Covid

By the end of March 2020 lockdown for the coronavirus was fully in force throughout the UK, my wife's osteopathic clinic had shut down, and I was cancelling all my clients without exception.

These cancelled clients, however, were those who came to see me for face-to-face meetings. But quite a number of them were perfectly happy with a telephone conversation, or to send me a detailed e-mail (I still find Zoom something I prefer to avoid). So while a number of people were masking up, distancing, and thoroughly washing their hands, I was still working with a substantial proportion of clients who looked forward to recounting their troubles and receiving a helpful bottle of essences by post the next day.

Within a few weeks I was noticing some interesting and intriguing similarities between these clients-at-a-distance. First, it was apparent that almost everybody apart from the very young registered symptoms of Covid-19. Second, their typical negative emotional state was one of grief or grieving in some form. Third, those who grieved usually tended to display lung pathology. When I say 'display' I am perhaps overstating the case. What I was seeing was frequently not discernible at the physical level: my dowsing saw it, but in most cases a scan of the lungs - or so I inferred - would not.

And this tallied very closely with the real world Covid cases of the time: March, April, May. It was only later that the spotlight fell on the asymptomatic cases. The early pattern seemed to be something like this: coughing, sneezing, general unwellness; lungs affected, extreme difficulty breathing, hospital, ventilator and, very often, death.

Going back to my old and new clients, lungs and grief - as in traditional Chinese medicine - were intimately connected. There are a lot of essences in the world's essence pharmacopaeia that support and clear grief, but the ones in my collection which came up consistently and frequently were Grieving Heart from Daniel Mapel's Wild Earth Animal Essences, usually followed by Kathrin Woodlyn Bateman's Grieving from her Flower Essences of Fox Mountain range. By the time these two essences had been deployed, at least in the earlier days, the Covid-19 pathology was cleared from the client's system.

The impression I formed from looking for relief for these clients was that Covid sought out and accentuated all the existing and residual (unprocessed) grief that a person was holding. And note that my most effective grief essences were combinations. Daniel Mapel describes Wild Earth's Grieving Heart as 'providing powerful support for releasing the emotional pain and tears that need to be shed in order to move forward.' It combines three essences: Wild Horse, which nurtures the healing heart, Hippopotamus, for embracing deep feelings, and Gazelle, for feeling safe while grieving. And Kathrin Woodlyn Bateman writes of her Grieving essence, which combines no less than eight separate flowers, that 'it addresses all types of loss' and that it 'has been helping people release their whole lifetime reservoir of grief and yet it seems to release it painlessly.' These were 'broad spectrum' grief essences, and very effective they are too, over a broad range of pent up grief.

What of the asymptomatic cases? Here, again, I think that Covid picks on your weak spots. Whatever negative emotions you are harbouring that you have been unable to release, Covid finds these out and shines a spotlight on them, thereby accentuating them to a point where you have to deal with them - or be swamped. I am reminded of one of the most - to me at least - notable aspects of the menopause: when it arrives it is these negative emotions with which the woman is involved, inescapably and sometimes painfully. And essences are called up accordingly, to resolve those long locked up negative feelings. Once the essences are chosen which shift those feelings the Covid pathology seems to melt away.

Are there positives to be taken from coronavirus? I think so. Change comes: the mid-life crisis in men, the menopause in women. With the change come the emotional challenges which have so far been dealt with inadequately in the life. The hormonal changes we meet bring the challenges into the open, encouraging us to review them, often from a different and useful perspective. The role of Covid seems rather similar. Just because change has been re-presented to us doesn't mean that this time we will necessarily get it right. So perhaps Covid is a further opportunity - another clarion call to successfully respond to long held emotional problems. Perhaps we still don't get it right: perhaps that is why the elderly among us suffer so disproportionately from Covid-19.

My Illness

In the autumn of 2019 I was giving an essence course each week, and found myself slowing down badly. I couldn't walk as far or as fast and noticed arthritis for the first time. However, I was unable to pin down where the root of the trouble was. My doctor was sympathetic. In the week before Christmas I was diagnosed by University College hospital as having a 3cm tumour on my bladder. It was 80% likely to become malignant, they said, and offered me a procedure which would excise the tumour. My prostate wasn't looking good either. The scan had given me some clear information, and while I declined the offer of surgery, I did start to think deeply about the diagnosis.

