I came across this quote by Wendell Berry last Saturday, the same day Paul and I had a wonderful walk in the woods. “Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread.” I wish it was my “daily bread”! I’m too cooped up indoors in my current life. Paul and I go for walks to our local park almost every day—sometimes the high point of my day! But while there is certainly nature there, it isn’t wild nature. It’s not like walking in a forest where everything has been left to grow free and almost absurdly abundant. You could just stand in one spot for hours and never take it all in.
I grew up in the time when letting your children free-range unsupervised for hours every day was normal. “Go out and play!” my mom would say and my siblings and I would run wild in the woods near my house (or anywhere else we wanted to go.) That was the best part of my childhood, and there have been times in my life when I have deliberately gone to the woods to regain my grounding and feel healed and whole.
Much later in my life I took a class in energy healing using earth energy from my Reiki teacher Jeanine Sande. It felt very different from Reiki energy—grounding, strong, revitalizing in a physical way rather than in the gentle lightening way that Reiki provides. I didn’t do much with that training as I was more drawn to using Reiki in my life and in my work; but just the practice of getting grounded and intentionally drawing up energy from the ground when feeling depleted and tired has been amazingly useful from time to time. You can learn to do it gently and easily by doing a simple grounding exercise where you imagine roots growing from the soles of your feet into the ground. With each exhale, imagine those roots becoming stronger and deeper, like you are a tree with roots firmly anchored in the soil. Imagine those roots go down to the center to the earth and can draw up healing energy with each inhale. Imagine the energy goes up those roots into the center of your body, up through your body and out the top of your head. Then imagine that healing energy raining down all around you and back into the earth as you exhale.
Flower Essences, Your Heart, and the Natural World
This being a blog that is usually devoted to flower essences, I would be negligent if I didn’t mention that there are several flower essences that help a person re-connect with the earth and the natural world. Interestingly, they are all made from green flowers. The color green is associated with the heart chakra as is the color pink. Pink is associated with love and compassion for oneself and others. Green is also associated with love, particularly unconditional love, but also healing, balance, and connection to nature and the entire world. Green is often used in hospitals for scrubs or decor because it is very calming to people and relieves anxiety. It is also connected to peace, harmony, growth, and renewal. I think the colors of flowers indicate the strengths they bring forward. So, to me, green flowers are likely to engage the heart chakra. And it is very interesting to me that the heart chakra—the balance point in the chakra system—is what connects us in a loving way to the world.
Green flower essences include:
Scleranthus: Rarely talked about as a tool for connecting with the earth, Scleranthus actually does connect you with your grounding when it comes to making decisions. People who need it tend to waver between two options so much they can become dizzy and off balance which might be reflected in their emotional state as mood swings. On some level, I think the person who needs this essence is afraid to engage with life, perhaps learning at an early age to be afraid to make mistakes for fear of the consequences. As a plant, Scleranthus literally hugs the ground, which a person who needs this flower metaphorically, at least, needs to do as well. As a flower essence, I find it initially grounding and then my energy centers in my heart and I feel like I look out into the world with clarity of purpose that comes from the heart, like my heart is leading the way.
Wild Oat: This flower essence is also used when it comes to making decisions but the decisions are more of a life direction sort of choice. This is the person who doesn’t know what they want to be when they grow up. There are too many options and they either wind up “sowing their wild oats” while trying them all or drift without any clear direction. While the Scleranthus person can hold back for years, afraid to make a decision, the Wild Oat person isn’t necessarily so afraid. They are more likely to want to try all kinds of things, not knowing what they want to do at all. Wild Oat can help such a person find a sense of purpose and, again, the true calling of their heart.
Quaking Grass: This flower essence also expresses the theme of connection with the world through the matrix of the heart, but in this case it is about finding your way within the context of a group. People report that it helps those from different backgrounds learn to work with each other better, for example, when it is sprayed in a meeting room. On an individual basis, it can help you be more receptive and flexible in your interactions with others. It awakens a group consciousness that is different than those in an excessively individualistic society often recognize. It can help you develop the capacity to notice the shared goals you have with others and operate more cooperatively.
