About the Bach Flower Remedies and the Work of Dr Bach

The 38 Bach Flower Remedies were created by Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930's and were the culmination of his life purpose to find a new method of healing and a new understanding of illness and disease. The Bach Flower Remedies help to bring balance and harmony to different states of mind and emotion, the kind of difficult or challenging emotions, thoughts and feelings that we can all experience in our journey through life. These lovely remedies are made from the subtle energies or vibrational frequencies of the flowers of wild plants, bushes and trees and are simple, effective and natural.

The Bach Flower Remedies are very useful and practical remedies for re-balancing thoughts and emotions and for working with how you are thinking and feeling in the moment. Just as importantly though, the philosophy behind them also provides an in-depth and profound way of understanding ourselves. Dr Bach's extensive research lead him to a deep understanding about the inter-connection between mind, body and soul. He recognised from studying his patients over many years that the true cause of illness and disease in human beings lay in the personality - in the mental and emotional patterns through which we view ourselves and the world around us. Bach found that treating these patterns with the the remedies that he developed promoted greater balance & harmony in mind and emotion and a beneficial and lasting change was facilitated at all levels of their beings. His motto was always ‘treat the patient not the disease’.

Since Dr. Bach's time, the Bach Flower Remedies have been used all around the world by people looking for emotional support with their daily lives, and now more than ever there is a need for this kind of help. Today the Bach Remedies fit neatly into the ever expanding field of complementary or alternative medicine but when they were first discovered they were revolutionary and way ahead of their time.

What are Bach Flower Remedies Used For?

The Bach Flower Remedies can be used to bring balance and harmony to your emotions, thoughts and feelings, and to facilitate a greater inner peace and equilibrium. They are gentle and supportive and help you to raise your vibrational frequency and to feel more at one with yourself, bringing greater unity between mind, body & spirit.

The Bach flower remedies work at an emotional and energetic level and help you with how you are feeling emotionally and with your thought patterns and beliefs about life. There are 38 different remedies, each working to support you with a different emotional reaction or thought pattern. For example if you are feeling angry or frustrated, take some Holly, if you feel guilty about something you've done, have some Pine, if you have lost trust and faith in life, take some Gentian, or if you have a lot of thoughts going around and around in your head, try some White Chestnut. Dr Bach said that he wanted it to be as simple as; “I am hungry, I will go and pull a lettuce from the garden for my tea; I am frightened and ill, I will take a dose of Mimulus.”

Of course it's not always simple to know exactly what is going on for you, and it can require a certain amount of honesty, self-reflection and observation. Key questions you might reflect on are: how am I thinking and feeling? What emotions do I most need help with? Is there a particular pattern or state of mind that is causing me difficulties? What common ways do I have of reacting to life and the people in my life? If you have difficulties going on in life, what are they triggering off for you emotionally? How you are thinking and feeling about what is happening?

As you begin to work with yourself in this way, it can be very empowering and the Bach Remedies are a wonderful catalyst for making these changes. The more that you are able to build a space of balance and harmony within yourself, the less reactive you are to the issues and difficulties that life throws your way. From this space you are also more able to be in your heart and more open and responsive to the people and possibilities in your life.

Using the Bach Flower Remedies

The Bach Flower Remedies are very good at helping you to balance how you're thinking and feeling in the moment and supporting you with for the issues of daily life. There are 38 different Bach Flower Remedies and each one has its own unique focus on a particular thought, feeling or emotion. They are simple and easy to choose and use so see which ones feel most right to you, you don't need any specialist knowledge to use the remedies. The Bach Remedies are liquid tinctures, each one an energetic imprint of a flower ( with the exception of Rock Water ), and they are usually taken orally. Each remedy can be used individually or mixed together into combinations of up to 8 remedies to make a personalised blend. The Bach Remedies can be used as and when needed in the moment, or on an ongoing basis to help you with longer term thoughts, feelings and patterns.

Bach Flower Remedies can be taken by anyone, safely and without fear of side effects, overdosing or addiction. While they are not intended to replace medical treatment where necessary, they can be used in conjunction with, and to complement, any other form of medicine. Since flower remedies work on a higher vibrational frequency they will not interfere with other forms of treatment. Animals and plants will also benefit greatly. No harm comes from choosing the wrong remedy as it will cancel itself out if not needed.

