Written by Pacific Essences facilitator Maryanne Campeau
He lay motionless and looked dead.
The room reeked of illness and strong, stale urine.
This was the second beaver brought into care in just over a month at the wildlife rehabilitation centre where I volunteered. He was in critical condition. It seems he ingested a fair bit of salt water and his kidneys were failing. The staff had already started him on homeopathic and primary care protocols. Even so, things weren’t optimistic.
My job was to do an Essence reading, then assess for further homeopathic remedies. Hematite and Tourmaline Gem Essences were indicated. Made sense. Hematite supports the Kidney meridian, Spleen Chakra and assists meridian flow while transforming negative energy. Tourmaline is a great energetic balancer working with all major chakras and meridians, as well as the Governing Vessel in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
It was clear that stabilizing this beaver was the priority. Tourmaline or Whale are my first choices to do so from an Essence perspective. I misted the room with Balancer®; along with Heart Spirit, these Combination Essences are valuable for clearing space of heavy discordant energy.
The beaver’s Essences and homeopathic remedies were repeated several times. Later, he seemed perkier and was put into a tub for a swim. He was more alert and mildly engaged with his surroundings. He growled at us. That’s a good sign.
Two days later, when I next checked in, he had been moved to the aquatics pen; evidence of his continued improvement. It has a spacious den box. This leads into a larger room with a circulating water pool. Boughs and branches had been arranged in the pen to make things more natural and homey for this woody lodge dweller. The resinous fragrance of chewed tree trunks and scattered wood chips confirmed that he was eating.
The second reading called for Gem Essences again. Rose Quartz (Heart Protector), Emerald (Heart), Opal (Spleen, Kidney) and Sapphire (Conception Vessel). Notably, several of these Essences are recommended for use in the bath. Specifically Opal, Emerald and his previous Tourmaline. Perfect for a water-loving mammal.
Any Essence can be added to the bath, and this is one of my favourite ways to integrate Essences into my day. I wondered, could we add the Essences to the circulating pool? Sure. The gentle agitation of the water would continuously activate them.
As I watched him swim and submerge I thought, Emeralds, Sapphires, Rose Quartz and Opals, could you have picked a more beautiful array of jewels? I imagined the pool bottom covered with these stunning gems. Rich and healing blues, greens, pinks and radiant Fire Opals. An undulating beaver breaking the image focus within my mind’s eye. The Essences lack the physical dimension of these precious gemstones but their vibrational characteristics would create a resonant treasure rich with healing for our recovering rodent.
One of the rehabilitation staff asked how Beaver’s reading went. I still had the picture of a pool full of gems in my head. “He has good taste,” I said.
_________________________
Note: A version of this article was previously published in Pacific Essences’ newsletter in 2013. Beaver photos and case story used with permission (Photo credit: Christina Carrières / BC SPCA Wild ARC)
]]>2024 is the Year of the Green Wood Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, and March 21 is the beginning of the season of the Wood element in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This confluence feels like a great time to talk about Wood and how imbalances in this element can affect us mentally, physically and emotionally.
The Wood element is about purpose and potential. It’s about beginning as a seed and becoming whatever possibility is contained within that particular seed. The acorn becomes an Oak tree. The Maple key becomes a Maple tree. And while each tree is living its journey, it is not looking around and seeing what all the other plants are doing and comparing itself to them. It simply moves forward to its fullest expression.
When adverse conditions occur, the tree either gives up and dies, or it gathers its resources and sends energy deep into its roots. It goes dormant, while perhaps looking fairly disheveled and unrecognizable above ground, waiting for life-supporting conditions to once again emerge and thrive. If it runs into another tree, it often changes direction. It doesn't just force its way into the space of the other tree. While Wood is not as fluidly flexible as Water, it does demonstrate the gift of ‘adaptation’. I remember being on the French island of Saint Pierre off the coast of Newfoundland and seeing all the trees that had been made into bonsai by the weather sweeping in from the Atlantic Ocean. They were the same trees as those growing elsewhere in the country, but presented a different expression as they adapted to their local environmental conditions.
This ability to adapt is one of the gifts of the Wood element. Driven by the desire for fulfillment, the Wood element stays focused on its purpose and moves in the direction that is easy.
The meridians, or energy pathways, in the Wood element are Liver and Gall Bladder. Liver is like the general who has the vision to see where we are going and where we want to go, and Gall Bladder is the decision-maker who directs the army toward the goal Liver has set.
The sense organs associated with the Wood element are the eyes, granting us our ability to see and to plan where we want to go.
The colour associated with the Wood element is green. We often use this information in TCM diagnostics by observing if there is any hint of green in the face of the person we are treating. This colour can appear around the eyes or the mouth if the patient is struggling with a Wood imbalance. It might also be useful to remember the phrase ‘green with envy,’ which can be a commonplace symptom for a Wood element imbalance. Envy can be the reactive emotion we experience when we ourselves are unfulfilled. In this situation, when we look around it might appear as if everyone else is happy and doing what they want to do, while we are struggling to find or to express our heart song.
The sound associated with the Wood element is shouting – big loud voices complaining about the way of the world instead of getting on with ‘being in the world’ at the highest possible vibration they can express on their own journey. The opposite of shouting can also be a symptom of Wood imbalance. This sound is very controlled and controlling, and there is a sense that if we get in the way of this person they might explode.
The season associated with Wood is Spring, the time of the year when Mother Earth wakes up and begins to express her bounty in the form of plants growing and manifesting their potential. This is a time of rebirth and promise.
When Wood becomes imbalanced in our Body/Mind we might experience some of the following symptoms:
Physical – Tight and tense muscles, headaches, symptoms of liver or gall bladder dis-ease, vision problems
Emotional – Frustration leading to anger and possibly depression when everything seems insurmountable
Mental – Addictive patterns, feeling like a victim, poor judgement, tendencies to be wishy-washy and undirected
Individuals with a healthy Wood element are charismatic and benevolent and derive profound happiness and contentment from knowing their purpose and constantly striving to fulfill it. They are happy wanderers on the Earth plane, where they exude harmony and balance. They are independent of the opinions and noise of the cultural conditioning which surrounds them and with gentle determination focus on what makes them happy.
I love this passage from an ancient Chinese text by Hung-Chih, which is quoted in Five Spirits by Lorie Eve Dechar:
“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere.
The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation.
The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water.
The clouds part and the mountain appears…
The six sense doors are not veiled, the highways in all directions have no footprints.
Always arriving everywhere without being confused, gentle without hesitation, the perfected person knows where to go.”
*Note: The ‘Way’ refers to the way of the Tao
The Green Wood Dragon year is the perfect time to pay attention to your Wood element. In Chinese mythology dragons are powerful helpers to manifest your hopes and dreams and goals. In particular, the Green Wood Dragon helps us to connect with Nature and to embrace the wisdom which she expresses, and then to choose to embody this wisdom within ourselves and our lives.
]]>Have you ever tried to explain the benefits of Essences to someone only for them to ask, ‘How come they don’t smell like flowers?’
That’s a clue that they are confusing Essences with essential oils, which is a pretty common misunderstanding.
Here is one way to explain the difference.
Since most people have at least a rudimentary understanding that plants have various qualities, be it culinary, medicinal, aesthetic or utilitarian in some way, start with herbal medicine.
Whether it’s in the form of a tea, tincture, capsule or poultice, the herb’s use is based on the physical plant and its particular biology and biochemistry.
Explaining that aromatherapy is a specialized branch of herbal medicine helps to distinguish its difference from Essences.
A plant’s fragrance depends on the physical presence of volatile/essential oils. These essential oils are fundamental to the therapeutics of aromatherapy.
Essences, in contrast, are non-physical. They are the energy-based expression of the flower.*
Whether one best understands an Essence as an energy body, electromagnetic field, bio-field, or the chi or aura of the flower, they all refer to this inherent energetic fingerprint of the plant.
Since Essences are non-physically-oriented, by their very nature they do not have fragrance.
That is the key difference between essential oils and Essences. One is a medicinal system reliant on the physical nature of the plant and the other is not.
Instead Essences are a form of Energy Medicine®.
The flower’s resonance, unrelated to its biochemical constituents, is what provides healing. If anything, as a healing modality Essences are more closely related to homeopathy and acupuncture than herbal medicine and aromatherapy.
With Essences, homeopathic remedies and acupuncture there is direct communication with the subtle bodies via the meridians, chakras, fields and cellular intelligence. Then integrating with our nervous system, this vibrational message is relayed to the emotional, mental and physical bodies as needed.
Essences can help remove obstacles to healing, promote shifts in consciousness, and foster health and wellbeing. They can help close the gap between our physical, limited self and our expansive spirit self, thus helping us tap into and align with our potential and purpose.
Aromatherapy and herbal medicine have long histories regarding their benefits and are wonderful, valuable tools in our wellness toolkit. Essences belong there also.
Nature provides us with so many gifts. Her essence is, in my mind, one of her most precious.
* As well as plant-based Essences, the same holds true for sea and gem Essences.
]]>It was a three-day workshop where we explored the impact of traumatic experiences on the meridians, and how different symptom patterns might be directly related to some traumatic event in our lives. I’m not even talking about big traumas like assault and violence and war and maybe pandemics. I am talking about ordinary life experiences like death, divorce, loss of jobs, loneliness, and maybe feeling powerless in the face of daily life.
Whether it is an experience of big trauma which should never happen, or the stuff of daily life which almost all of us will experience, the reality is that it is always how we handle these events that keeps us in a state of well-being. If not digested and released, these ‘ordinary’ experiences can contribute to dis-ease in our Body/Mind or eventually cripple us.
On the second morning of the workshop, I was up at 5am making sure I was prepared for the day’s curriculum. When I checked my emails, I received a link to this song:
My heart cracked open and tears streamed down my face. And I realized that I was crying for the recent loss of my dog Baba, and maybe for all the other losses in my life. I asked myself – what are you doing teaching about healing trauma when you are clearly still in pain?
That morning we talked about the Fire element, and especially the impact of trauma on the heart meridian and the heart itself. My heart was hurting. But one of our dear teachers, psychiatrist and homeopath and floral therapist Tereza Guimares, had suggested the day before that music is a universal language that can help us to heal. Music can bridge cross-cultural differences. Like Essences, music is vibration and we can be embraced in its non-verbal energy field. So I went ‘off script’ and played the song that had cracked my heart open at 5am.
That class turned into an amazing healing experience for all 60 students and for me. After the song, ‘we were all in this together.’ There was a little more ‘seeing and being seen,’ a little more vulnerability and openness to possibility.
One huge realization for me has been that for our hearts to be healthy we need to love. It’s not just physical exercise and the right diet which keep our hearts healthy. You can do all of that but if you are not sharing love with some being – 2-legged or 4-legged or even Mother Nature herself – your heart will not be functioning at full capacity.
Love is the answer.
And now I’ll go ‘off script’ once again. Recently I was at a concert featuring a 50-voice all-female choir who sing a cappella. While the music was exquisite and multicultural and befitting the season we are in, I was also captivated by the audience. I spotted a baby with his grandfathers and father and grandmothers. His mother was in the choir. The gentleness and caring emanating from this family was palpable even though I was on the other side of the church. Both grandfathers took turns soothing this babe – rocking him, carrying him, and feeding him a bottle. And he remained calm throughout the two-hour performance. After the show ended, I went over to them and told them I was enchanted by the love that I felt them sharing. When I rejoined my friend, he said, “Wow, you look like you’re in love.” And in fact I was. I carried that feeling with me into the next day, and as I share it with you I feel it all over again.
So how can we cultivate love? Put your attention on something or someone that makes you happy and lights up your heart. It’s curious how I can at the same time feel such profound sadness that Baba’s physical being is no longer in my world, and yet so much love for him and gratitude for all the adventures we shared. The same goes for my husband Michael. Everywhere I look I see his unbounded love for me and for Mother Earth and this sacred journey with the Essences. All of these thoughts and perceptions nourish my heart.
In TCM the spirit of the heart is called Shen. Often translated as consciousness, Shen gives us the capacity for joy and love, inspiration and passion, courage and compassion and commitment. It is laughter and light, peace and allowing, comfort, ease, and enthusiasm. These are all the qualities of a healthy heart in TCM.
So how can we regain harmony in the heart? In her book Five Spirits: Alchemical Acupuncture for Psychological and Spiritual Healing, Lorie Eve Dechar says:
The Shen are Yang and like precious wild birds they seek heaven and unless they are entranced and nurtured by the Yin essences of the earth, the Shen rise up and fly off, back to the heavenly realms.
