Getting to the Source of our Difficulties

As an essence therapist I aim to help my clients to live more freely and discover their aims in life more easily. But this is not so easily achieved. The source of our problems lies further back in our lives than we may be aware. If we can get to that source the essences can cleanse and purify it, but we may have to go back as far as our client's conception to manage this.

It helps me to think of this world as a plane of activity. Enduring souls incarnate upon it in order to discover and develop their talents. This brings them satisfaction and contributes to the evolving universe. The universe itself seems to be guided by its own mega spirit which interfaces with our own and provides guidance as needed - and requested: we maintain many degrees of freedom at all times.

These souls of ours incarnate to a mother who introduces us to this challenging world and starts signalling to us by her thoughts and actions even before she is aware of our existence. We forget where we have come from (a place, apparently, of love where personal development happens in a different way or not at all) and are agog to learn what this world has to offer us. Even in the womb babies are exceptional learners with an emotional intelligence which is frequently unappreciated.

If all goes well the baby grows from conception to birth having absorbed a surprising amount of knowledge about its family circumstances and emerges hungry for more.

However all often does not go well and the baby, to survive at all, may have to absorb knocks which are so severe that on occasion it cannot deal with them and has to bury them very deep so that it can continue to grow. The price it pays for this ring fencing of trauma is to lose energy which should otherwise keep it connected to universal spirit: the life force, chi or prana.

At an extreme the trauma the baby experiences is that of not being wanted at all. Sometimes, for many different reasons, the mother signals by her thoughts to the baby that she does not want it, and the baby, coming from a place of love and with expectations of reciprocated love, is devastated.

The outcome is complex: negative emotions are generated which play out sometimes for the rest of the person's life. Anger and hatred - the polar opposites of love - arise. Huge grief is experienced. The baby is unable to love or cherish itself as it has received the message that it is unlovable, and it develops a sense of worthlessness, of the lowest possible self esteem. And immediately it senses that it must depend on itself to control its environment, rather than the natural carers provided by providence. But of course it is a baby, and naturally is unable to control its environment. This need to control persists, but so does the inability to control.

The therapist can measure the strength of these negative emotions intuitively and work on them individually. Or he or she can choose to short circuit the process by selecting essences which directly impact on the vital energy of the person.

I am a dowser and dowsing is how I get at my intuition. Using my dowsing pendulum I can calibrate the strength of negative emotions and assign a value to them. I use a scale of 6, with 1 the lowest (least negative) and 6/6 the most extreme. This is the scale used by the MYMOP self assessment system. A step change from, say, 6 to 5 in a symptom can be noticed by the individual and used to denote a significant change.

This way of thinking about deep issues of unwellness did not occur to me overnight, but evolved over several years. At first I was sceptical of these dowsing indications. It was not until I found that I had experienced these kinds of difficulty in my own earliest childhood that I gained the confidence to build on my results.

Later I found Neide Margonari of the essence making company Florais de St Germain in Brazil writing about the exact same difficulty. She had developed a composite essence to help alleviate the problem. It is called Formula Leucantha, and I almost always use it to balance the energy of a person who felt unloved and unwanted by the mother in their earliest childhood. If the child experienced being unwanted by the father then Red Helmet Orchid from the Bush essences or Baby Blue Eyes from the Flower Essence Society seem able to assuage that difficulty. (Florais de St Germain essences are distributed in the UK by Sol Carneiro).

The role of the mother goes beyond the physical conception and birthing of the child. She introduces him to a strange new world refracted through her own unique experience of it. We all learn from the mother, and the difficult stuff is a necessary part of the learning package. Without the full spectrum of experience we are delivered to this world incomplete, unable to fully function within it. Hence the mother is naturally revered and protected even when she seems to be too much the bearer of bad news. The father's role is, of course, crucial too. Without his presence or support we are weakened as players.

Recently I have discovered the writing of the late Frank Lake, a counsellor who helped to develop residential workshops in which participants were able to safely regress to their prenatal roots and understand 'that they were actually and accurately in touch with their own foetal sensations and feelings'. Lake reported, from many hundreds of regression sessions, on the fact of some conceptions being ideal - 'there is such a sense of tenderness and love coming and going' - and then dissects the coping response of the foetus when it has lost hope of the ideal. This is varied, Lake wrote, but is typically characterised by a desire not to retaliate against the mother. The difficulties are 'loaded up in the foetus' own body structures' and repressed rather than 'fired back at the placenta/mother'. Sometimes, it seems, the stronger foetuses in conjunction with the more inadequate mothers decide from the beginning to act in the role of therapists, attempting to do all within their power to ensure that the mother is spared distress. This can become a life-long burden.

