedy cream... I'll tell you about it sometime.

[Lozen]

Check this out too: http://www.desert-alchemy.com/txt/faq.html

[karen]

Hi Yoda,

 

The only thing the Bach flower essences have in common with homeopathy is that Dr. Bach was also a homeopath. (Well, now I'm editing that, because I was a bit hasty, but let's say they have less in common than it appears).

 

Flower essences are more like herbal infusions, and contain some of the original material substance.. whereas homeopathics are purely energetic, and a chemical assay of homeopathics will show nothing of the original substance. The flower essences can be effective in cases where there is no deep pathology or trauma.

 

The people these remedies were developed for (upper class women in England in the 1930's , had few pathologies, just some disturbed mental/emotional states that were easily treated with the flower essences.

 

Loads more flower essences have been made from flowers found in different areas of the world, and the Bach flowers are only the original set.

 

I find Rescue Remedy a little too subtle for me, although a lot of people like it. I sometimes need a bit of a gentle hit in the head

 

Now.. this reminds me of something I think folks here might be interested in, that I find more powerful than flower essences and can be taken like nutritional supplements -- ORMES or ORMUS products. Has anyone experimented with them? Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements. Alchemical substances. I've used several ORMUS products and felt a quite subtle yet powerful kick from them. Nothing overwhelming, but definitely something going on there.

 

Off the top of my head, websites would be Subtle Energies and Life Enthusiast

 

Karen

Edited December 29, 2005 by karen

[Lozen]

I would have to disagree that flower essences are anything like herbal infusions. They are so diluted that I don't even know if chemically there would be any detection of even a trace of the original substance. I usually use one small flower per bowl of water, let it sit in the sun for as little as an hour, up to eight hours, and then I remove the flower, then I add alcohol to the water, and that is just the motherstock, which people go on to dilute, one or three drops in a glass of water. The flower substance is definitely not there, but the energetic imprint (hence the word essence) is there.

[karen]

Hi Lozen,

 

Maybe we're just using the term "energetically" differently. If you do a chemical analysis of a flower essence, there will be at least a few molecules of the original substance (maybe a few more than a few). It's highly dilute compared with the usual herbal infusions, but not dilute to the point where there is absolutely nothing material there but the carrier substance.

 

Even some homeopathics, below the 12X or 12C potency contain at least one molecule of the original substance -- the Schussler tissue salts, for example. But above the 12th potency, only energy and no substance.

 

The flower essences do act on subtle levels, which is I think what you're saying. Material things can have subtle effects. Just that they're not as dilute as homeopathics, and they are also prepared in a very different way -- homeopathics are potentized by vigorous shaking ("succussing") after each successive dilution.

 

The way you get a 12X potency is to take one part of the original substance to 9 parts carrier (let's say water), shake that very vigorously, then take one drop of that mixture and add it to 9 parts water, shake, and repeat the process 12 times. I often do it just by dumping the whole container out, because there will always be one drop left on the side of the glass. Not the most precise method, but it works in certain instances.

 

12C would mean that you use 1 part substance to 99 parts water, and dilute that 12 times. So you can imagine how dilute a 1M or 50M potency is (M meaning thousand)

 

-Karen

Edited December 28, 2005 by karen

[Lozen]

Okay, I think what I was saying is that percentage-wise, flower essences are more similar to homeopathics than they are to herbal infusions. Maybe I'm wrong, who knows, we'd have to do a lot of math. I do remember reading somewhere though that the percentage of original substance to dilution for flower essences and homeopathics was the same, but I'd have to try to find that article.

[karen]

Math, oh no, not that!! Not my fondest subject. And really, herbal medicines, flower essences and homeopathy each have their own special uses.

 

(I remember Michael Tierra advising me not to try too hard to find correspondences between Ayurveda and TCM :-)

 

It is fun to talk about these things, but we don't want to stress our spleen chi with too much analysis

 

Karen

[Lozen]

Found it!

 

Flower essences are based on the theory of water having a memory. The

Bach Centre acknowledges in writing that there haven't been any

proper clinical trials on the actions of the remedied. But the plant-

based formulas are highly diluted based on the theory that the waters

they are carried in - the water in which the flowers were originally

saturated - contain a healing message from the plant to the body.

 

The remedies are made by soaking or boiling the flowers in water and

then straining them out. The resulting fluid is then diluted 50/50

with 80-proof brandy -- the original preservative, which is still

used today. Then it is further massively diluted in 54-proof brandy,

creating the actual substance which is bottled and sold. The 10- mi

bottle only contains a fraction of a drop of the original tincture

(consistent with homeopathy).