In order to maintain a suitable resting place for the Shen, the heart must remain in a state that is close to its original nature, serene, accepting and open. The light of the Shen radiates from such a tranquil heart to illuminate the lives of all those it touches. The sage’s one and only concern is maintaining the tranquility of the heart so that the luminous wild birds of the Shen will have a suitable resting place.
And again I say, love is the answer. Or as the Persian lyric poet Hafiz put it:
The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well,
As a matter of fact
I know of no better topic
For us to discuss
Until we all die!
I hope that you like the song. It is a sobering thought to think that maybe we are all in this together, and that somehow each of us can make a difference by how we choose to take care of our hearts and be in our world.
]]>
A few days ago, I went grocery shopping. Outside the store were three young boys with their parents, selling donuts to fundraise for their hockey team. I walked past, knowing that I did not need to eat a box of donuts. However, when I came back out I was enchanted by their earnest little faces - I stopped and asked how much the donuts were. With hopeful eyes, they told me that one box was $20 and two boxes were $30. So I said to them, “Well… how about I buy them and you take them home and eat them. Would that work? Would you eat them for me?” The unabashed delight on their faces was heartwarming.
Last week, one of the people in a group that I meet with every Monday brought to our attention a news article she had recently read – it told the story of a woman in San Francisco who was intent on committing suicide because her life seemed meaningless and useless. Just when this woman was going to jump in front of a train, a pink-haired stranger asked her to take a photo of her. The stranger, visiting the city for the first time, was just so excited to be there that she wanted to record it on film. Taking that picture for a stranger made her miss the train that she was going to jump in front of. What a remarkable invitation from the universe to shift her perspective.
I have been thinking a lot lately about all the moments in life when something shifted either for me or for a person I was connected to. For instance, about a year ago an old friend (who I have not seen for years) told me that because of something I said, she had chosen to marry the man she had been seeing. She thanked me for giving her this amazing life that she had shared with him for over 40 years! At the time, she was hesitant because she did not think he was spiritual enough. It turns out it has been a marriage made in heaven - this beautiful man is a plant whisperer who grows organic vegetables and has lived his dream with my friend. It doesn’t get much better than that, I think.
For some of you, this time of year might feel incredibly stressful – family commitments, so many competing expectations, and perhaps a tendency to feel that others have it better than you. The bottom line is that we never know how we might affect the journey of another person as we make our way through our own experience. In fact, we may never know the impact we have made on another’s life. With the story of the little boys, it was quite clear that what I did meant something for them. In the case of my friend who married the organic farmer, I might never have known except that she chose to share this information with me when I congratulated them on their 40th wedding anniversary.
Thinking of actions and impacts, particularly at this time of year, another source of stress can be the question, “What can I possibly gift to a person who seems to have everything?” My friend and colleague Maryanne recently told me that from the time her son was born, she has donated to charitable organizations in his name. She wanted to start his legacy early in life, and so instead of buying more toys and clothes she gave at least one gift like this for each celebration. Now that she has a grandson, with the agreement of his parents she is continuing this generous tradition for a new generation. This year, she will donate to an agency in Mexico that rescues street dogs – one of whom is now a beloved furry family member living with her grandson.
In any case, while holiday cheer escalates over the next few weeks (or maybe not) I have decided that each day I will deliberately and consciously connect with another human being – maybe a stranger, maybe someone I already know. Every night I will record in my journal what appears to have been a meaningful encounter, even though I may never know from the other person what it was for them. This intentional way of being will be my gift to myself, and maybe to others, as we navigate ‘the season of love.’
Wishing everyone health, happiness, joy, abundance, and a profound sense of well-being and purpose.
]]>I am so excited to introduce The Power of One as part of our 40th anniversary celebration.
It all began with a tide change out at Botanical Beach.
As the pull of the tide shifted, we noticed the profound silence which occurs at the precise moment that the tide starts to return to shore. So way back then – 2009 I think – we began collecting the first water that flowed over a rocky ledge into one of the tide pools at this special moment. Everyone who experienced this moment reported feeling like they were connecting with something way bigger than themselves. They experience a moment of wonder and awe at the majesty of this precious resource which covers 80% of our planet and also makes up 75–80 % of our physical bodies.
Over the years we played with this Essence – taking it ourselves and giving it to others. We all had similar experiences of feeling fully present in this moment. What does that mean? Well for me, it’s kind of like feeling that anything could be possible because every part of me – body, mind, and spirit – are in alignment to make a choice. It’s like stepping into the field of infinite possibilities. And so we named this Essence Infinite Potential.
As I shared in a newsletter earlier this year, in 2018 we were guided to make an Essence from the abundant, fragrant blooms of our rose garden. We called this Essence, capturing the energetic vibration of love made visible, the Essence of Success.
Then in 2019, we were asked to make a special Essence to coincide with the new era that was launched in Japan with the coronation of their new Emperor. This Essence was named Ibuki in Japanese, which translated means to breathe something into or inspire something. The concept is to breathe a new beginning into the world. The images associated with this Essence are bringing hope, rejuvenation, uplifting, and supporting one's direction or one's path in mission. This is A New World of Hope.
So, we had these three Essences, and I felt sure that somehow they were meant to be working together to inspire people to be who they could be, and to live a life of fulfillment.
Then COVID happened, and I offered an online workshop in Brazil and called it The Power of One. This teaching was designed to help people:
- to disengage from the madding crowd
- to discover and access new ways to tap into their own inner knowing
- to live a life of loving and caring for themselves and others
The participants in Brazil loved it, and they loved the three Essences, and they asked for a guidebook to accompany them. They felt like each of these Essences brought unique gifts to the person taking them, but that together as a commitment to oneself - like the Abundance Program - they could really empower people to pause and reflect on where they were and where they might want to be.
Today, The Power of One – complete with Essences and Playbooks – is finally here! There is one Playbook with 11 exercises for each Essence, an instruction card to direct you how to use the Essences and the exercises, and bottles of the three Essences to take twice each day while you are engaged in the program.
The accompanying guides are called ‘Playbooks’ because they are meant to be playful and fun. For each exercise, there is a blank square page when the book is opened flat. The directions for the exercise are at the top of the right-hand page. The exercise space is yours to explore – you can draw pictures, write words upside down or in circles! Just go with what feels right in the moment, with what surfaces in your mind and heart.
The idea is to open up new perspectives and new pathways in your brain, so that you don’t just keep doing the same old things and expecting different outcomes. Or worse still, not even expecting an outcome because you are so buried in the daily grind.
The renowned self-help teacher, Wayne Dyer – who started his life in the foster system and became one of America’s top motivational coaches – said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” The Power of One is an opportunity to take stock of yourself and your life with loving awareness. Then perhaps you might be inspired to make some new choices, with the gentle assistance of these powerful Essences.
]]>
For me, the five elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are visible everywhere and in all living things. The window of the five elements allows me to step back and to witness energy moving and energy manifesting. And when I am in the role of healer, it helps me to refrain from judgement and merely facilitate energy coming back into balance with acupuncture or Essences.
Imagine, for instance, if you could receive someone’s angry words as an expression of themselves and not as a description of you. Imagine if you could notice when you were overexcited and heading towards a ‘crash and burn,’ and gently be able to autocorrect with a breath, a movement, or an Essence? These are just a few of the possibilities that exist when you understand the language of the five elements.
The Fire element radiates light and warmth. Its energy provides the impetus for communication and relationship and sets up the yearning for happiness which leads to love, and can inspire agape (the highest, purest form of love). It is the seat of compassion.
An unhealthy Fire element may manifest as blood and circulatory disorders, sexual dysfunction, body heat irregularities, and a build-up of toxins in the system.
When the Fire element is healthy it is vital and intense. It is the animating force of the five elements. Without the Fire the other elements could not exist in the physical body. The emotion of Fire is joy and its sound is laughter. In the balanced Fire element there is a spontaneous bubbling up of delight. More than any of the other elements, Fire gives rise to enthusiasm – from the Greek en theos (in God) – and is the path to at-one-ment or unity with Spirit. The Fire element houses the Shen, which is the spirit of the Mind. When Fire is deficient and passion for life is lacking, depression results and Shen is not at home in the Body/Mind. There may be a blank look in the eyes and the person may have difficulty with sleep or with concentration and memory. Fire creates Earth.
The Earth element is like the fertile ground of being. It is our connection to the earth plane and to the physical body which our Spirit inhabits. When we are nurtured physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually we allow ourselves the full experience of our incarnation. The feeling which corresponds to the Earth element is sympathy or empathy – we are all ‘strangers in a strange land’ at some level. The sound of Earth is singing.
People with an unhealthy Earth element may become obsessive and preoccupied with the mental realm because they are not grounded in the physical. They may suffer from digestion problems or eating disorders.
The spirit of Earth is I, the quest for nourishment, support, and understanding in our embodiment. It is from the Earth element that Metal arises.
The Metal element is cold, rigid, and hard, but it is also the source of precious metals – the minerals and chemical elements which are vital to healthy functioning. The Metal element seeks spiritual truth and purity.
An unhealthy Metal element may manifest as breathing problems such as asthma, bronchitis, and laryngitis or as bowel problems like constipation or diarrhea. All these physical difficulties have corresponding emotional and mental challenges such as being unable to let go of the past, or of being unable to take in and assimilate new life-supporting experiences.
The sound of Metal is weeping and the emotion is grief. The spirit of the Metal element is Po – our animal soul and the realm of desires. It embodies the same challenges as the eighth house in astrology – money, sex, death, and power. The Metal element creates Water.
The Water element is cold, deep, transparent, and transporting. It is the storehouse of the vital essence and from it flows the stream of our ancestral energy. It provides the blueprint for physical embodiment – the sperm, the egg and the DNA.
An unhealthy Water element may manifest as energy problems, back pain, urogenital disorders, problems with the nervous system such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, infertility, tooth and bone disease, and lack of will power.
Water is cleansing and purifying and also persistent. There is no force in nature more powerful for wearing away hard matter like rocks. Its sound is groaning and its emotion is fear. The Water element governs the will, our will to sustain life. Its spirit is Chih which is the seat of our willpower. Water creates Wood.
The Wood element connects heaven and earth, like a tree firmly rooted in the ground with its branches rising toward heaven. Trees are strong and enduring as well as flexible and bending. The Wood element is the source of creativity and is connected to birth and renewal. It is the activator of the DNA blueprint found in the Water element.
When the Wood element is unhealthy there may be muscle and tendon problems, vision disturbances, epilepsy, and menstrual difficulties. There may also be anger, complaining and indecisiveness.
The sound of Wood is shouting and its emotion is anger. The spirit of Wood is Hun, the force of creative expression. The Chinese say the Hun is the only spirit which we carry with us from lifetime to lifetime. It is the motivating force for the optimal creative expression of the soul in each lifetime.
While unique, these five elements are interdependent and co-creative. Together, these five elements underlie all of our physicality, all of our thinking processes, and all of our emotions. When one becomes excess or deficient our whole Body/Mind is affected. When they are in harmony and functioning optimally, we are in health and well-being.
I love the framework of the five elements. I love sharing this ancient wisdom with people who have never considered the possibility that if we begin to play with energy, we can have a life of greater well-being at all levels – physical, mental and emotional.
If you are intrigued by the possibility of learning this new language, at the same time as enjoying a relaxing and rejuvenating retreat out on the West Coast of Canada, I am thrilled to announce that we will be offering our transformative 5 Elements Retreat and Energy Medicine Training again in 2024!
The Retreat will take place from May 23 – 29, and early registration opens on October 1. Learn more about the Retreat (including the beautiful accommodations, nourishing meals, and comprehensive training program) here.
This Retreat and Energy Medicine training is one of the high points of our year for Pacific Essences. Seeing people connect with the sea creatures at Botanical Beach, meet the Mother Tree, walk to the Gnarliest Tree at Avatar Grove, and seeing the eyes light up as someone learns that they too can connect with and receive messages from the Nature Spirits makes my heart sing. I am infinitely grateful that this path chose me, and this Retreat is a special way to share these gifts from nature with others.
Curious what others have experienced on this Retreat? Here are some insights from our 5 Elements Retreat alumni:
]]>
'When a child is born, either the child is going to watch the parent die, or the parent is going to watch the child die.'
These words by Stephen Levine which I heard at a Death and Dying Retreat with Ram Dass have informed my life ever since. Every relationship has a beginning and an end, and when it ends in death the helplessness of grief ensues.
