This article is about the high desert flower essence range that I developed last year, how they work and why I feel they are a great medicine for the times we are living.
I have been using flower essences since I first discovered them back in the 80’s when I was a student. I believe they are one of the plant medicines that really helped me find my way and stay alive. What I love about this subtle but powerful medicine is the way they touch our whole psyche. They are not a medicine for physical ailments, but they are the medicine for the underlying emotional, mental and spiritual imbalances that create the physical symptoms in the first place.
Flower essences are vibrational medicines that resonate with our souls. They help us to peel away the layers that keep us from our soul’s purpose and help us embody spirit in our lives. On a practical level plants photosynthesize and enable us to breath. On a subtle level their medicine brings a respiration to our soul. They recognize any imbalances and trigger our capacity to self-reflect, bringing awareness to areas in our life that need purifying.
Flower essences are great allies in alchemical journey work such as the work we do in Aromagnosis with the alchemical stages, as described HERE.
Unlike pharmaceutical drugs that are destined to close down aspects of the self and put ‘plasters’ on symptoms, flower essences remind us of who we are and accompany us on our journey of becoming.
Unlike conventional medicines, they demand work of us. They ask us to reflect and to be honest with ourselves. They open up our view of how we react and respond to life’s experiences. We are more able to see our patterns and take responsibility to heal, integrate and evolve from this new viewpoint.
Flower essences contain information that comes directly from nature. The flower essences that I have made from the high desert here in Northern New Mexico really spoke to me about resilience, deep trauma healing and peeling away the layers keeping us from ourselves. These are all the ways that this land helped me to heal when I arrived here 5 years ago with cancer and a lifetime’s baggage of deep trauma. Like a tuning fork, these flower essences remind us of the harmonic of our true essence. They direct our being so that it can find the way home.
These flower essences are the medicine that called out to me first from this very particular landscape. This land is a land for soul healing, stripping away all that is not needed within and without. This land called me home. It enabled me to stop fleeing and to heal. It is like nowhere else on earth. I am so connected to this land of eternity. This is why I wanted to share it with the world through these flower essences. Each one of them called me, spoke to me and has a unique signature to share.
All these flowers have had to adapt to life here, to the extremes of heat, to the short growing season, to the aridity. Some of them, like the cacti, have had to change their physical structures in order to survive, their lack of leaves enabling them to retain the little water at their disposition. They are hardy, adaptable, strong and resilient. Others, such as the high desert perennials often, remain dormant during the dry periods and only come to life when water is available, which means not every year.
Most of the high desert plants complete their reproductive cycle rapidly, blooming in spring before the baking summer sun and then leaving their seeds in the ground dormant until the following year’s rains germinate them.
The high desert is not just ‘hot’ and ‘dry’ with a lack of plant life in the way many people think of the desert. Here in Taos county, nature is varied with a myriad of different micro-climates that change depending on the year’s weather patterns. You can never be sure of what will bloom in each micro-environment each year. Last year was an invitation to celebrate my own healing journey and share it with the world through the flowers that bloomed in abundance due to high levels of precipitation. These high desert flower essences echo the strength and magic of this land and the way it peels away the superfluous exposing our true soul’s purpose.
To make it easier for you to explore the different essences and know what they do, we have created a table with a description of the heart of each essence’s action.
I offer this beautiful expression of the high desert and its healing qualities to you in the signature of each of these plants.