As I said earlier, the repressions which occur at this early stage can inhibit satisfactory growth. At the least they act as a continuing source of weakness. The individual is often denied his full potential in life. The essences have a remarkable ability to ease these blockages. Formula Leucantha, Red Helmet Orchid or Baby Blue Eyes may ease the initial shock of being unwanted, and other essences act to soften the negative emotions which arise from the very beginning of life and are too intense to grow out of.

Thus anger and hatred can be alleviated by Dr Bach's Holly, or Dagger Hakea and Mountain Devil from the Australian Bush. I frequently turn to Urchin, Forsythia or Orange Honeysuckle from Pacific Essences. The need to control can be assuaged by Green Bells of Ireland from the Flower Essence Society of California (FES), followed up by Poison Hemlock or Sea Palm from Pacific.

Inevitably fear and anxiety are encountered. Dr Bach's Aspen, Mimulus or Rock Rose can be deployed here. I find myself turning to FES Sweet Pea, perhaps followed up by Wolf from the Wild Earth Animal Essences at a subsequent session. Grief is often detected as a deep, underlying emotional state. A composite essence from Wild Earth called Grieving Heart is valuable in shifting this state. It is composed of Wild Horse, Hippopotamus and Gazelle. This might be followed by the Grieving combination from Flower Essences of Fox Mountain.

Another aspect of the emotions of the unwanted child is an inability to love himself. If he does not experience love in the beginning then the 'script' he works from denies him present love. He does not understand love and is unable to extend it to himself or others. Formula Leucantha does a lot to enable this. The combination called Loved & Welcomed from Fox Mountain is an excellent follow-up remedy. Furthermore the child and adult almost always suffer from a related, corrosive state, an absence of self-esteem. Low self-esteem can be countered by Vanilla Leaf and Indian Pipe from Pacific Essences, and by Dr Bach's Larch.

These emotional states, when untreated, deplete the individual's life energy on an ongoing basis. At transition times such as puberty, adulthood and the menopause they can break out and manifest in severe forms of mental or physical ill health including, most obviously, the various kinds of depression. The gift of the vibrational essences is to gentle and disperse these difficult emotions and enable us to reconnect with life and our natural energy so that love can prevail as it always should.         

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Neide Margonari's Florais de St Germain: UK distributor Sol Carneiro at landofreiki.co.uk

Frank Lake's book Mutual Caring

Calibrating the dowsing protocol

An article submitted to 'Essence' magazine.

I write of dowsing because that is my way of selecting essences through my intuition. And I accept that kinesiology and other methods of getting to one's intuition work very well for others. However, to rely on intellect alone seems questionable to me as a way of putting together the ideal remedy for the person on the day. And really that is all we are striving to do. Many of us no longer work with Dr Bach's remedies alone - remedies which have been beautifully described in their actions by many writers over the years. Nowadays there are thousands of essences that we can make use of, and I know that I am not alone in working with hundreds of them. To try to discern their comparative values only by intellect seems too onerous.

Furthermore, spirit is our constant companion in any healing venture. We are part of it. It is part of us. And intuition connects us directly to spirit. Recognising this and acting upon this knowledge to select appropriate essences ensures that spirit is directly involved in the healing process. After all we are doing something presumptuous, determining somebody's difficulties, often from the very earliest months of life, and selecting helpful remedies to roll back those difficulties and get on with living. If we do this work by dowsing (through intuition) we can be sure that spirit is brought to the party and that our client gets the very best attention.

The process of determining what is wrong with our client before choosing the right essences for him may be quite a detailed process. We may wish to ask our pendulum quite a number of questions. To ensure that we miss as little as possible, many of us who regularly make use of essences also resort to a protocol, a set of guidelines which enable us to work in a consistent manner, thus not forgetting to ask crucial questions which are best considered in the case of most clients. Questions such as 'does this person truly wish to get well at all levels?' or 'is this person carrying an excess of anger or hatred?' For listening to the person's story is frequently not a sufficient guide to finding the most helpful remedies for him. So a protocol can be of great help to both us and spirit in bringing our clients into wellness.

A protocol in this context is no more than a simple piece of paper, a checklist, which enables me to be sure that I ask my dowsing questions consistently. All the questions I need to pose are there on the page, and there may be quite a lot of them, but if I can go through them in order each time the risk of missing out something crucial for a client is minimised.

So far, so good. Using a protocol helps to clarify our own minds as healers, and we thereby clarify any communication we may receive through spirit - our intuition - in the selection of essences. However, if we add measurement to our protocols then our clarity and our healing ability increase again. For example, we can determine more accurately our client's state during a session. If he arrives with a vital force (chi, prana) of 0% we know that he is disconnected from spirit to all intents and purposes, disconnected by the huge expenditure of energy he is investing in keeping his emotional blockages in place. If we drill down into where the energy is being lost we find that there is excessive anger or hatred present, that he is trying to control his world to an impractical degree or that he is in the grip of grief or fear. Probably all of these if his energy is so low.