Last month I had to let go of my precious dog Baba after eight years of unmitigated joy. He did not want to eat on Saturday night. We saw a vet on Sunday afternoon and on Monday he was put to sleep. This precious boy who went everywhere with me and who made my heart sing even when it was breaking with the loss of my husband Michael is no longer physically present in my life.
I am gutted. This space is empty without him. Yogi, our big fluffy tabby cat, is asking where his brother is, and I wake up every morning not knowing what to do because always first was Baba.
Baba came to us when he was about a year old from somewhere in Northern BC. From the get-go he was Michael’s dog and rarely listened to me. But he stole my heart from the very first minute. And as I threw myself into our relationship and our daily life together, I forgot Stephen’s words about impermanence even as we navigated the last two years of Michael’s life together.
Baba was so full of energy. Seeing him gallop across the fields in the park made my heart soar. I had this expression about him: ‘Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Baba!!!!!’
And then there was the digging. Our park is full of voles, which are kind of like field mice and live mostly underground. They especially make their homes around the roots of Nootka Rose bushes. Baba was like a kid in a candy shop when I let him off leash in the fields. Or maybe more like a cocaine addict? He would dig relentlessly for ages. Rarely catching anything, but when he did holding the little being tenderly in his mouth. Needless to say, the vole died anyway – probably of a heart attack.
We would get to the park and he would see one of his dog pals and look at me and say, “Oh Mum, I want to play!” So I would let him off leash, and he would run like the wind towards his dog buddy and then at the last minute veer swiftly to the right or left and find a place to begin his excavations. And when I called him, he could not hear me. And when I got close to him, he would dart off in another direction. His agility (not in the traditional sense of dog training) was Gold Medal standard in dodging me. And I just stood there and laughed, because his joy brought me joy.
Two of my trainers wanted me to use an e-collar to control him. For me that was totally out of the realm of possibility. I recognized from the beginning that Baba was a free spirit with a heart as wide as the world. In no way did I want to reign that in. So often I stood by looking like a helpless bystander while Baba pursued his heart’s desire.
Last summer we were in the park with one of Baba’s buddies and his dad, and another two-legged friend of both pups. It was right after the end of COVID, so people were beginning to gather again. There was this huge family gathering with old people and children and dogs and at least three portable tables full of food. Baba went flying across the field and snatched a loaf of bread off the table until one of the men pinned him down. When I arrived on the scene, there was my boy with this huge loaf of bread in his mouth being pinned to the ground without resistance. Of course I apologized profusely and offered to pay for the bread, but inside I was laughing and commending him for going for what he wanted.
I can feel dog owners, and especially trainers, cringing as I write these words. But if we humans had even half of the one-pointed determination that Baba had when it came to focus and attention on a goal, the world would be a better place and there would be less anxiety and depression and victim-ness among us humans. As the great poet and mystic Rumi says, ‘The soul is here for its own joy.’ Baba lived that idea to the fullest!
In any case, for the past few weeks grief has been my daily companion. A memory, a toy, his empty bowl bring tears. Then I remember Michael saying, “Tears are an expression of love,” and I find myself shifting into heartspace where all I feel is love and gratitude that this beautiful soul shared my life for nearly eight years. And again I remember Stephen Levine’s words about the impermanence of all of our relationships. And with a heart breaking with love, I write to Baba and express my gratitude for his life and all the gifts he brought to us. I discover that doing this eases the rawness and begins to nurture the joy that Baba was so adept at expressing in his daily life.
Baba was named after the great Indian saint, Neem Karoli Baba – Ram Dass’s teacher. Michael had a profound connection with Maharaji, as he was lovingly called, and talked to him daily. Maharaji’s teaching was Bhakti yoga and service. My all-time favourite book about him is Miracle of Love which contains stories about all those Westerners who trekked to India in the 60s to find enlightenment. Maharaji, like my Baba, was a bit of a trickster, showing up in the most unexpected ways and bringing unbounded love to whomever he touched. He was also a shapeshifter and sometimes was seen as the Monkey God, Hanuman, who was the perfect servant of God. And I am reminded again that our world would be a better place if we had more of these energies - Bhakti, joy, spontaneity, love.
As I share my sadness and my joy with you, I also want to share with you the Essences which support the Metal element in our Body/Mind, because the emotion of the Metal element is grief. The Metal element is all about what we value, what we hold dear, what we love. So naturally when we lose something or someone we love, there is grief and sadness. And I know for sure that all of us at some time or another are going to experience grief. That is the nature of life. I would not for a minute give up all that love and joy so that I never had to feel this pain. If some of this experience resonates with you, I invite you to explore our Metal Essences – the healing energy from these plants, flowers, sea creatures, and gems can support each of us as we move through these moments of love and loss.
]]>We visited his website and discovered that not only was this person claiming to sell our Essences, but he was also using our logo and verbatim product descriptions, including entire pages of text out of my book Energy Medicine – Healing from the Kingdoms of Nature.
Our sanctioned UK distributor reached out to this seller. He readily agreed to remove our logo and longer verbatim texts, all the while claiming that he was doing people a service by selling dosage bottles. The problem is, he is not certified by Pacific Essences® as an Energy Medicine® Practitioner – our designation for completing our training and demonstrating some in-depth knowledge of our system. From our perspective, he should not be preparing dosage bottles for people without this training. This policy is also supported by the British Flower Essence Association - see their ‘Statement on Essence Plagiarism’ here.
While we were dismayed to discover that this individual was ostensibly using our products – and certainly our name – to sell material without our consent, even more concerning to us was his failure to adequately address his customer’s concern. This is not aligned with our customer-centred practices and values.
Pacific Essences® is one of the oldest flower Essence companies in the world, and we take pride in our products and our customer service. We ship quickly, and if anyone complains about a product we take it seriously – thoroughly investigating and resolving the complaint. We care about our customers and their experience with our Essences.
As part of our commitment to customer service, we are choosing to share this information with you because we want you to always be able to access the authentic product. We do have global distributors who we work closely with to make our Essences more easily accessible in different countries. If someone is legitimately an Energy Medicine® Practitioner, they will be able to show you a certificate from us. Our legitimate global distributors of Pacific Essences® are listed on our website. All our distributors have been to Canada and taken our Energy Medicine® Practitioner training – they are as committed as we are to preserving the integrity and quality of Pacific Essences® products.
We welcome inquiries from potential distributors in other countries because we understand that shipping is expensive. However, it is much worse to pay less for shipping and not get the legitimate product at the end of the day. While we are actively working to ensure that only sanctioned Pacific Essences® products are available for purchase, we wanted to raise your awareness and give you the tools you might need to verify the authenticity and certification of your Essence supplier.
With love and blessings,
Sabina Pettitt
Founder of Pacific Essences®
M. Ed., Dr. TCM
This month I want to share more information about working with our precious Sea Essences, or as I like to call them – Gifts from the Sea.
Coral, for example, looks like a human brain. So if I were to be dealing with a patient who had just suffered a stroke, Coral would be one of the first Essences I would consider. If I were seeing a patient with heart problems, I would definitely test for Jellyfish – this is because a jellyfish has four chambers, just like the human heart, and because a jellyfish is flexible, soft and transparent. If I were seeing a patient with depression, I would pull out Dolphin because wherever I have been on the planet when I say the word Dolphin, people light up. Chiton looks very much like the cervical spine and moves infinitely slowly. It happens to be really good for neck injuries, as well as for softening really tight muscles.
Brown Kelp can have a stipe (imagine a stem or a stalk) which can be over 30 metres long and ends in the holdfast (imagine roots) which connects it to the ocean floor. Easy to see why this Essence might help us to tap into the unconscious. Sponge looks like the nephrons of our physical kidneys and provides a similar function of filtering out impurities in the organism just as our kidneys filter out waste in our body fluids.
That being said, while we can read the signatures of the Essence source and match symptoms to them, the reality is that each one of us is a unique system of energy and information. For this reason, working with Essences is never the same as taking aspirin for a headache (for instance). Essences can best be understood and appreciated through the lens of Physics rather than the lens of Chemistry, because Physics is the study of the phenomena of energy and matter.
In the early 90s a British medical doctor, Rob Jacobs, attended one of my first UK classes on Essences. Afterward, he sent me these images of his patients’ responses to some of our Sea Essences as seen through Kirlian photography. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at these fascinating images even if they may appear to be rudimentary.
Even when we are just holding an Essence, there can be a visible shift in our energy field that demonstrates more coherence and harmony in our Body/Mind. And balance, coherence, and harmony are the keys to wellbeing.
You will notice that most of these images refer to Sea Essences. When we made the very first Sea Essence on the planet in 1985, the first thing I noticed was rapid shifts in consciousness for people who took them.
Curious to learn more? Listen to the person who took the first Sea Essence here:
Accompanying those shifts in consciousness often came physical healing or some kind of ease or ‘feeling good.’ For instance, I always take Barnacle to a childbirth because inside that sharp and rigid shell is a fragile being who braves the tumultuous surf to access food in the ocean. It’s kind of how labour and delivery is - you just have to trust and to allow a force bigger than you to take over. Barnacle Essence has not only assisted many mothers to deliver their babes with greater ease, but it also helps us to connect with our anima, or female soul, as defined by Carl Jung and to heal our relationship with our female parent.
In fact, I think that another reason that the Sea Essences might be readily bioavailable for us is that most of us spend the first nine months of our lives floating in amniotic fluid – a medium which has almost identical properties to sea water. Even with dramatic shifts in consciousness which often occur when working with Sea Essences, there is also a comfortable nurturing familiarity for us when we take a Sea Essence. And feeling good is often the beginning of profound healing at every level of our Body/Mind.
Explore our full collection of 24 Sea Essences and discover their profound healing power for yourself!
]]>
Each year as we pass the summer solstice on June 21, we move into the season of the Fire element. Of all the five elements, only Fire has four meridians connected to it. One of these Fire meridians, Triple Burner, is distinct because it is connected not to one specific organ (like the Liver Meridian or Heart Meridian) but is in fact like a network of energy and information for the entire Body/Mind.
The Meridian of Balance and Harmony
Triple Burner (or sometimes called Triple Warmer) is in charge of maintaining balance and harmony. In ancient Chinese texts, the three ‘burners’ (jiaos) were depicted as three fires in the lower abdomen, solar plexus, and chest. They literally describe the physical energy required to reproduce and eliminate (the lower abdomen), to digest food and life experiences (the solar plexus), and to breathe and circulate life force via the lungs and heart (the chest).
We can see how this meridian is energetically connected to so many different organs – the heart and lungs in the chest, the liver, gall bladder, stomach and spleen in the middle, and the kidneys, bladder, and reproductive organs in the lower abdomen. Using the lens of Ayurvedic medicine, this meridian is also connected to three major chakras: the second (sex or sacral), third (solar plexus), and fourth (heart).
Whichever model you use, we can see how important it is to maintain balance and harmony among these centres. I have known at least two spiritual teachers who cultivated great compassion and had so much heart energy. However, their lower ‘fires’ (jiaos) were deficient. As a result, they experienced hypertension because the water in the lower burner was unable to control and moderate the fire in the upper burner.
Spiral Connection and Spiritual Renewal
More than just linking and maintaining balance among these three energy centres, I experience Triple Burner as a spiral connection between earth and heaven. In fact, many of the Essences that support this channel contain some aspect of the spiral in their signature. Most notable of these is Moon Snail (polinices lewisii). Its gift is to cleanse the mind and its message is:
“Let me guide you in the spiral dance,
the ever-expanding circles of life unfolding.
Let me take you into Light so that
you may appreciate the wonder of Life itself.”
Another of my favourite Triple Burner Essences is Poplar (populus tremuloides) whose gift is Innocence and whose message is:
“I offer you the ability to be moved in Spirit.
I offer you the healing energies of Spirit.
Let my ability to be moved by Spirit,
To be renewed in Spirit,
To channel Spirit be an inspiration to you.
Yield to the energy of Spirit
as it courses through your Body/Mind.
Flow with this energy and be connected to All That Is.”
Maintaining Balance During Transition
As an acupuncturist, I use many points in the Triple Burner channel to harmonize the flow of qi and regulate body temperature. Fluctuations in body temperature, in fact, are a key sign that Triple Burner is out of balance – after all, it is responsible for maintaining harmony and balance. Changes in body temperature often occur at the change of the seasons, but they may also be pronounced at other transitional points in life – starting a new career, ending a relationship, puberty, and menopause.
