Here are the answers to some of the commoner questions about the remedies. If you can't find an answer here you can always contact us for a personal reply.
The Bach flower remedies don't treat physical complaints directly. They help by treating the negative emotional states that provoke or worsen the problem in the first place. The way to select the correct remedy or remedies is always to think about the sort of person you are and about your current emotional state, and forget the physical symptoms.
The remedies come as a liquid, preserved in brandy. To take them, dilute two drops of each remedy into a 30ml dropper bottle, top up with mineral water, and take four drops four times a day. Alternatively you can put the two drops into a glass of water, and sip from that at intervals.
You might need to mix two or more remedies together to match your precise mix of emotions.
There is no difference in potency or speed of effect between taking four drops from a treatment bottle and taking neat stock remedy. If you don't dilute them the brandy in the stock bottle will taste stronger and this may give the impression that the essences are stronger. This isn't the case.
Yes, it is safe. The alcohol in the undiluted remedy can usually be ignored as the amount in a dose is so small. However, if you have any worries on this score we would always advise that you talk to your doctor or midwife.
Rescue Remedy usually works quite quickly, because people use it for emergency situations rather than deep-rooted problems. The other remedies can also work quickly, but if you are dealing with something that has been around a long time then it can take weeks or even months to see a real difference.
It's quite usual to take up to six or seven remedies together at the same time, and this is the rule of thumb maximum we suggest people work with. Dr Bach is known to have given nine remedies together on two occasions, but he was seeing thousands of people over a period of many years.
It's quite common for people to feel they need more than six or seven remedies. Some might feel they need 12, 15, 20 remedies or more. The answer to this is to think about how you feel now and treat that. If you have a lot of remedies on your list but many of them are for things you felt yesterday or last week or ten years ago, then you can leave those out. Treat your main feelings, and when the remedies have dealt with these you can move on to the issues that were in the background.
Still, 'up to six or seven' is only a guideline. If you are sure you need eight, or even nine, then that won't do you any harm.
The remedies work by flooding out negative feelings and emotions. Sometimes the emotions that are dealt with have been repressed and in order to clear them they have to be cleansed from the system. On very rare occasions this can take the form of a rash, or unexpected feelings may be stirred up. Where such things do occur there is no reason to stop taking the remedies.
The only ready-mixed remedy we recommend is the mix sold under the trade name Rescue Remedy. This mix was prepared by Dr Bach to cover the usual reactions people would have to crises and emergencies. It was intended as an emotional first-aid kit, so after the immediate crisis is over the correct thing to do is to look at the individual response rather than go on taking Rescue Remedy indefinitely.
It would be quite wrong to make up the same mixture for everyone preparing for an examination, or everyone who felt depressed or suffered from insomnia. No two people will ever react in exactly the same way and to reflect this we need to find a personal mix.
Rescue Remedy is a crisis remedy - something ready to hand when things have gone wrong. So if you have just received bad news you might take Rescue because it's more likely to be in your pocket. Then if it appeared that the shock was the outstanding emotion you might switch to Star of Bethlehem alone. You could take both right away - it wouldn't do any harm - but Rescue alone would be sufficient for the initial crisis.
An occasion where you might take both, perhaps mixed in a treatment bottle, is if you were suffering from regular panic attacks (Rescue Remedy) and could trace them back to a trauma in the past (Star of Bethlehem). There would then be clear indications for both remedies.
Generally speaking you should think of Rescue Remedy as a single remedy with its own indications, rather than as a mix of five remedies.
Some ezcemas do not respond well to any cream. If Rescue Cream is making the ezcema worse stop using the cream and instead add Rescue Remedy and Crab Apple to water and use that to clean the area a couple of times a day.
The key to selecting remedies is to ask how the person feels right now (rather than yesterday or last year) and also to consider the type of person he or she is. Then simply select the remedies that match.
For example, imagine someone who says that she is anxious about a job interview and is displaying her anxiety by becoming irritated with her family whenever they don't do things the way she would. The remedies would be Mimulus to deal with the anxiety and fear, and Beech to deal with the intolerance.
The answer is 'it depends'...