We can measure how extreme these negative emotions are, perhaps at 6 out of 6 in the beginning. And we can compare the measurements we take then with the measurements we take at our next session. If 0% energy has now become 20%, say, we know that we are on the right track. And if we see anger and fear drop from 6 to 5 or even 4 between sessions we can see where the improvement is coming from and select the next batch of essences accordingly.

In my own experience anger and hatred, anxiety and fear, excessive criticality and the need to control the world, grief and guilt, a lack of self-love and low self-esteem are the most dangerous emotions. There are many others and you will probably have listed them for yourselves, but those I mention lead, in due course, directly to severe pathology - which, of course, you can also list and measure.

Measuring pathology may be unlikely to give the same answers as doctors would obtain by measuring in their way. My own dowsing gives me a more impressionistic view, taking into account how the ailment is dispersed among the subtle bodies as well as the physical. But if cancer or heart pathology show up at 6/6 I have had fair warning. Choosing essences that affect those diseases becomes of paramount importance. If I can lower the measurements of the negative emotions I mentioned above then I have a reasonable chance of improving the person's condition.

Chris is an advanced practitioner of the BFVEA. He works in Tufnell Park, North London, and at Ainsworths, the homeopathic pharmacy in the West End. The author of 'Treating Depression Naturally: How Flower Essences can Rebalance your Life', he teaches an introductory course in essences and dowsing. Website flower-therapy.co.uk, and on Facebook: Chris Phillips Flower Therapy

Practice notes

Based on a talk given at the 2014 BFVEA Gathering and published in the Summer 2014 edition of Essence magazine.

When I started out as a therapist it took me some while before I realised that I was working with the best therapy in the world, and yet not all my patients got well. What was happening? Gradually, however, through working intuitively, relying more on my pendulum plus attunement with spirit, a dowsing protocol evolved consisting of a set of questions which focused on the problem. It is these questions and the issues they raise which I would now like to explore.

Are they holding on to their condition?

Sometimes a person simply doesn’t wish to be get well. If your dowsing or intuition discovers this, it is useful to have a conversation with the person at the deep spiritual level – which will be a place where truth is. If your argument in favour of their getting well is persuasive it will be listened to by the person and acted on very quickly. You may, however, find resistance. People have had to struggle hard to fashion a way of being in the world that works for them and they are understandably unwilling to let go of it. Using essences that help break entrenched patterns of behaviour can really help.

What have been their life difficulties?

The various difficulties that people have experienced in their lives may also be discovered intuitively. Sometimes they are traumatic, such as when the mother let’s the baby know, while still in the womb, that it is unwanted. Or negative programming can occur. Parental constraint between the ages of seven and fourteen often leaves an enduring mark on a child and depletes energy in adulthood.

Are psychic lesions or pathology present?

Psychic lesions can arise which stay with the person for life. Their effects can be diminished by essences which start vital energy flow. I measure energy level by dowsing and become optimistic if it starts to move upwards. I similarly measure whether pathology is present, and its intensity.  If medication is being given, essences can counteract the damaging side-effects while other essences are also at work.

Does the person suffer from depression and ‘stuckness’

I’m rather in favour of depression myself and am writing a book about it. Depression seems to be a prompt towards finding one’s role in life, and the essences seem to be the therapy above any other which guides you out of depression and into creativity. People may come to a therapist to deal with this or that difficulty or pathology but, in fact, being stuck is the universal disease. Unblock the ‘stuckness’ and people can move forward, and have nowhere else to go but into their own special identity and creativity. This is just as true of extreme conditions such as cancer and psychosis. They are severe forms of stuckness. Often they are medicated conditions so it is worth knowing whether medication is being taken so that you can choose essences which take this into account and thus protect the person from the worst side effects.

Are my own doubts affecting the results?

Sometimes doubt arises; doubt in our own capabilities, doubt in the essences. These can be so corrosive that, in their presence, you can hardly get the essences to work at all. But without self-doubt you may have lost your only effective critic. Sceptics will scoff at the effectiveness of essences, and they carry the majority with them which of course affects you; so the person you have to convince is, first and always, yourself. So seize the doubt, scrutinize your work critically, but do the work anyway, and keep on doing it and its quality will improve.

Can I help a problem client via remote transmission (broadcasting)?

Clients can be very variable creatures. One’s care with people is always to do the very best by them that it is possible to do, even if that is not reciprocated.  There are myriad reasons why you do not obtain the recognition that you are pretty sure you deserve! Never, therefore, say that the people you want to treat won’t accept treatment. If you care that they get well, treat them anyway. Like essences, we are vibrational beings. We can, by an act of intuition, select appropriate essences for a person and, by an act of will, transmit them to the recipient directly. Healers call this absent healing.

