The Australian Bush Flower Essences are a totally safe, simple and extremely powerful system of healing that can help bring you to emotional, spiritual and mental harmony. Their gift of healing is based on the timeless wisdom that true healing occurs when emotional balance is restored, most physical illness being the result of emotional imbalance. Bush Essences work extremely quickly on children, as children don't have as many emotional blocks and barriers as adults do.

Flower essences are obtained by extracting the healing quality from the highest evolved part of a plant, its flowers. Ancient records show that over 3000 years ago the Egyptians collected the dew from flowers to treat emotional imbalances. The Australian Aborigines have also long used flowers to heal emotional imbalances. They would also collect the dew, or eat the whole flower, to obtain the healing vibrations from the plant. The early European settlers reported that when the local Aborigines fell ill they would treat themselves by floating waratahs in water for a number of hours then drinking the water.

The earliest written European records of flower essence usage dates back to Abbess Hildegard von Bingen in the twelfth century and Paracelsus, the famous Swiss medical professor, alchemist and herbalist, in the sixteenth century. Both prepared remedies from the dew of flowers to treat their patients' emotional problems and physical ailments. Flower essences have also been widely used in Asia, India and South America for many centuries.

During the nineteenth century attitudes towards health and healing changed, particularly in the Western world, as the body was seen more as a machine that needed fixing rather than an intricate living organism requiring love and nurture. The emotional and spiritual aspects of wellbeing were also largely cast aside. So knowledge about the healing power of flower essences faded. Even the Australian Aborigines seemed to lose some of their knowledge of the healing power of flower essences.

Then in the 1930s the English physician and homoeopath Dr Edward Bach brought flower essences back into use. His Bach flower remedies, based on English flowers, became a popular form of healing. Like other great healers such as Hippocrates, Paracelsus and Hahnemann, Bach believed that good health was the result of emotional, spiritual and mental harmony. He found that when he treated the psychological imbalances in his patients, their diseases were cured.

My family and I have been practising herbal medicine in Australia for five generations. Both my grandmother and great grandmother were among the first non-Indigenous Australians to seriously study the medicinal properties of our Australian plants. I grew up living next door to my grandmother in the bush at Terrey Hills in New South Wales. As a young boy I spent as much time as possible helping her prepare herbal extracts and tinctures as well as accompanying her on regular bushwalks where she would point out specific plants and trees and discuss with me their healing qualities. During this time I came to appreciate deeply the immense healing qualities of Australian plants.

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