 

Homeopathy was developed by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th

century, he was a German physician who believed that minute doses of

a substance that in large amounts would cause an ailment would

stimulate the body to cure it. He also believed that the smaller the

dose, the most potent its effect. This contradicts the laws of

chemistry that state that there is a limit to how much substances can

be diluted without losing the original substance altogether (most

homeopathic remedies far exceed the limit).

 

There is some research done that by epidemiologist/homeopathist Dr.

Jacque Benveniste saying that water may have a memory and be able

to store information about an active substance even when highly

diluted. His research (which cost him his job) shows that an

antibody solution continued to evoke a biological response even when

it was diluted in a 1:1030 ratio Of serum to water. This is far

beyond the dilution limit when even a single molecule of the original

substance would be present in the water. His theory is that the

substance leaves some sort of energetic imprint on water molecules

that has a continuing effect ---possibly supporting the homeopathic

thesis of potency even in dilution.

[Lozen]

And this really cute guy I met in Oxford dissed homeopathy four years ago. I still have the e-mail cut and pasted below. This guy disproved homeopathy and flower essences. Hey Sean, what do you think?

 

According to calculations by this dude (god bless him), EVERY SINGLE drop of water on the planet already contains a HIGHER concentration of all these things than in a homeopathic remedy so you CAN'T dilute it down to 30C because you're diluting with water which is already more concentrated than this.

 

On examining the numbers he realized that a mixture of say 30C is so diluted

that all he has to do is put a 1 litre of the original mixture in the sea and

then 10^60 litres of the earths water are at the correct concentration.

 

Enough to accidentally heal everyone... or is it?

 

Well, unfortunately we didn't know the volume of the sea, but he did know the

radius of the earth though, it's roughly 6,400km. so, the surface area of the

earth is pi*r(sqauread)= 3.14*6400*6400 this is in kilometres squard though. for metres squared it's 3.14 * 6400 * 6400 * 1000 * 1000= 128614400000000 = 1.28 *10^14.

 

3/4 of the earths surface is covered in water it's roughly, on average say, around 2 kilometres deep. You will see that the exact depth is utterly irrelevant.

 

suppose it's 2km then we have a volume of 1.28*10^14 * 2 *1000 (converting to metres again)= 2.56*10^17. This is cubic metres of water, there are 1,000 litres of water in a cubic metre so, in fact, the total volume of the sea's water is only 2.56*10^40.

 

That means that if after I drop this litre of water into the sea we still need to do a dilution of 20C to get it to homeopathic dilution!1 litre in all of the worlds water is only 10C.

 

SO how can we expect to every STOP taking homepathic remedies that are too

strong? Every time we dilute the remedy it's in water which has got a HIGHER

concentration of the level of solution we are aiming at.

=====

 

and one more thing (okay, two)

 

1-i am just posting this to be funny and have issues with science anyway

2-the only thing this proves is that science considers flower essences and homeopathics to be "very diluted" lol

Edited December 28, 2005 by Lozen

[karen]

Found it!

Flower essences are based on the theory of water having a memory...

10143[/snapback]

 

Good article, although I'd make some distinctions.. "consistent with homeopathy" suggests it has some things in common with homeopathy, and I'd say sure. But not the same thing.

 

Now here's where things get a bit sticky, because the term homeopathy really indicates the way a remedy is used, not only the way it is prepared. Actually, technically, a remedy isn't prepared homeopathically. It's given homeopathically. Because if you take a so-called homeopathic remedy and give it according to the law of opposites, not similars, you aren't doing homeopathy.

 

So we're talking about how the remedies are prepared, but we also have to talk about how the remedies are given.

 

And the flower essences are given according to the mental/emotional picture, because they act on that realm, while homeopathics also include physical indications. Classical homeopaths generally give remedies according to the total symptom picture, weighing a multitude of minute indications. (that's pronounced my-nute :-)

 

I'm not a fan of classical homeopathy, but it's a good example for this.

 

Also, Dr. Bach developed the remedies according to his own experiments on himself and his own intuition, not testing them on many people as Hahnemann did. I know there are people currently who are doing provings on flower essences.. I've only read a little about it.. maybe you're familiar with that? Those recent provings are pretty interesting.

 

-Karen

[karen]

Geez, what's up with these cute guys dissing homeopathy. I know what you mean.

 

Swiss cheesy arguments there, but mainly I think it's interesting when people put so much energy into dissing homeopathy. To me that's more interesting than the content of the argument itself.