If you hear a noise and think that it might be an intruder, then that would be a known fear and you would take Mimulus, or Rock Rose if you were truly terrified. But if the fear is purely imaginary - you check the house and find nobody, but still feel afraid that 'something' is there - then that begins to be Aspen.
As for fear of the dark, that is a known fear and so indicates Mimulus. But again, part of the fear could be fear of 'something' in the dark, or of something that you cannot name happening to you while you cannot see - and again that is an Aspen fear.
In practice it may be right to take both at once, since elements of both fear can be present at the same time.
Gentian is for a mild despondency after a setback. For example, you might have applied for a job and failed to get it. You say 'I might as well give up' - but eventually, with a sigh, you fill in another application form for a different job.
Gorse is when you feel very pessimistic. Something has gone wrong and you decide to give up because there is no point trying again. To use the same example, you apply for a job and fail to get it. In a Gorse state you say 'that's it, I give up' and tear up the other application form.
Sweet Chestnut is a different thing altogether. Dr Bach listed Gentian and Gorse in his 'Uncertainty' group, because in both instances the problem is not genuine despair but rather a lack of faith. If only Gentian and Gorse were more certain of their success they would not be depressed at all. The Sweet Chestnut state comes when all avenues really are closed off.
Imagine someone who has failed to get a job. All the time he is out of work the rent remains unpaid. His wife and children are starving. He has no money to travel to an interview and his clothes are too ragged for him to get work in any case. Then the bailiffs arrive to kick them out of the house. This is absolute despair, the dark night of the soul, when all possible ways forward are cut off. Even suicide would not be a solution because it would mean abandoning his wife and children.
When you look at Sweet Chestnut like this you can see at once the clear difference between it and Gentian and Gorse.
Finally, Mustard is the remedy for when everything in life is fine but we still feel gloomy, as if there is a cloud hanging over us. To use the same example, you might have actually got the job that you really want. You should be excited, but your spirits are low. When people say 'why are you so down?' you can only shrug your shoulders.
You can put the remedies in tea, coffee, fizzy drinks etc., and in this respect they are not like homoeopathic remedies.
Putting the drops into a hot drink has the advantage of evaporating the alcohol. We sometimes recommend this method to people who for one reason or another dislike the alcohol content.
This is not true. The remedies are entirely positive and cannot under any circumstances cause the negative state to appear.
Alcohol helps stop the water from going off, so you might add alcohol if the bottle will not be kept cool - if, say, you intend to carry it about in your pocket all the time. A teaspoon of brandy - about 5mls - is enough. Other 'non-alcoholic' ways of keeping the contents fresh include keeping the bottle in a fridge, or adding a teaspoon of cider vinegar or vegetable glycerine.
When the problem that is being treated has gone. There is no need to continue taking them in case it comes back and of course no need to wean oneself off the remedies gradually, as you have to do with drugs like steroids and beta-blockers. Nor do you need to take a complete course of doses over a specific number of days, as you do with antibiotics.
The remedies do not cause side-effects or aggravations, but it may be that they are stirring up repressed feelings that need to be cleansed before complete healing can be achieved. If you feel this is the case then you can look to see if there is a need for any other remedies instead of or as well as the ones you are currently taking.
Where things are getting worse in spite of the remedies this may mean one of two things. Either the remedies have not yet had time to work or the selection was wrong.
The remedies will not cause any symptoms or problems that are not already in you and are entirely beneficient in their effects. This means that there is no need to stop taking them. Even if you are taking the wrong ones this only means that they will not improve things - they will never make them worse.The normal guideline is to try to use no more than six or seven at a time, since experience has shown that more than this number is not usually necessary if a little thought goes into the selection process. Taking more remedies than are actually needed means that the focus is lost, and the ones that are necessary will not work as well or quickly as they might otherwise have done.
However, it is not true that three remedies are always better than four, or that the ideal treatment is a single remedy: if six (or eight, or even nine) remedies really are necessary, that is how many you should take.
No. Even remedies that might appear to be direct opposites (Vervain and Wild Rose, for example, or Vine and Centaury) may occasionally be needed at once by the same person. It all depends on the personality and current emotional states of the person being treated.
