The Bach Flower Therapy was introduced between 1920 & 1930 by Dr. Edward Bach a Physician, Bacteriologist, Homeopath, and Researcher, who deeply studied 38 Flower varieties found in and around Mount Vernon, England.
Dr. Bach discovered that the essence of each of the 38 Flowers is associated with a basic human emotion and that the essence – in a diluted form – can bring back an emotionally disturbed person to a positive and happy state of mind.
Dr. Bach also found that these essences can greatly help in the treatment of most physical illnesses by treating the accompanying emotional disturbances of the affected person (worry, apprehension, hopelessness, impatience, irritability, etc.), which could either be the contributory causes of those illnesses or acting as obstacles in the path of recovery. He therefore named these diluted essences as the ‘Bach Flower Remedies’.
Bach Flowers are not medicinal. They can be taken along with any food, herb, health product, or medicine without causing any interaction. The Bach Flower Remedies have been found to give wonderful results, either when used on their own or as a complementary therapy to homeopathic or other forms of treatment.
All negative emotions can be addressed with Bach Flower Therapy. Unlike psychotropic medications (i.e. medicines that treat depression, anxiety, or psychosis), Bach Flowers treats specific shades of emotion. For example, they address sadness, despair, hopelessness, irritability, rage, resentment, panic, worry, concern about family members, uncertainty, self-doubt, shyness, lethargy, overwhelm, pain without physical cause, impulsivity, agitation, procrastination, daydreaming, vague anxieties, specific phobias, and any other disturbing emotion.
Difference Between Bach Flower Therapy & Traditional Therapy
There are important differences between Bach Flower Therapy and traditional medical therapy. Bach Flowers are not medicinal. They can be taken along with any food, herb, health product, or medicine without causing any interaction. In this way, they are similar to water. Bach Flowers treats the unhealthy emotional tendency, meaning that when the disturbing emotion is no longer active, Flower Treatment is stopped.
One does not continue treatment in such a case, because the Flower does not prevent sickness like vitamins or medicine do. Rather, it operates more like a process that undoes a knot (in the energetic flow). Once the knot is undone, there is no further need to keep undoing it! Bach Flowers can be taken safely by infants, pregnant or nursing women, the elderly, and even those who have flower allergies. Again, just as water itself cannot harm this population, Bach Flowers cannot cause negative reactions. Indeed, thinking of Bach Flower Remedies as being a collection of harmonious water crystals is really the most accurate way to conceptualize them.
Bach Flower Therapy can be used as a self-help tool by anyone to help soothe daily irritability, moodiness, and stress of all kinds. However, when problems are deeper, repetitive, or chronic, hypnotherapy may be more appropriate. Often, Flower Remedies can be used during the hypnotherapy treatment as a form of support between sessions or as a way of facilitating the psychological work itself.
