I strongly recommend that every parent, caregiver, teacher, relative, or friend keep Bach’s Rescue Remedy (www.bachremedies.com) or Healing Herbs Five-Flower Formula (www.fesflowers.com) on hand to administer for any of the various accidents or traumas that occur in the daily life of a child. As a grandmother actively involved in the lives of my five grandchildren, I always have a bottle within reach. These remedies not only help calm the child, but actually release the trauma from the psyche and the body in the moment. Otherwise, even small injuries or upsets can be held permanently as tension in the body and disturbing memories in the mind.

Over the years I have witnessed several of what I can only call “Rescue Remedy miracles,” a few of which I will describe here. The first happened not long after I began using flower essences, when a friend’s 18-month old daughter began chemotherapy for kidney cancer. By the time they arrived home after the treatment, the little girl’s mouth was full of sores and she had blisters on the bottom of her feet. My friend called me distraught, and asked me if I knew of anything she could do to help her daughter. I told her the only thing I could think of was to try giving her Rescue Remedy. Luckily she had a bottle on hand, because within minutes of giving her a dose the sores and blisters began to disappear. With the second dose of chemo, the sores and blisters rose up again, and again with a dose of Rescue Remedy they went away. I suggested to my friend that she try giving her daughter Rescue Remedy next time just before the chemo treatment and again immediately after the treatment. She did, and that time there were no sores and no blisters. She continued Rescue Remedy throughout the remainder of the treatment. Because the little girl responded so well to her treatments, her doctors referred to her as their miracle baby. Today that little girl is a woman with a daughter of her own.

I watched another “miracle” with a baby take place right before my eyes. This little girl had a rough time entering the world and was eventually suctioned out of the birth canal. Because I knew that had to be a traumatic experience for her, when I went to see her for the first time I took a flower essence formula with me that contained Rescue Remedy and a few other essences. I was actually concerned when I saw the baby–her color wasn’t good, she was listless, and under her little hat the top of her head was very bruised and swollen. As soon as I took her in my arms, I gave her a few drops of the essences and again about fifteen minutes later. After just two doses, she began to turn pink, become alert and began moving a little. I kept giving her the essences over the next hour or so, and by the end of that time she looked like a completely healthy baby. Then just before I left I pulled her little hat back to look at her head again, and was amazed to see that the bruising and swelling were almost entirely gone.

Two “Rescue Remedy miracles” occurred in public places where I just happened to be present with a bottle, as always, in my purse. The first incident involved a boy about four years old. In an auditorium after a drumming performance, I suddenly heard a loud crash followed by the piercing screams of a child and the hustle of people running toward the screams. I couldn’t see what had happened, but later found out the boy had crawled behind several heavy tables stacked against a wall and they had fallen on him. When I saw the still-screaming boy being carried out the door, I grabbed my purse and went outside to where the boy’s mother was doing her best to console him. He already had welts coming up on his head and bruises beginning to darken on his face and upper body.

With the mother’s approval, I squeezed some drops of Rescue Remedy in a small cup of apple juice and got him to take a sip. He began to calm down immediately, and agreed to drink the rest of the juice. Within a matter of seconds, the boy stopped crying, brightened up, and started talking about what had happened to him from an objective point of view. The welts on his head went down and the bruises disappeared before our eyes. People standing around were watching opened-mouthed–including me! I really didn’t expect anything that profound to happen. My drumming teacher was so impressed, she put my business card on her bulletin board and started touting me as an amazing healer. I told her to start telling people about how amazing Rescue Remedy is instead, because it was the remedy itself that transformed that little boy’s experience.

The second of the “miracles” that took place in a public place involved a girl around six years old who got stuck between floors for about half an hour by herself in an elevator. This was at a concert in a small venue, so her frantic screams and her parents’ desperate attempts to reassure her permeated the entire space. After she was finally rescued, I could still hear the girl hysterically crying in another room. Again, I grabbed my purse, went in to the room and asked the mother if I could give her daughter Rescue Remedy. She gave her approval, and because there weren’t any cups available, I just dabbed some of the liquid onto the girl’s temples and the insides of her wrists. As with the injured boy, she immediately calmed down, her breathing eased, and her eyes brightened. The mother then asked if she could have a dose of Rescue Remedy as well!

Awhile after I’d gone back to my seat, I realized that the girl’s little brother had witnessed the whole incident and was probably experiencing his own trauma as a result. Sure enough, when I found the family standing at the back of the hall, the little boy had his head buried into his dad’s chest and looked scared. I told the parents of my concern, and not only did they welcome me giving their son Rescue Remedy, the father asked for a dose. The whole family benefited from taking Rescue Remedy, and I know the rest of their night was a lot smoother than it would have been without the essences.

