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Flower and Vibrational Essences and Mind-Body Health

Marcey Shapiro, MD

Amazing doors open when we are aware that it is possible to communicate directly with the spirits of things. Flower and vibrational essences are one example of healing tools born of an expanded understanding of interrelatedness. Essences are vibrational impressions of a flower, leaf, gem, or other entity, stabilized in water and preserved with grape alcohol or another neutral medium. Essences have been used extensively in healing by various cultures as a form of spirit medicine. Essences were possibly important tools in ancient human societies such as those of Egypt and Sumeria, as well as in fabled societies like Atlantis and Lemuria of which there is no certain physical record.

More recently, Dr. Edward Bach reintroduced essences to the healing repertory. Bach was a successful London homeopath in the early twentieth century. Due to a crisis of faith in his work, he came to believe that even homeopathy did not address the spiritual roots of illness. Bach believed that illness was caused by “a contradiction between the purposes of the soul and the personality’s point of view.” He left his practice to become a wanderer in the countryside, communing intuitively with trees and plants and often sleeping outdoors. During this period, he gave away his services for free to those who requested them. Through communication with the natural world, he evolved the original thirty-eight Bach flower essences. These essences are made from typical plants of the British countryside in the early twentieth century.

Since that time many other essences have been made from native plants of other areas. The world of essences has expanded beyond flowers as well. There are falling leaf essences, gem elixirs, planetary and starlight essences, environmental and seasonal essences, animal essences, and more. Any aspect of nature can teach us about balance and harmony as we communicate with it and acknowledge its consciousness.

Vibrational tools are not necessary for healing, but for many people they are beneficial. They can help us to focus positively, giving attention to desired outcomes of well-being and greater harmony in various areas of our life. By focusing on what we intend, we gently release our resistance to and disbelief in the desired outcome. We inform our subconscious of our new directional heading.

I am well aware that discussion of the spirits within things moves us well out of the realm of conventional science. Materialist scientists might dismiss the benefits of flower essences as “just” a placebo effect. But that still begs the question of how to explain placebo effect? Placebos, in fact, are powerful medicines. Researchers refer to their effects as the “placebo problem.”

Excerpted from Transforming the Nature of Health: A Holistic Vision of Healing that Honors Our connection to the Earth, Others, and Ourselves  by Marcey Shapiro, MD, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2012 by Marcey Shapiro. Reprinted by permission of publisher.

Stay tuned for more thoughts from Marcey Shapiro, MD,  on “Transforming Health” and Heart Centered Living

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