Vibration Magazine Blog

By Deborah Bier, PhD, maker of the Whole Energy Essences and co-editor of the Vibration Magazine Blog.

After a series of events unnecessary to recount, I was so, so, so, SO, so sad. Disappointed. Downhearted.  Discouraged. My heart ached.  I was filled with grief and high drama. I was so brokenhearted, I couldn’t even play in the garden, particularly because it was so buggy: there being so much one-way fondness between mosquitoes and me, I just couldn’t get outside.

And it was getting worse every day: I was beginning to feel emotionally fragile in a way that I associate with unstable blood sugar, something I’ve experienced in the past. But I was so discouraged that I couldn’t do the things I knew I needed to do in order to begin to get that into control. Obviously, something had to change — and quickly! I had all but lost my sparkle.

I had been taking some stress-related flower essences from the Bach range through the early stages of this. Five Flower.  Wild Oat. Aspen. Mimulus. Oh, I had thrown much of the Bach kitchen sink at this, but I was still so, so, so, SO, so sad. I found myself one day feeling so broken hearted over the type of small, daily disruption that I used to simply just DEAL WITH in a second, that I finally just let go: I didn’t try to FIGURE my way out of the problem I was experiencing. Instead I simply prayed and meditated, asking for help.  And here’s the inspiration I received.

Having shot through the Bach essences without anywhere nearly good enough results, I realized I needed to look elsewhere for vibrational help.  I got out my boxes of and books about essences, and I sat down and did the following visualization directed to each brand individually.  By the way: I am a long-time gardener, so I tend to identify essences with their plants and flowers. I am also strongly visual, so it’s easy for me to visualize.

What essence from this maker’s range would be my highest good? I relaxed and allowed my mind to form a picture.  If none formed, I would move on to the next company’s work.

After shooting all blanks through Bach (just had to recheck!), Australian, FES, and everything else I had in my bag of tricks, I turned to the essences I have co-created — the Whole Energy Essences.  Immediately, I saw an image of the plume poppy plant. I’d scored — and so close to home!

Plume poppy (Macleaya cordata) is an absolutely stunning plant, though some gardeners complain about its tendency to continually spread so strongly underground.  Its leaves are the most intricately-cut and complex that you can imagine. And they are waterproof — rain just beads up and runs right off them. They are also beautifully bronzy when they are young.  Both the leaves and the plant can become HUGE — leaves can be up to a foot in length and the plant can easily reach 8′ tall under good, sunny conditions with the right soil and moisture. The blooms are like tall plumes; their panicles have the most glorious, light, fruity and sweet fragrance.  The entire plant loves to lean southward, toward the direction of strongest sun. Another interesting thing I’ve learned about this plant after growing it for years: it loves to climb steps!  I planted beside the base of a set of wooden stairs built over an earth embankment. It spread itself under and up through one stair per year, reaching the top in eight years, and then spreading only about a foot further — and then mysteriously, no more!

As much as I know about plume poppy as a gardener, I knew almost nothing about it as a flower essence. It’s one of the Whole Energy Essences’ research essences, which means that its action is not well enough understood, much less publishable.  But I had picked something about this essence — enough to have written it down somewhere that I couldn’t find until I had taken it for a two days.

But since I was acting on faith, I simply added the stock essence to my pitcher of iced tea, and set out to drink it through the day for two days.  Here’s what happened.  First, I stopped feeling so broken hearted! Having finally taken a few, clear breaths, I then realized I actually was quite angry. I spoke about what I was so angry with to the very people who needed to hear about it. At one point, I noticed that I started to harp on my anger. I was actually able to almost immediately catch myself doing this, deciding to let go of any bitterness as it would not allow the problems to pass if I kept regenerating fresh anger.

And without any further ado then I decided to make the dietary changes I had to in order to get my hypoglycemic self under control — something I had been resisting for months as I ramped up to the recent crescendo. I. Just. Did. It.  Oh, and I got out into the garden, too, without any further trouble, even though I had suddenly misplaced my Lemon Eucalyptus insect repellant (it was in my hand, and then gone, set down in an unknown location). I went into the insect fray au natural.

Things were going so well that I started getting mighty curious about the Plume Poppy essence and decided to research it.  A web search turned up that Green Hope Farm (www.GreenHopeEssences.com) also made the Plume Poppy essence. Here’s what their website says: “Good for work with the element of air. This one helps clear the air so it is good to spritz in a room that needed to be refreshed and cleared of heavy or dense vibrations. Plume Poppy also offers helpful information for our lungs, intent as they are on filtering out everything in the air that does not serve us.” Ok, so far so good — I DID clear the air, both inside myself and out!

Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (www.Botanical.com) said “The… juice from the stems of the leaves is used for insect-bites.” And there I had been fussing about the mosquitoes, even losing track of my bottle of repellant! What a comedy!

Darn it, where were my notes on the Plume Poppy essence I had made? Well, I never could find them, but I did locate the keynote that I had developed with for this essence: Enthusiasm.  If there ever is a cure for a loss of sparkle, surely it would be enthusiasm? And since the Whole Energy Essences focus on accentuating the positive to help us meet our challenges, this was about as perfect as possible.  I will leave it up to the reader to glean the doctrine of signatures from the description I’ve left above, which seems pretty clear to me.

Am I totally out of the woods with sadness? I don’t know… we’ll have to see how I react to the next set of stresses that come into my life.  I will complete a two- to four-week course of Plume Poppy essence to help more fully shift this pattern,  adding other essences are they seem to be indicated.

Editor’s Note: The process of thoroughly testing a research essence is meant to be—but seldom is—a rigorous one, and collecting notes like these is a part of the process. See a collection of articles about how to do it here: Making and Testing Essences – A Virtual Booklet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deborah Bier, PhD, when she’s not wondering if there is a limit to how many times a human being needs to be humbled by plants, is co-editor of Vibration Magazine, and  a holistic healthcare practitioner in private practice in Concord, MA. This is an excerpt from her newly published book/ebook Flower Essence Practice: For Students, Essence Practitioners & Other Healing Professionals (Windfall, 2008). She is also the author of Healthy Connections: Flower Essences for Better Family, Friend and Work Relationships; The Encyclopedia of Vibrational Essences, and Learning About Vibrational Essences (find all these titles here). She is the maker of Whole Energy Essences, and is available for private consultations.

Photo Credits: WikiCommons.