If remedies are mixed into treatment bottles and taken four drops at a time in the usual way the amount of alcohol taken is very small. Nevertheless, taking even a minute quantity of alcohol may have a psychological impact on someone who has decided to give up completely. In addition there is a very powerful drug (known as Antabuse) which can cause a violent reaction in someone drinking even a tiny quantity of alcohol. For these reasons it is best in these circumstances to consult your qualified medical practitioner before taking the remedies.
When you do so you might explain the dilution process and mention that if the remedies are dropped into a hot drink most of the alcohol will evaporate, and it is of course possible to administer the remedies externally by rubbing them on the pulse points. But if in doubt, ask for advice.
No. The brandy used to preserve the remedies may be affected and may taste a little strange, but the actions of the remedies are not affected in any way.
No.
Someone suggested this to Dr Bach, and he tried it but and found that it didn't work. The simplest and most direct path was the one he recommended - in other words, selection of a few remedies according to the personality and emotional state.
Rescue Remedy is a composite remedy and contains fewer drops of each individual mother tincture than a single stock bottle. So in order to get the right amount of remedy the dose is doubled.
This is true, but the amount of remedy is not important as long as the minimum dose is taken. The minimum dose is the amount you get if you take four drops from a treatment bottle. When putting the remedies in a glass of water you are probably taking more than you need, but it gives you a margin for error. You can sip from the glass without worrying about how big the glass is or how much water is in it (see below) or how much of the water you have drunk, because even one sip from the largest glass will give you the minimum dose.
You always take two drops out of a single remedy stock bottle, whether you are putting it in your mouth or in a glass or in a treatment bottle. You always take four drops out of Rescue Remedy, again whether you are putting it in your mouth or in a glass or in a treatment bottle. And you always take four drops out of a mixed treatment bottle. Simple!
You need to contact the main world distributor.
No. We don't export remedies or run a mail order service from remedies. The Bach Centre is not involved in the commercialisation or distribution of remedies.
Look for the Bach signature on the label.
It's true that times have changed and that we have new things to be afraid of and new freedoms and responsibilities. People in Dr Bach's day did not have to fear AIDS and nuclear warfare, or worry about global warming and genetic engineering.
Does this mean that we need new remedies? We don't think it does, because the remedies don't treat the triggers for our emotions but the emotions themselves. Fear is the same now as it has always been; and so are love, understanding and kindness. We don'tbelieve that our emotions are somehow more complex than those of Shakespeare, Da Vinci or Dante.
Also, it's worth noting that many of the best things about new age spirituality are actually rebirths of old beliefs and practices. These bring us more in touch with our roots and remind us of our relationship to the world and to nature. The remedies can be seen in that context: not as something outmoded but as something eternally renewed and timeless. They put us in touch with our higher, spiritual self - and in this way give us the freedom to develop at our own pace, whatever that pace may be, in perfect freedom from our ego's greed for immediate enlightenment.
Dr Bach made his system simple and easy to understand. He wanted people from all walks of life to use by as a way of healing themselves. When a practitioner uses the basic consultation technique for selecting remedies - which amounts to listening to what the client has to say - this is something that everyone can understand. Once the client sees that the remedies are chosen on the basis of how he feels and the sort of person he is, then he can go on treating himself in the future.
When dowsing, kinesiology or any other mechanical or purely intuitive selection method is used this introduces a barrier. Most people do not know how to dowse or muscle-test, so they have to go back to the practitioner every time they want to select a remedy. And if the dowsing etc. works it will go straight to the heart of the problem before the client is necessarily ready to go that far. This means that self-knowledge, which is one of the aims of treatment with the remedies, is never attained properly. Treatment should go at the client's speed, not the practitioner's, and this is why all practitioners registered with the Dr Edward Bach Foundation have signed a Code of Practice which commits them to only selecting remedies using the classic interview technique that Dr Bach preferred.
Dr Bach wanted his work to be kept simple so that everyone could use it. We believe the 38 remedies he found are enough when used in combination to treat every conceivable range of human emotions. Before he died he warned that attempts would be made to change his work and make it more complicated, and his assistants promised always to uphold the simplicity and purity of his methods. The same promise was made in turn by the current curators of the Centre who are proud to continue this work.
