Desert flower essences

While many healing modalities focus on the physical aspects of healing, flower essence therapy addresses the emotional and spiritual levels.

by Wayne Purdin — 

Naturopaths have studied the healing properties of plants for decades. In the 1930s, Dr. Edward Bach derived dozens of flower remedies to heal emotional and spiritual conditions.

Rather than use investigative research and experimentation based on the scientific method, Bach used his own intuition to derive his flower remedies. If Bach felt a negative emotion, he would hold his hand over different plants, and if one alleviated the emotion, he would assign the power to heal the emotional problem to that plant.

Cynthia Athina Kemp Scherer, of Tucson, Ariz., is the founder of Desert Alchemy Flower Essences and, like Bach, is an intuitive healer using flower remedies. However, unlike Bach, she used the scientific method and spent 15 years researching desert flower essences before publishing the results of her research.

When asked about it, she said: “Perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions is how I arrived at the descriptions of each essence. Researching flower essences is a marriage of sensitive attunement and logical observation over a period of many years. … I attune to the plant and invite it to show me its qualities, as well as the patterns of disharmony within myself with which it works.

“Then I use the flower essence and document what happens when I use it. This includes subjective, as well as objective impressions. I then use the essence with others and observe what happens. I do follow-up sessions in which I invite others to share with me their experiences while using the essence. … The complete process takes years, a lot of intense self-inquiry, careful documentation and patience.”

In her healing work, Scherer addresses what she calls core issues. She says that most people have been taught to look at their symptoms and try to alleviate them with drugs or natural means. However, these symptoms are the soul’s way of getting them to pay attention to a deeper issue. What appears at the surface is an alarm that forces them to pull their attention from what they are doing and to urgently deal with something more important. Thus, the core issue is what people should focus on in healing, and it is the key to the success of any form of therapy.

Scherer refers to these essences as agents of consciousness. They can help people see beyond the apparent and find the cause beneath the symptom in order to discover a core issue, such as resentment, intimacy, exhaustion, perfectionism, procrastination and aging. She has created 119 individual flower essences extracted from desert flowers and 91 composite formulas for various purposes, such as celebration of womanhood, anchor manifestation and creativity.

Any healing professional can incorporate flower essences into his or her practice. Doctors, therapists, body workers of all types and spiritual counselors have added flower essences to their sessions.

While many healing modalities focus on the physical aspects of healing, flower essence therapy addresses the emotional and spiritual levels. Healing is a multilevel process that encompasses the whole person, which includes the physical body, emotions, mental outlook, attitudes and spiritual understanding.

Health care practitioners now realize that patients with the best outlook on life and who feel emotionally supported tend to recover faster and have fewer recurrences of an illness. By incorporating flower essences with other healing therapies, a practitioner can support the client’s emotions, attitudes and spiritual awareness.

Wayne Purdin is the lead curriculum editor for Grand Canyon University and a freelance writer of over 140 articles. He is director of the Sun Center of Phoenix and editor of The Sun Gazette newsletter. wpurdin@gmail.com.