We have spent past issues diving into the complicated landscape of mental health, post pandemic emotional regulation, and (un)equal access mental health resources. In this newsletter we take a look at some of these issues through the lens of today’s guest, Heidi Smith, MA, RH (AHG). She is a graduate of the 3-Year Herbal Studies program at Arbor Vitae School of Traditional Herbalism and is accredited by the American Herbalist Guild. She holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling and has studied energy work and flower essences under several teachers.
Over on the Gold Road we are so steeped in the world of tinctures and face oils, that reading Heidi’s book on the multitude of therapeutic and practical ways flower essences can be used was fascinating. She has answered some questions for us, already prompting me to load up a cart of essences to try.
Heidi’s practice blends psychosomatic therapy, flower essences, and herbal medicine to address the multifaceted aspects of disease, with an emphasis on mental and emotional wellness. Heidi is passionate about engaging both the spiritual and scientific dimensions of the plant kingdom, and sees herbal medicine as a radical way to promote ecological and social justice. She lives and works on unceded Munsee Lenape land. She is author of The Bloom Book: A Flower Essence Guide to Cosmic Balance.You can follow along with her on Instagram and learn more about her practice at moonandbloom.com
courtesy of Heidi Smith
Can you explain for a total beginner what flower essences are and how they’re different from a normal herb tincture?
Flower essences are a type of plant and vibrational medicine that are used to address physical, emotional, spiritual, and energetic concerns. They create shifts in consciousness for healing to occur. Flower essences are not inert chemicals but are a type of plant spirit medicine, meaning the essences contain their own vital energy or spirit. They can be used to address psychospiritual symptoms like anxiety and depression, and also the deeper attachments to emotional states to produce healing on soul levels.
Essences assist us in resourcing ourselves in many ways. They create internal shifts that also translate into outer change. What I mean by this is that when we create a harmonic resonance within the self, the field around us changes. How we respond to stress changes, who and what we attract into our field as well as what we release shifts, our relationship to our situations is altered. Flower essences assist the self to reorient around balance and wellness, to allow for higher vibratory states such as love, joy, compassion, and peace, and higher levels of actualization.
Flower essences are vibrational aka subtle energetic medicine, meaning they work not only with our physical anatomy, but with our subtle energetic structures and anatomy: our chakras and nadis, the interstitial fluid, and the extracellular and crystalline matrix of the body. When I talk about energy, I am talking about emotional and electrical energy. We are still learning how to define, understand, and measure energy. As we continue to decolonize our minds and medicine, we will increasingly be able to fully comprehend how and why flower essences work. Regardless of this, you don’t need to be an expert on flower essences to work with them effectively.
Flower essences are very safe, effective, and accessible medicine. They have virtually no side effects and require very little plant material for production, making them highly sustainable and low-impact on the Earth, as opposed to other plant medicines like essential oils, which use a ton of plant matter.
The way flower essences are prepared is one way to understand how they function differently than an herbal tincture. Unlike herbal tinctures, wherein the physical constituents of the plant are extracted using alcohol or glycerin, FEs are made by placing flowers in a bowl of water and the healing signature of that plant is then energetically imprinted onto the water. The vital essence of that flower is then preserved with a small amount of alcohol or apple cider vinegar.
Dr. Edward Bach is the founder of flower essence therapy. Dr. Bach was a bacteriologist and homeopath working during the First World War, and studied the relationship between nature, personality, illness, and healing. Every flower has a healing signature, the way the plant has evolved to live in its environment. He formulated the first flower essences that we still use today. Flower essences follow lineages of thought from the alchemical tradition, which has its roots in Ancient Egypt and the Greek humoral tradition.
Can you tell us about your own practice and how you integrate flower essences to help yourself and people who come to you? Have you come up against any challenges as you focused your practice on more integrative healing (personal, from traditional medical binaries etc).
My healing training began with my spiritual teacher, Jane Bell, whom I met when I was 26. I worked with Jane for seven years, studying Egyptian and feminine mysticism, and a modality called Focusing, which is a psychosomatic integration technique. I am trained as a mental health counselor and chose to forgo licensure so that I can work alongside the medical industrial complex, but not within it. I have studied flower essences with Patricia and Richard Kaminski of the Flower Essence Society and David Dalton of Delta Gardens. I completed the three-year Herbal Studies program at Arbor Vitae School of Traditional Herbalism, and am accredited as a Registered Herbalist by the American Herbalist Guild. I blend all of my training into an integrative practice in which to serve my clients.
