In ancient and modern medicine, both in the East and the West, it is believed that one’s spirit plays a large part in the health of the human body. My teacher once said that when a person is sick, it is often, “70 percent due to spirit and 30 percent due to illness.” I remember when I was researching alternative therapies, I was looking for something that could be used at will without causing any side effects. It should also be easy to use, and not cause resistive forces in children. The therapy turned out to be Bach flower remedies.
Bach flower remedies were designed by British doctor Edward Bach. Bach studied medicine first in Birmingham and then in London, and in 1912 he officially became a doctor. He was a bacteriologist and pathologist who conducted vaccine research in his laboratory. In 1917, when Bach suffered severe bleeding after a seizure, his medical colleagues immediately operated on him, removed a malignant tumour, and told him that he had only three months to live.
Life Saved by Sense of Purpose
When he had sufficiently recovered, the first thing Bach did was return to his lab, hoping to “do as much as he could” on his work for the remaining three months of his life. Three months later, Bach found himself not only alive, but in much better shape than he was before. He was fully convinced that his sense of purpose had saved his life.
In his book “The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies,” (pdf) Dr. Bach said that the mind is the most vulnerable and sensitive part of the human body, and as such it becomes the most evident part of the body to exhibit the disease from its onset to it becoming full blown. It is therefore deemed necessary to pay attention to the condition of the mind, before deciding which drug or drugs to use.
Bach believes that “behind all diseases are our fears, anxieties, greed, likes and dislikes. Let us find them (the emotions), heal them, and after the heal, the sickness will go away.”
The 38 Bach flower remedies use the essence of flowers/other material substances to make an aqueous solution. They are produced by picking the flowers when they are mature, putting them in natural spring water, heating under the sun or boiling, and then filtering. Brandy is added as a preservative and the “mother tincture” is produced. That is, the genuine efficacious medicinal mother tincture.
Each type of flower corresponds to a certain emotion. According to the needs of the patient, one or more flower essences can be selected to improve the patient’s mental state, thereby eliminating the symptoms that appear in the body.
The 39th type of Bach flower remedy is called “Rescue Remedy,” and contains five kinds of flower essences, employed primarily in first aid or emergency cases. Dr. Bach believes that when a person encounters sad news or has an accident and becomes down in spirit, it is easy to become ill. By using Rescue Remedy at this time, Bach says you can correct this mental condition and prevent the body from getting sick.
Magical Effect of Rescue Remedy
I have used the Rescue Remedy on my family members, and every time the outcome was really amazing. The first person was my mother. When I was visiting her, I gave her a bottle of Rescue Remedy to carry with her in case it was needed. One day she called me and said that she had been in a car crash.
Fortunately, the accident was not serious. I asked her on the phone if she had Rescue Remedy with her, and she said, “Yes!” I told her to quickly put a few drops in her mouth. When I saw my mother the next day, I asked her how she felt about taking Rescue Remedy. She said that it was as if everything at the scene had nothing to do with her, and she could remain extremely calm.
Another instance was with a friend of my mother-in-law who had to undergo surgery for colorectal cancer and no doubt was very worried. I asked my mother-in-law to suggest that her friend take Rescue Remedy. As expected, her friend felt relieved, and the operation was highly successful.
One day, my youngest son was playing happily, but suddenly huddled in the corner of the sofa. I asked him what was going on, and he said that his wrist hurt. I couldn’t see any visible sign of injury but put a few drops of Rescue Remedy on his wrist anyway, and before long, he was up and playing again.
This last experience with my son was really amazing. Later, I saw an article on the internet about a similar example of using Bach flower therapy.
There was a lady whose dog became very different after recovering from a disease, and did not like to be touched. It did not even like to cuddle with its owner like a spoiled child as it had before. The owner chose a flower essence, gave it to the dog, and then went to work in the next room. As soon as she sat down, the puppy walked into the room looking for her and returned to its usual cuddly self.
Bach’s research on vaccines was going quite well, but he was not satisfied with the kind of treatment that focused soley on the disease rather than looking at the person holistically; so he applied to the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital to try a new approach. He started his subsequent vaccine research by adopting the concept of homoeopathy and developed seven drugs using the same principle. With these successes he also gained a certain reputation in the homoeopathy industry, and a lot of people nicknamed him “the second Hahnemann” (the German doctor who invented homoeopathy).