A remotely transmitted remedy will lose some effectiveness, but most of the strength comes through. So if there are those you know who are unwell and unwilling to take essences, let your intuition decide whether you can work remotely with them and, of course, that it is for the greater good to do so. Check also whether you have their permission – at the deepest level that is – and, of course, whether they do actually want to get well.

Three case studies

So how does this approach work in practice? Three case studies will illustrate the process.  The first is Martha aged 15. Dowsing showed her energy to be at 16 (out of 75), with lung pathology of 2/6, which is just sub-clinical, i.e. I would expect nothing to show up in a scan. Recently her step-father had split up with her mother, taking with him his two boys by a previous marriage who had become as brothers to Martha. He instructed them to cut off all relations with her, and to ‘unfriend her’ on Facebook. Her own father had told her that he was soon going to leave the country with his new family. I transmitted Wild Earth’s Wild Freedom essence. Six months later her she was exhibiting scoliosis and a bad back. Her lung pathology had disappeared, but her energy had dropped right down to 8/75. I gave Balancing Blooms’ Cheer Up! and Sensuality – a boyfriend had appeared. Two months later her energy was at 27 and the bad back and scoliosis were not so marked. I transmitted Wildflower Primrose and Harmony. She got the GCSEs she needed and energy steadied at around 45 (Shabd-Sangeet Khalsa’s Dancing Light Orchid essence, Walking Out of Patterns followed by Wild Earth Cygnet and Wild Foal). However, her father then left the country, the boyfriend went to university earlier than expected, and her mother, who had been going through a difficult patch herself, put their home on the market. Martha was overweight, and complained ‘there’s never any food in the house’. She failed her AS levels, energy dropped back to 15, depression advanced to borderline, and the scoliosis went up to 5/6. (FES Zinnia, Yarrow Environmental Solution). Several weeks of pneumonia and pleurisy followed, which was not necessarily a gloomy out-turn: the lungs are the seat of grief, and needed clearing. I transmitted FES Trumpet Vine and Violet, then Splendid Mariposa Lily and Tall Mountain Larkspur. Meanwhile her mother had been frequently threatening to commit suicide. When I last checked, however, Martha had put her mother onto a dating site and found a boyfriend for her and her own energy was at 57.

I had noticed that Caspar had lost a great deal of weight. Dowsing showed his energy at 14 and the following pathology: epilepsy at 4/6, gastro-intestinal 4/6, cytomegalovirus 6/6, sepsis 5/6, and HIV 5/6; also that there was heavy medication. Davidson’s, my medical textbook, said ‘pain on swallowing, weight loss and chronic diarrhoea are common presenting symptoms of late stage HIV. A range of opportunistic organisms and HIV-related tumours may be responsible.’[1] I broadcast Wildflower’s Sweet Dreams, White Archangel and Harmony. At my review a few weeks later only the sepsis, at 2/6, remained, and the medication had become less aggressive. I transmitted Balancing Blooms Cheer Up!, and Sensuality. Energy had gone to 34. Six weeks later it was up at 46, the sepsis had gone, and the medication seemed to have been withdrawn. I saw him and his wife happy and smiling and, as a last remedy, broadcast FES Yellow Star Tulip and Yerba Santa.

Then there is my own case. Eighteen months ago I had a stroke. It wasn’t a severe stroke, but I was taken to hospital (in France as it happened) with stenosis in a difficult-to-reach artery at the back of my neck. I was there for two days, including 24 hours in intensive care, and the doctors blamed my past history of smoking. However, I had the time to reflect upon my mood beforehand. It was strained and negative and I was always at variance with my wife, so I worked on this. I didn’t have any essences with me, but the day I left hospital I selected and transmitted to myself the energy of Wild Earth’s Wild Horse and Whale and, the following day, I did the same with Wildflower’s Nettle and Harmony. Later I supported myself with other essences. I dutifully took the aspirin, the platelet thinner and the statin for a few weeks, and then found by dowsing that I could discontinue all of them.

A final word

Developing a successful essence practice is not easy and using dowsing and distant transmission of treatments is well worth a try. It helps both you and your clients and may also encourage you to develop some specialism such as children or depression. Don’t forget, too, the effect of self doubt already discussed. ‘Ask and it is Given’, is the title of a book by Esther and Jerry Hicks [2], and it is worth being aware of the maxim in its title and ponder its implications. Good luck.

Book References

• [1] Ed. Colledge, N, Walker, B and Ralston, S. (2010) Davidson's Principles & Practice of Medicine, 21^st Edition No place of publishing: Churchill Livingstone, p.393
• [2] Hicks, E. and Hicks, J. (2005) Ask and it is Given United Kingdom: Hay House