Bladder difficulties suggested anxiety as the underlying emotional state, and indeed I felt no stranger to anxiety. But in this case it seemed not to be my anxiety I was experiencing but someone else's. My mother came to mind. She had been very anxious at the time of my birth. However dowsing said that wasn't the answer. The problem seemed to emanate from my grandmother, who had given birth to my mother in the harshest of conditions in a Canadian winter - and died 2 weeks later. According to my pendulum it seemed to be her anxiety that I was picking up on.

Perhaps there weren't specific essences for a bladder tumour, but the essences knew about anxiety, fear and grief - even in another generation - and I began to dose myself accordingly. The pattern I established at the outset of my (self) treatment was to create a series of remedies that I could take 5 drops of morning and night, for 2 or 3 weeks on each occasion: this translated into a series of 15 ml bottles. In addition I would take advantage of the osteopathic practice I lived above and support my remedies with regular weekly cranial osteopathy.

My first remedy focused on the emotions of anxiety and fear, on grief, and on shock. On the physical side I needed to concentrate first and foremost on the bladder tumour. My key essence was Grieving Heart, a combination from Wild Earth Animal Essences, and a number of 'manning up' essences, such as Wildflower's Brave Heart and Manifesting the Inner King from Desert Alchemy. Ian White's Boab got into the picture as well - evidence (from my dowsing) that I was indeed dealing with something that happened in my family before my time.

This remedy served me well. I felt a bit more energy. The fear and grief and shock in my system reduced measurably (measured by dowsing again), and the bladder tumour, which measured 3 cm, after 2 weeks had shrunk substantially at the level of the subtle body. For my second remedy I continued to focus on grief and fear and shock, and Fox Mountain's Grieving combination supported by Self-Heal from the Flower Essence Society became my main essences for the next 2 weeks.

At the end of that fortnight and by now in the middle of January, fear and grief had shrunk substantially but anger and the need to control had become more urgent, and my lack of self love manifested. This was the time when I had to confirm the decision not to go ahead with the hospital's bladder tumour procedure. I built a remedy around the Divine Child essence from Star of California.

Now my wife and I had a holiday in the snow of Northern Italy with a sister and brother in law. The anger and need to control were being managed, but a lack of energy and a sense of unworthiness manifested. The tumour was no longer an issue, my dowsing told me, but bone spurs in my spine were uncomfortable, and my circulation was bad. Divine Child featured again, supported by Dr Bach's Larch and Oak, and the Bush Dynamis combi and several other essences. The osteopathy helped with the bone spurs and, gradually, my posture improved. Two weeks later my next remedy again featured Larch and Oak, plus Bailey's Energy Liberator.

Gradually the sting went out of the tumour. A scan in July showed that physically it remained with only a slight reduction, but the energy had gone out of it. The hospital signed me off.

Remote transmission of essences

I have been working with essences pretty much full time for more than 15 years now, but I can't see myself becoming rich as a flower essence therapist any time soon. However, my understanding continues to grow, and one thing that came up quite early in my career is independent of reward. I found that it is possible to transmit the energy of essences to another person even though they were on the other side of the world.

A powerful option

'Why would you wish to do that?', you may say. It seems to me there is a variety of reasons. First of all, you need to care enough for someone. Remote work is neither particularly quick nor easy, and the person may be totally unaware of what you have done for them. However, if they are suffering in some way - and usually this suffering has a mental or emotional basis whatever the physical symptoms - then you may be drawn to helping them. In fact you can check intuitively (I am a dowser) and if the answer is 'yes, this is for the greater good', and if the person responds positively at the mental, emotional and soul levels to the idea, then it's okay to proceed.

Perhaps they are ill and though you care for them they are resistant to the idea of help from essences ('illogical',' insufficient evidence', 'I don't have time for this stuff'), or they live on another continent and you simply don't trust the post. Whatever the reason, remote transmission of essence energy is a powerful option.

Energy medicine

Essences are energy medicine. We are beings of energy. The essences go out to the recipient and the essence energy modifies their energy for the good. To transmit the essence energy, I visualize the person receiving the relevant essence and set my dowsing pendulum swinging positively until it stops, whereupon the energy of the essence - Australian Bush Confid, say, or Dr Bach's Larch - has been transmitted to the recipient. You can measure the effect between one session and the next. For example, if you have intuited that the person suffers from low self esteem you can measure the intensity of the feeling: let us say 6 out of 6 for a severe case. If you transmit the essence you can then measure the level of that negative feeling two or three weeks later. If the negative feeling has dropped, and a drop from 6 to 5 is significant, you will know that you are on the right track.

