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What are Flower Essences?
Flower essences (or ‘remedies’ – the terms are used interchangeably) are the vibrational imprint, or etheric pattern of particular flowers or plants prepared in liquid form. You can imagine, as science tells us, that everything – plants, animals, the Earth, stars – is made up at it’s very basic level of vibrations of energy. Then you can also imagine that every flower species has a particular vibration different in some way than any other. The energy of a dark red rose is different than that of a bright white lily in color, form, scent, texture, and so on. These tangible factors are associated with the flower’s individual vibrational pattern or ‘etheric essence’.
The vibrational pattern of each flower can be ‘imprinted’ in pure water through certain preparation methods – one used most often is the infusing (like making tea) of fresh flowers just picked in glass bowls of spring water sitting in bright sunlight. The water then takes on the etheric vibration of the flower, resulting in what has been termed a ‘flower essence’.
Vibrations and Emotional Energies
Now lets imagine that we as human beings are also made up of, at some level, vibrational energy. If we take this a step further, one can imagine that our ‘soul’ or ‘personality’ or whatever term you’d like to use here, has a vibration or etheric pattern of its own. Your ‘soul pattern’ includes your emotional makeup, and it directly influences your actions, choices, and perceptions of the world, both on a material and a spiritual level.
It turns out, as Dr. Edward Bach discovered in the 1930’s, that flower essences can alter our own etheric patterns. The vibrational imprint of a flower, prepared in water, can directly effect our own energetic makeup in a positive way. If you imagine that every emotion has a particular vibration, you can also imagine that vibration being affected or ‘tuned’ by the introduction of another vibration – that of a flower essence.
Flower Essence Application
We’ll take the clear example of the use of one of Dr. Bach’s original flower essences, Impatiens. You can think of being ‘impatient’ as being a bit ‘high strung’, where nothing is happening fast enough, with an overall sense of anxiety. This can be thought of as a particular vibration common to many individuals of the human species, and it may also be thought of as not particularly pleasant or useful – a ‘stress’ one might want to alter or release. By taking the Impatiens flower essence, the vibration of the flower synergistically alters a particular vibration of the individual, resulting in a noticeable calming action for many people.
Specificity of Effects
The use of the word ‘synergistically’ here is important: it has been found that each flower essence affects certain ‘soul patterns’ and not others. For example, if one is by nature, a patient person, one would not likely be affected by Impatiens flower essence. This is one of the many beauties of flower essence therapy – they are completely safe for anyone to take. An incorrectly chosen flower essence will likely result in no effect at all; there are no ‘side effects’ to be spoken of.
Broad Range of Uses for Emotional Healing
And this is a relatively simple case; one’s vibrational makeup may be affected by a particularly stressful early childhood relationship with one’s mother, and one could choose a flower essence to assist in the change or healing of that emotional vibration (Evening Primrose, as an example). There is clearly a great breadth of human emotion and experience, and as such there are a great many flower essences available. We carry both the original 38 flower essences developed by Dr. Bach, as well as the 103 North American flower essences from Flower Essence Services. For more on flower essences and flower essence therapy, see Choosing Flower Essences and Using Flower Essences, as well as the particular section on the Bach Flower Essences and Remedies.
An essential oil is a highly concentrated natural plant extract in the form of an aromatic liquid. When essential oils are used, the aromatic molecules of the oils are absorbed into the blood stream and transported to the limbic system. The limbic system is the processing center for reason, emotion, and smell and can thus trigger an emotional release. Although there are three different grades of essential oils only the top grade, therapeutic grade, has healing properties. We utilize organic therapeutic grade essential oils in our practice for massage and aromatic inhalation. Essential oils are concentrated volatile aromatic compounds produced by plants, the easily evaporated essences that give plants their wonderful scents. Each of these complex precious liquids are extracted from a particular species of plant life. Each plant species originates in certain regions of the world, with particular environmental conditions and neighboring fauna and flora. The result is a very diverse library of aromatic compounds, with some essential oils being made up of more than one hundred distinct organic chemicals.
What do they do for plants?
Essential oils are extracted from oil ‘sacs’ in flowers, leaves, stems, roots, seeds, wood and bark. They differ significantly from the well-known vegetable, nut and seed oils which are made up of various fatty acids (essential oils are not). Essential oils are used by the plants in somewhat the same way they are by humans – they fight infection, contain hormone-like compounds, initiate cellular regeneration, and work as chemical defense against fungal, viral, and animal foes. Despite their foliar origins however, essential oils have a similar structure to some compounds found in blood and tissues, allowing them to be compatible with our own physiology.
How Essential Oils Are Extracted
To produce essential oils of therapeutic quality – those that retain as much of the original plant essence in its original state as possible – the most gentle extraction method that will draw the oil from a particular plant is most desirable. Extraction methods range from Carbon Dioxide (CO2) extraction – being the most gentle (and most expensive), to pressing (as for extracting the oil from citrus rinds) and steam distillation, to solvent extraction. Steam distillation is most common, and as a result of only requiring heating to just above the boiling point of water, is considered gentle enough for most essential oils. (Note: All of Ananda’s essential oils are of Therapeutic Quality, being 100% pure, unadulterated, and properly produced to this standard – Read more about how essential oils are made).
The History of Essential Oils
Humankind has used plants for healing for many thousands of years, and it’s from this tradition of that the use of aromatic plant compounds is medicine began. (see About Aromatherapy for a more in depth discussion of the olfactory aspects of essential oil use). Documented use of aromatic plants dates back to near 4500 B.C., though it was in the hands of the ancient Egyptians that the use of oils and plant aromatics was truly developed. Oils were used in the embalming process, in medicine and in purification rituals. In 1922, when King Tut’s tomb was opened, 50 alabaster jars made to contain nearly 350 liters of oil were discovered. There are also over 200 references to aromatics, incense and ointments in the Old and New Testaments; Frankincense, Myrrh, Galbanun, Cinnamon, Cassia, Rosemary, Hyssop and Spikenard are noted for being used for anointing rituals and healing of the sick.
