The Healing Power of Plants

• Dr. Bach’s Flower Remedies

Dr.Bach

Dr Bach used a metaphor to describe how the remedies work. He said, ‘they are able, like beautiful music, or any gloriously uplifting thing which gives us inspiration, to raise our very natures, and bring us nearer to our Souls: and by that very act, to bring us peace, and relieve our sufferings.’ Just as a beautiful sunset or a photograph can move us so that we feel more at peace, so taking a remedy uplifts us in a gentle way and helps us be the best we are.

There are many theories about the mechanism the remedies use to achieve this. Most believe the active ingredient in the remedies is a kind of energy or vibration that is transferred from the living flower to the water during the process of making the mother tinctures. Some believe the energy forms a pattern in the water; others talk of quantum mechanics and spiritual vibrations.The real proof that these flower energies exist, however, is the effect they have on people. Taking Mimulus when we are afraid is just a more specific form of the emotional reaction we feel when we listen to Beethoven or gaze up at the stars.

In  the world of colour. There are only three basic colours (red, blue yellow), yet every visible colour can be produced when they are combined.n the same way there are 38 basic states of mind. Combining them gives hundreds of millions of variations.

Dr Bach considered many theories and ideas during his career, and wrote notes, articles and letters on them. But at every stage of his work he was keen to leave behind anything that was no longer relevant.

For example, he discontinued the use of succussion in preparing remedies, investigated and discounted links between remedy types and astrology, gave up diagnosis by physical symptom, and abandoned as unnecessary the idea of different remedies working on ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ planes.

He could be quite emphatic about such excess baggage! When he decided in 1930 to leave London and devote himself to flower remedies, he made a bonfire of all his outdated pamphlets and papers. Later, at Mount Vernon, when the system was finished, he built a further bonfire in the garden here to destroy what he referred to as ‘scaffolding’.

Dr Bach had cancer when he died, but in fact died of exhaustion rather than because of the disease itself.

Because he was only 50 when he died people have sometimes asked why he wasn’t able to cure himself. What this question ignores is that in 1917 when the cancer was first diagnosed he was given just 3 months to live. From then until his death in 1936 he was curing himself, every day, for nineteen years – all the time it took for him to complete his work.

The sun method involves floating flowerheads in a clear glass bowl filled with natural spring water. This is left in bright sunlight for three hours, then the flowerheads are removed and the energised water is mixed half and half with brandy.

The boiling method involves putting flowering twigs into a pan of spring water and boiling them for half an hour. The pan is then left to cool, the plant matter removed, and again the water is mixed half and half with brandy.

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