The Bach Flower therapy (pronounced as 'Batch' ) is an innovative
healing modality, discovered by Dr. Edward Bach between
1930-1936. It
is not intended to treat, diagnose or cure any
illness or disease as on the lines of modern medical science, rather it offers
a simple
system of eliminating behavioral negativities
by taking into account your overall nature, personality traits and attitude towards
life -irrespective of your disease or ill-health condition. Reigning
behavioral negativities --like frustration, guilty
feeling or jealousy-- which accumulate at the core of
our psyche over a duration of time --as in the form of
"negative emotions"-- and incessantly make
us "emotionally imbalanced", are considered
to be the root cause of all our sufferings.
According to
Bach Flower
Therapy, often any ailment or ill-health condition
--at most of the time and in majority of the cases-- is the result or expression of persistent "emotional imbalance" that takes place at the core of your psyche and persists over a period of time due to gradual accumulation of numerous
Negative
Emotions,
those originates
either from your mind itself or from your surrounding circumstances. As soon as
your mental state improves, the physical trouble disappears. Therefore a
person --which implies his overall nature, his general attitude towards life
and his inimitable surrounding circumstances-- is more important than his disease or ill-health condition.
Dr. Edward Bach -pronounced as 'Batch'-(1886 - 1936) M.B., B.S.,
M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., D.P.H. (Camb.) -An allopathic Doctor of British origin, was
a renowned physician and pathologist (-bacteriologist). While practicing as
a general physician he realized the meaning of old dictum,
"There are no diseases or
ill-health conditions but only sick (-emotionally imbalanced) People!"
He studied numerous individual personalities
-observed their mental make-up, their responses to treatment
and carried out number of scientific tests. Dr. Bach noticed that, two
persons (identical in weight, height, and age) with same background and training, in same field, often react very differently even to
the same life situation. Why? Simply because of their
different attitude towards life! Their emotions affect their thoughts, and those thoughts either put them into action or prevent from reacting towards
the life
situations, they come across. While administering
certain dosage of antibiotics in them for the same ailment, Dr. Bach further
observed that they take dissimilar time to cure. He noticed that their
innate nature or inborn behavior and their attitude towards
life would impact their recovery
time and could have affected the efficiency of administered medicines. He concluded that,
while facing life situations, the innate nature and mental make-up of a person plays an important role in the process of healing
and that must be considered during diagnosis, while determining
the line of treatment.
His goal was then to determine, how the inherent behavior and
physical body of a person are correlated with each other. He was
interested in identifying those physical symptoms that were
commonly experienced by people with the same type of the
personality. While treating the factory laborers prone to
various diseases, he observed that they were working under the
same unknown fear -It was the fear (-of uncertainty) that they would be jobless soon. He
observed that when the mind is under constant pressure of fear, terror, uncertainty, despondency
or despair the harmony between mind and body
gets imbalanced, which weakens the "Life force",
debilitating life force makes the immunity of body frail and the physical body becomes easily susceptible to
diseases or harmful conditions,
resulting into illness. Therefore the patient is more important than the
disease or ailment and their
basic behavior and mental make-up plays vital role in determining the correct line of treatment.
In other words, often any ailment or ill-health condition -at most of the time- is the result or expression of persistent "emotional imbalance" that takes place at the core of your psyche and persists over a period of time due to gradual accumulation of numerous
negative emotions, which originates either from your mind itself or from your surrounding
circumstances. As soon as your mental state improves, the physical
trouble disappears. Therefore your overall nature, subtle personality traits
and attitude towards life is more important than your disease or
ill-health condition.
Dr. Edward Bach observed that:
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Your
mental make-up and overall attitude towards life are equally important as
your symptoms of diseases or ill-health conditions. In fact, the they are closely linked.
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Although
invisible through naked eyes, our behavioral
negativities OR emotional imbalances are real and we can
perceive their effects on our lives in the form of pains
or pleasures associated with them.
