Issue 50 - July/August 2003

The Bach Centre

Mount Vernon

Sotwell

Oxon

OX10 0PZ

England

Tel: 01491 834678

Fax: 01491 825022

www.bachcentre.com

Every so often somebody has the idea of bottling combinations of remedies for specific everyday situations. After all, one of the biggest problems that people face when they come to the system of 38 flower remedies is knowing what each one is for. Having a set formula for people taking exams, another for bereavement and so on, would make taking the remedies – and selling them! – much easier. After all, say the marketing men, Rescue™ Remedy is successful, and that’s a combination, so why not make up some more?

The latest attempt to do this is a range of pre-mixed remedies that has been produced for sale in a well-known UK retailer. The recipes include:

• "Courage": Honeysuckle, Cherry Plum, Mimulus, Red Chestnut, Rock Rose, Aspen, Agrimony
• "Direction": Scleranthus, Wild Oat, Cerato, Walnut, Mimulus, Wild Rose
• "Focus": Larch, Elm, White Chestnut, Hornbeam, Gentian, Clematis
• "Letting Go": Holly, Willow, Vine, Beech, Chicory, Water Violet
• "Optimism": Gorse, Gentian, Mustard, Sweet Chestnut, Cherry Plum, Heather

At first sight these combinations might seem plausible. It’s easy to see how somebody who lacked courage might need Mimulus and Rock Rose and Aspen, and Agrimony could indeed apply if the kind of courage lacking was the courage to face up to the dark side of life. But what about Honeysuckle? It can’t be courage to face the past because a Honeysuckle person is in the past already - that’s the whole of her problem. Courage to face the present, then? Maybe – but if so why not include Clematis as well, in case refuge was being sought in the future?

This question points to the first major problem with creating pre-mixed combinations: that remedies somebody needs may not be present. Look at the indications for the "Letting Go" formula. These include resentment, intolerance, co-dependence, neediness, unhappiness, relationship problems, attention-seeking, blaming, indifference, lack of caring, distancing, controlling and an inability to change. There is no Walnut in the formula (co-dependence and inability to change could both indicate this); there is no Impatiens (an Impatiens state can be described as indifference and as intolerance), there is no Heather (neediness, attention-seeking), and as for ‘unhappiness’ and ‘relationship problems’ – they could be rooted in any of the 38.

The "Optimism" formula contains, predictably enough, Gentian, Gorse, Mustard and Sweet Chestnut, and so falls into the classic mistake of thinking that at least one of these must be needed by anybody who feels despondency or despair. A quick look at the other remedies that Dr Bach put into the ‘Despondency or Despair’ category should be enough to point out the error.

So the first problem is that a formula may miss out the essential remedies that one particular purchaser needs. The second is that another person might find way too many remedies in the bottle. We know from experience that giving people too many remedies tends to slow down the work of the ones they actually need. That’s why we take so much trouble as practitioners to select exactly the right remedies. Somebody who only needs Mimulus will receive little benefit from a "Courage" mix that includes six other remedies. The Mimulus will have to work hard to be heard above the cacophony of mixed messages in that bottle.

And of course, if the recipe doesn’t work people might blame the ingredients rather than the chef!

The formulaic approach bases itself on Rescue™ Remedy without understanding what Rescue™ Remedy is for: an emotional first-aid kit, something ready-to-hand that can be used in a crisis when there is no time to make a proper selection. As soon as there is time – as soon as the immediate crisis is over – the idea is to put away the Rescue and look for the things we actually need. When we do this we find that no group of people need exactly the same mix, and that the most effective help is always to select remedies for the individual rather than generalising.

We can’t pile people together and treat them as if they were all the same. It may make marketing more difficult, but it’s the truth.

One of the most common requests from new practitioners is for back issues of the Bach Foundation Practitioner Bulletin. Unfortunately we only have a limited number of each issue printed, so it is often not possible to provide back issues.

To resolve the problem, we are going to put each new issue of the international bulletin onto our web site. You will be able to see the latest bulletin at least two weeks before the printed version is sent out.

The address to go to is:

Over the next few months we will add to the site any back issues that we have as computer files, so that this will build into a useful library that you can access and print off to help you with your work.

If you have visited the Bach Foundation’s online list of practitioners recently (www.bachcentre.com/found/rp_list.htm) you may have noticed that all the email addresses listed there include the words ‘KILLSPAM’ in capital letters. Those of you who recently received a registration renewal reminder might have noticed the same thing on your renewal forms.

