One day my attention was drawn to a book the Handbook of the Bach Flower Remedies by Phillip M Chancellor that had been on my bookshelf for several decades. It had been many years that I had worked with the Bach Flower remedies. Not that I had used them myself, but I had worked with a local homeopath with the view to helping my own clients. He explained how they worked and gave me a the [above] book. I referred clients to him quite often and despite my scepticism, I had to admit that they were responding very well to a combination of my psychotherapy and the flower remedies. I was fascinated and learned everything there was to learn about the remedies so that I could discuss my clients’ progress at their follow-up appointments. Despite my scepticism, I was hearing about some remarkable and often sudden improvements in many stubborn stress-related conditions.
So now around 30 years on, I started using Bach Flower Remedies this time for myself. I took a good look at how I was, realising that it was imperative that I was very honest with various aspects of my personality. I had not long had a bereavement of a close family member, and whilst I was still feeling sad from time to time, I felt I was coming to terms with my loss and moving on with my life. But I had noticed that my physical pain and exhaustion that accompanies M.E had returned more than it should have done considering I was now permanently eating only foods of which I was not intolerant. It was obvious that the bereavement has triggered my relapse. Studies strongly suggest that stress in the nervous system has a detrimental effect on the immune system.
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| Star of Bethlehem Photo supplied by Jan Rehschuh from Wikimedia Commons |
With the Star of Bethlehem I added Impatiens, as I had noticed that I was indeed very impatient and irritable with myself for relapsing back into my ME regardless of whether or not my irritability was justifiable. My irritability was there and I was experiencing it, so it would be interesting to see if anything about it would change as a result of my choice.
On the first day, I mixed 2 drops of Star of Bethlehem and 2 drops of Impatiens in a glass of water around 9am and sipped it slowly throughout the day. The effect was quite remarkable at the speed at which it happened...
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| Impatiens Photo Supplied by Kalyan Varma from Wikimedia Commons |
That night, I slept very deeply and had many surreal dreams of which I could not remember on awakening. I awakened after around 6 hours, which is quite a long time to me, having for years finding that a good night’s sleep was around 4-5 hours. However, I had awakened to a dull headache together with a mild pain in my neck and shoulders. I felt my good mood of the previous evening evaporate into a feeling of great disappointment.
I went as is usual for me, to sit in zazen (meditation) and set my timer for 45 minutes. The sitting time seemed to go by in an instance and as the timer sounded the end of the sitting, I noticed that my headache and other aches and pain were gone; my mood lifted again. However, for the rest of the day, I lacked any motivation to get anything done. I had intended to write a blog post, but there was something inside me saying, “There’s no point.. Chill out!”. I grew disappointed at not having such a good day as the day before. The disappointment this time was, not because of pain because it did not return, but because I was feeling stressed at myself for not wanting to bother creating anything whilst I felt pain-free. I felt annoyed. The Impatiens I felt, was doing something though, and I reminded myself that things often get worse before they get better, and with the realisation that the Impatiens was doing something, perhaps not exactly to my liking, I felt more positive. So I would continue with the same remedy of Impatiens and Star of Bethlehem and see what next would come up.
For the following few days, I drifted back into my negativity and was accompanied by the feeling that I was wasting time and should really be more productive with my blogging. I was irritated in not disciplining myself to work, but subtly, in the background, I sensed a difference… I was beginning to feel OK physically but was being unproductive. My Zen experience reminded me to accept and allow any experience and thus become OK to be not fully OK.
Towards the end of the first week it came into my awareness that I was feeling guilty about lazing around and at first it was definitely not OK to either laze around or feel guilty about it! I contemplated this guilt and realised that I was reacting to childhood conditioning, particularly from my schooldays and piano-learning days where I was constantly being reminded that unless I worked hard, and passed both my school and music exams, I would not get anywhere in life. In fact, I remembered believing that all criticism was punishment, because I was doing my best to get my teachers’ approval! The Bach Flower Remedies, particularly the Impatiens now seemed to be ‘reminding me’ that I had to resolve these conflicts in order to be free of them.
What was amazing me here, and it became very obvious that the Remedies were not only doing their work, but showing me where to move next. The next Bach Flower Remedy I would purchase would be Pine. A remedy for those finding themselves suffering from self-reproach, guilt feelings and despondency. I did not exactly feel despondent, but I was realising that not everything written about the remedies would apply to myself. But there’s no mistaking the buried guilt, and self-reproach. I looked forward to receiving my next remedy that I ordered from Amazon for next day delivery.
Amazon links.. Impatiens.. Star of Bethlehem.. Pine…
Thanks for reading. Follow-up articles to come....
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