 

I've had such.. um, discussions, with an ex-boyfriend until we realized that we weren't really arguing about homeopathy at all.. that was just a trigger for some unresolved power issues.

 

In more recent years I've conserved a lot of energy by not climbing on the soap box anymore . There are more fun things to do.

 

Karen

[Yoda]

cool thread!

[Lozen]

Good article, although I'd make some distinctions.. "consistent with homeopathy" suggests it has some things in common with homeopathy, and I'd say sure. But not the same thing.

----

 

Fair enough but then I would say that the only similarity between flower essences and herbal infusions is that the plants were in water at some point...and it ends there...

 

I guess I may not be making much of a distinction between the two because the way I have seen them used has been similar--look up your emotional imbalance on a chart (for flower essences) or your physical ailment on the rack (for classic homeopathics), and buy the one that will "fix" it. Of course people who are more into it or have the knowledge, or time, or money will read books or get an in-depth consultation. I think flower essences, at least for the desert essences, use the law of similars, like to learn boundary issues you end up taking cactus flower essences, so I suppose that is a key difference. Like I said I don't know very much about homeopathy, but I know a teeny bit about flower essences and a bit more about herbs and they are about as opposite as I think they get. Well, except that using drop doses of tinctures (like just one drop instead of 30 drops or 90 drops a day) can be really similar to flower essences, but you mentioned using arnica--one pellet in a glass of water and just sipping a few times a day, and that seems similar as well. Ahh, what do I know. But seriously though, if you are using the law of opposites, wouldn't a vaccine (like a Western medicine vaccine) be a homeopathic remedy?

 

Also, to throw another thing in there, I know that Australian Bush essences, which are flower essences, are used for physical indications. Also, I know that some Western herbs are used for the mental/emotional realm. And when you throw TCM into the mix which covers all of 'em... Well, I guess that's not really true. I've never met an acupuncturist that can deal with a client crying. They either try to fix it or they ignore it. If I ever study TCM seriously--and I hope to one day-- if someone cries, I'll sit and talk to them and be present about it, and then tell them why the treatment energetically brought up the emotional root problem of their physical ailment. Why doesn't anybody do this? Uh, but I think my point is that ideally, TCM docs, as well as naturopaths, will give remedies according to all symptoms...as will herbalists...so it's not just homeopathy.

 

Now I'm confused. I need verbena tincture or vervain flower essence!!!!

 

Tell me more about what you mean by provings on flower essences?

[Lozen]

The problem I have when cute guys diss homeopathy, or people diss acupuncture, or w hatever, is that I then have to basically admit that as much as I read up on or study the science behind what I do, it's definitely not the reason, and mostly I just use my intuition and my dreamwork to keep me in check.

[karen]

>Fair enough but then I would say that the only similarity between flower essences and herbal infusions is that the plants were in water at some point...and it ends there...

 

Yup, fair enough .

 

>I guess I may not be making much of a distinction between the two because the way I have seen them used has been similar--look up your emotional imbalance on a chart (for flower essences) or your physical ailment on the rack (for classic homeopathics), and buy the one that will "fix" it.

 

Eeek . But you're right, that's often the way homeopathy is used, unfortunately. There are a bunch of points to sort out here. First of all, choosing a homeopathic according to what's printed on the labels will rarely give you the correct remedy. But even if we look at the few occasions on which that might actually work (for example, Ingnatia for ailments caused by emotional states), even then, using homeopathy like that is like saying that putting calendula on a cut represents the whole system of herbal medicine. Now you're probably saying Eek too .

 

Classical homeopathy, in my opinion, is utilizing a very small corner of the whole system of homeopathic medicine which Hahnemann called Heilkunst. But even within classical homeopathy, a very detailed workup is necessary and people apprentice for years to learn the art of prescribing.

 

The indications that are printed on the labels of the vials really should never be used in choosing a remedy. A principle from one paradigm only become distorted when squeezed into another paradigm. If you look at the homepathic materia medica (fun book to skim through), you see several pages of indications (rubrics) for each remedy.

 

I just took some Gelsemium yestereday.. the bottle said "For flu symptoms." Well, Gelsemium is ONE remedy that's used for flu symptoms, but then again, "flu" is not a symptom but an allopathic designation. And there are at least a dozen other homeopathics that might be used for "flu-like" symptoms. We need to get the whole picture of this particular expression of flu-like symptoms in this particular person.

