Are Bach Flower remedies herbal tinctures?

There is a lot of confusion about what Bach Flower remedies actually are and how they are made. Maybe it is good to explain where Bach Flower remedies come from.

Dr. Edward Bach who lived in England from 1885 until 1935 discovered Bach Flower remedies. During his short life he was constantly looking for ways to heal people gently and unharmful. First he graduated as a doctor and later he specialised in bacteriology, immunology and homeopathy. He felt dissatisfied and went into nature in search for the right method of healing. In this way he found it in the form of blossoms. He found that certain blossoms of plants of a higher nature have healing abilities. They have the energy to change negative emotions and turn them into their opposite positive state for example fear into courage.

He had to find a system to retrieve the energy from the blossoms. By coincidence on one of his morning walks in nature he saw the drops of dew reflects into the morning sun. He took the dewdrop on his finger and licked it. He now experienced how the energy of the blossoms had transferred into the dewdrops. So he discovered the way to get the energy out of the blossoms.

At first he went from one blossom to the next to collect all the dewdrops. But this was such a time consuming task so after a while he was looking for a more economic solution. He then tried out the sun method and saw that it was working as good. The sun method consists of collecting the blossoms and putting them in a bowl of water and leave it exposed to the sun for 3 hours. Afterward the flowers are taken out of the water and an equal amount of alcohol is added to the water. This way the energy of the blossoms is preserved.

A second method that Dr. Edward Bach discovered is the cooking method. Here the flowers are put into a pot with water and boiled for half an hour. When the blossoms are taken out of the water, the water is left to cool and again an equal amount of alcohol is added to preserve the energy of the flowers. This makes the bases to make the stock bottles.

Dr. Bach has written down precisely which flowers are prepared with the cooking method and which with the sun method. Until this day this method of preparation is still used by the Bach Centre in England. They also still use most of the trees and plants that Dr. Bach chose himself to make his preparation.

Making Bach Flower remedies is a different way than making herbal tinctures. Here it is more about the energetic power of the blossoms than about the material substance of the plant.

In case you want to know what the Bach Flower remedies can do and for which problems you can apply them, then click on “Bach Flower remedies”.