There are many ways into healing. I was guided to blend my somatic, counseling, and plant medicine training together—this was my way into healing myself. I have always been drawn to the feminine, to prayer and ritual, and to the cosmic threads that connect all life. I no longer feel a separation between how I am healing myself and how healing is happening for my clients, the plants, the animals, and the Earth—I feel it all dynamically co-occurring.
Client sessions are structured similar to traditional psychotherapy. I conduct an intake, the client and I collaborate on the intentions of our work together, and we come up with a game plan. The integrity of the healing space is very important to my work and every session opens with a prayer and grounding (with the client’s permission). Follow-up sessions consist of processing, Focusing, and talking about how the flower remedies have been working. I work with most clients bi-monthly or monthly, both short and long-term.
Flower essences are gentle yet powerful medicine. They are so magical, and the more I work with them the more I am awed and humbled by them. I always envisioned being able to give clients unique flower formulas so that even though the session was over, their healing work could continue. The flowers act as allies for any issue, symptom, inquiry, or life situation that is arising. My role is to act as a guide for clients to feel empowered and in their agency to come into greater balance and heal. The breakthroughs and dramatic healing I get to witness are such an honor. It’s truly a dream to do this work.
I think we need more alternative models of healing. I feel strongly that we need to make alternative healthcare—especially alternative mental healthcare accessible. This is a challenge for me because I can only do so much as a solo practitioner. Not participating in insurance is a double-edged sword because while I’m not participating in a system that I think is responsible for much harm, it’s also a way for people to access (generally limited) mental healthcare. To offset this, I offer a small number of sliding-scale sessions per month, with preference given to BIPOC. Whenever I teach a class I always offer a couple free spots to anyone who lacks the funds. For the last two years I have, fortunately, been in the position of giving 10% of my profits to LGBTQ and BIPOC-led organizations. I am very eager to keep the circle of abundance growing and moving in a positive direction: the more abundance I generate, the more I am able to give back to people, animals, and the Earth.
I’m going into my seventh year in private practice and much has shifted in the healing and wellness sphere since starting out. In the beginning, it was unthinkable that I would be able to practice unlicensed. It was a scary yet conscious decision to go against the status quo at that time. But I’m so glad that I trusted my instincts around licensure because it has opened so many more doors for me. For instance, I have the ability to offer my services out of state and internationally. I also feel more protected and in alignment with the level of care that I offer. Now, what I’m doing isn’t considered so unorthodox.
I don’t feel I have to explain myself as much these days, and I don’t really care to try and convince people of the validity of anything. Plant medicine, flower essences, and psychosomatic therapy aren’t for everyone and that’s ok; I’m not here to force or fix. I trust myself and this work implicitly at this point, and trust that I will connect with the clients and colleagues that are in the right alignment.
I have a cohort of herbalists, counselors, and practitioners that I am in regular contact with for client support. Being part of a diverse healing community is essential for accountability and growth. My hope is to continue working collaboratively in groups and collectives with like-minded practitioners—this is how I see my work growing in the future.
Some of Heidi’s magical bath oil, which you can find on her site
Much of the past year has felt so traumatic to people in so many ways, how can essences help people find their own sense of resiliency again?
Yes, we have been in a season of trauma for a while and people are running low on reserves and resilience at this point. Right now, as we prepare to return to some sense of normalcy, I am observing a lot of burnout, fatigue, and anxiety. I’m seeing a lot of agoraphobia, which is the fear of going outside. We are such creatures of habit, our nervous systems modulated to being in isolation for the last year. As people are going out again, riding public transit, socializing, just being in the world, etc., it’s a jolt to our nervous systems.
In order to access resilience, I feel strongly that we must rest and relax as much as we are able, and we must feel safe. Luckily, there are a lot of essences that support rest, relaxation, and safety. I’m recommending a lot of protective essences like Angelica, Yarrow, and St. John's Wort, which help us to feel safe in our bodies and in the world, Bach Gentian is an essence to restore faith and perseverance, also Bach Aspen for fear of all the unknowns, and Alaskan Bog Rosemary for fear and resistance held in the heart. It’s so easy to feel hopeless about the state of the world and the future, and Bach Gorse and FES Scotch Broom are indicated here.