 

For example, if my flu-like symptoms include fatigue but no thirst, not sweaty, and I'm not particularly irritable, then Gelsemium might be a good match (oversimplifying this just to make the point).

 

But on the other hand, if someone's flu symptoms include fatigue, marked thirst, sweaty, and irritability, then Gelsemium is NOT the similar remedy, but Bryonia might be a possibility. Many indications are considered, including things like "right middle toe hurts every other Thursday in the summer" (ok, I made that up to exaggerate the point, but really it's not far off).

 

And all this only holds true for the realm of acute prescribing, for self-limiting conditions like colds, infections, accidents, childhood illnesses like mumps, etc. What is known as constitutional prescribing, in the realm of classical homeopathy, is a whole 'nother thing. The practitioner usually does a long interview with the person, eliciting great detail of their likes and dislikes, what kinds of influences make them feel better or worse (seasons, temperatures, environments, etc.), and all their peculiar sensitivities. Then the practitioner has to know to weigh each indication in the analysis, because certain signs and symptoms weigh more heavily than others, and choose a remedy that has proved to be most similar to that pattern.

 

Provings are the experiments done on healthy people to determine the characteristics of a remedy. The basis of the law of similars is that a substance given in crude dose will produce the same symptoms that it will cure in the minute (and dynamized) dose. In order to come up with a basis for giving each remedy medicinally, Hahnemann conducted "provings" on each remedy. He gave a small crude dose (not enough to hurt the person) of a substance to a healthy person (beginning with himself), and then observed the symptoms that developed. Each substance would create a variety of symptoms unique to that substance. Then that substance when diluted and dynamized would be used to treat those same symptoms, essentially.

 

Substances used were herbs, minerals, animal parts, and many toxic substances like heavy metals. I've taken homeopathic arsenic probably hundreds of times (in a higher than 12th potency so there's no material substance left!)

 

(New remedies have been proven since Hahnemann's time, including the recently proven Lac Humanum, which is mothers' milk!)

 

Now about flower essence provings.. I know a classical homeopath who works with flower essences, Eileen Nauman, and she has been conducting provings of new flower essences. She has people take the flowers, I'm not sure in what form, but they report their subjective experiences and the results are compiled in order to learn the profiles of these flowers. Here's a bit about her provings: Medicine Garden

 

> using drop doses of tinctures (like just one drop instead of 30 drops or 90 drops a day) can be really similar to flower essences, but you mentioned using arnica--one pellet in a glass of water and just sipping a few times a day, and that seems similar as well.

 

Similar in that it's a small dose. But even if you took the whole bottle of arnica in one shot, you'd still be getting less than one molecule of arnica :-)

 

> But seriously though, if you are using the law of opposites, wouldn't a vaccine (like a Western medicine vaccine) be a homeopathic remedy?

 

Good question. (I assume you meant "similars" there, not opposites?) Vaccines use what I'd call the nonexistent law of sames, not similars . And in a very misguided way, but the law of similars does seem to make intuitive sense to people (a hair of the dog that bit you), and some mistakenly believe vaccines = homeopathy.

 

But when you're giving material doses of toxic substances, you're not doing homeopathy -- you're doing poisoning. If all the criteria aren't met, you don't have homeopathy.. sometimes you have something that's ineffective yet harmless, and sometimes you have things like vaccines which are very harmful. I wrote an article on Homeopathy vs. Vaccination

 

>Uh, but I think my point is that ideally, TCM docs, as well as naturopaths, will give remedies according to all symptoms...as will herbalists...so it's not just homeopathy.

 

For sure. I would say that Heilkunst even gives remedies that are not based on current symptoms at all, but treat old traumas that have lodged in the energy body.. disturbances in the vital force due to vaccinations, injuries, traumas of all sorts. We could compare the different systems in a multitude of ways, and they're each unique.

 

Hope that's helping to clear the confusion, or maybe the flower essences will

 

Karen

[karen]

The problem I have when cute guys diss  homeopathy, or people diss acupuncture, or w hatever, is that I then have to basically admit that as much as I read up on or study the science behind what I do, it's definitely not the reason, and mostly I just use my intuition and my dreamwork to keep me in check.

10158[/snapback]

 

It's a blessing wherever that capacity is still intact!

 

Certainly what we've come to know as scientific thinking is suffering from tunnel vision. Having TCM treatments undergo double-blind study is not exactly what thrills me

 

But then I would change the definition of science to mean natural law, and principles based on natural law. Then I would say that herbal energetics and Heilkunst-homeopathy are all scientific, and our intuitive senses are part of that as well.

 

-Karen