Flower Essence Info

Due to the interest on the recent webinar on flower essences I thought I’d post more info for anyone interested in learning more about Flower Essences.

The Bach Centre is at the home where Dr. Bach lived. Lots of info and

links to education. Main webpage: https://www.bachcentre.com/en/

A Quick Reference Guide: https://www.bachcentre.com/en/remedies/the-38-remedies/quick-reference-guide/

Australian Bush Flower Essences. This is a link to their main page with lots of info and links to education: https://ausflowers.com.au/  This is a link to their selection of blends: https://ausflowers.com.au/ABFE-Products/ABFE-Remedies/

A Comprehensive Guide to North American and English Flower Essences for Emotional and Spiritual Well-Being by the Flower Essence Society: http://www.flowersociety.org/repertory/repertory.pdf

Alaskan Essences: https://www.alaskanessences.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA0rSABhDlARIsAJtjfCfDNzDNubKYaRistjnZ27dyVxbfStv43JGfvPHsstXyNH2NsxY0fGEaAh15EALw_wcB

Pacific Essences: https://pacificessences.com/

Power of Flowers Healing Essence Company: https://www.powerfloweressences.com/about-our-company

Florais de Saint Germain. You will need to translate this home page unless you speak Portugese: https://www.fsg.com.br/

Mushroom Essences: https://selfhealdistributing.com/mushroom-essences/ Robert Rogers has written a book on the subject. Mushroom Essences: Vibrational healing from the Kingdom Fungi. It is available at most online book sources including amazon.ca and amazon.com.

How to Make Flower Essences

Bloom Institute: https://bloominstitute.ca/how-to-make-flower-essences/

Herbal Academy: https://theherbalacademy.com/homemade-flower-essence/

American College of Healthcare Sciences: https://info.achs.edu/blog/how-to-make-personal-flower-essences

Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism: https://clinicalherbalism.com/how-to-make-your-own-flower-essence/

Comments

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    Thank you for compiling this great list! Some of these I knew, some are new to me (mushroom essences--wow--never even heard of that one!), but I can't think of any good sites to add.

    Would like to talk books too--I have Flower Essence Repertory by Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz,(revised edition,1994,1996), but has anything about North American flowers come out more recently? It's an impressive collection of flowers (full text with the flower essence portraits is 406 pages. I think the online version is only part 1, "Overview of theory and practice") But still, the text reads very much like a work in progress. I've been hoping for an updated version, or a newer book for North America, but haven't found any yet.

  • JennyT Upstate South Carolina
    JennyT Upstate South Carolina Posts: 1,273 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Oh wow! I didn't realize there was so much about flower essences out there. I'd only heard about Back Flower Remedies.

    @torey Thank you for sharing all these site links. Can't wait to dive in.☺️

  • Torey
    Torey Posts: 5,679 admin

    @MaryRowe Good idea to post books as well. I hadn't seen the Flower Essence Repertory before but I just looked it up and it looks like an excellent book.

    Ian White has written a book "Australian Bush Flower Essences". It should be a good one for anyone who is considering the course that is being offered via the webinar earlier this week or any other course on Bush Flower Essences.

    The "Bach Flower Remedies" book was written by Dr. E. Bach himself. I would think that this book is required reading for any of the Bach Flower Practitioner courses.

    The Collected Writings of Edward Bach. Another one that is likely on the list of required reading for practitioners.

    "Bach Flower Therapy" by Mechthild Scheffer. I have this book. Not as good as what Dr. Bach has written but an OK book if you find it at a used book store. That's where I found my copy.

    The Mushroom Essence book I mentioned in the original post is really excellent. I have this book.

    This is another Flower Essence company that I missed earlier because it has a similar name to one of the others mentioned. Pacific Northwest Essences. https://pnwessences.com/

    If anyone has any other books or flower essence companies to recommend please do so. What I provided is not a complete list.

    @JennyT You are welcome. Enjoy your "dive".

  • JennyT Upstate South Carolina
    JennyT Upstate South Carolina Posts: 1,273 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @torey @MaryRowe I was able to find at a used book store by me the book: The Bach Flower Remedies Step by Step A complete guide to selecting and using the remedies by Judy Ramsell Howard. She apparently works at the Bach Centre and has since 1985 and is a Trustee and Custodian of the Bach's Centre's heritage.