However, even with homoeopathic treatments, Bach was still working with bacteria, and he was eager to find other, purer, treatments that reduce the reliance on the products of disease in medicine. He began collecting plants, especially flowers, in the hope of developing a range of gentler treatments.
In 1930, Bach abandoned his lucrative vaccine clinic in London, intending to spend the rest of his life finding a new drug system from nature. In the process, he used his talent as a healer and his intuition, to find the right mix of plants to use in a nosode.
After repeated experiments, Bach discovered that the top of the flower is exposed to the most sunlight, so it is also the part with the most energy, and provides all the vitality it needs. In 1934, Bach developed the last 19 kinds of flower essences one after another when he was in a painful mental condition. Every mental condition he suffered during that time simply provided him the added impetus to find the corresponding flower essence to relieve his pain.
Just one year after completing the research and development of the flower essence series, Bach died in November 1936.
Shen Nong Looking to Eliminate the Plague
The story of Dr. Bach reminds me of a similar person in ancient China: Shen Nong (Farmer God).
Shen Nong is a great god who appeared in the period when Chinese civilization was on a path towards farming (from simple animal herding). He is one of three emperors in ancient China who taught his compatriots the skills of growing rice and understanding herbal medicine. He is known as the god of agriculture and the ancestor of medicine.
Tasting medicine himself was Shen Nong’s most commendable practice. Sima Zhen of the Tang Dynasty wrote in his “Complementary History of the Three Emperors’ Chronicles” that Shen Nong “used the ochre to whip the herbs and tasted all kinds of them, and then there was medicine.”
It is said that Shen Nong had an ochre-coloured whip, and after whipping an herb, he could immediately tell from its scent whether it was poisonous or not and whether it had cold or warm medicinal properties.
In order to further identify the nature, taste, smell, and function of medicines, Shen Nong tasted all kinds of herbs himself, and then recorded all the herb’s medicinal properties in detail, and determined what each was suitable for treating. He tasted hundreds of herbal medicines almost every day, and even “encountered 70 types of poisons in one day.”
Fortunately, it is said that Shen Nong’s body was exquisite and transparent, and the internal organs could clearly be seen from the outside. With such a unique physiognomy, not only could people observe the effects of herbal medicine on the human body, but also know a poisoned site and find a way to quickly detoxify it.
As Shen Nong travelled all over the mountains, he tasted wheat, rice, millet, beans, and sorghum and realized they could be used as food, so he taught people to plant them, and they later became the five grains. In total, he discovered 365 kinds of herbal medicines and wrote “Shen Nong’s Materia Medica,” to help ordinary people cure diseases.
After further research, it was discovered that Shen Nong’s real purpose of tasting the herbs was to find a cure for the plague. The earliest extant Han nationality epic, “The Biography of Darkness,” described this sad history, “At that time, the plague was widespread all over the country, and no one was left alive in every village.
“Shen Nong, with all the good intention to treat the disease, tasted all kinds of herbs and worked hard to enter the mountains and forests.” “Over the 100 years under his reign, epidemics broke out frequently. He could not bear to see the suffering of the people, so he went deep into the mountains and forests to test all kinds of herbs for medicinal use to save the people. The process was full of blood and tears and in the end Shen Nong tested hundreds of herbs, found the right antidotes, and removed the plague.”
Both Shen Nong and Dr. Bach believe there is an antidote in nature to relieve human diseases and pain. Their belief, and success, should provide inspiration to people today.
There are numerous claims that Bach flower remedies have a kind of placebo effect, which is akin to improving mood or helping the body perform in a better state using meditation.
Perhaps Dr. Bach did not live long enough to share the in depth application of flower therapy that he discovered. However, Dietmar Kramer, a German therapist who studied the application of Bach flower remedies in detail, believes that Dr. Bach’s discovery is not a trivial matter, and mentioned that Dr. Bach had used flower therapy to treat some severely ill patients. I remember reading similar opinions, and one article said that Bach used different flower essences to cure two patients of diabetes. With that in mind, Kramer hopes to continue Dr. Bach’s flower remedies research and learn more about their application.
Bach flower remedies are an energy medicine. Kramer shows in his book the patient’s Kirlian photograph (image of light released by an object in an electrified field) before and after using a flower remedy, from which we can see how the energy distribution is changed. If you are interested, you can check out Kramer’s book online.
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