Frequently, of course, the person targeted may be quite unaware of this going on but, nonetheless the energy shifts. Personally I would rather have the patient applying her own intention and affirmation consciously to the process and believe that generally the best results come that way. However, often that is not possible and it can be deeply satisfying to help at a distance.

My book on depression

Published by Floris of Edinburgh on 27^th August 2017, the book is called Treating Depression Naturally: How Flower Essences Can Rebalance Your Life. The first two chapters can be read on the Floris website.

It’s available from bookshops, Floris themselves and, of course, from Amazon, who provide a reasonably priced Kindle download.

Treating different forms of depression

The approach I take is to look at a wide variety of different forms of depression and related ailments, so there are chapters on general depression, hormonal depression, SAD, anger and depression, and severe depression and suicidal thoughts. And related subjects such as OCD, low self esteem, insomnia, psychological trauma, loss, mourning and grief, and abuse are covered as well.

Generally speaking the structure of each chapter is to explore its special topic and then select remedies from 5 different essence makers to address the individual’s problems at the detailed level. Thus the chapter on chemical depression – which usually results from an addiction to recreational or pharmaceutical drugs or alcohol – shows essences which deal, for example, with addiction as a family pattern, or with feelings of unendurable desolation, or with a tendency to sabotage oneself or one’s goals.

Five flower essence makers

The format makes it an easy matter to home in on a particular area of difficulty dealt with in the 20 chapters, and then select essences at a high level of detail. The 5 makers – Dr Bach, Bailey essences (from the UK), Australian Bush, the Flower Essence Society of California and Pacific essences of Canada – have been chosen because their ranges cover the full variety of the human condition. Not that they are the best, indeed there are several other fine makers nowadays who cover the ground extremely well, but these 5 have been chosen for their variety and manageability – to try to include every maker would have been confusing and counterproductive.

The book is heavily illustrated - mostly with flowers mentioned in the text - easy to use, and (in my opinion at least!) beautifully produced.

Essences and dying

During the past six weeks six of my friends or acquaintances have died.

Some of them were comparatively young, of my son’s generation, but in most of these cases I had been personally involved in their care, making remedies for them as seemed necessary. In the most recent case I had made up an essence – Crowea, from the Australian Bush flowers – to help him to stop worrying, And within 12 hours of his receiving it I heard that he had died.

Range of Light

After this I felt that I needed a remedy for me. I dowsed for what I needed, as I usually do (see my Dowsing blog) and came up with four essences from the Range of Light made by Flower Essence Services of California (FES).

The first essence was Hawthorn. Hawthorn is for ‘overly strong will that depletes heart balance’, says FES. More particularly it is for someone who is ‘easily agitated or stressed when personal will forces are not satisfied.’ The next essence I selected for my new remedy was Mountain Forget-Me-Not which was for ‘soul angst and alienation, feelings of isolation due to lack of connection and guidance from the spiritual world; confusion about life purpose and direction.’

A pattern seems to be emerging here: I am feeling uncomfortable because something I want to happen – so much that I can’t even hear the promptings of my heart or my spirit guides – is not happening. My third essence is Ocotillo, and it appears to add an extra emphasis to my imbalance: Ocotillo is for ‘excessive psychic “fire” leading to emotional reactivity, psychic projection and distortion, or various forms of anger and violence.’ This is strong stuff: clearly I’m feeling what I’m feeling with considerable force. And finally Pedicularis goes into the mix, and this essence helps with ‘excessive emotionality which inhibits deeper understanding of one’s soul pain.’

Soul Pain

So what is this ‘soul pain’ that has been so troubling me? I think the answer is that I was running with the idea that I should be using the essences to ‘save’ people from death, and that if I made a remedy for someone it would so dissolve their problems that they could go on indefinitely. I know that I didn’t really believe that I could cheat death, but nonetheless I had a tendency to get angry if someone died that I had been treating – they should have responded more positively or, worse perhaps, I blamed myself for not coming up with the right remedies at the right time to ensure that they lived on!

I think the penny has dropped at last. When we are working with the essences we are working towards our better self-understanding, to finding out what is the very best for us, and then doing it to the very best of our ability and with the greatest enjoyment. Death will have his day, but until then we owe it to ourselves to get the greatest possible satisfaction from this life.

