Of all the plant medicines available to us, flower remedies offer the most subtle – and perhaps the most profound – path to inner healing. Are you willing to believe, asks Ruby Warrington? Images: Addie Juell. Prop styling: Cindy DiPrima.
Over breakfast green juice with my girls, I’m trying to explain how I feel since I started taking the flowers. “It’s subtle. You know those days when it just feels like things are going your way? Then imagine feeling like that all the time…” And they’re intrigued, want the number of the fairy who gave them to me. But still the general consensus, as Kerrilyn puts it, is that: “of all the mystical healing arts, don’t flower remedies require the biggest leap of faith?”
At the tail end of summer 2013, burnt out from too much travel and an avalanche of deadlines all at once, I was ready to take that leap. Introduced to Kerri Aab, a.k.a. Seed To Blossom, by a mutual friend, what did I have to lose? And, when I dissolved into tears during our initial hour-long Skype consultation, what had presented as minor stressors revealed much deeper issues that had been long been festering.
Like a lot of people, I’d had positive experiences using Bach’s Rescue Remedy – but my experience with Kerri took things to the next level, and then some. After that first call (read: therapy session), she mixed a custom blend of seven flowers to address the core issues that had come up. To give you some clues, this included Rock Water, to help balance out perfectionist tendencies, Pine, to help with feelings of guilt, and Elm, to put my large workload into perspective.
The prescription? Four drops, four times a day, while the bottle of drops (the essences are held in an alcohol solution and administered with a pipette) would hold it’s potency for three weeks, so we scheduled a catch up for a few days before that.
Over the following 18 or 19-day period, it’s true that things quieted down on the deadline front. But the change in outlook – and “in-look” – I was able to report back to Kerri in our second session went beyond this external change in circumstances. The best word to describe how I felt I was coming to see things is “acceptance” – of myself, of my surroundings and of the challenges I still faced.
Kerri, who was introduced to the flowers during a 50-hour labor with her daughter, describes her personal experience as that flowers; “making space for my natural light to shine.”
Was it really the flowers? As Alexis Smart, widely recognized as one of the leading figures in flowers, puts it; “why is it so hard to believe that plants and flowers have healing properties or effects? Many of our drugs come from plants.” And it’s not as if the notion of “plant medicine” is exactly alien to us in the now age.
In my second session with Kerri (by the way, one of the least “witchy” purveyors of potions and tinctures I’ve ever met), we switched out the Elm for the aptly named Impatiens flower, to help ease feelings that I’m always running out of time. And slowly, bottle two is doing its work too.
If you think a custom flower remedy might be for you, here’s what you Need to Know:
Know that there are 38 flowers in the Bach medicine cabinet, and that your custom blend can include up to seven.
Know that an initial consultation with Kerri lasts up to 90 minutes, and that the more you’re prepared to bare your soul the more you’ll get out of it.
Know that you can use the flowers alongside any other natural or man-made medicines and that they will still have the same effect, while not interfering with any other remedy you are taking.
Know that unlike other plant medicines (ayahuasca, marijuana) Bach flowers work on a solely energetic level and affect no purely physical changes whatsoever.
Know that this makes them safe for children, pets and even…other plants! Further, infants and animals are impervious to suggestion and the success of flowers in treating them disproves any placebo effect.
Know that Crab Apple comes up most frequently among Kerri Aabs female clients. A cleansing remedy for both mind and body, it works particularly well for people who struggle with negative self-image and issues with obsessive neatness or physical perfection.
Know that in each subsequent session your blend will likely change, as the issues which feel the most urgently in need of a remedy will shift with the ebbs and flows of your life.
Know that you won’t feel the flowers working, but you will know that they are.
Visit Kerri’s website to learn more about her work or book a consultation.
Additional research Andrea Kasprzak.
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