What are Flower Essences?

Flower Essences are energetic remedies, gentle enough for every body.

Flower essences are subtle, yet impactful dilutions of a flower's vibrational spirit. They’re taken orally & worked with as guides to address specific areas of one’s emotional wellbeing, creating energetic shifts towards vibrancy. Similar to homeopathics, flower essences are so dilute that they can be worked with from childhood through adulthood.

We believe the root of happy skin begins with the emotions, creating inner harmony alongside our topical products. Keep reading below for common questions & to get to know our process with them and their best use.

**Flower Essence History**

*Flower essences are said to have originated through the work of Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930s. While working as a* *physician— a bacteriologist,* surgeon & researcher— he concluded that the basis of disease was directly correlated from imbalanced emotional states. After many experimentations & studies with flowers that he believed correlated to particular emotions, he intuitively created 38 flower essences from the English Countryside and documented the improvements in emotional harmony & dis-ease prevention. Though Dr. Bach’s results cannot be proven scientifically, we fully believe in the lived experience & stories of decades of people who have shared their experiences of creating harmony through flower essences, our story included!

*We do not discount that fact that vast cultures of indigenous peoples have worked with flowers ceremonially and spiritually understandably undocumented.

**The Essence-Making Process**

Like our Hydrosols, our essences are also unique & 100% regionally crafted.

Each are made in-house (in-garden!) with flowers our family grows. Our essences are created using the no-touch solarization method and preserved with locally distilled fruit brandy spirits before they are diluted for treatment bottles. The way this looks is on a sunny early morning, fresh flowers are collected with a clean instrument at peak bloom time and placed to float into a clear bowl of fresh spring water. They are warmed by the sun for several hours, being left undisturbed. An energetic imprint is believed to impart the spring water, the flowers are then strained out, and the water gets preserved with organic brandy. This creates the ‘mother’ essence which is then diluted even more to create the stock that we sell for personal use.

Our flower essences are made from my direct & long-term relationship of growing, sitting with these plants, channeling & dreamwork alongside my two children. I feel strongly that the language of flowers is more easily accessible through a child’s open mind. As I’ve sat with these plants over the years with my children through their pre-talking days through half a decade later, our shared stream-of-conscious when working with these flowers began to paint a felt, collaborative portrait of the plants expressions.

**Flower + Fruit**

Classically produced Flower Essences (such as Bach Remedies) are traditionally preserved with brandy— Brandy being a distilled spirit produced from fermented fruit juice, most commonly grapes. As a distiller of Hydrosols, it was a special step for us to partner with local spirit distillers here in the Pacific Northwest. The spirits we’ve selected are each chosen for the specific flowers we pair them with, each unique from the next. We do not mix fruit extracts or dilutions with your essences to make an elixir. These are solely brandies, just as the classics were preserved with, yet with subtle tasting notes from each brandy distillation. You’ll taste local fruits like apple, pear, cherry, apricot and plum— each telling a story of the senses, of relationship & of communion with the flowers.

How + A Couple Case Studies.

We know that the emotional expressions directly influence physiological experiences of the body and mind. Flower essences come into play through that lens too. They are gentle, yet effective ways to guide the nervous system & one’s emotional experience into balance, so that balance may directly speak once again to your psychological experience. A metaphor I can use is that it’s like a ripple in the water from our felt space making its way as it reaches the shoreline to our lived space. When a flower blooms, it is physically sending energy upwards, into a blossom. That blossom is a direct expression of that plant. It’s total signature arriving through gesture, shape, color and frequency. Instead of working with a plant’s constituents like we see in a Hydrosol, a flower essence is working with a plants resonance by subtly acting on the field of the body through its vibration. Similar to homeopathics, they speak directly to the nervous system & can influence alignment from the soul of the plant to the soul of the person. Whether or not someone believes these transformations are from mindfulness, belief, expectation or even placebo (as some that haven’t found the right remedy yet may think!), what matters is there are real results being created…a state of being has markedly shifted due to intentional action.

One of our earliest case studies comes from a customer of ours that was working with Honeysuckle. She is a single parent and was going through grief when her child moved out of the home for college. She reported in 1 week of use, her emotions began shifting rapidly— she was surprised by finding peace in change and moving through the discomfort that the experience of heightened grief actually pinged for her. At that moment of great shift and realization, she began working with Apple Blossom to stabilize the root of the emotion.

