Vibrational and
Flower Essences
By Danu Forest
Close your eyes for a moment and picture yourself walking barefoot through a rose garden at dawn at the height of summer. The sun shining on the dewy grass, glittering like diamonds scattered on emerald velvet, tiny cobwebs become glittered chandeliers, the first stirring of bird song fills you with the subtle joy of possibility, and as you pass by the roses their delicious scent enfolds you. The moist air of the morning glistens on their soft, blushing petals, the sumptuous beauty of the scene, and the sensuality of the moment fills your heart and being with the delicious joy of being alive. Your body feels divine, a god or a goddess stirring within your heart, and love surrounds you.
Can you imagine this place, this moment in time, having a spirit, having a divine intelligence, a life of its own? Reach out your hand and touch the roses, gathering their dew onto your skin. Sorrows, fears, any sense that you are less than beautiful within and without just as you are fall away in the perfection of the moment, the wonder of nature; the roses remind you of the secret places of your heart, forgotten but stirring once again, like new love.
Essences in History
The dew of flowers and plants, and water in which flowers have been steeped have long been used for medicinal and therapeutic uses. In India the tradition of offering devotees water upon which flower petals have been scattered goes back millennia and is an excellent example of flower or vibrational essence use: to cleanse the minds and spirits of devotees, as well as restore their physical well-being. The concept of using a flowers essence, its “vibrational signature, pattern, or spirit,” is thought to have been practiced by many cultures, including Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, and the Australian aborigines.
In Europe, the sixteenth century alchemist Paracelsus and other early chemists collected the dew from lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) for use in their potions.1 The dew of flowers and other plants also have a long oral and folkloric history of use by wisewomen and herbal healers in Britain and Ireland. More recently, in the 1920s British Harley Street physician Dr. Edward Bach rediscovered flower essences after his work with bacteria and vaccines led him to work with homeopathy, and then extend his ideas and practice into working directly with the plants themselves. His famous thirty-eight flower remedies are still used to this day. However, since then, the whole area of flower remedies has opened up into a wider field of vibrational essences, using trees, gems, and other factors and sources along with co-creation with the plants themselves very much at the core.
Personal Stories
I first discovered flower and vibrational essences over twenty years ago. I was in a health food shop just outside London when there was a terrible, heart-wrenching cry. A small child had trapped her fingers in the door to the shop and was distraught, in pain, and in shock. Immediately, the woman behind the counter pulled out a bottle of Dr. Bach’s Rescue Remedy and gave her a drop on the tongue. The effect was incredible. Within seconds the two-year-old girl calmed down. Her fingers were still clearly sore, and she held them carefully, but the shock and upset had vanished. She was clear-headed, present, and digesting what had happened to her in a way that was remarkably quick for someone her age. She walked to the tap at the back of the shop with her mother to run cold water on her hand and was smiling again within a minute. It seemed almost miraculous.
All these years later, and having made my own essences and treated clients with them for well over a decade, I must say it’s a miracle I’ve gotten used to. A few months ago I treated another small child who’d just fallen and hurt his leg. I put a few drops of my own essences on his head as his mother comforted him, and to our amazement he calmed, sat up, and said, “That’s better!” immediately.
Flower and vibrational essences don’t just treat upset children; they have been used successfully for all manner of problems—emotional, spiritual, but also physical. Working with the person as a whole rather than treating an individual illness or symptom, and coming from an assumption that many illnesses and problems stem from an inner emotional, psychological, or spiritual imbalance, these essences gently treat the underlying issues that can lie at the core of many of our everyday health concerns, and can form an invaluable support to conventional or herbal medicine. However, physical changes in response to flower or vibrational essences are regularly reported, and many healers, herbalists, alternative and complementary therapists as well as those working in hospices and cancer clinics in Britain, the United States, and Australia now use vibrational essences in their daily work. They are also becoming a popular addition to the family first aid kit.
What Is a Vibrational Essence?
