Bach Foundation International Register
The Bach Centre
Mount Vernon
Bakers Lane
Sotwell
Oxon OX10 0PZ
England
www.bachcentre.com
Telephone +44 (0)1491 834678
Fax +44 (0)1491 825022
Review of the Code of Practice
We are about to undertake a thorough overhaul of the Code of Practice. There are a number of reasons for this, not least our desire to consider including a section on working with animals and to have a clearer complaints procedure in place that we can make available to the public. This is especially important as it will help bring the Code up to the level of professionalism increasingly demanded by the public.
We also need to include in the Code information on the use of the new Bach Foundation logo and badge and of the letters ‘BFRP’, all of which were announced in the last Bulletin.
Finally, we are concerned that some clauses in the current Code could be interpreted as being commercially biased. Our stance in education and registration has always been indifferent to commercial interests and concerned only with promoting the highest possible standards of practice. We believe the Code should clearly reflect this position so as to place the Register and all Bach Foundation Registered Practitioners beyond criticism.
The review will be very thorough. Nothing is sacred, except for the commitments set out in the preamble of the current code. Every clause will be looked at with those commitments in mind, to make sure that the Code will help our growing community of practitioners carry out the promises made to Dr Bach as effectively as possible. We want the Code to be as clear and fair and open and inclusive as we can make it.
If we are going to achieve our aim with this review we need your help. You are the people who work with the Code day by day, and you are the people who might have problems with some of the clauses that we know nothing about. Your input will be invaluable.
So – please take a few moments to look again at the Code and send us your thoughts. Thanks as usual and as ever for all your help.
Long-distance consultations
by Ingrid Lewis BFRP, UK
I know this may sound odd but I give consultations by fax. Let me tell you how this began…
My husband, small son and I lived and worked for three years with Yaka Pygmies in the northern Republic of Congo, Central Africa. During our stay we made friends with a few, mainly French, expatriates living in the area. The Bach remedies are my steady companions wherever I go, and I had them with me in the Congo and also did consultations with people I met there.
In June 1997 a civil war broke out and forced us to leave the country via neighbouring Cameroon. I left my set of remedies and Judy’s book Bach Flower Remedies Step by Stepwith a Tongan friend. I had treated her with the remedies and we hoped that she could use them to support herself and her family through those terrible times.
She has used the remedies ever since. Whenever she is in doubt about which remedies to take she sends me a fax and we determine the appropriate remedies in this way. She took the remedies throughout her pregnancy and when her baby was born here in my house in London we used them as a labour support. She had a natural birth without any forms of pain-relief.
When she came to England, we chose several books about to enable her to improve her knowledge of the remedies – the Distance Learning Programme was not available at the time. Last year she introduced the remedies to her sisters in the Tonga Islands. One of her sisters, a mother of two young children, also started working with her own set of remedies with the help of Judy’s and Stefan’s books.
Another ‘fax-client’ I have came via a different coincidence. I met her in the Congo too, and after the war she and her family moved to Cameroon. One day they passed through London on their way to attend the wedding of English friends. It became apparent that her son was behaving strangely. When I asked about this she told me that back in Cameroon she, her husband and two small children had been on their way to have a picnic one weekend when they were stopped by soldiers at a roadblock. At gunpoint they were forced to leave their car and the soldiers aggressively demanded money.
The mother took the two children in her arms and tried to cover their bodies with her own. She tried hard to stay as calm and silent as she possibly could in order not to aggravate the situation whilst her husband negotiated and pleaded with the soldiers.
All of a sudden her small son stood up, walked up to the soldier who held the gun to his father’s head and tried to reach up to take the gun away. He begged the soldiers not to hurt or kill his family. Finally, the father handed over a watch and some money and they were allowed to leave.
Shortly after the incident the little boy denied that it had ever happened and also ignored his mother completely. He was obviously angry and neglectful towards her and only wanted to be with his father. The mother felt that he resented and hated her for having taken such a passive role and thought that he wanted to punish her for ‘not having tried to protect the family’.
She could not talk to him about it since he insisted that it had never happened and that he recalled no such thing. It seemed that he suffered amnesia in order to cope with the trauma. I told her about the remedies and she accepted my offer to treat her son.
After observing him for a while and talking to him I prepared a treatment-bottle and also gave her the remedies (Star of Bethlehem, Holly, Willow, Clematis, Agrimony – and a bottle of the crisis formula for the future) to take away with her to prepare repeat mixtures. Since they only stayed a few hours with us and soon returned to Africa, there was little more I could do for this family.
A few months later I received a fax from her asking me whether the remedies that had helped her son so much could be helpful for her too. She was very pleased that her son was now well and able to speak about this experience. Back and forth went the faxes until we had determined the remedies for her. But then we had to solve the problem of getting the actual treatment bottle to her.
Since she knew my Tongan friend from living in the Congo the task was made easier. So we managed it in the following way. As my friend in the Congo has the whole set of remedies, we asked her whether she could prepare the treatment bottle for my client in Cameroon. She agreed. Now the next problem was how to send the treatment-bottle swiftly and safely from Congo to Cameroon. Fortunately this problem could also be solved. The two women send each other the new and/or empty bottles via the private plane of a local logging company, which travels weekly between the two countries.
