The Healing Herbs flower essences
are made according to Dr. Bach’s original directions and methods.
Julian Barnard lives and works on the borderland of Wales, close
to the area where Dr. Bach also developed his work. Julian searches
for the best natural habitats where the remedy flowers are still
vibrant and abundant. He is a trained herbalist, with a hands-on
approach and sensitivity to the healing energies of the plants.
The Healing Herbs flower essences have the same potency, efficacy
and vibrancy as those originally developed by Dr. Edward Bach.
The following are summarized excerpts
from an in-person interview conducted by Richard Katz and Patricia
Kaminski in the summer of 1995 at Julian’s home in Herefordshire,
England. These notes were revised and expanded in October 2001,
during our visit with him at the Ibero-American Flower Essence
Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
The Role
of Flower Essences in Our Technological World
Dr. Bach was concerned about the
encroachment of technology and its impact on the soul life. His
quest was to create remedies that had sufficient life force and
vibrancy to counteract these hardening tendencies. I experienced
these same intense states of suffering and longing in my own soul.
When I was younger and living in industrial Manchester, England,
I found myself gasping for green. My soul was so hungry. I remember
discovering some young urban kids who were tearing down a small
tree. I called out to them and said, “That is a living thing,
and you’re killing it!” These city children had lost
their feeling for life and death, and the cycle of the seasons.
They didn’t experience the tenderness of growing things—they
were separated from the life cycle of Nature. They couldn’t
feel the destructive force of their action, that they were killing
something. Flower essences are intended to serve as a healing impulse
to the devastating soul conditions of our time that alienate us
from Nature and from our own true selves.
My Home
on the Welsh Border:
A Crossing Point Between Wilderness and Civilization
If we are interested in aligning
ourselves with what is helpful for life, then we have to align
ourselves with life. It seems to me there is a great crying out
from the earth at this moment. Nature is so generous and long-suffering.
It is important that we work as much as possible with the wild
and native elements still remaining.
Living here on the border of Wales,
one experiences a crossing point between wilderness and civilization.
This place is a pure energy reserve. After study and travel in
other parts of the world, and living in London, I made a conscious
decision to return to Herefordshire. It is a similar feeling that
Bach had when he left London to come to this area. I didn't really
think about it until much later, when it hit me: “That’s
just what he did!” He got out of the train, walked along the
river, and started to see the Clematis, Mimulus, and so forth.
About
My Research and Writing
Patterns of Life Force is a
fresh look at Dr. Bach’s innovative approach to healing;
I attempted to put myself in Dr. Bach’s soul, and to
understand how he saw the world. I organized all of Dr. Bach’s
work into Collected Writings, in 1987. Through a careful
study of all his writings, I realized that many assumptions
simply were not true. For instance, Bach was emphatic that
his remedies were NOT homeopathic substances. I am very clear
that I need to make our essences in the traditional way with
the least amount of interference, and without modifying the
basic process, whether by the sun method or by boiling method.
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The Healing Herbs of Edward Bach
is a work that required enormous force and dedication – the
goal was to see each plant as a living expression of Nature,
making it possible to move in a seamless manner from the quality
within the plant to the healing quality for the human soul.
To take the photographs and to write about each plant involved
a real meeting and relationship with the plant’s essence.
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Collaboration
with Nickie Murray,
Director of the Bach Centre
I originally approached the Bach Centre in the 1970’s in order to get backing for a book I wanted to write about flower essences and alternative medicine. But I soon realized that the real reason I was guided there was for my own learning and soul deepening Nickie Murray was administrating the Bach Centre, and we felt an immediate recognition of each other. We developed a close friendship through the forces of nature as well as the human heart. We used to take walks to get to know the land, and in the most intimate way I discovered and observed the life cycles of each of Dr. Bach’s plants.
My apprenticeship with Nickie was
a tremendous period of inner growth for me. Nickie Murray learned
the healing art of working with the plants directly from Nora Weeks,
Dr. Bach’s colleague, whom he entrusted to carry on the work
after he died. Nora Weeks, in turn, trained Nickie Murray. I am
immensely grateful that I was able to receive my understanding
of Dr. Bach’s plants, not as a theory, but as a living lineage
of experience.
Rock
Water – the “Mother of All Flower Remedies”
Rock Water is the mother of all flower
remedies; it is typically an entry-point remedy that softens the
soul’s disposition, and introduces the individual to a realm
beyond the hardness of the physical body and the material world.
Rock Water is not an environmental remedy or a remedy made from
rocks, as some New Age thinkers have assumed. Dr. Bach intended
that all flower essences be prepared with vibrant spring water,
and Rock Water is the base element that is foundational to all
true flower essences.
Rock Water is
the base element
that is foundational to all true flower essences.
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In the native healing tradition of
the Celtic World, living spring water was called Rock Water – it
is the water that emerges out of the depths of the earth into the
light. Water that is revivified in the dark womb of the earth and
finds its way again to the light is a re-born substance.
Our source for the Rock Water is
high up in a region called the Black Mountain, where the water
flows out of the heart of a massive rock structure. The water flows
from the sacred Well of St. Thomas, associated not with the Biblical
St. Thomas, but a local healer who helped the villagers with these
vibrant waters in his ministry. It seems significant that the well
is embraced by the roots of a massive Holly tree, one of the plants
beloved by Dr. Bach and by the traditional Celtic healers.
