Bach Flower Remedies
A unique self-help system for emotional support.
Dr Edward Bach's Life Story
"The light that never goes out"
If this is said about your lab’s window, you are surely on to something big!
Dr Edward Bach - medical doctor, bacteriologist, botanist, surgeon, vaccine researcher, homoeopath and inventor of Bach Flower Remedies - is in question here.
Dr Edward Bach completed medical studies in Birmingham and later at University College Hospital, London, where he was also a surgeon. He also ran a private practice. As a bacteriologist and pathologist, he conducted research on vaccines in his own laboratory.
In 1917, during the First World War, Dr Bach worked in the wards where wounded soldiers returned from the war front in France.
During his work here, he experienced a breakdown and was diagnosed with cancer. According to the tests, he would live another three months.
However, he miraculously recovered and, stronger than ever, believed he still had work to do.
Homoeopathic Research
Dr Bach was dissatisfied with the fact that doctors were expected to focus on the disease instead of on the entire person consisting of body, mind, and spirit.
He therefore strove for a more holistic approach to medicine. He accepted a position at the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital.
Here he soon saw the similarities between his work on vaccinations and the principles of homoeopathy.
He adapted his vaccines to develop a series of seven homoeopathic nosodes. This work and its publication brought him recognition and a great deal of honour in homoeopathic circles. People began to refer to him as "the second Hahnemann". (Samuel Hahnemann is the father of homoeopathy as we currently know it.)
A Search for Something Even Simpler
Dr Bach believed that the system of homoeopathy was still too complicated for people to help themselves and continued searching for simpler and more natural treatments. As he told his assistant - if he wanted to make a sandwich, he would fetch salad leaves from the garden. When he was afraid and anxious, he would pick Mimulus, and when he was excessively worried, he would pick Red Chestnut. It should be that simple!
A Good Judge of People
He was an extremely careful observer of human behaviour, and it was very noticeable to him that different types of people, with different emotional approaches to life, reacted very differently to illness.
People would also heal more easily when they were emotionally balanced.
Using Plants and Flowers
He began collecting plants and especially flowers, hoping to develop an even gentler treatment than the nosodes of homoeopathy.
By 1930, he was so enthusiastic about the direction his research was taking that he closed his successful medical practice and left London.
A New System of Healing
Dr Bach began to focus on finding a new system of healing, which he believed was available somewhere in nature. He took a radiographer named Nora Weeks with him as his assistant.
Over time and through testing hundreds of plants’ properties, he came across the treatments he was looking for, one by one.
Each was aimed at a specific emotional state that people could be in, which could lead to chronic illness.
Successfully Completed
A year after he completed the system of 38 Bach Flower Remedies, he passed away.
How the System Works
Here is an example of one of the plant tinctures as quoted directly from the Bach Institute’s page:
Willow
“…is for people who feel resentful and bitter about the way their lives have gone.
In a Willow state, we begrudge others their success and happiness and are reluctant to admit when our own lives go well.
We prefer to grumble and are prone to resentment and self-pity.
The remedy encourages the rebirth of optimism and faith.
It helps us feel more generous towards others and more aware that negative thinking can attract the very ill fortune of which we complain.”
Dr Bach’s description:
“For those who have suffered adversity or misfortune and find these difficult to accept without complaint or resentment, as they judge life much by the success which it brings. They feel that they have not deserved so great a trial, that it was unjust, and they become embittered. They often take less interest and less activity in those things of life which they had previously enjoyed.”
Modern Classification
The Bach Institute has classified the plant tinctures in more modern language according to seven groups of emotions that can positively affect people's health, namely:
• Find Joy and Hope
• Live and Let Live
• Stand Your Ground
• Face Your Fears
• Live the Day
• Reach Out to Others
• Know Your Own Mind
Practical Example:
The following emotions can be treated under “Stand Your Ground”:
• You can’t easily say no to people.
• Other people’s ideas knock you off course.
• You feel wounded, spiteful, or jealous, or want revenge.
• You hide your troubles behind a smile.
If you look closely at this, chances are you may become bitter if you never get to exercise your own choices.
This is a form of stress, and your fight or flight system is activated.
If you suppress your natural response for years and just please everyone, physical conditions such as stress-related diseases can develop.
Blend Your Own Treatment
Up to five remedies can be selected and mixed in one 30ml treatment bottle. The treatments are effective, gentle, and bring relief soon.
It therefore makes more sense to have a treatment mixed with a variety of tinctures at R95 than to buy five bottles at a much higher cost each.
Mirre & Kaneel stocks the full range and will be happy to help you blend a treatment.
Source:
Disclaimer: No complementary health treatment is meant to replace medical treatment and should be done responsibly in agreement with your general physician. We are not responsible for decisions that you personally make to discontinue any medication.
For the Afrikaans version, click here.
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