    I was very excited to find this on the shelves with other herbalism/natural healing books.😃

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    @JennyT Great find! In my opinion, Judy Ramsell Howard's book is the very best first-book introduction to the Bach remedies. It's the one from my shelf that I would always lend to friends wanting to get started with Bach. (Though inevitably, one of them never got around to returning it.....🙄)

    These are my other Bach books; they are all still available from Amazon I think, but of course cheaper if you can find them in used book stores:

    The Bach Flower Remedies (Rev.Ed. 1997, pub. by the Dr, Edward Bach Centre). I think this is the best next step after Howard's book. It has the two foundational texts by Bach, "Heal Thyself" and "The Twelve Healers," and the first practical guide to Bach's system, written out by his assistant, F.J. Wheeler, "The Bach Remedies Repertory."

    The Bach Remedies Workbook by Stefan Ball (1998, 2005) is another that came out under the auspices of the Bach Centre, and Ball was part of that team. It is an excellent practical step-by-step guide for building your knowledge of, and confidence working with each of the flower essences.

    Two books by Mechthild Scheffer: Bach Flower Therapy (1981,1988) that @torey already listed, and Encyclopedia of Bach Flower Therapy (1999, 2001). Scheffer is German; she studied and worked at the Bach Centre in England for years, and became its official representative in introducing the Bach system to Germany and Austria. I found her earlier book first, when I was just beginning to study Bach, and found it helpful at that point. Later I found the Encyclopedia, which is basically an expanded version of the earlier book, with a lot more practical information on the uses of each of the essences. It is the more useful of the two.

    Bach Flower Remedies for Animals, by Helen Graham and Gregory Vlamis. (1999) Short book, but a good bit of information. Lists each of the essences, with general recommendations for use with animals, then specific recommendations for birds, dogs, cats, horses, and other animals. The authors are part of the Findhorn group, apparently a sort of unofficial link between Findhorn and the Bach Centre, and you can see the influence from both sides in the book. I've found it helpful with my cats and my chickens at various times.

    And one last book, which I just found recently and haven't read yet: Advanced Bach Flower Therapy, A Scientific Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment, by Gotz Blome, M.D. He is German, has some connection with Scheffer, and his book is supposed to be an expansion on the Bach system, Guess I'll find out whether it's useful once I get around to reading it....

    And I agree that Bach's collected writings ought to be on the reading list--but I was able to get those from the library....I don't think you'd necessarily want to go to the trouble and expense of getting your own copy unless you were going into this professionally.

  • Torey
    Torey Posts: 5,679 admin

    Excellent list @MaryRowe! Thanks for posting all of these with such good reviews.

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    @torey Thanks, and I forgot to mention that Bach's collected writings are mostly about homeopathy, rather than his flower essences. He did some important break-through work in that field before he got around to developing his flower essences, and wrote extensively about it. The writings are useful insights into his thinking and method, but they are not much help if you are just interested in how to use the flower essences. I think that in developing those he probably relied so heavily on intuitive processes that it was hard to put it in writing.

    There are so many books about the flower essences! I listed the ones I've found useful, but I came across some duds along the way too. I'll try to go back through my old notes to see if I can come up with a "don't bother" list....

  • JennyT Upstate South Carolina
    JennyT Upstate South Carolina Posts: 1,273 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @MaryRowe Wonderful, thank you. I think I've seen some that you listed. I have borrowed several from the library. I'll make a note to make sure and check into getting these from the library again. At the very least to see if the library has all of them or access to them.😊👍️

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    @JennyT Yep, if your library has a good collection, or at least a good inter-library loan system, that'a the best place to start--that way you can decide whether the book will be useful reference to have on your shelf before you spend money on it. I was still at the university when I began studying Bach, so I had access to a university library with a fantastic inter-library loan system, which is how I got access to Bach's collected writings.

    The Bach Centre has worked very hard to maintain a stranglehold on anything published about the Bach system in English, and they've been quite successful in Britain, less so on this side of the Pond or in Australia. On the one hand, you can trust that anything published with the Bach Centre's approval is going to be reliable; but on the other, this has stifled the kind of development and growth that you find in Germany. Thanks to the work of Scheffer and her students, there was an explosion of experimenting with and writing about the Bach system in Germany in the 1980's and '90's. Most of that has not been translated into English, and it is hard to find in this country. But if you really get into the Bach system, read German and have a friendly librarian willing to help, you have to explore the German stuff. Some of it is really amazing.