Official disclaimer coming in ;) :
To all of you who are allergic & reactive to woo-woo stuffs, homeopathy, alternative medicine & healing modalities & only trust medical doctors, feel free to skip this newsletter ;).
I herewith officially declare that I am, and always have been, more than happy to try out all kinds of health modalities there are. Basically being my own personal & experimental lab-rat: amazingness, I love it!
Mainly because of my curiosity and my deep believe that plants hold healing powers, AND that all types of energies, thoughts & feelings influence us as well. Aka. can make us equally sick or healthy.
I am also very reluctant to trust any type of one-solution-only strategy, especially when it involves becoming a life-long customer of the medical and pharmaceutical industry complex. But trusting only one alternative healing method is equally narrow-minded.
So, what are Bachflower remedies and why am I taking Centaury?
In short: these are ca. 38 flower extracts (alcohol or water extracts) with certain properties that balance our mental, emotional and even spiritual well-being.
(these are my own words, don’t nail me on this definition, feel free to google or AI the heck out of it ;) )
The first time I came across them was in India a couple of years ago.
I went on a Mantra meditation retreat with my two teachers & a group of fellow students. We went to visit our (back then) teacher Master Shashi in India and had an awesome pilgrimage planned. (I did write about some of my experiences in India before, feel free to check out my other posts).
One day, we were at Master Shashi’s home, waiting for dinner to be served & I sat at a table with lots of stuffs on it. A little bottle caught my eyes & I took it to check it out & laughed, cos it said “Rescue Remedy”. Bachflower-sth-sth.
I thought it was funny, cos it sounded so dramatic, being rescued by this liquid in this tiny bottle seemed hilarious.
On another occasion, Master Shashi & I had a session in his office and he told me to go to his huge bookshelves and take out a book, so I did & had this in my hands:
He told me that I should take it home and read it. I was immediately fascinated, cos I love flowers and plants and I have never heard of it before. And the little bottle I chuckled at, with “Rescue Remedy” written on it, was basically a Bachflower remedy.
It is a mixture of five Bachflower plant extracts and helps us in sudden stressful or traumatic experiences that occur in our life (for you nerds out here: Star of Bethlehem – Orithogalum umbellatum; Rock Rose – Helianthemum; Cherry Plum – Prunus cerasifera; Impatiens – Impatiens gladulifera; Clematis – Clematis vitalba)
It supports us to stay calm, relaxed, breath deeply and deal with the shit that is hitting the fan at that stressful moment in time.
I started reading the book & loved it! It makes total sense to me. Yes, also from a scientific perspective, being a plant biologist myself.
And simply, by being a human being that knows about the healing powers of being out in nature, surrounded by plants etc. If you do that too, you know it.
If not, check out e.g. the Japanese concept of “Forest bathing”, the studies out there that show tannins help with cancer treatments or whatever finally gets publicly accepted around walking barefoot in nature because of its grounding capability (negative ions & all that stuffs).
Or: just start being in nature & observe on yourself how well it does you ;).
Anyway, I deviated :D
I took the book back home to Sweden & read it here and there. I also ordered the rescue remedy, but never needed it, cos I rarely encounter super traumatic moments.
A couple of months ago, I had a chat with my mantra teacher Elisabeth. While I am not a student of Master Shashi anymore, I still have Elisabeth in my life, almost 5 years now. And she knows me very well, we are totally part of one soul family & have travelled lifetimes beforehand, & will do so after this life as well ;).
I asked her for advice on something, or maybe I just shared a recent challenge in my life & she said: “Try the Bachflower remedy Centaury.” I immediately ordered it. I am often slow with these things, but that one somehow hit differently. Without even reading up on it before my order, I just ordered it.
Then I checked my book again, specifically for this flower. And damn! Did I recognize myself in it :D. Centaury, or Centaurium umbellatum is called the Service Flower.
Specifically for people who are, or want to be, of service for others. And if you know me closer, heard me talking & are aware of my path, I usually say that I have a strong service personality inside of me. I want to help and be of service to others; that is one reason why I became a scientific illustrator.
