Flower essences figure prominently in my work. While not every client resonates with or has an interest in what I call “flower medicine,” the essences nevertheless weave a matrix of invisible support in sessions and in the courses I teach.
My work with essences has been profiled in the Flower Essence Society International Research Journal. FES is a leader in flower essence research and education, and I am beyond thrilled at this honor!
To give you a sense of the power of the flowers, I’d like to tell you a story of my first encounter with flower essences’ transformative effects.
But before I do, I want to clarify that flower essences are not essential oils. Flower essences have no scent and are subtle in nature. In a similar vein to homeopathy, they contain no measurable trace of chemical compounds. In this way, they are the “woo-iest of woo”… and that brings me to my story:
Many years ago, I was working at my little Goddess shop in San Francisco. A friend of a friend came in and wanted to share with me a special project she was working on: her own line of flower essences for pets.
Honestly, I hadn’t been impressed with flower essences before then. I had seen them at my local herb shop and tried a bottle of one essence or another. My experience was kind of a shrug.
At this point, I was making my own “aura spritzes” out of pure water, intention, and energy (plus some essential oils for scent). If there was no actual botanical matter in a flower essence, how were they any different from my intentional spray blends? But my aura spritzes were actually very effective, and I know that some tools resonate with some people and not with others.
(Side note: if you’d like to call all of this placebo, you are welcome to. As a recently-updated article from Harvard Medical School states “…placebo is not proof that a certain treatment doesn't work, but rather that another, non-pharmacological mechanism may be present.”)
So, while I was not personally compelled by flower essences at the time, I was happy to carry her line of products in my shop. I was certain someone would benefit from them. But my new friend wanted me to get a feel for their true transformative power, so she offered me a consultation and custom flower essence blend.
That was the turning point for me. I enjoyed my consultation. Just having someone listen and mirror back what you’re up to is profoundly healing!
In the consultation, I learned some important distinctions about flower essences. If you choose an essence you don’t need (or, rather, isn’t in vibrational alignment with you), you won’t really notice anything. Hence my shrug-worthy experience in self-selecting essences.
I also learned to think of essences not as tools or as things, but has teachers and allies — different presences and personalities from the realm of nature.
And the effect of my custom flower essence blend itself was a total “wow!”
I took the essences as indicated: 4 drops under the tongue several times a day for two weeks. I didn’t notice anything the way I might if I was taking allopathic medicine. But I was game to see it through. Maybe a week or so into my blend, I had a profound, healing dream.
The details are extremely personal, but the dream reached back into some deep ancestral trauma. Dysfunctional family patterns were laid bare in this dream. In seeing these patterns clearly, I also saw one of the defining stories of my life with new clarity. And I saw that it was a story I had made up. And, frankly, that it was incorrect.
I woke up from the dream… transformed. This incorrect story was just sort of “liberated” from my nervous system. I knew — at the deepest cellular level — that it wasn’t true, so it didn’t have a hold on me anymore. And without this story running as a life script, I was free to make different choices, specifically in the area of relationships. And a whole new paradigm of relating opened up for me after that.
It also opened up a whole new world of study and discovery, and I later went on to share flower essences in my transformative practice. Over the years, I observed how some clients’ tenacious patterns seemed to melt away. Or how some clients just stopped talking about recurring issues and when I inquired about them, they would pause and say with surprise: “Oh, I had completely forgotten about that! Nope, that’s not an issue any more.” They couldn’t say how or what shifted exactly. Just that the shift occurred.
This is not to say that flower essence are a “magic bullet.” They are not. And sometimes what happens when you take a resonant flower essence is that the theme you’re working on “lights up” and pushes you to get deeper and different support.
Essences are, as I said, teachers and allies. They can’t do your transformative work for you. But they offer presence and support to those who desire it. Flower essences can strengthen your relationship with nature, too. I see this as being particularly important in our climate-changing world.
My work with essences that the Flower Essence Society included in their journal emerged from my process facilitating the Wisdom Year, a 12-month spiritual development journey based on the 12 themes of my book and deck, Seeds of Wisdom.
In the Wisdom Year, I began pairing each of the 12 Seeds of Wisdom themes with a selection of five flower essences that harmonize with the teachings of that theme.
Whether you work with flower essences or not, my hope for you is that you make a connection with nature that nourishes your soul. Take yourself outside, and share reciprocal breath with the wild world.
If you are already working with flower essences for yourself or others, be sure to explore my Priestess of Flowers: Flower Essence Journal.