Confounding factors

There are however a few instances when flower remedies should not be used, or at least only with great caution, or an alternative should be employed. The following four cameos illustrate the point.

To return to the musical analogy. Of course there are external factors that may affect a symphony orchestra's performance. Factors such as a power cut, a leaking roof, dry rot under the stage or other problems can completely undermine or devastate the structure, negating the orchestra's best efforts.

In the same way it is difficult for flower essences to do their job if external factors are strong enough to block or undermine them. Such factors might on occasion include geopathic stress, marked electromagnetic stress, chemical poisoning, nutritional deficiency and food intolerance.

Caroline was helped by Rescue Remedy, Mustard and Walnut after her husband's death. She passed through the grieving process successfully and healed her life. A year had passed since I had last seen her when she arrived in surgery distraught and 'all to pieces'. She had re-started the smoking she had managed to give up, she had put on weight and generally let herself go. She had developed headaches and her energy level was low. On checking, it appeared that she needed an unusual combination of several flower remedies for her distressed state. Because the picture appeared unusual we looked into other factors.

The problems had started just three months previously - soon after she had moved her bed. She decided to move her bed back to where it had been before - and immediately all the problems resolved. Subsequently a dowser checked the house. Along the wall where her head had been lying, was a particularly bad line of geopathic stress. Later she told me how her husband had slept with his head in that line for two years before he died. The brain tumour that killed him became apparent a mere ten weeks before he died. Geopathic stress is now known to be an important factor in depleting the power of the immune system and the self-healing power of the body.

Angela was 26, separated and lived alone. Her commuting and work hours left little time for practising proper eating habits, so she lived on snacks, chocolate and junk food. Her mother had come to stay because she was worried about her daughter. Angela had started having paranoid thoughts about the people at work being out to harm her, and she was rather frightened even in the surgery. Although she was helped to regain her balance of mind by flower essences, to a degree, they would have had little effect had she not taken vitamin supplements and started eating fresh food and a proper diet again. Within three weeks Angela was back to normal, and the planned psychiatric referral was cancelled.

Robert had tantrums and behaviour at primary school that were disruptive to the class and to his own learning. Although Holly, Vine and Willow helped him a lot, his mother found that only by keeping him off certain foods did his behaviour remain good. These excluded foods included oranges and some junk foods. Presumably citrus and food additives were the culprits.

Frances had become bossy and domineering, yet was not responding to Holly, Vine and Willow - which overlap with homeopathic Nux Vom. A few days later, she became ill with a temperature, and became quiet and clingy. On single dose of the homeopathic remedy Pulsatilla made her better within minutes, and then she slept all afternoon. The next day, she was back to the bossy state, so I gave a single dose of Nux Vom, with the same, rapid resolution of her 'out-of-balance' state as with the Pulsatilla. This time the cure lasted, and flower essences were not needed. So, on occasions, homeopathy or other treatments may be more appropriate than though flower essences.

These four stories illustrate that, although flower remedies may seem to be indicated, there may be other factors which are more important to address first. In fact changing the other factors (as with geopathic stress) may be the only change needed.