Here a couple of excepts of the book:
I also realized that I came already very far, cos I was not the same people-pleasing and giving-myself-up-for-others person anymore than I was in my past. Yet, I still have difficulties to say “No”. Especially to people I am close to and those that I know and deeply love & care about.
The thing is, that the remedy is supposed to help even with residual patterns like that. It helps to establish a healthy baseline of my own personal Centaury-state, without having me go back into the negative state I might easily drop into because of the fact that I have always been like this.
So, what have I noticed in these weeks of taking the remedy?
One of the major realizations I had just two days ago, still processing it.
It is, I am able to say “No” to myself.
Maybe that sounds weird, even counterintuitive to what I described till now, but it is not.
Why? Because if I cannot say “No” to myself, I cannot say “No” to others either.
And with these, I mean very specific types of “No’s”.
I say “No” to my thoughts and feelings of inadequacy about myself.
I say “No” to anything inside of me, that doubts myself.
I say “No” to self-judgement.
I say “No” to being self-deprecative.
I say “No” to whenever I have a negative, or degrading or non-appreciative thought about myself. Etc :)
You know how we are most critical & harsh of ourselves? Judging more tough what we do, how we do it and why, compared to anyone else?
Yeah, that just needs to stop I decided. I am no longer putting myself down, on any level and if I catch myself, I say “No” to these thoughts & feelings. Because more often than not, they are lies & untrue.
I am still good at discriminating to not getting delusional about myself and my capabilities, but I decided life is just too freaking amazing to be bothered with limitations and judgements about myself that happen in my head.
And I also know how powerful thoughts are, they basically shape our reality & self-perceptions, so I might as well clean them up ;).
I will not turn into an egotistical and poophole egomaniac towards others, but I will surely not be one to myself either.
All this means, I am saying more ”Yes” to myself, and also more “No” to others.
For example, I exited a work-relationship because it did not serve me anymore, it became a mess, unreliable & sucked out my energy. And I simply got irritated just thinking about putting more time & effort into it.
I also said no to a potentially developing relationship, because some of my needs were not met. That one was difficult, cos I just love to try and dare and explore, but I used to compromise on myself in the past and I felt like its time to leave this behavioral pattern for good.
All this also helped me to be vocal about my professional wishes and speak out loudly what I don’t want to do anymore and why.
Instead, I started doing more of what I love and feel very different about all that.
I am not there yet fully, it takes time to develop & transition, cos at the same time, if I don’t truly hate and feel a lot of pain about my current activities, it will take a while for change to occur.
Now, with all that, one might think: “But how do you know that the Bachflower remedy Centaury helped you with this?”
Question back from me to you: “What do you think “knowing” means?”
My answer is: I don’t “know”. I feel and perceive and see differences in my life, and my inner world, how I appear and operate in the world and people.
Is it maybe a placebo effect? I honestly don’t give a damn if it is. I truly don’t care.
I do not think or believe it is, cos I also know about the power of the mind, our thoughts and feelings, our self awareness & consciousness and our soul & the power of the Universe/God etc.
And if that little bottle of Centaury essence helps me to align personality traits that don’t serve me anymore & I feel better: why wouldn’t I take it? Who am I to question & start to argue against that?
I am Scientist enough to be aware that there are things and energies at play in our world that no scientific method can explain, yet.
I am also Scientist enough to know that experiments on myself, collecting datapoints about myself are more than valid compared to any official scientifcally peer-reviewed study (and pharmaceutically funded & therefore manipulated like hell).
I also talk to people, interact with them, ask all kinds of experts, met people with insanely amazing “alternative healing” knowledge and their experiences and those of their patients speak volumes about the many opportunities that exist to make us feel better.
Yes, that includes homeopathy, meditation, singing, dancing, kinesiology, osteopathy, TCM, Ayurveda, art creation, somatic therapies and what not!
So these are my explorations for today :)
I hope they were of value to you, writing this down was truly of value for me & I cant wait to see what will be the next thing to share with you :)
And as usual: feel free to throw any of your own experiences at me. I LOVE to hear all your life stories & anecdotes!
Love,
Daria