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It's not
that person's fault if he or she is emotionally
imbalanced. Their innate nature and existing hostile circumstances are
equally responsible.
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Emotional imbalance is not a sign of weakness.
"Emotional imbalance" at times is natural.
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For
most of the people, it
is the fear, shame, and embarrassment that often prevent
them from seeking help for their emotional imbalances. Most of the people get surprised to learn that other family members had dealt either once or more times in their life with the same problem that they are facing
right now!
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Homoeopathy also works on a principle of complete personality rather
than the physical body. The state of mind, emotions and body altogether
are taken into consideration, while determining the line of homeo-treatment. Naturally Dr. Bach concentrated his studies in homeopathy. His goal was to determine, how the
innate nature of a person and his body could be co-related with each other. He roughly classified all
personalities into seven basic types, based on their way of reacting to
particular life situation. He found that following are the
basic negative emotions, which are principally responsible to
bring about the emotional imbalance.
Those basic negative emotions are:
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Fear
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Uncertainty
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Insufficient interest in present situation
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Over-sensitiveness towards ourselves or surroundings
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Hopelessness or depression
(Melancholy)
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Despondency and despair
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Over-concern for others.
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He then co-related those negative emotions with the intestinal flora
(fluid) or bacterial bowel lining of that particular category
of person. He established that each type of negative emotion represents its specific intestinal flora.
Dr. Bach developed seven vaccines from the bacteria of those intestinal fluids and secretions (flora) of
that patients. He administered the vaccines successfully as a homeopathic
medicine -in the same way as other antibiotic vaccines were used- to the different type of personalities,
those were categorized broadly on the basis of their prominent negative emotion
-as described above. He found
that the bacteriological vaccines that were corresponded to
either of the specific negative emotions worked well on the
people that were classified merely on the basis of their
prominent negative emotions irrespective of the
varied ailments or ill-health conditions that they were
carrying inside.
He then published a paper on the role of bacteria in chronic diseases and the relation between Vaccination and
Homeopathy. That paper was highly applauded. Later he prepared seven nosodes,
("Nosode" is a Greek word that implies a sort of antibiotic homoeopathic medicines) working on the principles of
homeopathy and can be taken orally.
Although those nosodes were accepted widely among physicians and patients
alike, still Dr. Bach was not satisfied with this evolution, as the scale for prescribing
them (-nosodes) was only the
body symptoms of patients, rather than their mental make-up.
However nosodes were certainly the first step towards consideration of emotions during
treatment.
After successful application of nosodes, Dr. Bach became fascinated with the approach of homeopathy wherein mental status of the patient forms an integral part of diagnosis and treatment. He was surprised to find
that homeo-remedies were affecting the mind directly while curing the body. He
confirmed that his nosodes were also invented on the same lines wherein special attention was paid to emotions. He re-structured his invention
again within the framework of homeopathy, still he realized that their scope is limited in homeopathy. Apart, those nosodes were prepared from bacteria evolved from the intestine of
patients, which disgusted him. According to Dr. Bach, it was
indeed not a "normal" method of
deriving the medicine.
Although Dr. Edward Bach was quite impressed by the principles of homeopathy wherein consideration of
human emotions forms a prominent role in determining the line of treatment,
still he was searching for a more simple solution that could be finely tuned to
the innate nature of a person. For further research in that particular direction, he abandoned his flourishing practice and roamed for 6 years in ravines and jungles of Mount Vervain.
He was pretty sure that, there must be a natural, pure yet simple healing
modality from nature
itself that would have a similar healing effect. He was searching for such a simple system of healing wherein remedies should be derived from the natural herbs, bushes and flowers. He
studied the plant and animal's kingdom minutely. He found that the plants are very much alive. They have emotions and speak their own language of silence.
Finally he decided to
use the power of selective wild flowers in the homoeopathic way.
Bach
Flower Therapy - Brief History and Overview. Continue to Part
- II
