Bach Flower Remedies.

The philosophy behind the Bach Flower Essences is that disease is a way for our body to tell us that we are doing something that goes against our soul and personality. A conflict or disease arises when, as Dr. Edward Bach wrote in Heal Thyself "our personalities are led astray from the path laid down by the Soul, either by our own worldly desires or by the persuasion of others." Such a conflict is "the root cause of disease and unhappiness." Unfortunately, things happen in our life which can lead us away from our path. It can be parents who do not let their child choose his or her profession, but instead, for their own selfish reasons,  influence the child to choose a profession, which they believe is "better." Also, fears, loneliness, uncertainty and despair can prevent people from following their path.

Dr. Bach was a renowned physician and homeopath  in London who in 1930 became disillusioned with the side effects of drug therapies and devoted all of his time to search for a new method of healing, turning to the healing power of nature. For many years he had sought a natural and pure way to heal people, he had discovered how different people reacted differently to the exact same disease. One could be cheerful and hide his worries while another would be very depressed with no hope for tomorrow. Dr. Bach believed that those two patients should be treated differently, not strictly according to the disease, but according to their emotions. In 1928 when Dr. Bach discovered the first of 38 Essences he was very excited and started to administer them to his patients, with immediate and successful results. The cheerful patients would acknowledge their worries and the depressed patients would regain hope. The Essences restored their emotional balance allowing their bodies to heal themselves.

Dr. Bach saw that illness was a result of mental or emotional imbalance and that the unique energetic property--the etheric energy-- of a plant could be used to rectify an imbalance and restore the awareness of 'wholeness'. Using the homoeopathic law of potentisation, he reasoned that the healing effects of plants might also be contained in the morning dew found on their flowers, which are the crowning experience of a plant's growth, holding the highest concentration of the plant's life-force, to become seeds which bring forth new life.
In using Flower Essences we are watering the seeds of potential that lie within each one of us. The flower essences are in tune with respective emotional states, and each one contains within its essence—its etheric imprint-- a virtue, which, when taken, brings out our inner resonating virtue state and corrects the emotional imbalances.

When prescribing the Essences, Dr. Bach would look at the patient's emotional health and not the disease, since he believed disease to be caused by emotional imbalances. He would look at their outlook on life: Does the patient have low self-esteem? Does he or she criticize others? Is he dominating? Is she fearful? And so on. The patient may say, "I am so impatient", "I feel so lonely", "I just have to live with it" or "I feel that I am going to explode."

The Essences would then be chosen to correspond with the patients' emotional outlook on life, allowing them to be in harmony with themselves and their soul and therefore regain health. A remedy such as Larch will help a person with low self-esteem, Mimulus will help a person who is fearful and Pine will help a person who feels guilt. All 38 Essences help certain emotions, and in combination 292 million emotional states can be balanced.

Since childhood is a roller coaster of change both physically and mentally, The Essences could help a child go through those changes without too many worries and trouble. The Bach Flower Essences have been used successfully with children of all ages, to treat everything from shyness, homesickness, tantrums, low self-esteem, trauma, exam nerves and adolescent angst.

In adolescence the young man or woman goes through some turbulent years which can often be extremely frustrating for many teenagers and their families. At the same time these young people need to break free from their parents, they must go through significant changes both mentally and physically. The Essences help the teenager make it through this time with confidence and allow him or her to follow the path put down by the soul and thus grows up as a harmonious person.

The healing process can be described as peeling a cabbage, the size of which depends on how old and how many unresolved problems the person has had. Therefore, the young person will easily be brought back in harmony with him or herself by the gentle effect off the remedies. An older person with a hard life filled with problems and unhappiness will still benefit greatly from the remedies, and find relief immediately, but it will take some time to get to the core of the cabbage.

Dr. Edward Bach wrote "Disease is solely and purely corrective; it is neither vindictive nor cruel, but it is the means adopted by our own souls to point out to us our faults, to prevent our making greater errors, to hinder us from doing more harm, and to bring us back to the path of Truth and Light from which we should never have strayed."