One of the Essences associated with the Triple Burner meridian that I use for both menopausal hot flashes and life transitions is Orange Honeysuckle. I love the energetic signature of this plant – bright orange fallopian tubes emerging from the centre of an ovary-like leaf. Indeed, this Essence alone has helped many women around the world cultivate a greater ability to deal with hot flashes, while directing that energy into productive, creative expression.
Reap the Benefits of a Healthy Triple Burner
If you want to go deeper into the importance of how this meridian keeps you healthy, you might appreciate this book by a British medical doctor and acupuncturist, Daniel Keown – The Spark in the Machine: How the Science of Acupuncture Explains the Mysteries of Western Medicine.
We also have many Essences that support a flourishing Triple Burner channel. I invite you to explore how these Essences might support you at this point in your life journey.
]]>One of the workshops I created for this trip was for the Essence of Success, a new Essence which was actually born in 2018 while I was teaching in Japan and celebrating the 35th anniversary of Pacific Essences.
The Essence of Success
I was offering practitioner training, and I learned that there was going to be a very special full moon. It was called a blood moon due to the fact that its surface would appear on fire from the impact of the sun shining on it - it would appear red instead of its usual pale yellow. It was also going to be the longest total eclipse of this century, and in fact in over 300 years! It was going to create a rebalancing of Yang (Sun) and Yin (Moon). Moreover, it promised to be a cosmic energetic shift which had the possibility of bringing each of us closer to our ultimate destiny.
I have a profound notion that each of us comes into this life with a purpose to fulfill, and the people I know who are living their purpose emanate health, vitality, and happiness. I was intrigued by the energetics of this full moon and asked our long-time Essence friend and colleague Maryanne Campeau to make an Essence from the rose garden. I asked for her help because I would still be in Japan when this potentially auspicious event occurred, and she was at my home looking after my dog Baba and cat Yogi.
An Oasis of Love
So first, let me share with you that this rose garden is an oasis of love created by my husband Michael. When we moved to our home on Vancouver Island in 2000, the land was decimated. Four and a half acres of clearcut, with two buildings which suited our purposes for operating Pacific Essences close to home. Michael was committed to restoring this tiny piece of Mother Earth, and over the next few years planted over 200 trees in the area below our home and fenced the flat upper part to create fragrant and colourful gardens of lilac, laburnum, mock orange, magnolia and other delicious manifestations of the plant kingdom. The jewel in this floral crown is the fragrant rose garden. Every single rose bush is scented, carefully chosen, cultivated, and cared for by my Beloved.
Needless to say, this sacred space emanates love.
Cellular Intelligence
Some of these rose bushes are now 22 years old, and each one has been lovingly hand-watered, nourished with fertilizer, and had black spot cut off so that the infected leaves do not fall to the ground and spread dis-ease.
When cutting off the black spot from a rose bush that appears ravaged by it, I think of the intelligence within this plant which, with care and attention, brings new healthy growth to the plant. I see it as the same intelligence which exists in every cell in our human physiology which comes ‘wired from the factory’ to participate in the whole to sustain life and well being. As conscious living beings with the ability, and indeed, the mandate to make choices, we are responsible for removing the ‘black spots’ from our lives so that each of us can fulfill our unique destiny.
But I digress. Why did I create a workshop around this Essence? Essentially because I see people struggling with their jobs, with their relationships, with their lives. And I just do not believe that life is meant to be a struggle.
Love Made Visible
I have spent the last five years reflecting on my life, and especially on my journey with Michael and this amazing work that seemingly ‘fell into our laps.’ But of course Pacific Essences did not just fall into our laps. It took courage and curiosity and commitment. It took the experience of some dark days and making new choices, like when I was working for the government and ‘crashed and burned.’
Michael was a master of making choices based on the notion of ‘This… or something better.’ In his work life, he started as a Chartered Accountant doing forensic audits for an international accounting firm out of London England. He was really good at it but found it unfulfilling, so he went back to school and got a degree in Latin American studies from Stanford and eventually a PhD in Anthropology from Berkeley, thinking he might do foreign aid work in Central and South America. When he discovered that engaging in that work was too governed by political agendas, he became a professor.
But through his doctoral work he had come to realize that change comes from seeing the world in a new way, and he began to seek out tools for transformation of consciousness and became a Meditation teacher. When he understood that only with a shift in consciousness would anything change in our world, he asked Maharishi how to expedite the process of expanding his consciousness besides practicing and teaching Transcendental Meditation. Maharishi told him to connect with Nature. Thus began the Farmer phase of Michael’s incarnation, and eventually Pacific Essences and his mastery of Energy Healing.
Kahlil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible.” Michael lived a life of making love visible. And the rose garden is one of those manifestations.
Introducing the Essence of Success
I created a recipe for success to accompany the energy of the Essence of Success, and I shared it last month in Japan. The recipe will be published in its entirety later this year, but for this moment I just want to share the key ingredient – LOVE.
We are offering the Essence of Success to help you to consciously connect with what you love. I suggest that if you take this Essence daily, and perhaps write down one thing each day – person, place, activity – that you love, you will be a completely different person by the end of a month. Of course, you will be a completely different person anyway, but when you do something with intention the transformations can be priceless.
As always, we welcome your response to this Essence. Its release is in part a celebration of Pacific Essences’ 40th Anniversary – a milestone which in itself is a beautiful manifestation of success.
Of all these emotions, I truly believe that anger is the most challenging and toxic. Because of this, I think it is important to explore anger a little more deeply – what it is and how to deal with it.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said that anger is healthy and takes ten seconds to express. It’s like steam coming out of a kettle and when the temperature hits boiling, it turns off. If it lasts longer than that and we cannot switch it off, then it has morphed into something quite different. This might be annoyance, frustration, or hostility – all of which can easily become habitual responses. Beneath the annoyance, frustration, and hostility there can be a profound sense of ‘nothing ever works for me’ or other similar negative self-talk.
Have you ever seen the branch of a tree that looks as if it is going in one direction and then all of a sudden seems to grow in a new direction? A healthy Wood element has that capacity – to change direction and continue to flourish. When it bumps up against an obstacle like the branch of another tree, the innate intelligence of Purpose and Survival kicks in and the branch will find a way to continue growing.
The Buddha said, “You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger.” He also said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
Another unknown wise man was asked what anger is and he replied, “It is a punishment we give to ourselves for somebody else’s mistake.” People who have the ability to see energy fields can see all the fiery redness and confusion in the aura of someone who is angry. And of course, physiologically there is an increase in heart rate, adrenaline, and cortisol production – all of which can be precursors to serious physical ailments.
Not only are we harming ourselves if we get out of bed angry on a daily basis, we may also deeply hurt beings who we love.
There was once a small child who had a very bad temper, so his father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he had to hammer a nail into the fence. The first day, the boy hammered 37 nails into the fence! Over the next few weeks the boy gradually began to gain more control over his temper. However, when the bag of nails was empty, his father said, “You have done well, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. Just as when you say things in anger, your words leave a scar. No matter how many times you say you are sorry, the scar will still be there.”
Apart from harming ourselves and others with our anger, there is also the possibility that anger is telling us something about the quality of our life and whether or not we are on purpose and living our dharma. Anger can tell us that we are in the wrong job, or the wrong relationship, and once we recognize this, then we can make a new choice about how to move forward. And the power to make choices is another attribute of a healthy Wood element.
When I was little we had a principle by which to live: “Never let the sun go down on your anger.” I did not know where it was from, but it was a rule my brothers and I lived by. We always kissed and made up before we went to bed. By doing so, our caring and connection was restored and the trivialities of our conflict long forgotten by the next morning.
Now as an adult, my understanding of this quote is:
In retrospect, and with years of clinical experience witnessing the damage that long-held anger does to our Body, Mind and Spirit, I am grateful that I learned that anger is and can be just a fleeting moment of recognition that I am off track, and that only I can get myself back on track by making new choices.
]]>
BALANCER | The First Pacific Essence Combination
We had enlisted the assistance of Dr Mikhael Adams and his VEGA electroacupuncture testing device to corroborate the meridian and chakra connections we had already determined for some of our Essences by using kinesiology and other methods. As we were going through the procedure of putting different Essences in the circuit, which was connected to the test subject, Dr Adams suddenly said, “Those last three remedies feel like Rescue Remedy.” (Rescue Remedy is a combination from the Bach Repertory). I said, “Well, we can’t make Rescue Remedy because it is already made!” Nonetheless, we decided to put the three Essences together and see what might happen if we took it ourselves, or if we gave it to our test subject who was beginning to show signs of tiredness after lying on the table for over two hours. The results were astonishing. Our subject, a healthy athletic male, was completely rejuvenated before our eyes.
Now, many years after the creation of Balancer, we have countless stories of how this Combination has restored wellbeing after some episode of mental, emotional or physical overload, stress, or trauma. Energy testing (HADO) in Japan has also revealed that Balancer has one of the highest frequencies in the vibrational medicine repertory and addresses issues like anxiety, stress, and nervousness. Overall, it supports our autonomic nervous system to cope with the stresses of life and especially the big shocks and traumas which can cripple us if left unattended.
Balancer became a new signature Combination, and as its name suggests it restores balance, equilibrium, grounding and harmony within the Body/Mind. Even just a moment experiencing that sense of balance is seductive to our Energy Anatomy, helping to maintain that harmony over time.
ABUNDANCE & HEART SPIRIT | The Powers of Intention and Attraction
After Balancer came Abundance (created in 1986 and first released in 1991) and Heart Spirit (1995). At that moment I honestly believed that was all we would create in terms of Essence Combinations.
OPTIMAL LEARNING | Exploring Synergistic Formulas
Then one day, someone asked, “How is anyone going to know that Blue Camas is the best Essence on the planet for children with learning disabilities if it is simply called Blue Camas?” With that question began the creation of the next nine synergistic formulas.
In the 80s I had spent considerable time using Educational Kinesiology with children who were challenged in the school system – from dyslexia to ADD and ADHD. One of the things I noticed, in addition to their inability to see letters the right way round, was that there was a significant amount of stress evident in their young bodies: locked knees, tight shoulders, and tight jaws. With repeated errors being made in front of their peers, these kids began to carry a lot of fear and shame-related tension in their physical bodies which then further inhibited their ability to make progress in a regular learning environment.
So we added Rainbow Kelp which harmonizes the front brain (rational, reasoning brain) to the back brain (‘old’ brain, limbic system, flight or fight response) to Blue Camas which harmonizes the left and right hemispheres of the brain and activates or optimizes the corpus callosum (the bundle of nerve fibres which connects the left and right hemispheres and which needs to be fully switched on in order to facilitate reading and other functions which require use of the whole brain). Then we added Blue Lupin for focus and attention. That’s how Optimal Learning was born.
What we discovered about this Essence Combination along the journey was that it was not only for people with learning disabilities, but it was also effective for people who keep making the same mistakes over and over again because they are stuck in some kind of behaviour linked to a limited style of brain functioning. For example, the left brain tends to be rational and logical and maybe not very creative, while the right brain can be too carefree and less practical and pragmatic. People who are stuck in their back brain can be over-reactive, volatile, and quick to anger.
SHIELDING | Synergy After Disaster
Another invaluable Combination came into being when the tsunami happened in Japan in 2003. So many of our students emailed to ask what Essences they could take to protect themselves from radiation. Eventually we put all of these protective Essences together and came up with the Shielding formula. While Black Tourmaline is the keynote of this formula, and specifically beneficial for deflecting all kinds of radiation, we discovered that with the addition of three other Gem Essences and two Sea Essences this formula also protected people who are sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) and so this Combination became a kind of protective shield physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
ESSENCE COMBINATIONS | Creating New Energetic Signatures
You have likely heard the expression, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is exactly how I see our Essence Combinations (which we first named Synergistic Formulas and now call ‘Good Vibrations’). Each formula has one key ingredient. For example, the foundation of Forgiving is Salal, while the foundation of Being True Worth is Polyanthus. Somehow, when other individual Essences which support the keynote in particular ways are added, the formula becomes bigger and a whole new signature is created. The new signature is embodied in the name of the Combination – Being Peace, or New Attitudes.
CHOOSING YOUR COMBINATION | Take the Good Vibrations Quiz!
While our Combinations can be a powerful and accessible way to begin exploring the energy medicine of Essences, you might wonder which Combination could best support you at this moment of your life journey. We have created a beautiful and intuitive quiz to help you discover which Good Vibration has something to offer you – we invite you to give it a try!