Why are Bach Remedies Made from Flowers?

Edward Bach discovered the flowers for his remedies between 1928 and 1935, driven by a strong desire to find natural remedies based in the flowers to be found in the fields of nature. The Bach Flower Remedies are made from the beautiful flowers of nature, some are wild flowers such as Agrimony, Centaury, Clematis and Wild Rose, and some are the flowers of trees and shrubs, such as Oak, Sweet Chestnut, Pine, Gorse and Holly. The only exception is Rock Water, which as the name suggests is made from well or spring water.

At a time when most allopathic medicines and homoeopathy were derived from chemicals or extracts of disease, Dr Bach wanted to create something that used the natural healing powers of nature. His belief that “healing with the clean, pure, beautiful agents of nature is surely the one method of all which appeals to most of us” is something we can all relate too.

His research lead him to the conclusion that there were flowers out in nature that held the healing qualities that would help people to balance how they were thinking and feeling. Flowers that held a higher vibrational frequency or energy that would help us to clear and release our negative thoughts and feelings. Talking of his remedies, Bach 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 bring us peace and relieve our sufferings".

Flowers carry a high vibrational frequency or energy, the highest frequency of any part of a plant. Flowers are an intrinsic part of Mother Earth, an expression of her beauty and are intimately connected to her energy field and consciousness. Have you ever sat next to a flower and connected with it's energy and felt better as a result? Felt calmer, more centred and relaxed? This happens when you connect with the energy of the flower and allow that vibrational frequency to raise your vibration and bring you into balance. What Dr Bach discovered was how to bottle this energy or vibrational frequency, so that it could be used to help people. The result was the Bach Flower Remedies.

The Bach Remedies encapsulated Bach's desire to find a simple and natural way of helping people. He said; “the whole principle of Healing by this method is so simple as can be understood by almost everyone, and even the very Herbs themselves can be gathered and prepared by any who take delight in such.”

How are the the Bach Flower Remedies made?

The Bach Flower Remedies represented a new way of working with flowers, one where the tincture contains the energy signature of the flower rather than any physical herbal properties. Although there are indications that flower essences may have been a part of very ancient healing practices, Bach was the first to discover this way of working with flowers in modern times. So how to extract the energy signature from a flower into a usable form? Bach had been testing the dew that he found on flowers that had been warmed by the morning sun and had found that the dew contained a very definite energy to it. By experimentation he found that it was the sun's heat which was essential for the process of potentising the dew with the energy signature of the flower. So Bach created a new system for potentising the flowers that he discovered in nature - the sun method.

The Sun Method

It was on a trip to Wales that Bach discovered and perfected the Sun Method of potentisation for making remedies. The method was incredibly simple and involved filling a thin, clear glass bowl with spring water and floating his chosen flower on the surface of the water in uninterrupted morning sun for three hours. The heat of the sun would transfer the properties of the flower into the water, impregnating the water with the energy signature of the flower. This water was then combined with brandy, which acted as a preservative, to make the mother tincture. This new method delighted Bach as it caused no distress or injury to the plants that he choose and it was a simple, effective and natural method of preparation that anyone could use. He described is thus: "The earth to nurture the plant, the air from which it feeds, the sun or fire to enable it to impart its power, and water to collect and be enriched with its beneficent magnetic healing". Bach made twenty of the thirty eight Bach Remedies using the Sun Method.

The Boiling Method

Eighteen remedies are made using Dr Bach's second method of making a mother tincture - the boiling method. As the name implies this method uses the heat of a fire rather than the heat of the sun to transfer the flower's properties into the water. To make a remedy in this way an enamel pan is filled with a litre of spring water and both flowers and stems are placed in the pan and simmered for 30 minutes. Bach first used the boiling method to make Cherry Plum, which flowers early in the spring before there is much heat in the sun, and it is also used for woodier plants such as Oak, Elm and Hornbeam. This new method must have offered him something different to the Sun Method as he used it even for more delicate flowers, such as Wild Rose, that he made in the summer months. Unfortunately neither Edward Bach or Nora Weeks left any details about what different properties he felt the boiling method offered other than the obvious and practical ones.

