The creation of flower essences is profoundly simple. The picture of it is enough to bring about calm and inspire faith that all that we need to heal is already present in its simplest form in the world around us!
Dr. Edward Bach, after building a tremendously successful practice in traditional and then homeopathic medicine in Britain, decided that there was something simpler, more directly available from the gifts of the earth that possessed the power to heal us. He spent time in Wales walking the countryside, communing with the plants and flowers in nature. The story goes that he tasted dew from the petals of a flower and felt the emotional effect of that flower in its extreme – similar to the process of ‘proving remedies’ in homeopathic medicine, wherein like cures like, and the original substance brings about the same symptoms that need to be cured in someone’s disease.
After experiencing this result in the singular, he developed the process of infusing water with the vital essence of the flowers so that he could cultivate it and use it for treatment. The first and simplest method was to collect a number of flower blossoms in the very peak of their blooms, and lay them across the top of a glass bowl filled with spring water. The sun played its natural part, and when small air bubbles lined the sides of the glass bowl he felt that the water had been sufficiently infused with the energetic imprint of the flowers. He called this water the mother tincture, and preserved it with brandy. Hardier plants were prepared using a boiling method to infuse the water and then preserved in the same manner.
Bach continued to develop different flower essences until he had first 12 Healers, as he called them, then added 7 Helpers. Finally he added The Other 19, satisfied that within these 38 essences he could support anyone in regaining their emotional balance, thus restoring their health and wellbeing.