Dr.
Bach’s Chestnut Remedies –
Breaking Free to Inner Stillness
Each plant has been redefined in
my experience of working with it not only in making the essence,
but in my deep encounter with the plant. What is the relationship
between the various Chestnut essences (Red Chestnut, White Chestnut,
Chestnut Bud and Sweet Chestnut)? What do they hold in common?
You will see that, as essences, they are designed to fracture and
break a pattern of thought, to de-structure a thought form. There
is something quite crystalline in the geometry of these trees.
This gives us insight into the type of fear we are treating.
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Red Chestnut
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White Chestnut
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The quality of the tree is often
observed in the bark, and in the trunk. In the bark of a Chestnut
tree, the lines of force are broken. The bark is actually peeling,
and breaking into pieces. It’s almost like torn pieces of
paper coming away from the tree. In the Sweet Chestnut, we can
see great, swirling forces in the trunk and the bark. The strong
flower spike faces in all directions, as if establishing a new
Centre of awareness. The Sweet Chestnut is a remedy for profound
transitions in the soul, typically experienced as an abyss or a
deep well of anguish. The fresh new potential of emerging forces
in the Chestnut Bud remedy helps those stuck in repetitive karmic
patterns that drag down the soul consciousness. In the White Chestnut,
the thought patterns are repeating over and over again, while in
the Red Chestnut we see obsessive worry fixated upon another. The
white is a color directed towards the interior of the soul, while
the red color rays out into another’s experience. In all of
these remedies, the primary question is: Can one break free and
reach inner stillness?
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Patricia Kaminski & Richard
Katz
with Sweet Chestnut in Herefordshire, England
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White Chestnut
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The
Heather Plant and the Holy Longing of the Soul
The Heather is indicated for those
people who “buttonhole” by absorbing or depleting the
attention and psychic force of others. They are over-talkative
people who gravitate to anyone who will give them attention. But
we have to go deeper into the plant if we want to understand its
true gift. Its magenta color indicates a tremendous vitality. Dr.
Bach designates it as a remedy for loneliness, along with Water
Violet and Impatiens. The native habitat for Heather is a very
high place – covering the barren open spaces in the highlands.
It has a close relationship to the sky, and endures the elements
of wind and weather in the most open manner.
The Heather is
like fire on top of the earth,
aligned with the air and moving out into space.
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Heather is a remedy for people who
feel the separation from their place of origin. Such people have
an intense longing for soul companionship and for meaning in life.
Heather helps them to deal with their innate sense of aloneness.
The positive state of the Heather is the sense of communion with
all of life.
Frequently
Asked Questions
about the Healing Herbs Essences
Are the Healing
Herbs homeopathic remedies?
While flower essences and homeopathic
remedies belong to a larger classification of healing
substances that are regarded as energy, or “vibrational” medicines,
these two healing modalities should not be confused.
Dr. Bach was a well-recognized homeopathic physician
who left his profession to found a distinct, new
therapy based on flower essences. In an address to
his homeopathic colleagues, Bach emphatically stated
that flower essences do not work by the Law of Similars.
The central principle of homeopathy is that substances
are chosen that produce symptoms that match the similar
condition of the client. These substances are derived
from a vast spectrum of possibilities, including
animal, mineral, plant and human sources. On the
other hand, flower essences are derived only from
the flowering part of the plant, and are intended
to introduce positive archetypes that stimulate conscious
choices and self-awareness. Therefore, the method
for choosing flower essences and the therapeutic
goals and outcome are directed toward the soul life
of the client.
In addition to a unique therapeutic goal, flower essences are also
prepared in an entirely new manner. The mother essence receives
an energetic imprint of the whole blossom into living water, out
of a relationship to the living forces of the plant at the peak
of flowering, the four elements, and other environmental influences.
By contrast, a homeopathic mother tincture is prepared by extracting
properties from pulverized minerals and stones, animal or human
substances, or various plant parts, such as the root, bark, leaf,
fruit or flower, which are then macerated in alcohol for several
weeks. These procedures are generally conducted indoors in a laboratory
setting, and do not involve the “living” context required
for flower essence preparation.
Although other brands of “Bach” remedies may be prepared
and labeled as homeopathic, the Healing Herbs Flower Essences are
prepared according to Dr. Bach’s original methods, and are
labeled as herbal dietary supplements.
Are the Healing Herbs “Bach
Flower Remedies?”
Healing Herbs flower essences
are made from the same plant species and with the
original methods employed by Dr. Edward Bach in the
1930’s. The name “Bach Flower Remedies” is
a universally-known generic term used when referring
to the therapy initiated by Dr. Bach, as well as
the flower essences he discovered. This name has
been used by A. Nelson & Company to designate
their particular brand of the flower remedies. The
appropriation of Dr. Bach’s name as an exclusive
commercial trademark has been successfully challenged
in court by Julian Barnard, founder of the Healing
Herbs Bach flower essences. Recently the judgment
was upheld on final appeal by the House of Lords.
Currently, the term “Bach Flower Remedies” is
recognized as a generic term and is no longer a trademark
in the United Kingdom.
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