]]>Ever since I met the Mother Tree around 2007, I have been enchanted by her majesty. I have taken many people to meet her, and young and old alike stop talking and appear awestruck by her beauty and accomplishment. She is a yellow cedar tree and is perhaps the oldest nursing tree on southern Vancouver Island. Her age is certainly at least 500 years, and some have suggested she is maybe even 800 years old or more! Just pause for a minute and attempt to grasp what was happening on Vancouver Island 500 – 800 years ago. Or expand your thinking to a global scale and remember what was happening on the planet 500 – 800 years ago. It’s incredible to think of the planetary timeline the Mother Tree holds in her experience.
When I feel sad or lonely, my dog Baba and I drive out to Renfrew and we walk around her perimeter and hug her close – still, after all these years, marvelling at her endurance and the life force which she generously shares with all the other plants, fungi and insects she is nurturing. Of course we were inspired to create an Essence with the Mother Tree. The resonance of this Essence, like the tree herself, is endurance – not in any sense of suffering or sacrifice, but rather living out your awesome full potential.
In 2014 we were invited to participate in international Flower Essence conference in Japan, hosted by Nature World. As part of this gathering of Essence creators, we were each asked to select one of the Essences out of our repertory. These Essences would be combined to create a global super-combination at the conference. I had just read the email request and walked over to the workspace where Michael was working to ask what Essence we should contribute. Before I even finished the sentence I heard Michael say, “The Mother Tree.” Although my own thoughts had been veering towards Sea Essences, because of my affinity to these beautiful beings and my thrill at birthing them into the vibrational medicine pharmacopoeia, I immediately knew that Michael was bang on and it was imperative that our contribution be the Mother Tree.
My dear friend Steve Johnson, founder of Alaskan Essences, was the Master of Ceremonies at the conference, and each of us went down into the centre of this huge auditorium with an image of the Essence we were contributing projected on a screen behind us. When I spoke about the Mother Tree Essence, I said something about her gifts being wisdom and love and nurturing. I explained how when we connect with her, we become fully present in the centre of our being even when it looks like ‘really bad stuff is happening out there.’ She also gifts us the possibility to fulfill our own life purpose and the ability to reconnect with the seed which contains our original intention for this lifetime. After I spoke people came up to me and told me that they could see this bright light around me.
Because the Mother Tree sits on private land, there has always been the possibility of something happening to her. One year when we were out at Renfrew for our Energy Medicine Retreat, we found a giant rope – maybe 50 feet long and 6-8 inches in diameter – wrapped around her trunk as if someone was going to try to pull her down. One of our students actually went down there with a knife early one morning to try to sever the rope. She was unsuccessful, but fortunately the next time we visited the rope was gone. In fact, I learned this week that it was vandals who were responsible for that desecration, and the owner and developer of that land removed the rope.
Every time I go out to that area, my first stop is to visit the Mother Tree, to acknowledge her and to express gratitude for her existence. At each visit, I always wonder if this is the last time I will see her. (Perhaps this could be a good attitude to cultivate in all our relationships – being with someone as if it might be the last time we get to be with them. Just a thought!) Because of this uncertainty over the future of the Mother Tree, I was guided to approach the land owner/developer to ask if we could put a protective covenant on her to ensure her safety and eventually a natural demise.
Making this request brought to my mind memories of my father. He was a builder and developer back East, and I always remember the reverence and respect he gave to Nature. When he bought land on which to build, he always first assessed what trees were on it and instructed the architects to design the structures around the existing landscape. And it appears that the owner of the land on which the Mother Tree lives has a similar consciousness about Nature.
I am thrilled to report that the Mother Tree will be preserved, along with 17 or 18 other large trees on his land which he invited me to visit. His intention is to create a 15–20 foot radius around each of these trees, where there might be benches for people to sit and to just be with the tree. As we discussed my request and his plans for the future, I felt that I was communicating with a kindred spirit and a conscious being who knows the value of Nature.
I realize now that I have had a long history with trees, from the apple tree I climbed in our back yard when I was ten years old, to the 60-foot Poplar outside our bedroom window in our first home in Victoria, to the amazing trees which surround me now on this precious piece of land I now call home. This land was 4.5 acres of clear cut when we arrived, with only two older trees left standing. Michael planted over 200 trees – Silver Birch, Oaks, Maples, Dogwoods, and Poplars. He planted White Chestnuts which began as 8-inch seedlings from the gutters of that first home in Victoria, and Garry Oaks which began as seedlings in 4 oz cups and are now 12–15 feet tall.
Michael always took visitors to the Garry Oak meadow, because even when the trees were only three feet tall it was still a startling memory to know they had begun their lives in a paper cup that was three inches tall. Moreover, these trees are absolutely a propos to the challenges we face in our world today, because Garry Oak Tree Essence helps us to use our resources wisely and focus on our own journey rather than wasting an iota of energy judging others or kvetching about the world.
It’s not surprising to me that when we were inspired to bring out a special kit of Tree Essences there turned out to be one for each meridian of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) – one Essence for each of the 12 meridians. It was like a special gift to me because of the way we have approached our work/play with the Essences through the windows of TCM and Ayurvedic Medicine. Both traditions are based on free flow of energy in chakras and meridians, and on maintaining balance and harmony in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies. It was as if the trees were confirming our intuitive knowing that they needed to emerge and had some new healing energies to contribute.
Let’s go back to our first house in Victoria and the 60-foot Poplar tree outside our bedroom window. One day the neighbours decided to cut down this tree, because they thought it might disturb the foundation of their home. It was devastating. A being who had accompanied us to bed every night, and was there when we awoke each morning, was gone. The sound of the wind in her leaves, the patterns she made on our walls and floors as the sunlight came in through our south facing window, her changing wardrobe with the changing seasons, gone forever within 20 minutes of a chainsaw ripping into her body. A living being that I took for granted was no longer there, and I missed her dearly. For the rest of the time we lived in that house I was sorely aware of her physical absence – and yet, her subtle energy remained ever present.
What I recently learned is that Nature has memory, and is able to pass on this memory to their offspring.
During their lifetime, trees are not only able to adapt quickly to new conditions but can even pass on the 'memory' of such environmental changes to the next generation. This amazing ability has been proved for the first time by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL).
While this remarkable ability did not save the Poplar tree, perhaps it prepared future seedlings to find alternate spaces to grow. For sure this capacity is at work every day in our forests, and I suspect this is why people stop in their tracks when they have the privilege of meeting the Mother Tree. As Sir David Attenborough has proclaimed “Ancient trees are precious. There is little else on Earth that plays host to such a rich community of life within a single living organism.”
So again I express my gratitude to the developer who will include the Mother Tree in his future creation, and to the Mother Tree herself for our profound journey with her.
]]>“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.”
– Paulo Coelho
Each of the five elements of TCM has its own ‘spirit’ or unique life force. The spirit of the Heart (associated with the Fire element) is called the Shen, which is sometimes translated as consciousness. A basic belief in TCM says, “The heart takes the hit.” When there is a great shock or surprise to a person that he or she cannot process, the overwhelming energy goes first to the heart. The heart starts racing to prepare the person for fight or flight. The heart goes out of balance and the excessive energy is then distributed to the meridians, some of which subsequently go out of balance. Acupuncturist Lin Cao said, “If the basic energy is not stabilized, the spirit is insecure.”
In her book Five Spirits, Lorie Eve Dechar suggests that the Shen spirits are Yang and, like precious wild birds, they seek heaven. Unless they are entranced and nurtured by the Yin essences of the earth, the Shen rise up and fly off back to the heavenly realms. This is exactly the physiological response that happens when we experience some severe shock or trauma. She goes on to say that in order to maintain a suitable resting place for the Shen, the heart must remain in a state that is close to its original nature - serene, accepting and open. The light of the Shen radiates from such a tranquil heart to illuminate the lives of all those it touches. The wise person’s only concern is maintaining the tranquility of the heart so that the luminous wild birds of the Shen will have a suitable resting place.
I love this metaphor, and I have first-hand experience of how this works. I have actually fainted and lost consciousness when something has been too overwhelming to digest in the moment. For instance, when we were studying shiatsu in New York, one of my brothers was in a car accident which broke his neck. My mum was telling me about it on the phone, and the next instant I was unconscious on the floor. And I do not see myself as a fragile Victorian lady who has attacks of the vapors, but in that moment the shock was just too much.
Western medicine is also starting to consider the heart as more than just a pump which circulates oxygenated blood to all the cells and organs in the body. I remember reading a book by Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park fame). He had always wanted to be a writer, but his father wanted him to be a doctor, so he dutifully went to medical school. When he was doing his cardiology rotation he asked all of his patients, “What do you think caused your heart attack?” The reply was always some heartbreak event, some emotional pain like a separation, divorce, death, or loss of some expectation a parent had for a child that the patient spontaneously reported.
Our hearts are the part of our anatomy which directly equates to love. Not sure how that happened or where it came from, but the reality is that when we see hearts, we usually appreciate them as symbolic of love.
Bruce Lipton calls the quest to continuously feel ‘in love,’ “The science of creating heaven on earth.” And science has spoken about such things, writes Lipton. For example, HeartMath researchers have found the impact of love itself is real and biochemically measurable:
“When subjects focus their attention on the heart and activate a core heart feeling, such as love, appreciation, or caring, these emotions immediately shift their heartbeat rhythms into a more coherent pattern. Increasing heartbeat coherence activates a cascade of neural and biochemical events that affect virtually every organ in the body. Studies demonstrate that heart coherence leads to more intelligence by reducing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system—our fight-or-flight mechanism—while simultaneously increasing the growth-promoting activity of the parasympathetic nervous system.”
As a result, stress hormones are reduced and the anti-aging hormone DHEA is produced. Love actually does make us healthier, happier, and longer-living.
Paul Pearsall has done some amazing research with heart transplant patients and has written about it in his book called The Heart’s Code. He states, “We believe it’s the heart that loves and feels.” Pearsall and fellow researchers went further to find out that the heart also thinks, remembers, communicates with other hearts, helps regulate immunity, and stores information that constantly makes waves through our body. In other words, researchers found that it is love that leads to physical and mental health.
Many years ago, a young man went to his Flower Essence therapist and, having read the first edition of my book Energy Medicine – Healing from the Kingdoms of Nature, asked his therapist to make him a formula which contained all the Essences which resonated with the Heart meridian, the Heart Protector meridian, and the Heart chakra. At the time it turned out to be 20 essences. His therapist said, “Oh no, that is way too many Essences.” And the patient replied, “If I don’t heal my heart, I will die.” She heard him and took the risk. This leap of faith on her part, this intuitive knowing on the part of the patient, was the birth of our Heart Spirit Essence which has healed many, many hearts over the past 30+ years.
So let us tune in to what our heart might need in order to be the wise monarch who has cultivated the abilities of tranquility and equanimity. Or as Lao Tzu said, “Make your heart like a lake, with a calm, still surface and great depths of kindness.”
Well, let me tell you – anything is possible.
2023 marks the 40th anniversary of Pacific Essences, and I am pretty sure these Essences would never have been born without the experience of my personal health crisis.
I was working for the federal government as my contribution to our adventure of surviving on five acres (which was actually 25 acres) with my husband Michael, connecting with Nature as guided by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, communicating with plant devas because the Findhorn books had accidentally dropped into our laps in a bookstore, and just generally being in love with each other and all of life.
At some level I loved my job as a community development officer. It meant that I got to meet people and try to solve community problems with government funds – solutions like setting up daycares, helping women get back into the work force after maternity leaves, and upgrading skills for people who wanted to have access to other workforce options. I kept getting promotions and increased job security, and perhaps that increased security was a factor in how my life unfolded.
One day I crashed and burned. For the first time in my life, I felt fear. Not necessarily a specific fear, but fear somehow associated with the notion that I might wake up at 65 with a pension and my life would be over. One night driving home from the office, I literally felt like I could not keep the car on the road. It was as if I was going to be ‘beamed up.’ Although I was not a big Star Trek fan, I somehow knew about other dimensions and I was not at all ready to explore them – especially not without Michael with me! I mean, if we were going to be ‘beamed up,’ we were going to be doing it together, right?
In retrospect I guess I was having what might today be called ‘panic attacks’ or ‘anxiety attacks.’ I am eternally grateful that no one gave me that label and suggested anti-anxiety meds!!!!! Every couple of weeks Michael drove me 70 miles to Toronto to see a chiropractor named Dr. John LaPlante. Except Dr. John was much more than a chiropractor. He had two treatment rooms and in one there was a Radionics instrument through which he could tune in to the frequencies of different organs and systems in your physical body and turn some dials on the instrument to play optimal frequencies to any system which was either in excess or deficiency. In the other room there was a regular chiropractic adjustment table. But before he even touched your body, he would scan it with his hand about 8–15 inches above your body and ‘feel’ what was out of balance. The corrections could be anything from gentle manipulation of fascia to a chiropractic adjustment – always very gentle with no force. After the treatment he would send me home with a bottle of flower essences.