Green Rose: As a green flower AND a member of the Rosaceae (Rose) family, Green Rose has emotional heart healing energy in abundance. This flower essence opens the heart and heals what closed it down, sometimes addressing layers of abuse or neglect that causes a person to retreat from engagement with others or with life on the planet. This is a person who is afraid to participate in life, usually because of past traumas. Consider adding other flower essences for addressing fear or trauma to ease the process of healing as those issues come up. Eventually, Green Rose can help a person tap into the experience of unconditional love and safety, bringing peace and connection to life.
Green-Cross Gentian: I’ve been using Green-Cross Gentian since my earliest days of using flower essences. I put it in my first flower essence formula, Support for Troubled Times, because it helps you regain your balance and grounding when the traumas of the world or your life feel overwhelming. It might feel like you have to carry the burden alone but that’s not true. This flower essence helps you connect with renewed hope and strength, more faith in yourself and in the world, and resolve to persevere.
Green Nicotiana: Nicotiana, in general, is helpful for feeling deeply grounded and at peace. The green variety is said to help when your disconnection with the earth is why you feel ungrounded. Deep grief is often at the root of this, perhaps because of living a life too much indoors or focused on computer or phone screens. I tried this flower essence as an experiment and needed to release the grief that came up. (I don’t think of that as a bad thing but felt drawn to using Green Rein Orchid immediately afterwards.)
Green Rein Orchid: I really enjoyed this one when I tried it earlier this week. I felt like it cleared my energy up through the top of my head and down to the ground. Supposedly, the purpose behind this essence is for feeling a heart-felt connection with the natural world, feeling the life-force energy of the earth. I can’t say whether it did that for me or not—I just felt good, more at ease in the world with a nice feeling of well-being. I think it helps a person connect with the healing energy the earth provides.
Green Bells of Ireland: I feel like I have a great affinity for the plants I most need for healing. My heart leaps up or I suddenly feel obsessed with a plant that I really want to take home with me from the nursery, only to discover that it’s the flower essence that I really need. If you’d like to have a deeper connection with the plant kingdom, you might give Green Bells of Ireland a try. It is said that it helps a person tune into the natural world and have a more direct experience of how a plant might help. Some describe it as a heart-opening flower essence, while others say it is grounding and connects them with the healing energy of the earth. (I have not tried this one so I can’t share my personal experience.)
Lady’s Mantle: This is one of those flower essences that people think is magical! It is strongly associated with alchemy and is said to help people feel an instinctual connection to all things. Others say it connects a person, especially women, with the Divine Feminine which might be helpful in healing your relationship with women in your life or with the experience of being a woman. (In folk medicine, the plant is used for women’s reproductive complaints and a variety of other purposes.) When I have tried it, I feel like it connects me through my lower abdomen to the earth and it is gently grounding and calming.
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Flower essences are used to assist with mind-body-spirit interactions and individual results may vary. They are extremely dilute which makes them quite safe. But because so little physical substance can be detected in a flower essence solution, these products are presumed to work on an energetic or vibrational level—something that cannot be adequately tested by western scientific methods. Claims made by me, therefore, are based on personal experiences and the evidence of the combined multiple decades of case notes by Dr. Edward Bach as well as Healing Herbs and Flower Essence Services (the companies who make the ingredients I use in my products). This is not, however, accepted medical evidence or substantiated scientific evidence from a modern allopathic point of view. I am not a medical doctor or licensed healthcare practitioner.
Statements made have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information provided on my blog, websites or by this company are not a substitute for a face-to-face consultation with a health care provider, and should not be construed as individual medical or mental health advice. Consulting with a health care provider is a must for anyone taking medications or working with a medical or mental health condition, and highly recommended before using any herbal product. Please consult your doctor or health care provider for any possible contraindications and/or interactions with current medications. I trust you to seek the medical guidance you need to use any of my herbal products healthily at your own risk.