Personal consultations are always the preferred choice, but the most important objective here is to make the remedies available where they are needed. Both women really want to learn more about this wonderful system of healing than I can provide by fax or by sending books. Since the launch of the Distance Learning Programme this has become much easier. Unfortunately the DLP will not yet benefit my client in Cameroon, as the programme is not yet available in French. We hope that it won’t be too long before it is translated and available to French speakers so that people like my client in Cameroon can learn to work with the remedies successfully on their own.
The crisis formula cream
Last issue we printed an account by Margaret Foster of a talk she gave last year. One of the questions Margaret was asked was about the cream version of the crisis formula and it’s use as an apparently ‘physical’ remedy for spots and skin conditions.
Margaret’s response was fine and correct, but she felt she could have explained more clearly, so here is an ‘official’ explanation, taken from Teach Yourself Bach Flower Remedies:
You might think that applying a cream to cuts and bruises violates the principle that the remedies only work on emotional imbalances, but in fact Dr Bach often applied remedies externally. If one of his patients had a broken leg and felt impatient to get back to work and worried over how his wife would cope, then Dr Bach might have given him Impatiens and Red Chestnut by mouth while applying the same remedies to the leg using a cold compress. He would have selected these remedies for the emotions (the impatience and anxiety) and not for the physical problem (the broken leg).
The same principle applies to all external use. If you fell downstairs you could take four drops of the crisis formula or add it to a cold compress or apply the cream version to the affected area. Cold compresses and the carrying cream do have a physical effect (the cold water helps any swelling go down and the cream is made in part from helpful natural healers such as honey) but the flower remedies in them treat the crisis of having fallen down the stairs, not the physical injuries.
Theoretically you could apply all the remedies in creams, or even make up a different cream for each of the 38. But for most purposes taking remedies by mouth is easier, and less messy.
Odds & Ends
- HealthyPages.co.uk is one of the growing number of internet listing services for complementary therapists. Unlike many of them, however, they offer a free service to both advertisers and potential clients – although you can if you want buy additional advertising space from them. If you would like your details on their site go to www.healthypages.co.uk
Welcome to…
Since the last (July 2000) issue was prepared, 65 new practitioners have joined the register:
- in Argentina, Gabriela Paz and Mariana Veracierto;
- in Austria, Birgit Schiessl;
- in Belgium, Nobuko Asanuma and Vera Van Mele;
- in Brazil, Ana Maria Fernandes Caruso, Maria Aparecida Ribeiro de Almeida, Marcia Tavfic Poggi, Silvia Gumerato and Sonia Maria Cardoso Dutra;
- in Canada, Kim O’Kelly, Daryn Hubbard and Carolyn Olive;
- in Cyprus, Martine Shelior Eyre;
- in Denmark, Anja Mai Nierich, Hanna Taunø,.Randi Vammen Petersen, Fritse Oluffa Ziggie Jensen and Ingrid Oddershede;
- in England, Stuart Guffogg, Elaine Copeland, Lindsay Bradshaw, Pamela McBride, Kara Hanson-Kyle, Mei Lee, Christine Chalklin, Jeanne-Marie Aerts, Veronica Friend, Karen Whatsize, Fiona Elliott, Susan Robdale, Susan Owen, Karen Briscombe, Françoise Gins, Elaine Townsend, Atosha Chadwick, Dorothy Jackson, Trudy Lehmann, Leila Riddell, George Hollis, Susan Baumback, Tracey Deacon, Lesley Foulkes, Mark Fletcher and Susan Argles;
- in France, Trinh Dinh Line, Brigitte Subrini, Sylvain Pecetto, Michel Esposito, Vincent Gey, Genevieve Bastard Haas and Anne-Marie Michaut-Pavot;
- in Israel, Flor Tavor;
- in Japan, Ikuko Nakano, Yumiko Tsuna, Kayoko Moriguchi, Kinuko Matsuoi and Tokie Tomizawa;
- in Mexico, Eugenia Nadurille;
- in New Zealand, Sheila Firmin, Kim Cantwell and Linda Harris;
- in Spain, Miquel Creixell Seco;
- and in the USA, Esther Sager and Christine Kuefel.
There are now 803 practitioners on the register.
Your letters
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 to us at the Bach Centre, 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.
I am a member of the teaching staff of the School of Health Care at Oxford Brookes University, and I am undertaking research into the use of complementary therapies for and by people with dementia.
We are interested in knowing about any research, especially ongoing or unpublished, which relates to the field of dementia, including problems such as agitation and sleeplessness. We are also interested in knowing about any clinical centres or practitioners who are using or offering complementary therapies to people with dementia. We want to discover how complementary therapies are being used across Europe in the field of dementia.
Anne Wiles, Senior Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University
If you have any information or contacts that could be useful to Anne you can email her at dmwiles@brookes.ac.uk or write to her c/o the Bach centre and we will pass it on.
In reply to Anne Woodhead’s letter [in the May bulletin – the letter was about dealing with a ‘nuisance’ client], in a similar situation, though not so threatening, with a Heather client, I found taking Centaury and Pine allowed me to deal with the situation quite effectively.
Jill Woods BFRP, UK
This archive material has been edited to remove some out-of-date advice and information.