What are Bushflower Essences

OMG I’m writing a post about something that I know nothing about!  Hang on, isn’t that how every good piece of scientific enquiry starts out…….

Anyway

While browsing my friendly organic goods online shop I spotted this and just had to try it.

After all it says ‘calm & clear’  which is soooooo not me (I can’t see anything clearly unless I have my glasses on and I’ve seen calmer bull + red flag combos) and it also says “Body Love” which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  But they are just elements of this skin care brand and while I can attest to this product being very nice, beautifully aromatic and ‘quality’ in terms of presentation and in-use experience that isn’t the part I wanted to focus on.

What really got me interested was this thing about Australian Bush Flowers and their essences.

What are they?

Well according to the website founder and science bloke  Ian White says ‘The Bush Essences are a system of healing that anyone can use for themselves or prescribe for others. Although Flower Remedies have been used by many cultures for thousands of years, the Australian Bush Flower Essences meet the great need for remedies that help people address the issues of the 21st century – sexuality, communication skills and spirituality to name but a few”

I would summarise that by saying they have the power to make you shout out  ‘Oh My God yes please’ during moments of cardinal pleasure’.  Do I really want that on my face?

Ok so thousands of years of evolution and bush craft is worth more than that so I had a bit more of a dig around.

Everyone knows that modern medicine originated in nature by combining different plant, animal and mineral materials into biologically active poultices, tinctures, suspensions, solutions and powders.  As I suspected Bushflower essence ‘medicine’ captures the ‘essence’ or essential heart of each wild crafted native and extracts it into a potent biological form.  As I didn’t suspect this process is bound up in spiritual ritual and ceremony.

I am often talking on here about how context matters and often say things like:

“The devil is in the detail”

“The dose makes the poison”

“Safe if used as directed”

“The best way to test a product is to use it”

“The packaging choice matters”

To get my point across.

When I say all of these things I am trying to bring cosmetic chemistry back down to earth and wrap it up into a context that makes sense – a chemical becomes an ingredient, an ingredient combines with others to be a recipe, a recipe when packaged becomes a product and a product when that pack is printed and marketed is a brand etc etc.

So what is the relevance between this and bush flower essences?

Well, in the little bit of reading I’ve done on Bush Flower Essences it seems to me that the magic in these botanicals is all to do with the context in which it is encountered.  In this branch of natural medicine the relationship between the medicine and patient really matters as the medicine (or cosmetic active) is ‘talking’ to the patient (or product users) soul.   This sort of thing can feel a bit weird for those used to our modern  ‘well does it work or not’ black or white mentality but the more I read and the more I delve into the world of the soul the more this sort of approach resonates.

So what are Bush Flower Essences again?

They represent the heart and soul of each native botanical and that heart and soul have a myriad of health benefits if applied in the right setting. The right setting includes the constitution of the product user and considers their physical, psychological and spiritual reality.  Once that relationship is right these essences resonate to their full potential and deliver the many benefits that Bush Flower Essence practitioners talk about.  Get it wrong and all you have is a nice smell and an intriguing story.

Interesting.  Very interesting……

For more info you can check out their website here: http://ausflowers.com.au/