Why people don't get well

All too often, as a therapist, I sit down with clients, listen to their stories, and readily identify a number of essences that match the negative moods or the positive aspirations that they are engaged with at the moment. Essences are combined in a dosage bottle and handed over and, a few weeks later, the person returns to the consulting room – and nothing seems to have happened!

Working at depth

Essences work at depth rather than on superficial symptoms and yet, as patients, we are used to reporting the symptoms – this backache, or that headache. Unless the therapist can go below the surface and identify the true negative emotions or mental states which are giving rise to the symptoms there is every possibility that essences will be selected which fall short of our aspirations. If the client is in a steady state of despondency she may be so used to that condition that she fails to report it. If the therapist also misses that state then he or she may not select a despondency remedy – Dr Bach’s Gentian remedy comes to mind – and so the client, still bowed down by her despondency, returns with her bad back for the next session. I am not saying that Gentian is the cure for a bad back, but it does help to shift despondency, and if despondency and the bad back are intimately connected then Gentian may well be the answer, or at least a part of it.

Resistance and blockages

Sometimes the trouble lies in the resistance that the other has built up. A lot of the difficulties that draw us to trying essences have occurred early on in life, so early on indeed that we may have repressed those difficulties and then forgotten that they ever happened. Sigmund Freud recognised the resistance more than a hundred years ago and gave it its due importance. Some essences help to dissolve resistance, and thus enable other essences to do their good work.

And those difficulties I mentioned do need to be looked at before healing can occur: they create blockages which deplete our energy until they are cleared. I am talking not only about early abuse and ill treatment, but about less obvious difficulties such as parental constraint or marital break-up or uncertainty for the young child. If these problems can be eased then a major barrier to healing is removed.

One difficulty which afflicts many of us is that of not being wanted by our parents and, as you may imagine, it runs deep. If the mother conveys to the foetus in the womb that it is not wanted that message can be understood by the unborn child and can be devastating. It is buried in the subconscious and a lot of life energy (prana, chi) is used up in the process. If this trauma is identified and essences are used to release it, energy invariably improves dramatically.

Mental health issues

Depression and other mental disorders are often either not recognised or not acknowledged by us or our clients, but they also tie up a lot of life energy which could be better used for healing. There is no cure among the essences for bipolar disorder, but this and other difficulties have mental and emotional components which, when addressed by the essences, can bring some welcome relief and help us to become well again.

These are some of the reasons why listening to the complaints and aspirations of clients and selecting essences to help resolve them may not be enough. Intuition is our best friend in probing deeper, to arrive at the underlying causes of our difficulties.

Dowsing

When I have had a discussion with a client it’s time to choose her essences and I pick up my dowsing pendulum.  The client is often intrigued. What’s going on? Sometimes I anticipate that accepting dowsing on top of flower essences may be a bridge too far for her, in which case I ask her to wait in the waiting room after our consultation until I have thought some more about the best essences for her.

Another kind of field

Dowsing seems very like using Google to me. Google has access to a vast range of information via all those linked servers. The dowser accesses another kind of field where all the information is held and questions that field for the benefit of the client.

I get more information about his health, perhaps more than he knew himself. I can confirm his own ideas about his health, and discover what’s important and what may be less so. I can find out things he may have forgotten about.

Just as with Google, there are controls. I can’t use my dowsing frivolously when asking questions about her health. Data is provided on a ‘need to know basis’. If I need to know in order to select the most helpful essences then I get that information. If not, then I don’t.

An intuition amplifier

Then I dowse for the essences. I have more than 1000 essences to choose from, and I can’t keep a detailed knowledge in my head about all of them, but the field that my dowsing goes into does have this knowledge. It matches essences against the person’s needs, and comes up with the best fit.

Dowsing seems to be an intuition amplifier. My belief is that you choose essences best when giving full rein to your intuition. Choosing essences is not just a rational process of matching the client's moods to what the makers say about their essences. If you are 'invested' in a particular answer, in other words if you really, really want a particular result, then you can override the pendulum, but otherwise it is a most helpful tool.

Dowsing can be learnt easily. The British Society of Dowsers (https://www.britishdowsers.org) hold regular introductory courses, and dowsing isn’t just for health and essences but a host of other questions as well.