Vibrational essences are usually a mixture of spring water that has imbued the energetic imprint, pattern, vibration, or spirit of plants, trees, crystals, or other natural sources preserved in alcohol, glycerine, or vinegar. They are also made or added into other products such as balms, creams, and oils.
A belief in the inherent spirit of nature, or of plants, trees, and other living things, exists in many spiritual traditions around the world and is a key feature in some of the oldest religions, spiritual practices, and philosophies in the world as well as the earliest healing practices. In India the spirits of plants, and even geographical areas, are known as devas, meaning “shining ones.” In ancient Greece the belief in the spirits of plants, especially trees, was widespread, and the name for an oak tree spirit, a dryad, remains with us today as a generic term for tree spirit, while the term deva now also has widespread use. In Celtic folklore the spirits of plants and trees had many names, but were also commonly understood as “the fair folk” or “the shining ones,” reflecting a similarity with the devas of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the genius loci, or “spirits of place.”
Modern New Age thought has also embraced the concept of tree and plant spirits, as well as quantum physics, reflecting that the spirit may be the same as a being’s vibrational signature, or energetic pattern. These spirits, or energetic patterns, interact with us for our well-being.
How Do They Work?
Vibrational essences work with the higher levels of our consciousness, understood in various ways as our spirit, the positive aspects of our personality or psychology, our “higher selves,” or even in shamanic terms as “the upper world” where the idea of our physical incarnation was first conceived. These interact with our rational minds and our sense of our own bodies to encourage us to change our patterns of thought or behavior to attract more well-being. Other ways of looking at it are that the energetic pattern of the plants, the part of them that is spirit, the blueprint of their being, interacts and aligns with our own spirit or energetic pattern, rebalancing, correcting, adding things that we lack or have lost, and clearing away what we no longer need.
Medical science has explored the link between our mental and emotional states for many years, and those links are now commonly acknowledged. Vibrational essences take this logic a stage further by incorporating our spirits, or vibrational pattern, into consideration, tackling physical, emotional, or psychological issues at the core—their spiritual or vibrational source—from which positive or negative influences are able to ripple through into physical effects and forms.
Scientific Studies
While there are thousands of documented positive testimonials and millions of cases of anecdotal evidence over decades of use around the world, there has been only limited scientific study into vibrational essences. However, two important studies in the United Kingdom have shown remarkable results. In 1976 Brian Forbes, a consultant who ran a cancer clinic in Bristol, found that flower essences made a notable difference in the ability of cancer sufferers to cope and come to terms with their condition. In 2007 Michael Hyland, professor of health psychology at Plymouth University, used a variety of Green Man Essences “Focus Fixes” for toddler tantrums2 in an experiment that statistically proved that it reduced the frequency and severity of tantrums in children between two and five years old. While the matter of how vibrational essences work is still argued, the personal experience of many is that they work very well with none of the potential side effects that conventional medicine can have.
Identifying Plant Uses
In some ways, the way that certain plants, trees, and other things have been identified as useful for essences follows the lines of herbalism. The plant signature, its shape, color, smell, or other physical characteristics as well as its folklore and uses elsewhere can all help inform us of its potential uses. Oak is a good example of an essence to assist in discovering or building one’s own inner strength and resilience. Rose, as described earlier, also speaks for itself. It is often used to promote inner peace, to develop our ability to feel love, and to heal our emotions. Rose is also good for helping us have a better relationship with our bodies and the physical world around us, reminding us of the joy of sensuality and the beauty of the natural world. Whatever our age, health, or relationship status, rekindle these things in someone with health problems gently adjust their attitude to life and themselves, and much of their condition can be made more comfortable at the very least.
There are many resources online as well as numerous organizations promoting the use of vibrational essences and listing directories of plants and their therapeutic essence uses. However, it is also okay to use your own sense of intuition and herbal knowledge. Many of the best practitioners use their relationship with nature, their insight, and subtle senses to help them discover which essences to use or make, while others use kinesiology or a careful study of effects together with logical deduction. As no physical plant matter is taken into the body, essences are safe to use and pose very little risk for those new to working with them.