I give these examples to illustrate what a powerful healing force Rescue Remedy can be, but I want to reiterate that it is equally important to use the remedy for less dramatic injuries and upsets as well. A few drops in a sip of liquid or a few drops applied to the skin are all that is needed. (Drops can also be put directly in the mouth, but for small children the taste is quite strong if not diluted. Bach’s Rescue Remedy is also available as a spray.) In the event of a more severe injury or major trauma, I recommend giving the remedy every fifteen minutes for a few hours, and three or four times a day for a few days.

Keeping a Flower Essence Journal

Keeping a flower essence journal can be a very helpful tool for developing awareness of inner change. This can be as simple as briefly jotting down what is going on for you at the time of getting a formula, listing the quality of each essence that is in the formula, and noting periodically what happens for you during the time taking the formula. Even this simple process provides a chronicle to help you see what essences show up repeatedly, what comes up as the next layer to work on, and what comes up under different life circumstances such as before going home for a family visit or when problems arise in relationships or when experiencing loss or unexpected change.

A flower essence journal can also provide an opportunity to take time for deep self-reflection and contemplation. For example, you could take time each morning to set an intention based on the essences in your formula, and hold that intention mindfully throughout the day. In the evening, writing in the journal could be a way to reflect on how the day went in relation to the intention–where you saw positive change in relation to your intention, which circumstances made it difficult to maintain awareness of your intention, what insights you gained about yourself.

Over time, looking back through a flower essence journal can provide the hindsight to see the wisdom of the pace and of the stages the essences have taken you through as layers of patterns and conditioning were peeled back one-by-one, guiding you in closer to your core, to the essence of who you are. This is a unique journey for each person, and through a journal you will be able to see, even through the ups and down, the benevolence and perfection of your own journey.

Why the Pendulum? or “How Did You Get into All My Nooks and Crannies?”

Flower essences and the pendulum came into my life at the same moment. I had never heard of either of them at the time. Looking back now I am so grateful that I was able to view them both with curiosity and an open mind, because the combination of the two has had such a positive impact on my own and so many others’ lives.I have used a pendulum to determine which essences to put into every formula I have ever made for myself and for every formula I have ever done for anyone else. From the start in my work with the essences, I found it interesting that people who presented similar-sounding issues ended up getting different essences in their formulas. For one person with an emotional issue, for example, the essences in their formula might show a need to do some healing of past emotional wounds. Another person’s formula might show a need to let go of obsessing about incidents in the past and to focus instead in the present. Yet another person’s formula might show that a quantum leap was about to take place in their consciousness so all their emotional issues were asserting themselves as a last ditch effort to hold on to the familiar, and what was needed was perseverance and steadfastness in going forward in their spiritual development rather than regressing into old patterns.

What I found amazing was that each person completely related to the particular essences that came up in their own formula. One experience that illustrates this continues to stand out in my mind. I did a formula for a friend of a friend, a woman I had never met or even talked to before doing her formula. The arrangement was that my friend would send me a photo of the woman to work with and I would call the woman after I did her formula, so I didn’t know in advance what she considered her own issues to be. As I was doing her formula, I was a bit shocked to see how many essences were coming up for her–over 60  in all. The essences indicated that there were a number of pretty intense issues going on, some of which I had a feeling might not be easy for her to hear about.

As it turned out, this woman was quite aware of many of her issues, but was trying to keep them at bay as she focused on her career and image in the world. At the end of the session she said she had a question for me: “How did you get into all my nooks and crannies?” My answer to that question: “By using the pendulum.” Even if I had talked to her before doing her formula, there is no possibility that I could have chosen essences that would have gotten into all her nooks and crannies, partly because she was doing her best not to acknowledge her hiding places to herself, much less to anyone else.

Using the pendulum for my own flower essences formulas gave me a clear look into my own nooks and crannies. Even though I was always “working on myself,” it was seeing what came up in my formulas that brought unconscious issues into my conscious awareness. I began to realize that by using the pendulum with the flower essences I was able to access clear guidance for the inner work I needed to do. Not only that–taking the flower essences helped bring about the inner shifts that needed to take place for my personal growth and spiritual development.

Over time I have come to regard the pendulum as a divining tool, and I only use it as such. When I sit down to do a formula, I take a moment of silence to petition the powers that be–spiritual guides? the client’s higher self? the mystery?–asking that whatever this person needs for their personal growth and evolution come up for their formula; and that I be a clear instrument for them in that process and interpret their formula correctly. I fully trust that this is indeed what happens every time I do a flower essence consultation. If the idea of using a pendulum as a way of choosing flower essences seems a bit like “woo-woo,” I invite you to step into “beginner’s mind” and give yourself the gift of the guidance and assistance that comes through the flower essences.