Choosing intuitively

Here we shall look at four ways of choosing flower essences intuitively: scanning, dowsing, kinesiology and flower cards. The first relies on picking up subtle hints from your thoughts; the next two give precise visible indications. One more advanced technique, Baihui diagnosis, is described in Australian Flower Essences for the 21st Century.

Scanning

Scanning is the simplest method of intuitive diagnosis. It involves just quickly reading through a list of essences and picking the first ones that spring to mind or catch your attention. It is surprising how often this approach yields accurate results when the remedy descriptions are checked by the person to whom they apply.

Sometimes reading the names of the essences is sufficient, though, more often, scanning the descriptions yields results. Your abilities in diagnosis and remedy choice by scanning depend very much on natural flair, experience, and how 'tuned in' (attuned) you are at the time.

We all learn in different ways from preference: some of us are 'auditory' learners - we convert input into words - some of us are 'visual' learners - we respond well to pictures and convert input into mental pictures or diagrams - whilst some of us prefer 'kinaesthetic' input - we are hands-on learners.

For instance, if your are learning car maintenance, auditory learners will enjoy the lecture and visualise the diagrams in the manual, but before either has finished the kinaesthetics will have stripped down the engine and put it back together again - and working better than before! Society, for better or worse, over the years has filled the top echelons of the Establishment with articulate auditory and visual learners, who tend to perpetuate their own systems - so that school achievement and exams often seem to prize and cultivate these talents more than intuitive kinaesthetics. (This perhaps explains why a number of teenage boys drop out and drift for a while, being good at kinaesthetics, but unable to jump the hurdles set by the auditory and visual dominated examination system. However, things are changing...)

Many people are far more intuitive than they realise. Many women, teenagers and children, somewhat fewer men, can 'feel' flower essences. By either just looking at an open Bach set, or by slowly running your hand half an inch above the bottles (parallel to them), many people pick up a sensation or a knowing. Sensations felt, either in the fingers, or the palm, over specific essences vary from nothing, to a tingle, to a slight breeze or draft, to warmth or cool, to just stopping, or even to the sensation of an electric shock for the very sensitive. When you read about essences chosen in this way, it can be fascinating! We always choose first (unless we have a stronger intention), for our default level - which is "Please balance me, now" or "please balance me for the most important outstanding issue". So sometimes choosing then holding the bottles will bring about a resolution of a stuck energy state and consequent frame of mind. Then, and only then, can you choose for 'Life's Path', or personality issues, or for 'my relationship with so-and-so' - and the answers can be fascinating!

It took me years to realise the above - because, although I've used flower essences for a dozen years or more, I still cannot 'sense' an energy field around them in the way I've just described.

If only Jane had helped me... Jane came to me, a square peg in a round hole at work. She was unhappy and frustrated in her job, which rubbed off on colleagues. I diagnosed Holly, Vine and Willow for her (strong-willed, chip on shoulder, less than loving...) but did not tell her. Instead she borrowed a set, and took just one single essence. She chose Wild Oat, for life's path, and took it just once only, lay awake all night thinking about life and issues, and sorted them out. Within two weeks she had found a new job, and has now blossomed in her career. How did she choose Wild Oat, I asked a couple of years later, when she told me how powerfully it had changed her life? "Oh, I just ran my hand over the box, and it was the only one that gave me a tingle!" she said. If only I'd known that sooner, it would have saved me a lot of effort! So her choice was for the deep issue of "Where am I going in life?" whilst I could only see the surface emotional issues - and the three I had chosen would not have achieved the same effect for Jane.