One of the facets of our work environment was that we all drank lots of coffee, ate Tim Horton’s donuts daily, and smoked cigarettes. This behaviour was always exacerbated when we had a ton of money allocated from the federal government for our communities, and thus needed to put in tons of overtime to do the work necessary to assess the impact and sustainability of the projects. So as I navigated this experience of vulnerability and helplessness, I took some time off work and allowed Mother Nature, our farm, and Michael to hold me softly and allow me to heal. I stopped eating sweets because if I did the panic would immediately take over my Body/Mind. I drank way less coffee. And I cut back, but did not quit, smoking. After a few weeks I thought I was ready to go back to work. So one morning I set out and got to that place on the road where, a few weeks earlier coming home late at night, I thought I was going to be ‘beamed up’. All of a sudden, I felt complete terror again and realized that I could not do it. So I turned around and drove home. Michael came out of the greenhouse when he heard the car and I ran sobbing into his arms, wailing, “I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t do it!” And he responded, “It’s nearly lunchtime. Would you like a bowl of soup?” To this day, I see that as the perfect response. He fed absolutely no energy into my crisis, and he didn’t label it as anything special.
That year for our anniversary, Michael took me to a retreat at a Sufi Centre in upstate New York. We were there to attend a workshop with Dorothy McLean, co-founder of Findhorn. But in fact, since we were already deeply immersed in communicating with the devas (plant spirits), we went off and found another workshop which was much more engaging: Shiatsu with Wataru Ohashi. This was the beginning of my lifelong passion for Traditional Chinese Medicine and Energy Healing. This model made sense to me – and it worked. If you balance the energies, you stay in health and well-being. When you move into excess or deficiency it affects the whole. Oriental Medicine spoke to me in a way that I understood viscerally: too much sugar gave me a burst of energy, but it was not sustainable and burned up too quickly. Moreover, learning shiatsu gave me greater compassion for my fellow beings. When I laid my hands on the hara (soft abdomen) of the person on the tatami mat in front of me, and silently asked them to show me where was excess and where was deficiency, I was honoured and humbled to be able to feel that energy with my hands and then through gentle pressure along meridian pathways help that Body/Mind return to balance. From the very first class we understood that emotions could harm the organs and sick organs would impact the emotions. I totally ‘grokked’ it – the wholeness and connectedness of all of us, Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual.
So that’s how the journey began. I quit my job, we sold the farm, and moved to Manhattan to study shiatsu with Ohashi. When we returned to Canada, we moved to the West coast. Having experienced flower essences as one of the pivotal pieces of my personal healing journey, we spent lots of time in Nature exploring the plants of this amazing rainforest island. It seemed like second nature to make them into Essences, and when Dr. John came out for a Naturopathic conference and I said to him, “I don’t know how I think I can do this,” he looked at me with profound love beaming from his eyes and said, “You’ve done this for lifetimes.”
It’s such a blessing in this moment, on the eve of our 40th anniversary as Pacific Essences, to look back on this journey and see some of the different turning points and choices which led to this day. I remember on one of the darkest days turning to Michael and saying, “Maybe if I get through this, I will be able to help someone else.”
This year we will have many celebrations of different sorts to help you find the Energy Medicine from Nature that will assist you on your own healing journey and the fulfillment of your life purpose. Connecting to your life purpose, and living it, is a huge contribution to your health and well-being.
So I invite you to explore more deeply the ancient art and science of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the ancient art and science of healing with plants as a way to transform your life. To begin this exploration, we offer you a new video on our YouTube channel called ‘144 Healing Vibrations from Nature’ – a visual introduction to the beautiful conscious energies that contribute to Pacific Essences.
]]>It doesn’t matter who or what you think is the source or cause of any problem you might be experiencing, it all comes back to you and choices you make. And whatever happened, the question is: How do you want to handle it now?
I recall going to a Gestalt therapist in my early 20s and for half an hour or so bewailing all the insufficiencies of my childhood. After I paused for a moment, he said, “And where is that ‘stuff’ now?” And I looked at him, eyes wide open, and spontaneously pointed to my gut and said, “Here.” And he said “Exactly, and that’s where you can heal it.”
It was an epiphany, and an unforgettable moment that has served me well over the years. And, by the way, I had an amazing childhood in retrospect with incredible love and support from both my parents and three amazing brothers who I adored. But somehow when it feels like our lives aren’t working, we tend to look for excuses and explanations. I was an immigrant kid. I had a British accent and was teased. I was smart and saw angels in clouds because I was bored with the curriculum. I was skipped a grade to curtail my habit of talking to angels and make my school life more challenging which led me to be the youngest kid in the class and socially inept. Woe is me! That was my story! To this day I remember that moment with Merv (that Gestalt therapist) and feel huge gratitude to him for helping me to come to my own conclusion about how to move forward in my life.
The next pivotal moment came when Michael and I deliberately and consciously examined our beliefs. Those of you who have done the Abundance Program will recognize this as one of the exercises in the 22 Day Abundance Program. We picked a topic – family, work, money, God, etc. – and while one talked the other recorded everything the other person said. The idea is that if you engage in ‘stream of consciousness’ thinking and writing, you are more likely to discover that you actually have conflicting beliefs. Once you are able to bring the sabotaging beliefs into conscious awareness you can choose what you want to do with them. But the most important thing is recognizing that you have them and being willing to let them go if they are not serving you.
Read More: A Personal Story About the 33 Day Abundance Program
As well as examining your beliefs, beginning to pay attention to how and why you do things can be life-changing. Sometimes we just do something because ‘that’s the way it was always done.’ There is a fun story about a young newlywed who was cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner. She was baking a ham and before she put it in the oven, she cut it in half. Her husband asked why she was cutting it in half. She replied, “That’s the way my Mum does it.” So the curious young man asked his mother-in-law why she cut the ham in half, and got the same reply from her. Now he felt quite determined to understand why the ham was being cut in half, so he went to his wife’s grandmother and asked her. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “I had to cut it in half because my oven was not big enough to cook it all in one piece.” A silly example perhaps, but still worth looking at why we do what we do and if what we are doing is bringing us any closer to happiness, fulfillment, and living the life we want.
Another huge step on my personal journey was connecting with Nature and paying attention to how Mother Nature lives her magnificent life. No wasting energy on regret or opinions simply showing up every day manifesting the best version of herself that is possible in that moment. Aaaaaaaaaaah! We humans can get so caught up in our stories, our melodramas, and our opinions of good and bad and right and wrong, and we forget that in some sense it is just a waste of our precious life energy that could be directed towards “becoming the greatest version of the grandest vision ever we could hold of ourselves” (from Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch).
In order to cultivate what that vision might be for each of us, we need to take the time and space to imagine what is possible. And in fact everything is possible. But if we cannot imagine it, how can we bring it into manifestation? We can’t. And that’s why becoming more aware of our conflicting thoughts and our unexamined behaviours is well worthwhile.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine there are five elements – Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. It is within the Wood element that our life purpose is planted and must unfold in order for us to have a full and satisfying life, and to allow us to fulfill our purpose and maintain health and well-being. I often think that if I had stayed working for the government I would not be alive today to tell the story. And luckily for me, this path of unimaginable fulfillment opened up. Now instead of talking to angels, I talk to plant devas – and more importantly, I listen to what they tell me. But it was not just luck. It was a moment, and in fact many moments, of coming to grips with the idea that I was driving the train of my life.
I wish for you the same incredible magic of being able to fulfill your own dreams. First, you must identify what they are - and to help with that, our Abundance Program Kit has everything you need to begin this deep inner exploration. It will help you reignite the knowledge that you are, in fact, driving the train of your life, and open you up to more happiness, more well-being, more love, and more abundance at every level of your life.
Because remember - only you can make it possible. Only you can transform your life. And the time to start is in this precious present moment.
]]>Flower Essences are based on the understanding that each plant has its own individual signature or unique expression on earth. The Doctrine of Signature refers to the physical characteristics of the plant including its shape, colour, texture, and smell as well as the environment in which it thrives.
The Doctrine of Signature is the belief based on early observations of plants that their physical expression provides insight into the use of the plant and was a fundamental tenet of herbal medicine. In fact, many of our pharmaceuticals initially came from the medicinal uses of herbs. The Doctrine of Signature is the wisdom of Mother Nature and her desire to assist us with our healing.
Pacific Essences is one of the oldest Flower Essence producers in the world. In fact, 2023 marks our 40th anniversary. Most of us who began making Flower Essences in the early 80s was inspired by the work of Dr. Edward Bach who made the first 38 flower remedies in England in the 1930s. Each of the first ten producers knew nothing about each other but somehow felt called by the plants in our specific location to make essences and to see if they had any healing properties.
At Pacific Essences we were immersed in the understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the Mind/Body connection. TCM maps the underlying connections between Mind and Body and shows, for instance, how anger damages the liver but also how a damaged liver can lead to an angry temperament. From the beginning we documented all our research in the context of TCM and TCM became this bridge to help people understand how an essence might have an impact on a physical condition as well as an emotional state.
The benefits of Flower Essences are broad and far reaching. For example, it turned out the Blue Camas was the best Flower Essence on the planet for children with dyslexia, ADD and learning disabilities. This Flower Essence became the key ingredient in a Combination Essence which we named Optimal Learning so that people would understand its possibilities for helping their learning challenged children.
The major benefit of using Flower Essences is that they support health and well-being of the whole person. Mind and Body are not separate but represent an infinite field of possibilities for growth and change and living healthy fulfilled lives. Flower Essences are gentle medicine that assist us to be the best we can be.
Read More: The 5 Best Flower Essences For Stress Relief`
The traditional way to use Flower Essences is 2 – 4 drops under the tongue four times per day. At Pacific Essences we discovered that there was much more compliance if people take their essences twice a day – 11 drops in the AM and 11 drops at night. The morning dose helps us to anchor the desired new state of being. The nighttime dose assists us to release challenges that may be preventing us from claiming a new state of being.
Since the skin is a major organ of absorption, Flower Essences can also be used in the bath. Put 22 drops in a bath of water and welcome the energy which Flower Essence offers. For example, if you wanted to encourage more self esteem you might put Vanilla Leaf Flower Essence in your bath. Or if you wanted to heal some past trauma, you might put Nootka Rose Flower Essence in your bath. Of course, all Flower Essences can be taken orally.
Flower Essences are safe for children and animals as well. Since they are a vibration either the Body/Mind will recognize the Flower Essence as beneficial or simply discard the energy.
With the research we have done at Pacific Essences we can see how physical, mental, and emotional re-balancing takes place and healing with Flower Essences can occur at all these levels.
Read More: How do Flower Essences Work?
The best place to buy Flower Essences is directly from the producer www.pacificessences.com or from any of our authorized international distributors.
Related Blog: Do Animals Feel the Effects of Essences?
]]>It all started last spring when I heard that Elton was doing the swan song tour that he was scheduled to do before the pandemic intervened in all of our lives. And I thought – “I want to do that!” The concert in Vancouver coincided with the beginning of Sacha’s reading break and it turns out that he really likes Elton John. What better 20th birthday present for this young man whose entry into the world I was privileged to witness and whose growth to this new decade I have been privileged to share?
Every summer from the time he was five, Sacha - and a couple of years later both Sacha and my younger nephew Ethan - would come out for a special camp orchestrated by me and Michael. It was always two of the best weeks of every year sharing our world with these two young souls. Taking them to Botanical Beach to see the tide pools, standing at the feet of the Mother Tree - even as little ones, they sensed that there was something incredibly powerful and serene about this great being.
We taught them how to make an Essence and shared with them what is important in our lives. Sacha was singing the whole Moola Mantra with Deva Premal when he was five as we drove around the Island swimming, hiking, doing water sports and even go-karting (which has for the past couple of years been Ethan’s passion).
So, this trip to Vancouver to share Elton John with Sacha evoked a cascade of memories.
The concert itself was phenomenal. There was no intermission. Elton did not take a break except to do a quick costume change after the first hour. Essentially, he told everyone to get up and dance. And dance we did – the only caveat being that we had to stay in front of our seats and not block the aisles.