A useful analogy is with the world of colour. There are only three basic colours (red, blue yellow), yet all kinds and variations can be produced when they are used in combination. In the same way there are 38 basic states of mind. Combining them gives hundreds of millions of variations.
There haven't been any full clinical trials on the actions of the remedies. There was a study done in California as part of a doctoral thesis, but the methodology followed was questionable both in scientific terms and in terms of the assumptions made about the remedies, so we would not produce this study as 'evidence' even though it claimed to show that the remedies work. And there have been other, small-scale studies in different parts of the world, but again nothing that would convince a determined sceptic.
The Bach Centre has never set up experiments, and we don't document the help we give to people. When Dr Bach entrusted his work to Nora and Victor, and in so doing set up the Bach Centre, he instructed them to keep their lives simple and their work with the remedies simple as well. We don't see it as our role to 'prove' that the remedies work - instead we simply demonstrate how to use them and let people prove the effect on themselves.
Dr Bach had cancer, but in fact died of exhaustion rather than because of the disease itself. Because he was only 50 when he died people have sometimes asked why he wasn't able to cure himself. What this question ignores is the fact that in 1917 he was given just 3 months to live. The truth is that he was curing himself, every day, for nineteen years - all the time it took for him to complete his work.
There are two reasons: a) we don't know a great deal, because Dr Bach didn't leave many personal papers and Nora Weeks never talked about Dr Bach's personal life precisely because it was personal and b) his personal life had nothing to do with the remedies, and that's always been our main concern.
For the record, though, Dr Bach was married twice. His first wife died. He had a daughter by his second wife, but the marriage failed some time before he left London in 1930.
There are parallels between Bach's beliefs and those of Steiner. But as far as we know they never met.
Absolutely not! Dr Bach was no more (and no less) divine than the rest of us. He was human, with human faults (a workaholic, a failed marriage, short tempered sometimes) and human qualities (courage, persistence, selflessness). He was a great teacher and found a precious gift that he shared with others, but that doesn't make him more than human. We tend to think that 'just human' is more than enough!
This idea seems to come from a WHO report that mentioned the Bach remedies, along with other forms of complementary medicine, as examples of the kind of complementary techniques that were being used around the world. It seems that somebody misread this passing renfernece as being an official statement of approval. This mistaken belief ended up being put in a book. From there, other authors have quoted the same statement to the point where the idea is quite wide spread, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries.
As far as we know there is no truth in this statement. As far as we know the World Health Organisation doesn't approve or licence any treatments, so the question should not even arise.
Thre is an introductory distance learning course that is equivalent to the normal taught level 1 course.
By law the stock bottles have to carry a use-by date. The five year period relates to the shelf life of brandy stored in a rubber-topped bottle. The remedies themselves will keep their properties indefinitely (although the brandy may begin to taste a little strange after the five year period).
The sun method involves floating flowerheads in a clear glass bowl filled with natural spring water. This is left in bright sunlight for three hours, then the flowerheads are removed and the energised water is mixed half and half with brandy.
The boiling method involves putting flowering twigs into a pan of spring water and boiling them for half an hour. The pan is then left to cool, the plant matter removed, and again the water is mixed half and half with brandy.
In both cases the resulting mix is known as mother tincture. This is diluted at the rate of two drops per 30mls of brandy to make the stock bottles sold in the shops.
We are in a village called Sotwell, just outside a town called Wallingford, in the county of Oxfordshire (Oxon for short - don't ask us why!). If you are driving from London, take the M4 west out of London and turn off at the junction to Henley on Thames. Follow the road into Henley, turning right at the traffic lights in the town and onto the road to Wallingford. Keep on this road all the way into and then through Wallingford. On the other side of Wallingford is a roundabout; go straight on towards Didcot but then take the next turn on the left (signed to Brightwell-cum-Sotwell). Follow the road around to the right. When you come to a fork in the road take the right-hand fork, again follow the road around to the right and you will see us right in front of you.
If you are coming by train, go from Paddington in London to Didcot Parkway station, and from there take a taxi to us in Sotwell.
For more information on visiting the Bach Centre, go here.
The Foundation: Education and Registration // The Trust: Preservation and Donation
