By Alena Miles
Edited by Jann Garitty

Key essences for the grief process  

Transforming fear into confidence  

Healing the loss of relationship with a daughter  

Grieving and accepting the loss of sexuality  

About Sherri Zysk

Key essences for the grief process

Dr. Sherri Zysk is a retired Transpersonal Psychologist and Management Consultant who currently works as a life coach, specializing in grief counselling. Dr. Zysk has discovered that there are several essences and formulas that turn up again and again. In every case, she has found that her clients need Grounding Green , Grace , and Grief Relief .

When making custom formulas the three single essences that come up repeatedly are Lady’s Mantle , Desert Lily , and Glassy Hyacinth :

Lady’s Mantle - Integration with plants and a connection with nature bring healing

Desert Lily - Overcoming grief requires something of the feminine forces

Glassy Hyacinth - Initiates the transformation of suffering on the journey; “You don’t want to get stuck in the suffering.”

“I am at a loss to understand how the flower essences work. They have such a delicacy it is hard to describe them in words,” says Dr. Zysk.

Grounding Green and Lady’s Mantle together play an important part in regaining a connection with Earth’s forces. “They help us remember our kinship with something greater than ourselves so we don’t get stuck in our own separateness.”

Transforming fear into confidence

A woman had had a very bad car accident. But when she rode her horse, it was sensitive to her shock and trauma, and so the two of them couldn't ride without the horse shying or throwing her off. The woman believed that the situation was a result of her own trauma and fear that she brought to all situations after her car accident. She thought her horse was sensitive enough to pick up the fear from her as she communicated fear to it in all she did while trying to ride. She had trained the horse and competed as a barrel racer, but since her accident, the horse was picking up on her fear and tension so strongly that it would buck and kick when the woman tried to ride the horse. Both had lost confidence in each other and were now unable to ride together.

Sherri gave the horse (in a spray bottle) Grief Relief and Magenta Self Healer mixed in vinegar.

She gave the client Lady’s Mantle , Desert Lily , Fear-Less , and Post Trauma Stabilizer among others.

After several bottles and about one month later, the woman called to say “We rode!” She and her horse had regained their confidence in each other, and the woman was feeling much more confident in herself. They were able to begin competing again together. This particular case occurred early in Sherri’s experience in working with clients and showed her that the results of using flower essences could be quite powerful.

Healing the loss of relationship with a daughter

One of Sherri’s clients was experiencing anguish as her daughter suffered from alcoholism. It was a great loss when she realized that she couldn’t protect her grand-daughter from her own daughter’s negative behavior. They also all lived on the same property making the situation additionally difficult.

Flower essences used: Grief Relief , Grounding Green , Desert Lily , Glassy Hyacinth , Post Trauma Stabilizer , Corn Lily , Joshua Tree , Green Rose , Cherry

Although she couldn’t help the daughter, the flower essences gave her client the internal station within herself to deal with all the issues, and she was able to cope with the circumstances. She also was able to more effectively express to her daughter that “this isn’t right,” and to do what she felt was best in the situation.

With this case Sherri also learned that she couldn’t give flower essences “second hand.” At her clients request, she had put some formulas together for the daughter, but it was not successful. “I realized that you can’t make a gift of flower essences, something special happens between me and the client that can’t be passed on.”

Joshua Tree Yucca brevifolia Positive qualities: Individuation of soul forces through conscious transformation of family patterns and related cultural conditioning; enhanced freedom and compassionate insight for family and culture of origin Patterns of imbalance: Generational karma which shackles the soul’s potential; inability to break free from family or cultural patterns of dysfunction, such as alcoholism, addiction, depression, violence or hereditary illnesses; loss of individual identity and freedom due to lack of insight regarding familial and cultural influences

Grieving and accepting the loss of sexuality

Sherri was helping a man with prostate cancer for the effects of the treatment. He was having a difficult time dealing with the changes in his sexual function due to the treatment.

Flower essences used: Glassy Hyacinth , Lady’s Mantle , Grace , Tall Mountain Larkspur , Cherry , Redwood , Joshua Tree

The flower essences helped give him the internal space to step back and see his situation and move toward acceptance. He was grieving the loss of his sexual life which is difficult for a man. He was able to evolve past resignation to true acceptance.

About Sherri Zysk

Sherri Zysk began working with flower essences when her son passed away and they were the one thing that greatly helped her negotiate the grieving process. Many years prior, she had used Bach flower remedies, remembered Rescue Remedy, and started using it. Subsequently a close friend, an alternative health practitioner, introduced her to the Range of Light flower essence s and Flourish formulas by creating custom formulas for Sherri. Sherri found that the flower essences had a significant impact in helping her to cope with life as she moved through her grief. “With grief, you can’t go away from it, you have to go through it, there is no way out. There are many ways through it and flower essences helped me to be able to truly mourn instead of just feeling the desolation.”

Sherri’s friend remembered that back in the 70s Sherri had successfully been able to locate water as a dowser when living in a rural area. She encouraged Sherri to learn to create her own formulas to continue the grieving process. “You have to do it yourself, you can dowse your own formula,” she told her. So she began to use a pendulum to determine her own blends. "Dowsing with a pendulum is a conscious and purposeful interaction with intuition.”

At the time, Sherri was involved in a meditation community, and soon her friends began to notice that she was doing better, and eventually people began to ask her for flower essence formulas for their own grief. Her practice grew from there: although initially she had been offering life coaching as well, her practice soon became primarily focused on helping to create flower essence formulas for her clients.

“This was not something I decided to do, but something that chose me, something I was destined to do.” In working with her clients, Sherri continues to use a pendulum to determine the blend of flower essences. When the pendulum swings in a "yes" direction as she touches bottles of essences, she includes the essence in the formula. She reads to her client the description in the Flower Essence Repertory about the qualities of each essence and usually their response is, “Yes, yes, that is exactly what I need!” In her experience Sherri finds that “almost all issues involve some level of grief; in these difficult times most people are dealing with some type of loss.”

Dr. Sherri Zysk is a retired Transpersonal Psychologist, Management Consultant and Executive Coach. Her credentials include an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Science and a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology. For over 20 years she was a Management Consultant and Executive Coach for top companies including Hewlett-Packard and General Motors. Sherri also offered life-coaching and women's wisdom workshops.

Sherri is a gifted intuitive and currently is a life-coach who blends and creates unique flower essence remedies for her clients. She specializes in providing flower essences that heal by initiating subtle releasing in the emotional and spiritual selves. Sherri can be reached for consultations by phone or in-person : sherri@insightful-healings.com .