Elton John is the poster boy for aging. At 75 he puts his heart and soul into his passion for music and is not retiring because he is old or tired, but because he wants to spend more time with the people he loves – his husband and his two young sons. That was a big message of the concert – do what’s on your bucket list. If you have never seen that fabulous movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I suggest that watching it might be a ‘game changer’ for you. I’ve seen it at least five times and savour it anew with each watching. In some ways it feels like I have been privileged and blessed to be knocking things off my bucket list from the time I met Michael.
Having turned away from a prestigious career as a Chartered Accountant doing forensic audits for an international outfit before he met me, and a second career as a Professor of Anthropology, he became a meditation teacher and then a farmer and Energy healer. It was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who told Michael that connecting to Mother Earth and caring for Mother Earth would transform his consciousness. That directive eventually began this amazing journey of Pacific Essences which will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.
But back to the concert. Elton John played pretty much non-stop for two and half hours to a crowd of thousands, many of whom were wearing really sparkly, flashy clothes. His life and work gives people permission to be who they can be. What a treat to hang out with someone who has the courage to express their gifts and their joy of life, and to inspire other to do the same.
The next morning I felt sad that this moment had passed, thrilled that I had listened to my inner voice and engaged in this experience, hoarse from yelling for encores (he gave us three encores!) and delighted that I had made another memory with Sacha. As I was chatting with my brother on the way home, I heard myself say, “Well, it’s about making memories, isn’t it? Maybe when Sacha is 60-something he will be taking one of his children or grandchildren to a concert and he will remember this night with me and Elton John – all three of us passionate Aries souls ticking off another box on our bucket list of this precious life journey.”
]]>'Sensitivity' can be a curse – whether it is physical, emotional, or mental sensitivity. I want to show you how your ‘sensitivity’ might become a blessing if you take good care or your Earth element.
Some people may think that the brain is in charge of our health and well-being. Others may think it is the heart which is in charge.
The reality is that our health and well-being in daily life is fundamentally created and supported by how well we are able to digest: not only our physical nourishment, but also our reactions and responses to our life experiences.
I want to introduce you to the Earth element in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) – the Spleen and the Stomach channels which govern our digestion, nourishment, and immunity.
Unlike the other four elements – Fire, Water, Metal and Wood – which all have a specific season, the Earth element is seen as Indian Summer and sometimes as the 10 – 15 days before the beginning of each season and at the end of each season.
The ancient Taoists, however, saw Earth in the centre. In my own practice I have adopted this ancient Taoist perspective because in fact the spirit of the Earth element is ‘I’ which literally translates as ‘embodiment’. And in reality it is through the health and well-being and optimal functioning of our physical vehicle that we experience all of life. Therefore, cultivating healthy digestion at all levels – physical, emotional and mental – may well be a worthwhile pursuit.
In TCM the Stomach is in charge of receiving and digesting our physical nourishment, transforming it into substances which can support and sustain our physical body and supply the Spleen with the nutrients necessary to build and to sustain a vital immune system.
The direction of the energy of the Stomach is downward – from Heaven to Earth. Think about eating and digestion. If the food is not going down we experience indigestion, acid reflux and other digestive discomfort. In TCM if the Stomach Qi is not flowing downward, it rises up and clouds the mind, leading to symptoms like worry, anxiety and over-thinking. When I have patients with these kinds of symptoms I often suggest going on a 10 day rice diet. This means that all you eat for 10 days is rice, and then you begin introducing other foods. You will notice immediately if cheese is not good for you or if meat is not good for you or fruit is not good for you or sugar is not good for you. This practice has the capacity to rebalance your digestion and to calm the mind, and allows you to take charge of the well-being of your Earth element.
I had a colleague who was worried about displeasing a friend. My colleague had been asked to participate in a project with this person and knew that she did not want to do it but was afraid to say no. She was losing sleep and having trouble eating. I asked if she had tried Narcissus (narcissus pseudo-narcissus) flower Essence – an Earth element Essence. She took some Narcissus that night, slept through the night, and woke up the next morning, phoned her friend and said, ‘Thank you for asking me, but now is not the right time for me to engage in something like this.’ No excuses and no apologies were necessary, just a simple statement of ‘This is my choice right now.’
For a person who has the tendency for their Earth element to become out of balance, it is critical for them to develop the ability to step back, take a breath and ask for some inner guidance to direct them. Earth is that place of stillness between Yin and Yang. It is the centre. It is present. It is NOW. And it grants us the capacity to receive and to digest all of our life experience so that we do not become crippled by our sensitivity.
When Stomach is doing its job of digesting we feel present and centred and embodied. Thus we are able to respond to whatever comes our way with grace and ease. When Stomach is not functioning optimally there is a tendency to worry and to overthink and to feel the pain of the world weighing us down. The emotion related to the Earth element is sympathy, but what use is sympathy if it is harming ourselves and not in fact helping whoever is suffering? Therefore, one of the most important abilities for a ‘sensitive’ Earth element to cultivate is healthy boundaries. For example, if we have a propensity to sympathize with suffering, we could deliberately and consciously choose to avoid TV shows about animals being harmed or other kinds of violence and suffering.
One of the behaviours I have noticed about imbalanced Earth is that they appear to have difficulty making choices – whether it is what to eat in a restaurant or how to spend their time. Perhaps in an effort to ‘please’ others, they might say yes to everything but in fact internally be building up some resentment and anxiety. This is the moment where we need to step back and check in and see what feels right for us in this moment and give up the posture of being ‘nice.’
All that physical, emotional and mental energy expended on being ‘nice’ can in fact be directed towards making sure that out Spleen is doing its primary function of protecting us from external invaders. Physically the Spleen produces White Blood Cells from the nutrients digested by the Stomach. These White Blood Cells are fundamental building blocks of our immune system and protect us from external attack by dis-ease at all levels. When our Spleen is not functioning optimally we are more vulnerable not only to physical invaders but to emotional and mental attacks and toxins as well.
One of my favourite flower Essences for the Spleen and for the immune system in general is Goatsbeard (aruncus sylvester). It not only supports the Spleen to produce White Blood Cells but also the Small Intestine to support the production of Red Blood Cells. It manages this by triggering a parasympathetic response to our life experience. The parasympathetic nervous system is what kicks in when we are feeling relaxed and able to ‘digest’ whatever is coming our way.
Another amazingly powerful Essence for the Spleen is Urchin (strongylocentrotus purpuratus). I had a patient who was in a state of constant fear and anxiety about being attacked by others. He was a heavy smoker and suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety. He was also an empath. When he used Urchin essence he was able to get in touch with his ‘still small voice within’ and make choices which gradually increased his feeling of safety and well-being in his physical vehicle. And over time he was able to transform that over-sympathy and over-empathy into compassion.
If you happen to be one of those people who have weight problems, who feel hyper-sensitive to external stimuli, who have difficulty saying no, who suffer from digestive issues or seem to catch everything that is going around, or who suffer just because you see suffering outside you, perhaps it would be good to check in with your Earth element and to see what you can do to restore balance and harmony within.
None of us will ever change the world ‘out there.’ But we can change our response to the world out there. When we embrace this reality we can develop greater adaptability and resilience to cope with changing times in powerful and effective ways. In this manner, we can harness the power of our ‘sensitivity’ to maintain health and well-being in our own Body/Mind and to contribute something meaningful and powerful in our world.
]]>Looking out at the sparkling serenity of the Pacific Ocean on this late summer morning I see a cluster of Brown Kelp (nereocystis luetkeana) and am immediately overwhelmed with gratitude that we, Pacific Essences, brought these amazing energies into the vibrational medicine pharmacopoeia. Like a proud parent I reflect on the gift that this particular sea essence offers – the ability to delve deep into our unconscious to discover the source of some confusion or discomfort or some way in which our lives do not appear to be working. And somehow just that awareness allows us to make a shift in perception to create just the change we want or need. At a practical level, because this sea essence resonates with the Bladder channel we have used this repeatedly with patients who have bladder infections with great results.
From the moment we made Sand Dollar (dendraster excentricus) in 1985, the journey of learning more about the healing properties of life from the ocean was compelling. After the first 12 essences, which were all made in the waters surrounding Vancouver Island, proved to hold correction energy for all 12 meridians of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) we really felt like we had been given “gifts from the sea”. Correction energy is a term used in Kinesiology, where there are certain neurolymphatic massage points and neurovascular holding points to correct a weak muscle and bring it into harmony with the whole. But we discovered that holding a bottle of Jellyfish (aurelia aurita) corrected the energy in the muscle, subscapularis, which is related to the Heart meridian and the physical heart, and we were thrilled.
We moved on to making essences in the waters of the Big Island of Hawaii – Sea Turtle, Whale, Coral, and Dolphin. What incredible and amazing experiences these were. Swimming with Turtles and Dolphins and connecting with Whales (Globicephala macrocephalus) was over-the-top amazing, joyful and blessed. I remember the first experience with Turtle on the very last day of our trip. We had seen them while snorkelling with all the amazing tropical fish, but I had not gotten close. Coming in from my very last snorkel I saw a crowd of people on the shore and then saw this giant turtle do a somersault flip and begin swimming back out into the ocean. I pulled down my mask and followed, and he led me out into the bay. I was about three feet behind him the whole time and could see every detail of his beautiful shell. It felt as if he was somehow connected to my heart centre with an invisible energy cord from his heart centre. It turned out that Sea Turtle (chelonia mydas) is indeed connected to the heart protector channel as well as the spleen channel. As well as protecting the heart and supporting our ability to absorb nourishment via the spleen channel, it particularly addresses fear of flying.
My first encounter with Spinner Dolphins was equally remarkable. We were just floating in the boat when the captain said “Here they come. Jump in.” As we submerged and opened our eyes there was a sea of dolphins below us, al swimming in this rhythmic dance. Apparently they were in alpha state at this time of the day = very chill and relaxed after feeding. When I emerged, I was so far away from the boat and knew that I had not done it by myself. For one thing when you swim with dolphins in the wild you keep your hands by your sides so you look more like them and are not threatening them in any way. I realized that this sea of dolphins had virtually carried me. On another occasion one of them came up to me and just looked me right in the eyes. Unfortunately I was fumbling for my camera to get a picture so I kind of ruined the moment. But still there was that instant where we were face to face, eye to eye, and heart to heart. What a blessing!!! Dolphin (stenellia longirostris) sea essence has blessed people all around the world and brought joy and happiness to people who were gloomy and depressed. A teenage boy in France who was awaiting a kidney transplant used this essence to sustain him while he was going through dialysis four times each week. My experience is that people feel a lighter heart and an exuberant sense of embodiment when using this sea essence. And it especially speaks to the hearts of children. The connection is instantaneous and like magic erases whatever troubles they may be experiencing.
So how do these salty slimy beings work as essences? Primarily the sea essences are about transformations in consciousness. Being willing to adapt and to perceive differently, to question our ingrained attitudes and beliefs and positions. The inspirational teacher Wayne Dyer said, “Change the way you look at things and what you are looking at will change.” Fixed ideas are often highly detrimental to our well-being.
And what makes the Sea Essences different from the flower remedies? A key factor is the very medium from which they come – water, specifically salt water.
Water not only makes up 75% of the planet Earth, it also comprises 75% of the human body. It is the medium, or carrier substance, which carries the vibrations of the flower and gem essences.
Water is one of the five elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine and has been recognized by other medical systems as not only vital to human life, but also symbolic of character and personality types. In addition, water is a key symbol in both Tarot and Astrology.
In the Chinese medicine cosmology, Water is related to reproduction, growth, and maturation, including the development of Marrow or the brain, and Essence, which is the material basis for the Mind. Herein lies its first association with transformation of consciousness.
When we are aligned with our own inner consciousness we create our own reality rather than following someone else’s myths. We are enabled to perform “right action” in tune with our own inner knowingness and direction.
In Chinese medicine, the emotional characteristic associated with Water is fear. Fear is the obstacle which blocks expression of our true selves. Have you ever noticed that when you are coming from a place of total harmony within, there are no obstacles to action?
At the level of spirit, Water is related to Chih, the psychic strength which leads us through obstacles to growth. As Lao Tsu said:
“Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is more powerful;
It has no equal.”
Think about it. Water wears away rock and water always finds a way to keep flowing.
Archetypically Water is the symbol of the unconscious.
The Sea Essences, by their very nature, expose the unconscious and strengthen consciousness to move forward in its own unique unfolding. They are dynamic and act quickly to help us to flow with inner strength and knowingness.