I list some additional flower essences for safety, grounding, and relaxation in my book.
You bring up the idea of ‘cosmic balance’ in your book- can you explain what that means and how essences can help people align with that sense of balance?
As I share in my book, we have entered an age of massive transition from a time out of separation and into unification; there is both extreme volatility and also miraculous potential. We all know how oppressive patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy are, but I’m interested in how we understood reality before these forces came into power. I’m curious to understand how we are moving into a time where more of the feminine is being embraced.
Masculine and feminine are not about gender, but energetic states found within all of nature. We’ve been living in an incredibly toxic masculine time (separation, capitalism, colonization, force, materialism, etc) for millennia, but are switching into more of the feminine. I’m interested in the genesis of this phenomenon because I think it sheds much light on what we were connected to before the dominant paradigm came into power, and who we were before this. I think we have the potential to come into greater balance when we embrace that which has been denigrated and largely forgotten—the feminine: the mystery, the void, intuition, creativity, receptivity, connection, and so forth. By understanding our true histories and roots, we are better resourced to thrive in the future.
A plant’s healing ability is revealed within its signature, the way that plant evolved to flourish in its environment. Flowers came into existence later on in the evolution of plants, relating to their connection to our higher consciousness. We have been co-evolving together. The flowers are here to help us in this rebalancing since much of the disease states we experience are a result of a separation from divinity, from nature, and from our true selves. Nature is our biggest teacher for living in harmony with our environment. Everything is intersectional and interconnected, and nature is asking us with increasing urgency to pay attention, and come into balance immediately.
Healing occurs optimally when we are in balance. This is true for many healing traditions including Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Earth and the plant kingdom, with their divine intelligence, exist within a state of beingness of balance. Cosmic balance is not about perfectionism, but allowing for pure states of being within ourselves and also in relationship to all sentient beings.
I feel we have transcended a this-for-that encyclopedic application of flowers for topical symptoms. We are being asked to go deeper, in order to completely re-orient ourselves around love and truth, instead of separation and fear. So, this balancing is happening on very deep energetic levels.
“As above, so below; As within, so without”—this is a cosmic law of the universe. It holds that there is no separation between life. I believe the flowers can assist our evolution as the true, multidimensional cosmic beings that we are, co-existing and co-creating in harmony with all life.
Can you recommend a few essences that are broadly useful to people who are struggling with the anxiety of living through and emerging from the pandemic?
There are numerous essences that address the many facets of anxiety. For many of us, especially in urban areas, our systems have been sensitized and now we can’t have the same expectations of ourselves, our bandwidths for stress have changed, we can’t keep drawing from our banks, so to speak (and extracting from the Earth). So, I don’t want to just give people essences to offset the anxiety, but to encourage a deeper healing, e.g., to support a shift in their relationship to whatever is causing the stress, and to strengthen the energy body.
In addition to protection essences, I’m calling upon Lilac/Pearl from Delta Gardens to restore hope in life. I think of FES Red Clover to avoid falling prone to collective hysteria, FES Indian Pink to remain focused and centered in times of chaos, FES Pink Yarrow for healthy emotional boundaries (a must for all empaths!), Woodland Essence Quaking Aspen for fearless courage and moving forward despite unknowns. Woodland Essence Red Cedar for drawing upon our deepest resources and inner wisdom. And of course, I always carry small bottles of Bach Five Flower Formula and Alaskan Essences Soul Support in case of emergencies.
I’d like to add that there were also gifts from this last year. I think the last year illuminated a lot of the ways we are living out of alignment, and it was a call for living in greater balance. I think it helped us to honor the sacredness of connection. We heal in connection. We co-regulate in relationships with supportive people—with supportive plants and animals, too. We’re never going “back” to the way things were, but we do have the opportunity to reevaluate: what was working? What wasn’t working? And integrate these findings into life now. Flower essences can help in this process as well. How can we work not harder but more efficiently? Delta Gardens Golden Amaranthus comes to mind for this inquiry. How can we repair and restore? I think of FES Self-Heal, and definitely Bach Cerato, because now more than ever, we have to trust ourselves.