Another case study example is a customer of ours that worked with Chicory after coming to the conclusion that anger was never an expression that felt safe to explore. Through her experience with Chicory, for the first time in her adult life, she was able to access trapped anger she didn’t realize she carried, helping her lift a burden of physiological symptoms that began as emotional repression.

My experience of working with flower essences personally for almost 20 years has directly supported the transformation of various physical sensations through the release and greeting of feelings of grief, anger, abandonment, trauma, acceptance, courage, community, faith and leaning into my true voice— I’m excited to share them here with you. Let’s see what’s possible.

Practice.

Flower essences are most commonly internal remedies, taken by the drop on the tongue. Our recommendation begins with tapping the glass and placing 3 drops on the tongue 2-4x a day. You may also find connection in dropping on the crown of your head, wrists, the soles of your feet, specific acupressure meridians, or simply taking in a glass of water. This is commonly a slow, vibrational remedy, generally taking anywhere from a few days to a few weeks+ to notice an ‘a-ha’ moment that there’s been a shift. Flower essences strengthen our emotional body, not as a quick fix, but as a subtle guides, ushering our spiritual, mental, emotional & soul into transformation & alignment. We recommend keeping a journal or log to track your sensations. Oftentimes you won’t even notice the change happened until you realized your initial sensation has already transformed! This is the magic and beauty of an essence and the power in journaling during the process.

How long should I work with an essence?

We have experienced that transforming chronic sensations & qualities typically can take closer to 3 months, while new or acute sensations can often lead to transformation anywhere from right away to a couple weeks of use. Every body is unique & the key is believing in the remedy you gravitated towards & being consistent with your usage. We recommend keeping a journal or doing weekly self-check-ins until you notice there has been an emotional shift. Once you notice, you can stop taking it. If you don’t notice a shift, after full moon cycle (just about a month), we suggest shifting to a new essence. Listen to your body & do what calls to you.

“Like humans, flowers are made perfectly just as much as they are imperfect by nature. This is where real beauty lives.”

— Cortney Herrera

What if I don’t identify with all of the qualities an essence lists?

You do not need to relate to all (of even any) of the channeled expressions for an essence to be right for you. The beauty of flower essences is that they continue to surprise us and data is constantly coming in with client reports and expanding profiles and applications of essences. By that same token, what I channel intuitively may be different than what you channel intuitively! All flowers are perfect, just as all flowers are imperfect. The negative qualities we may share as keywords to direct, do not mean you possess those qualities. For instance, an essence like Chicory that we often relate to anger, could very well be the healing tool for someone that operates on a calm, regulated state that doesn’t feel they are challenged with anger, but could wholly support another avenue of healing they didn’t see or feel until they began the essence that called to them! Lean in and go where your heart leads you, even if you don’t logistically understand it yet.

Can I work with them with my children or during pregnancy?

Absolutely. Flower Essences are similar to Hydrosols in that they have no negative side effects and truly are risk-free. They are very dilute, vibrational remedies with no detectable physical plant matter, that work with the body energetically to shift the physical expressions experienced. If you’re concerned, you can always communicate with your care provider - or feel free to dilute even further into a cup of water or tea.

Shop our Essences

The Journal

Keeping a journal is your personal space of record keeping as your experience our essences. When a flower essence speaks to you, a bond begins to form. Taking good notes is key to your future care, becoming a tangible tool in your energetic tool belt as you stretch, grow & be. As flower essences impact the body spiritually, emotionally & physically, your records become a powerful personal key in noting meaningful relationships & allies that you can more easily call upon & go back to.

We created our essence log book to serve as a guide to build intimacy with these flowers as much as you do with yourself. If you do have the flowers you work with in your area, spend some time with them. Maybe even pick up some seeds & plant them! Ask good questions & allow the proper space & time to let the guidance unfold. Remember, flowers speak in their own divine timing; Stay open to receive miracles.

Why log your experience?

So you may index and refer back to which essences supported you best during specific emotions or experiences if you’d like to call on them again.
You create a bond with a plant that you may decide to deepen through planting, sitting, or further engaging in real life.
You have a physically written record in processing the transformations that occurred from beginning to ending an essence journey.
You engage with a product one step further. Instead of just dosing yourself, you give yourself and the plant you’re working with proper attention, respect and care.