There could be a deeper reason why the presence of flowers energizes us. Flower essences try to capture flowers’ good energy and allow us to hold it within ourselves. Try your hand at making a flower essence to bring balance and harmony to your spirits.
Have you ever heard of flower essences? They’re not to be confused with essential oils or medicinal tinctures. Flower essences are based on the idea that flowers contain vibrational healing energy.
I took a class on flower essences from my herbal mentor, Lori Snyder, a few years ago, and I thought it would be great to share it with you today.
Lori is Garden Therapy’s herbalist mentor as well, and I asked her to join me in sharing a little bit more about flower essences and how you can make and use them yourself.
This post will cover…
- What is a Flower Essence?
- History and Benefits of Flower Essences
- How to Make a Flower Essence
- Materials
- Make It!
- Flower Essence Recipes
- Rescue Remedy
- How to Use Flower Essences
- More Ways to Heal with Plants
What is a Flower Essence?
Flower essences are a combination of earth and sun. It’s a way of extracting a flower’s energetic properties rather than the scent or medicinal properties.
Flower essences are considered the highest vibration of the plant. This means they hold a certain amount of energy that can help balance our own during times of stress. After all, who doesn’t find the scent or presence of flowers relaxing?
These essences are made of spring water, fresh flowers, and preserved with brandy or vinegar. They work to bring us back to our natural state of harmony and equilibrium. Typically, you use them to help with mental and emotional issues rather than physical conditions.
As Lori says, “Flower essence remedies address many different emotional states including fear, despondency, loneliness, the concern of others, worry, the shock of bad news, and many other emotional states. They can be shared with our animals, plants, children, and elders.”
History and Benefits of Flower Essences
The exact beginnings of flower essences are unclear, but it appears that the practices began with the Yucatan and the Mayan people. In the 1930s, Dr. Edward Bach reintroduced the idea of flower essences after leaving his physician practice.
After moving to the countryside, he took up homeopathy and worked as a bacteriologist. There, he explored how restoring emotional health could also improve your physical health.
“He believed there was a more subtle pathway for healing based purely on nature,” says Lori. “The remedies help the emotional cause with no side effects, treating the patient vs the malady. This gently restored balance from negative emotions (such as worry, depression, loneliness, etc.) into positive emotions to stimulate our own self-healing.”
How to Make a Flower Essence
Making flower essences is quite simple, but there is a certain way you should do it to express your gratitude and get the most energy possible from the flowers.
Materials
- Scissors
- Fresh flowers
- Glass or crystal bowl
- Spring or purified water
- Tweezers
- Dropper bottles
- Brandy, vodka, or glycerin
Make It!
Lori calls this process the sun method, as you allow the sun to help you extract the flower’s energy. To make a flower essence, you must use fresh flowers.
Wait until your flowers are at the peak of their blooming, and head out in the early morning to cut them. Lori recommends that you begin by expressing your gratitude to the flower and take a few moments to ask permission to cut it.
When you’re ready to cut, use sharp, sterile scissors to snip the flower. Avoid touching it, and let it drop into a glass or crystal bowl filled with spring or purified water.
“Remember that water carries messages,” says Lori. To learn more about this concept, check out the book The Secret Life of Water by Masaru Emoto.
Let the bowl sit in direct sunlight for several hours or until the flower begins to wilt. Gently remove the flower without touching it by using tweezers.
Fill a dropper bottle half-full with either brandy or glycerin. These both will act as a preservative. Pour the flower water to fill the rest of the dropper bottle.
At this point, you can label the bottle and give it a shake. This bottle will be your ‘mother’ tincture.
Next, Lori recommends preparing another dropper bottle halfway with preservatives and half the spring water. Then, put 5-7 drops from the ‘mother’ tincture in the second bottle. Label this bottle as your ‘stock.’
You can then prepare a 3rd bottle using half spring water and half preservative. Drop 5-9 drops from the ‘stock’ bottle into the 3rd dropper. This will be your ‘dose’ bottle.
Note that you can also dose from your ‘stock’ bottle.
Flower Essence Recipes
Just like their medicinal properties, different flowers will have different energies and can specifically aid you with different things.
Lori recommends making flower essences from your surrounding environment rather than those from another country.
Here are a few flowers and their essences to try.
- *Blackberry: helps with procrastination and strongly connects to our will. It helps balance our thoughts into specific priorities to manifest our goals and brings vital energy to our limbs.
- Chamomile: helps to balance moods when feeling irritable.
- *Cosmos: integrating thoughts into speech and ideas into focused action. It provides mental agility to harmonize an overly active mind. Cosmos will flood us with creative thoughts and inspiration, which need synthesis and organization for bringing creative ideas into form, especially through speaking and writing.
- *Cottonwood: releases physical and emotional tension. It balances our life force and is grounding.
- Dandelion: dispels tight, old energy from the muscles and tissue. It gets you into a more active mindset.
- Feverfew: works well in group situations to help soften the need to argue and overall agitation and intensity.
- Forsythia: opens up spiritual nature and ushers in joy.
- Lavender: calming effect to balance emotions and relieve stress and anxiety.
- Lilac: helps with uptightness to usher in joy, laughter, and release painful memories.
- Lily of the Valley: helps untapped spiritual potential. Connects you to the divine.
- *Rose: helps with those lacking trust and faith. It brings courage, interest in life, the ability to build trust, and encourages openness.
- Peony: dispels fear and nightmares. Provides light.
- Yarrow: helps to protect against negative influences. A psychic shield.
*From Lori. Her favourites!
Rescue Remedy
Another one of Lori’s favourites is what is known as the rescue remedy, which Edward Bach created. This flower essence combines five flower essences:
- Cherry plum
- Clematis
- Impatiens
- Rockrose
- Star of Bethlehem
“Last fall, I slipped down some stairs and cracked two ribs,” says Lori. “From the pressure of the blow, it turned out that I pushed oxygen from my lungs and into my chest cavity. In those first few moments, I could not breathe and felt the panic growing. I quickly had a few drops of rescue remedy, and instantly I could breathe. These flower essences work!”
How to Use Flower Essences
To take flower essence, you can add them to a glass of water with four drops at a time. Take them as often as you feel you need.
Like homeopathic remedies, they are safe to use with any other kind of medication as they are non-interactive.
More Ways to Heal with Plants
- The Top 5 Medicinal Herbs to Grow in Your Garden and How They Heal
- Make This Healing Herbal Bath Tea (with No Messy Clean Up!)
- 3 Ways to Make Herbal Oils
Flower Essence
Equipment
- Pair of scissors
- Glass or crystal container
- 3 Dropper bottles
Supplies
- Fresh flowers
- Spring or purified water
- Brandy, vodka, or glycerin
Instructions
- Express gratitude to the flowers and ask permission to cut it.
- Use sharp scissors and cut flowers at peak bloom directly into a glass bowl of spring water. Avoid touching the flower. Flowers are best harvested in the morning.
- Let the bowl sit in direct sunlight for several hours or until the flower wilts. Afterward, remove the flower with tweezers.
- Pour your preservative (brandy, vodka, or glycerin) into a dropper bottle, filling it halfway. Fill the other half with your floral water. Label this bottle as 'mother.'
- Grab another dropper bottle and fill halfway with preservative and half with floral water. Add in 5-7 drops from the 'mother' tincture. Label this bottle as 'stock.'
- Optional step. Take another dropper bottle and fill halfway with preservative and half with floral water. Add in 5-9 drops from your 'stock' bottle. Label this bottle as 'dose.' Note, you can also dose from your 'stock' bottle.
- Add your dose to a glass of water 4 drops at a time. Take as often as you feel the need to.