What we have done is add ‘KILLSPAM’ to each email address in our database, so that these words will automatically be included in any updates to the web site. This should help to defeat the various email address robots that strip email addresses from web sites like ours and use them to send unwanted and offensive emails (known as ‘spam’) advertising unwanted and sometimes offensive services.

All you need to do to use an email address is delete the word ‘KILLSPAM’. So if an email address is listed as ‘somebody@KILLSPAMsomewhere.com’, the actual address to use is ‘somebody@somewhere.com’. Editing like this is easy for humans to do, but defeats robots!

We want you to use this bulletin to keep in touch with each other. If anything wonderful, funny, interesting or just plain typical has happened to you in your work with the remedies, or if there are any questions that have been nagging away at you, or if you simply want to say hello, please write and tell us.

Send your contribution to the Foundation, marking your letter clearly as being ‘FOR PUBLICATION’.

We can’t promise to print every letter in the bulletin, but even if we don’t use your contribution we always love to hear from you.

In reply to Lynn's article ("A Case for Supervision?" in the May bulletin – Ed.), I have an annual classroom observation by my local adult college, which is both helpful and useful in an educational environment. But I think the most valuable thing of all for BFRP's is to compare notes and share experiences with each other.

A practitioner support group in my area did not materialise due to busy lives, but I do think we should all feel comfortable with occasionally making and receiving contact from any BFRP. This is especially important for those who are geographically isolated. From a practical point of view, perhaps active sharing, rather than supervision, is the way to go?

- Jill Woods BFRP, UK

I am disturbed by the account from an anonymous practitioner on the subject of potential suicide ("Confidentiality" in the May bulletin – Ed.). As one who has spent many years in the Samaritans, I know that the subject has to be handled with the utmost tact and discretion.

Why then did the writer feel she needed to contact the GP? One cannot force a person not to take their own life, one cannot prevent a person taking their own life, but one can work with a person, go into their feelings and reasons and then, only then, can one stand a chance of persuading the person not to take the final step.

Of all disciplines, surely Bach is the one that best teaches us to work with feelings and reasons. The average GP is not trained in deciding suicide risk, and the risk of involving one is to risk having the person committed to hospital.

I am not aware of any legal reasons for doing what your anonymous correspondent felt obliged to do, and it could have caused untold harm. A responsible person, in this case the parent, had been involved, and the matter should have rested there.

- Les Bremner BFRP, UK

Since the last (June 2003) issue was prepared, 57 new practitioners have joined the register:

• in Australia, Sharon Leigh, Ian Jaeschke, Lynden Boehm, Diana Tollis, Brenda Simpson, Karyn Provis and Aíne Greene;
• in Belgium, Alison McDonagh;
• in Brazil, Cecilia Sampaio Trinxet, Angela Cristina Cordeiro de Abuquerque, Gracia Valéria Vieira de Lima, Salete Ribeiro de Almeida Silveira, Cibele Bizarro Costa and Mariza Helena Ribeiro Facci Ruiz;
• in Canada, Carole Huston, Stacey McFarlane, Susan Poluyko and Linda Rankin;
• in Denmark, Birthe Witt;
• in England, Jenni Gordon, Bridget Macklin, Sandra Scott Palmer, Cynthia Griffiths, Sue Owen, Carole West and Lyn Danbrook;
• in France, Marianne Marcuse, Pascale Maasdam, Genevieve Enggasser, Jean-Francois Mazouaud, Riou, Veronique Duthoit and Soraya Villain;
• in Ireland, Caroline Kenny, Lorraine Sheridan O'Boyle and Mary Queeney;
• in Israel, Susana Krimerman;
• in Italy, Elisabetta Simeone;
• in Japan, Hideaki Ryu, Junko Ishida, Mika Honda, Valéria Tanaka, Mami Kubota, Ayako Taketani and Yoko Sekino;
• in New Zealand, Diane Chaney;
• in Spain, Ana Isabel Muro Campo, Elena Correa Gonzalez, Olga Fargas Obiols, Nerea Domenech Rodriguez, Maria Asuncion Berbegal Romeo, Manuel Fernandez Santoyo, Antonio Javier Aguilar Laguna, Maria Carmen Lozano Casado and Montserrat Masdeu Bonet;
• and in the U.S.A., Patricia Mattera and Julie McKay.

There are now 1,315 practitioners on the register.