I’m a Bach Flowers therapist- Bach Center Practitioner (BFRP) for the past 21 years now.
At the Bach Center there are 3 levels of expertise, the 3rd and last one being “Practitioner”. Every level requires a comprehensive study, practical experience, long-term work with patients, project submissions and tests. You can’t proceed to the next level without having completed the one before that, so It takes about 3 years to complete the entire degree.
Bach Flowers are remedies extracted from 38 different non-toxic and non-edible flowers, the 39th remedy is the Rescue Remedy which is well-known for many years now and is a combination of some of the other remedies, meant to help people in a situation of crisis…
The remedies are the fruits of labor of Dr. Edward Bach’s research of 7 years, he managed to complete all 38 remedies between 1928 and 1934.
Dr. Bach himself was a Pathologist and a fully-fledged Bacteriologist who disagreed with his colleagues’ claim that one should focus and address the symptoms of a disease by giving them the relevant medicines in order to “heal”.
He believed that the emotional state and conduct of a patient before the illness irrupts is the key to its cure and that if you could treat this emotional state while it’s accruing you could prevent the irruption of the illness in the body… for the body expresses what our spirit/soul experiences.
Bach Center is located close to Wallingford- Oxfordshire in England, where Dr. Bach lived, researched and discovered the remedies. The lovely garden in his house is an uplifting experience during spring time when all the flowers are in bloom and it is a sort of Mecca for all Bach therapists wherever they may be.
Bach flowers therapy is common all over the world…Europe, Asia, The Far East, and millions of people are being treated or use the remedies. Dr. Bach’s dream was that every person wherever he may be could use the remedies to prevent or improve the process of his illness. His dream grows and expands each day far beyond the borders of England. He was a free thinker and a therapist.
The remedies themselves treat the emotional aspects of each illness or mental disorder and reach the true reason for that illness. Therefore, there are those (Dr. Bach included) that divide the remedies into groups, for there is more than one remedy that treats a single problem. The difference between them, though, is the way in which the patient defines and describes his feelings, meaning, his emotional experience. There’s a group of remedies that is meant to treat fear, another group for insecurity and so on…Dr. Bach divided the remedies into 7 groups in total.
The remedies can treat trivial problems such as headaches, a cold, jetlag but also anxiety, stress, fears, sleep disorders, indecisiveness, depression, infertility, trauma and various diseases (such as cancer, colitis and more).
They can help in times of change like changing your job, place of residence, economic situation, relationship status (single/married) and way of life.
You can take Bach Flowers remedies together with any conventional medicine since they don’t clash with it.
There are two ways in which you can use the remedies…one is as a current state remedy, meaning, if someone made you get angry at work you can take a specific remedy that would help you deal better with that anger without letting it sink in and sabotage your personal/work life. Another example- if for some reason we start having a bad mood, but we’re supposed to go out to a friend’s birthday party we can take a remedy that will alleviate that feeling and let us be a part of the festivities.
The second way in which you can use the remedies is as a treatment remedy. This one is made specifically for you by the therapist after some questioning and an interview. This already refers to the process of treating the problem or problems for which you came to the therapist. The bottle you’ll get will consist of several remedies put together by the therapist in order to treat your problem/illness. This process can take time, all depending on the severity of the problem, the person himself and his capability to accept change. Here, the remedies will penetrate the root of the problem and the real reason for it. The Bach Flowers remedies will work much like an onion, peeling away the problem, layer after layer till you reach its core, its reason.
The combination of remedies changes according and parallel to the changes that the patient goes through, his reaction to that change and other things that may surface during and because of therapy.
From my experience as a therapist the Bach Flowers remedies therapy must also be combined with talks and conversations and references to subjects or other problems that may surface during treatment in order to release the cause for imbalance and prevent it from resurfacing in the future.
For a more detailed information on the subject and each one of the remedies you can go on the Bach Center website: https://bachcentre.com