Stefan Ball - Principles of Bach Flower Remedies: What it is, how it works, and what it can do for you

PRINCIPLES OF BACH FLOWER REMEDIES

other titles in the series

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CHINESE MEDICINE

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THE ENNEAGRAM

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HYPNOTHERAPY

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PRINCIPLES OF

KINESIOLOGY

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NLP

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REFLEXOLOGY

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PRINCIPLES OF

TIBETAN MEDICINE

Dr. Tamdin Sither Bradley

PRINCIPLES OF

BACH FLOWER REMEDIES

What it is, how it works and what it can do for you

Revised Edition

Stefan Ball

LONDON AND PHILADELPHIA

This edition published in 2013

by Singing Dragon

an imprint of Jessica Kingsley Publishers

116 Pentonville Road

London N1 9JB, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.singingdragon.com

First published in 1999 by Thorsons, and imprint of HarperCollins

Copyright Stefan Ball 1999 and 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84819 142 6

eISBN 978 0 85701 120 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Elaine Abel, Lucille Arcouet, Rosemary Barry, Claudia Belou, Barbara Davis, Elaine Hollingsworth, Ingrid Lewis and Rae Ramsey for permission to include their accounts of the remedies in action.

Thanks also to the team at The Bach Centre and in particular Judy Ramsell Howard, Kathy Nicholson, June King and Emma Broad.

I first learned about the remedies from my wife Chris in the early 1990s. My love and dedication go to her and our children, Alex, Maddie and Ethan.

Introduction

Western Medicine

The Western worlds approach to dealing with health has on the whole been extremely successful. Even countries like India and China, which have very different medical traditions of their own, accept and use the Wests model. But what exactly is orthodox Western medicine?

At the risk of oversimplifying, we could say that Western medicine represents a reductionist, physical approach based on the use of drugs and technology. It is reductionist because it reduces people to sets of symptoms so as to intervene at that level. It is physical because it deals almost exclusively with bodies. And the fact that it is based on drugs and technology is graphically shown by the different values placed on people and machines in modern health services: money is lavished on new drugs, machines and techniques, while nurses remain relatively underpaid.

If you have a wheeze in your chest, the doctor will start by listening to your breathing. Then he will prescribe a drug or other treatment designed to deal with the inflammation or congestion that is causing the wheeze. If the doctor asks you how you feel apart from the wheeze, you will probably understand this to relate to your physical condition. You are likely to mention a sore throat and less likely to mention that you lost your job yesterday.

This approach is very effective at dealing with physical symptoms like the wheezing chest, because drugs are tailor-made to attack the physical cause of symptoms. It is also spectacularly successful when it comes to injuries such as fractured legs, ribs and skulls. The doctor can use the technological equipment at his disposal to isolate the problem and then use physical means to repair it straightening the leg, binding up the rib and tacking metal plates onto the skull.

Lives are saved every day using scientific Western medicine. But for many it is still failing.

People as cars

The magic bullet idea of medicine that there is a physical solution to every physical symptom is in turn based on a philosophical view of human life that stresses the complete separateness of our physical and mental worlds. I think therefore I am, said Descartes, but the I he referred to was not his stomach or his arms or his heart. Instead, I is somewhere in the head. I looks out through its eyes, and its body is something else a sort of vehicle that I gets carried around in. The thoughts and feelings of I dont have any real effect on the body because there is no direct connection. I can do what it wants with its body, as long as it gets it serviced from time to time and takes on enough fuel.

Perhaps this explains why some of us treat our bodies much the same as we treat our cars. We go too fast; we dont look after ourselves; we crash; we take ourselves off to the doctor to be fixed up. Doctors become glorified garage mechanics, replacing worn-out parts and rebuilding bits of broken machinery.

A problem with the orthodox approach

To continue the metaphor, one problem with the orthodox approach is that while the car is being repaired, the driver is often not treated at all. He sits around waiting for the vehicle to be fixed and then off he goes, driving just as badly as before, until once again he crashes.

The main criticism of the orthodox approach is that it does not do enough for that part of us that cannot be seen. The I in its head is not considered, when in fact the I is often the cause of the bodys disease. Beyond the I, at the level of spirit or soul, the problem is worse. In much of modern Western medicine, the soul of the patient is not only not considered: for all practical purposes it isnt there at all.

Holistic medicine

Treat the person, not the disease. This is the holistic approach in a nutshell, and the focus on the whole person is the main difference between holism and orthodox Western medicine. Holism puts forward the view that spirit, mind and body are interconnected in countless subtle ways. Holistic medicine seeks to view and treat people in their entirety so as to address all aspects of their lives at once.

Some methods, such as reflexology and acupuncture, direct the majority of their attention to physical problems, but do so using a system that also affects the mental and spiritual side of our beings. Others seek to prescribe for both levels at once. Homoeopathy is a good example of the latter, with its mix of physical and mental symptomatology.

Working with the Bach remedies, however, means taking a third route. Diagnosis and treatment happen on the level of emotion, spirit and mind, on the theory that balance here will in turn affect the health of the body. Emotional states are used as the key to unlock the bodys natural capacity to heal itself.