How it all began
As it often seems to happen in life, my first encounter with flower essences came about through “chance”: in 1985 I was working as a teacher at the Ottawa Waldorf School when one of my colleagues noticed a book for sale at a School Fair. It was Mechtild Scheffer’s: Bach Flower Therapy – Theory and Practice, in the original German. Since I spoke German, he thought it might be of interest to me. I purchased it, and the journey began!
And what a journey it turned out to be. I started reading and could hardly put the book down . This book – still today a classic on Bach Flower Essences – gave descriptions of 38 personality types & states of mind, and I started recognizing them one by one – in myself, friends, colleagues, family members or public figures.
I would open the Chapter on Centaury and recognize the secretary I had worked with, a woman in her early thirties, taking care of her mother, unmarried , staying late in the office every day of the week and doing everything for everyone, never going on a holiday, for there were always reasons why this wasn’t really possible; a woman basically giving up on a life of her own and letting others take advantage of her.
I would read the Chapter on Vine essence and recognize the university professor under whom I had studied, a man with imposing authority most people found impossible to face and dreaded by the whole department – except a by few Centaury types who willingly served him…
I read the Chapter on Chicory and recognized the caring, but strong-willed and demanding relative, expecting regular family visits “after everything she had done”, or else!
I opened the Chapter on Pine and recognized the guilt-ridden Catholic (other denominations not exempted!) who felt guilty for what s/he had done, had not done, had desired, thought or felt, and who in the depths of her being felt undeserving and in need to sacrifice herself for others.
And on it went.
The marvelous thing was, however, that these states of mind were not only explained, key distortions pointed out in a way that just reading was a relief, but there were these small bottles, not larger than 10 ml, filled with an apparently magical liquid that was supposed to be able to turn all that distortion around.
For example, not only did the article on Centaury point out why at times it really is okay to say No to others, it also showed how to get to the point of actually doing so in situations where it had seemed impossible previously. When reading about Clematis essence, I not only understood why I had a seemingly insurmountable tendency to daydream since I was a child, I could now take a Flower Essence and be able to stay present and focused.
So, I had a friend make up a bottle of essences for me that seemed to be the most urgent ones, Clematis being one of them. Lo and behold, I experienced the changes, some subtle and slow, some striking and sudden.
Soon I purchased the whole set of the 38 Bach Flower Essences which seemed to hold the promise of being something like emotional life savers and started using them. Family, friends and colleagues were next in line, including the family pets. A colleague of mine started using the essences and wondered how she had ever been able to survive without them. One of our cats who had been the smallest of the litter, hiding the moment a stranger approached, started to become independent after a cycle of Rock Rose, an essence for fear and panic, and a few years later gradually left the home to fend for himself in the wilds of Africa.
And on it went. Many blockages that I had not known how to deal with in the past dissolved, and many things became easier to deal with.
A few years later, our family moved to Harare, Zimbabwe (that is where one of our cats struck out on his own).
For me personally this time coincided with the start of a lengthy illness that would take altogether ten years to overcome.
When we moved back to Canada, I started to make some essences of my own – the countryside where we lived provided the perfect setting. I also felt that I needed essences beyond Bach Flowers. I explored various lines of newer essences and eventually decided on Californian and Pacific Essences, on top of experimenting with a number I made myself.
Some readers might ask themselves: if Flower Essences are so great, how come I was ill for so long?
The changes that can be achieved with flower essences sometimes border on the miraculous, either in subtle or in obvious ways . At the same time, flower essences are not a panacea. Nothing is. The essences did provide immense help in the process of recovery, on many levels, including physical recovery. But during this long illness I also learned many a thing. I learned about many different healing modalities, from the very conventional to the very unconventional. I learned what it meant to be ill, to be disabled, and to get better. I discovered the alchemy of illness, and acquired many tools that are second nature to me today, helping me in my work with clients.
As my health improved, I took formal training with the Flower Essence Society in 2003, after having completed training in Therapeutic Touch the year before.
Why “The Flowers of Aeskulap”?
The Avaton at Epidauros
A few years into my practice, I went to Greece and visited the site of Epidauros, best known today for its amphitheatre. I found that I had a strong inner connection to this location. In the ancient world, Epidauros was one of the largest and best known Healing Centres – people traveled from far and wide to find help. Asklepios (Asklepius or Aesculapius in Latin) was the name the ancient Greeks had given to their God of Healing. His daughter was called Hygieia (health). Already in 2003 when I needed to complete a plant study as part of my training, I had chosen the Common Milkweed, Asklepias syriaca, which for some reason had always been one of my favorite plants. Coincidence or not, as a flower essence Milkweed helps to awaken those parts in us that have been deeply dormant, muted or even regressing. As I see it today, the quality of the Milkweed Essence, Asklepias cordifolia, another Milkweed variety used for the flower essence, epitomizes what I had seen happening to clients: the hidden core coming to the fore, like a buried jewel that nobody even knew existed and that was now being released.
When I came back from Epidauros, I decided to name my practice The Flowers of Aeskulap.
For information on Californian Essences, go to: http://www.flowersociety.org/.
For information on Pacific Essences, go to: www.pacificessences.com
For a Milkweed Plant Study, go to: http://www.flowersociety.org/Milkweed-Plant-Study.htm
For an article on Rock Water essence, go to: http://www.flowersociety.org/schuster-rock-water.html
For a comprehensive Introduction into flower essences, go to my Blog Articles.