BACH FLOWER

flower- essences

The efficacy of a treatment lies in its simplicity and naturality.. There are numerous methods of healing, which aim at curing the physical disease. The BACH FLOWER remedy is the only healing method which heals the patient’s soul. Dr Edward Bach the founding father of the said remedy qualified as a doctor in 1912, saying as he received his diplomas, ‘it will take me five years to forget all I have been taught’. It was eighteen years before he finally turned his back on orthodox research, smashed the glassware in his laboratory, and left London.

Edward Bach ( 24 September 1886 – 27 November 1936) was a British physician, homeopath, bacteriologist and spiritual writer, best known for developing a range of remedies called the Bach flower remedies, a form of alternative medicine inspired by classical homeopathic traditions. Bach grew up in Birmingham. At the age of 20 he entered Birmingham University, going on to University College Hospital in London to complete his studies. He studied medicine at the University College Hospital, London, and obtained a Diploma of Public Health (DPH) at Cambridge.

In 1917 Bach had a malignant tumor removed from his spleen. It was predicted that he had only three months left to live, but instead he recovered. Starting in 1919, he worked at the London Homeopathic Hospital, where he was influenced by the work of Samuel Hahnemann.  In this period, he developed seven bacterial nosodes known as the seven Bach nosodes.

In 1930, at the age of 43, he decided to search for a new healing technique. He spent the spring and summer discovering and preparing new flower remedies – which include no part of the plant but simply what Bach claimed to be the pattern of energy of the flower. In the winter he treated patients free of charge.

Rather than being based on medical research, using the scientific method, Bach’s flower remedies were intuitively derived and based on his perceived psychic connections to the plants.  Bach’s remedies focus on treatment of the patient’s personality, which he believed to be the ultimate root cause of disease.

The discovery of the 38 remedies took another five years. Along the way Dr Bach perfected two entirely new methods for preparing medicines from plants – the sun and boiling methods, which are still used today. Bach enjoyed many years of successful research in London. He had founded an entirely new approach to healing that concentrated exclusively on the emotional and spiritual health of people rather than their physical symptoms.

Bach flower remedies are solutions of brandy and water—the water would contain extreme dilutions of flower material developed by Edward Bach. He claimed that dew found on flower petals retain imagined healing properties of that plant.

The solutions contain a 50:50 mix of water and brandy and are called mother tincture.  Stock remedies that are the solutions found in the shops are dilutions of mother tincture into other liquid. Most often the liquid used is alcohol, so that the alcohol level by volume in most stock Bach remedies is between 25% and 40%. The dilution process results in the statistical likelihood that little more than a single molecule may remain; it is claimed that the remedies contain energetic or vibration of the flower and that this can be transmitted to the user.  The solutions are described by some as vibration medicines, which implies they rely on the concept of water memory.

It is a system of 38 Flower Remedies that corrects emotional imbalances, wherein the negative emotions are replaced with positive. Bach believed that illness was the result of a conflict between the purposes of the soul and the individual’s actions and outlook. This internal war, according to Bach, leads to negative moods and to “energy blocks”, which in turn leads to a lack of “harmony” and physical diseases. Bach derived his solutions intuitively and based on his perceived psychic connections to the plants, rather than using research based on scientific methods. If Bach felt a negative emotion, he would hold his hand over different plants, and if one alleviated the emotion, he would ascribe the power to heal that emotional problem to that plant. He imagined that early-morning sunlight passing through dew-drops on flower petals transferred the healing power of the flower onto the water, so he would collect the dew drops from the plants and preserve the dew with an equal amount of brandy to produce a mother tincture which would be further diluted before use. Later, he found that the amount of dew he could collect was not sufficient, so he would suspend flowers inspiring and allow the sun’s rays to pass through them.

Each solution is used alone or in conjunction with other solution, and each flower is said by advocates to impart specific qualities. Remedies are usually taken orally.

The solutions may be recommended by a naturopath or by a trained Bach flower practitioner after an interview. Some vendors recommend dowsing to select a solution.

The best known solution product is the Rescue Remedy combination, which contains an equal amount each of rock roseimpatiens, clematisstar of Bethlehem and cherry plum remedies. The flowers are very aptly called the SOUL HEALERS.

At the same time his sensitivity to nature and to the people who came to him for help grew. Towards the end he would suffer himself from the same symptoms and mental agonies as his patients. During the finding of the last nineteen remedies in 1935 he suffered to an extreme degree from the nineteen mental states for which he needed a remedy and only found relief when he found the right plant.

Dr Bach declared the system complete when he had all the remedies he needed – 38 preparations in all. The 38 could be combined into nearly 293 million different combinations, yet were so simple to make and use that anyone could do it.

Bach enjoyed many years of successful research in London. His work brought him fame and a high professional standing among both orthodox and homoeopathic doctors. Now he had founded an entirely new approach to healing that concentrated exclusively on the emotional and spiritual health of people rather than their physical symptoms.