Here Are Some Essences to Try:
Apple blossom for wholeness and general healing; good for convalescents, those with depression, and to support children.
Holly for anger and jealousy issues; feeling “prickly.”
Comfrey to ease suffering from stress and prolonged trauma, or for those who feel bruised by life.
Hawthorn blossom to ease stress, broken hearts, and anxiety.
Star of Bethlehem for shock and trauma in the past or present.
Oak for strength, exhaustion, and helping the sufferer find the ability to cope.
Rose to help open the heart, bring joy and serenity back after a hard time, and find beauty once again.
Making Your Own Vibrational Essences
Making your own vibrational essences is easy and can be a wonderful way to spend a sunny day. While it’s possible to buy essences, the best ones will be made in very much the same ways that you could try for yourself.
You need spring water, access to a healthy, blooming plant that you want to work with, and a sunny day. You will also need a glass bowl, a suitable bottle, sterilizing equipment, and a preservative, such as brandy, if you want your essence to keep for a while.
Some practitioners and manufacturers make their essences by cutting their chosen flower and placing it in spring water out somewhere sunny. Others will not leave the essence in the sun, but will instead take the blooms and water, and boil over a naked flame, such as a gas stove, for a few minutes. (Those who use this technique must be sure they are working with plants that are safe to imbibe.) Some may accompany their essence making with prayers, communion with the plant spirits, or other sacred activity; others simply add the flowers to the water, leave them out in the sun for a few hours, and let nature do the work. Personal beliefs, philosophy, or religion of the manufacturer seem to have little effect on the essences themselves.
Personally, I don’t cut the flowers. I ask the plants themselves for their assistance, and place a bowl of water amongst the blooms to infuse their essence in this way so that no harm is done to the plant, and the most living essence is drawn into the water. I find this works best for me, and working in this way has added to my own insights about how to work with plants in various ways for healing, but I know others who work differently who also have very positive results. The best way to learn is to try it out for yourself and see what you think, see what works for you.
Finally, the blooms if used are removed, being careful not to touch them or the water with your skin, and the water is decanted into a sterilized dark glass bottle, to 50 percent. The bottle is usually topped up the remaining 50 percent with brandy or another preservative. If no preservative is used, then the essence can only be taken internally for a few days, but can still be used in a variety of other ways quite safely for some time after.
How to Take Them
The finished bottle of essence is commonly called the “master,” and only a few drops of this are added to water and preservative to make a stock bottle—these are the stage and dilution commonly sold in the shops. These can be taken on the tongue or, more economically, they can be diluted further into a “dose bottle” where a few drops are put into a small bottle of water, taken over a day or two.
Vibrational essences can also be added to bath water, to plant misters to spray a room, in oil burners, in food and drink, anointed on the brow or other part of the body, or even used by placing a few drops in a bowl of water and left out somewhere in the home. As they are perfectly safe, they can be used on children, those on strong medications, and even animals and plants with positive effects. A few bottles tailored to the household’s needs can make a valuable addition to the family medicine chest.
Endnotes
1. The British Flower and Vibrational Essences Association. May 2014, http://bfvea.com/resources/BFVEA_guide_to_FE__VIB_Essencesnov13.pdf.
2. Green Man Essences shop, http://www.greenmanshop.co.uk/acatalog/30mls_Focus_Fixes.html.
Resources
Danu Forest, http://www.danuforest.co.uk/individual_essences_23.html.
The British Flower and Vibrational Essences Association, http://bfvea.com.
The Bach Centre, www.bachcentre.com.
The Flower Essence Society, www.flowersociety.org.
Danu Forest is a respected Wisewoman, teacher, writer, and healer. She is an Ard banDrui (Arch Druidess) of the Druid clan of Dana, and is an experienced vibrational essence practitioner making her own essences using sacred well water and traditional Celtic plants for many years. She leads her own Druid grove as well as running a thriving healing practice in Glastonbury. For more info and consultations go to www.danuforest.co.uk