Philosophy Behind the Bach Flower Remedies

Edward Bach's inner drive to find the underlying cause of illness and disease took him on a journey from his research laboratories and conventional medical wisdom to the flowers and fields of rural England and Wales. It also took him on a journey of spiritual discovery and a deep understanding about the inter-connection between mind, body and soul.

Bach recognised through his work with his patients that to bring about real and lasting healing it was necessary to treat the cause of illness rather than just the symptoms. With a vision way-ahead of most of his contemporaries, he understood that the true cause of illness and disease in human beings lies in the personality - in the mental and emotional patterns through which we view ourselves and the world around us. Bach developed his theory about personality types while observing his fellow diners at a banquet he was attending. He began to understand that humanity was made up of a definite number of personality groups or types and that “the individuals of each group would not suffer from the same kinds of diseases, but that all those in one group would react in the same or nearly the same manner to any type of illness”. This was a key understanding for Bach, that it is the state of mind and emotion that is of most importance not what condition the patient is suffering from. Since the body is a direct reflection of the mind, transforming negative vibrations into positive good vibrations allows the body to respond naturally with better health.

From a spiritual perspective his research lead him to believe that life on the physical plane of existence was meant to be a conscious partnership between our personality self ( our mind & emotions ) and our Soul. He believed that our emotions, thoughts and feelings could create disharmony between our personality and Soul. "This disharmony, disease, makes itself manifest in the body for the body merely serves to reflect the workings of the soul; just as the face reflects happiness by smiles, or temper by frowns. And so in bigger things; the body will reflect the true causes of disease (which are such as fear, indecision, doubt, etc.) in the disarrangement of its systems and tissues.”

In his pamphlet 'Free Thyself' Bach says: “Health is our heritage, our right. It is the complete and full union between soul, mind and body; and this is no difficult far-away ideal to attain, but one so easy and natural that many of us have overlooked it.”

The 38 Bach Flower Remedies were developed as tools that would help us to rise above the limited vision that we carry at a personality level and connect us with the true Essence of ourselves.

The Bach Flower Remedies in Dr. Bach's Own Words

"The action of these remedies is to raise our vibrations and open up our channels for the reception of our Spiritual Self, to flood our natures with the particular virtue we need, and wash out from us the fault which is causing harm." Edward Bach - Ye Suffer From Yourselves

“They cure, not by attacking disease, but by flooding our bodies with the beautiful vibrations of our Higher Nature, in the presence of which disease melts as snow in the sunshine” Edward Bach - Ye Suffer From Yourselves

“In illness there is a change of mood from that in ordinary life, and those who are observant can notice this change often before, and sometimes long before, the disease appears, and by treatment can prevent the malady ever appearing. When illness has been present for some time, again the mood of the sufferer will guide to the correct remedy. Take no notice of the disease, think only of the outlook on life of the one in distress”. Edward Bach - The Twelve Healers & Other Remedies

“Those beautiful remedies, which have been Divinely enriched with healing powers, will be administered, to open up those channels to admit more of the light of the Soul, that the patient may be flooded with healing virtue.” Edward Bach - Ye Suffer From Yourselves

Original Writings of Edward Bach

Dr Bach wrote numerous books, pamphlets and lectures on the Bach Flower Remedies and his philosophical understandings. Notably 'The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies' was his final book on the 38 Bach Remedies, detailing what each remedy did and how to use them. 'Heal Thyself' was his seminal work on his understanding of the true causes of illness and disease. 'Free Thyself' was published as a pamphlet and provided another fascinating insight into his ideas and vision. These and may other writings from Edward Bach can be found in 'The Collected Writings of Edward Bach' which is a must read for anyone interested in the Bach Remedies and work of Edward Bach.

Brief Summary of the Bach Flower Remedies

• Simple, natural and gentle acting, the Bach Flower Remedies provide a wonderful tool to help our inherent ability to restore balance & harmony within ourselves.
• Bach Flower Remedies can be used by anyone; including children, babies, animals and plants - safely and without fear of side effects, overdosing or addiction (*Nb Bach Remedies are traditionally preserved in brandy ).
• Bach Flower Remedies simply use the vibrational frequency or energy of a flower.
• You can use a single Bach Flower Remedy or mix them into combinations of up to 8.
• Bach Flower Remedies are simple and easy to choose and use.. dosage & use

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