Perhaps the rigidity of our fears and unexamined myths and beliefs can only be transformed by the Yin qualities of Water, for by its very nature it demands and challenges us to “let go” into the direction of our own being. And isn’t “letting go” into life our first act as we claim human form when we leave the safe watery amniotic fluid of our mother’s womb and embrace life on earth?
With love and blessings,
Sabina
PS - The first 12 Sea Essences (Kit 4) have one essence for each of the 12 meridians and can be used to correct imbalances in their correlate meridians in the same way as we can make corrections with acupuncture or kinesiology. The second 12 Sea Essences (Kit 5) are more about expanding our own unique potential and were given to us to help humans to refine their nervous and electrical systems to expand into new dimensions of being. When we work with Diatoms to repattern cellular memory, or Coral to support neuroplasticity of the brain or Sea Horse to fortify the life force within and to nourish the central nervous system, we begin to realize what a generous gift these essences really are.
]]>It can be rightly said that flower essence therapy is closely related to homeopathy. Below listed are five flower essences that are known to help relieve stress and promote relaxation, making them some of the best natural remedies around.
Natural remedies made from flowers restore harmony and balance by treating emotional and mental imbalances. Flower essences are made from flowering parts of plants. Flower essences can be taken orally or topically on the skin. Flower essences are made by floating the flowers of a plant in pure spring water and leaving it in sunlight for 2 - 3 hours. Then the water is preserved with alcohol. This is why all essences smell and taste the same.
Grape Hyacinth flower essence is just what you need when you have experienced some shock or trauma whether it is physical or emotional. It's all about helping you to be able to take a breath and step back and find perspective. This essence can provide you with a sense of peace and clarity. You may also be able to see things objectively, which will improve your decision-making abilities when you are feeling stressed out.
Blue Lupin is a flower essence that offers clarity and attention. When you're feeling overwhelmed, it can be difficult to focus on anything else. With Blue Lupin, you will have clarity of mind and heightened attention in times of stress, making decision-making and other cognitive activities more manageable. It clears and calms the emotions so they do not have the power to dominate one's life and opens the heart chakra so one can be at peace during stressful or confusing times.
Take the weight off and bring some levity back into your life with Fairy Bell Flower essence, a natural essence that you can apply under your tongue 11drops in the morning and 11 drops before you go to bed. it's an excellent general tonic to promote a feeling of calm and well-being and is ideal for people facing mental or emotional difficulties. The result is many healing effects including relief of depression, grief, and stress.
You should choose Periwinkle flower essence if you want to feel centered and grounded. The soothing and peaceful colour will make you feel less stressed. You may find this formula particularly helpful if you are feeling as if everything is hopeless and you are trapped in a dark cloud of negativity. Take 11 drops each morning and evening.
During times when life feels chaotic, it can be hard to relax. But with Goatsbeard flower essence by your side, you can find stillness among the busyness. By promoting meditation, visualization, and fantasy, Goatsbeard's unique formula promotes calm thinking. So put it to use for the next time you're feeling frazzled and let the calming effects do their work. The most valuable attribute of this essence is that when we are in emotional equilibrium and our minds are calm it has been shown that our immune system is much more powerful.
There are many benefits to using flower essences. They can be used for healing physical maladies, emotional balancing, and even mental disorders. Known for being gentle, safe, and non-toxic, these liquid essences are also easy to use and carry in your purse or bag. Many remedies can be made from flower essences, but five have been found to reduce stress the most. They all decrease anxiety and produce feelings of peace and tranquility when ingested orally or applied topically on the skin.
One easy way to naturally reduce stress and promote relaxation is to take flower essences. In fact, flower essences are more akin to homeopathy than herbal medicine. Herbal medicine is based on the chemical compounds found in the plants whereas homeopathy is the energy imprint of a plant. At Pacific Essences, you can find a variety of flower essence collections.
Enter the Goddesses!!!!!
Every culture has archetypes of the divine feminine – beings who have been elevated to the status of goddess because of their seemingly super human capacity to embrace challenges (Isis, Demeter, Persephone, Sita) or modeled the living of an extraordinary and exemplary life (Kuan Yin, Lakshmi, Radha) or simply expressed phenomenal energetic wisdom which cuts through the delusion of “this is who you are, this is who I am, this is how it is” (Kali, Maya, Shakti). And of course there are hundreds more but nine of these came to us on New Year’s Eve 1990 and the tenth one, Lakshmi, showed up after being on a retreat in India in 2003 with Master Choa Kok Sui. They arrived with the message that they were here to offer healing to all of humanity – both men and women, to cultivate the qualities inherent within their vibrations. In other words they acted in a similar manner to other essences by either attracting some new desirable state of being or by deleting/cancelling some challenging state of being. The only difference being that we can relate to the goddesses through the expression of their archetype.
Learn more about the creation of our Goddess essences
A parent who has lost a child because the other parent has removed their child to another city, or even country, knows the grief of Demeter firsthand. A person who has lost the love of their life through some kind of trauma can easily resonate with the story of Isis. A male or female child who is the offspring of a rigid and controlling father can heal that wounding of the inner child and embrace their own animus in a clear and empowering manner – Kuan Yin. And the child who blames his/her father or mother for all their woes can benefit greatly from Persephone.
Essentially goddesses can help us to write a new story of our own life so that we are not carrying the past and are able to move forward into our future with more grace and ease.
Moreover, the goddesses who did not have physical incarnations – (Kali, Maya, Shakti) are available to help us to manage our daily life experience. Maya can help us to see through and to disengage from the melodrama. When we want to stop the stories and inner chatter and remember who we really are, this goddess will assist. Kali dissolves the fear of death, and assists in dealing with anger and addictions. And Shakti frees up our energy to be used in whatever manner is best for us in the moment. This is a great goddess essence to take with you to yoga or tai chi practice. It addresses issues of survival, power and control and promotes a fluidity in Body/Mind/Spirit.
One of the most interesting ways to use the goddess essences is by taking them one at a time and journaling with them daily. One of our students in Brazil did a project like this for her certification. She herself does past life regressions and hypnosis and she and a friend who is a Jungian therapist committed to taking one goddess every month for 10 months to see what happened. They each took the essence daily and made notes on any insight or experience they had. Then once a month they got together and compared notes. They were both astonished at the synchronicity they experienced and also what emerged from their own unconscious. One of the most powerful realizations for both of them was that somehow it felt as if they were doing ancestral healing. It was as if the problem that resolved was not in their immediate life experience but that in fact it had been the experience of a grandmother or great grandfather. In other words the insult or injury was actually somewhere else in their lineage but somehow existed in their cell memory.
I have always loved the idea that whatever healing work I do for myself that I am contributing to the well-being of my family for the next 7 generations. And that even if I don’t have children myself, I am certainly part of the fabric of a family lineage and contribute my story and my healing to that lineage.
When we engage with a goddess it can be a powerful reflection of the quality of our lives and an empowering impetus to make necessary shifts to allow the divinity with each of us to emerge.
Namasté,
Sabina
PS - What’s the difference between a goddess and a witch? Nothing if you consider that a witch is a Woman In Total Control of Herself = someone who is able to respond with calm demeanor to whatever and whoever is in front of her. Witches, of course, also had super human powers like the capacity to heal and especially to use plants for healing and to communicate with animals. Sadly they were vilified and burned at the stake in the culture of the day.
I like to think of using the goddesses as an opportunity to step back from the frenzied pace of our lives and connect with that place of calm demeanor and then to reflect on – is this who I want to be? – is this who you really are? - is this how I want my life to be?
]]>What if the life journey you are on was 100% chosen by you? And you forgot?
A few days after I wrote the last blog and mentioned my mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother in the context of happy memories, I realized that I had an amazing childhood. I was flooded with gratitude and then realized that I don’t often hear people talking about the happiness they have experienced. It’s as if we are somehow self conscious about sharing the good stuff that we have experienced. Or maybe we simply believe that we have no happy memories from our childhood.
I seem to recall reading a Stanford study about a group of people who were asked to choose between a pain button and a pleasure button. Surprisingly a higher percentage chose the pain button. The researchers asked what that was about and came up with the notion that our Judeo-Christian tradition prescribes suffering as a means to ultimate fulfillment. Or that perhaps we have a mass belief that we have to experience pain before we can fully enjoy pleasure. Whatever the explanation, I think we all need to deliberately disengage from “mass consciousness” and deliberately make choices which bring fulfillment into our life experience.
I remember attending an Alpha training workshop with a guy called Verl Minto (Alpha Awareness Training encompasses cybernetics, positive thinking, meditation, motivation, goal-structuring, and extra-sensory awareness to teach people how to direct and control their lives with success, happiness, and peace of mind.) and he said that the only thing he remembered about his childhood was the day his dog died, the day his father’s house burned down and the day he backed his father’s brand new Plymouth convertible into the potato patch. After beginning to practice Alpha, he discovered happy memories. He further suggested that if we made a conscious effort to retrieve happy memories, we would find some.
Well in my case above I did not have to search for them, they just bubbled up by surprise and it made me feel good. And as I noticed how good I felt and how grateful I was, more happy memories surfaced. By the end of the day I was feeling incredibly blessed and very grateful.
I realized that ‘the better it gets, the better it gets.’ I guess it’s the principle of attraction and attractors and what we put our attention on gets bigger. We can’t “fake” it, but we can definitely cultivate it. We can pause for a moment in the busy-ness of our lives and pick a thought which is pleasing and see where it leads. This is where essences can assist. Each individual essence has a unique vibration and energy pattern or Resonance which can gently shift us in a direction of greater peace, greater happiness, greater well-being.
For example Ox-Eye Daisy which is blooming abundantly in my world in this moment gives us the gift of Perspective and the capacity to see things differently or to grasp the bigger picture.
Dolphin gives us the gift of Lightheartedness. Wherever I have been in the world, if I mention Dolphin or show images of Dolphin, people immediately light up. It is a cross cultural phenomenon – which is really cool when you also consider the possibility of people getting along with each other and dissolving separation.
Nootka Rose is also vigorously blooming right now and I have had amazing experiences with this beautiful being over the years. In one of our early classes a student identified Nootka Rose as the Prozac of flower essences. In my clinical practice it has been incredibly powerful to help people to dissolve and to move past the thorns of their life experience and to begin to enjoy the delicious fragrance of all the good things that they have. Maybe that’s because the Essences will help us to move blocked energy and to dissolve habitual thought patterns which are holding us in the same old “stuck place.” But first we must claim the reality that, “I am master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” ~ Nelson Mandela.
I invite you to spend a few days – 11, 22, 33 or even simply 5 or 10 and come up with one positive memory from your childhood. For however many days you choose to engage, write down the happy memory. Then notice how you feel when you decide that you are complete.
P.S. I have no idea who originated the Life's Journey meditation. I did it with Chuck Spezzano, Ram Dass and Wayne Dyer. I have used it myself in many classes around the world and people have had some astonishing healing experiences when gently prompted by this notion that we are each on a journey which somehow we chose and that in every moment we get to choose again about how we want our experience to unfold.
With love and blessings
Sabina
]]>And then of course Michael came into my world and began to gift me shiny things. And all of these shiny objects emitted energy and had value for me and provoked a curiosity in me about how they evoked different responses within me. This curiosity led us to the discovery that gems had been used thereapeutically in India for centuries and that the first documented records of using gems to heal date back to the Sumerians 4500 – 2000BC. Crystal healing shows up in the writings of Plato and crystals and stones were mined in Egypt and then crafted into jewelry and amulets to support the well-being of those who wore them.
We began collecting. The stones did not have to be expensive or flawless. They just had to call to us, much in the same way the flowers called to us when we were out in Nature. So by the time we released the first flower essences in 1983, we also had quite a collection of gemstones and felt like a good way to share the energy would be as gem essences. In 1988 we added 60 gem essences to our repertory. Unlike the flowers these gems and crystals were catalyzed by both sunlight and moonlight.
Because in the 80s there was beginning to be a plethora of books about gems and crystals, the information about our gem and crystal essences was just one appendix in Energy Medicine – Healing from the Kingdoms of Nature. More detailed information was published in Japanese and French in 2007 and German in 2014 and Portuguese in 2018. I began to feel that these very special energies were being ignored by me, so one of my pandemic projects while I was ‘grounded’ was to write Energy Medicine from Gems & Crystals. I am thrilled to announce that it is now in print and available!!!!!
So what is the unique gift of the gem and crystal essences? Many of our practitioners have suggested that including a gem essence in a dosage bottle actually holds physical structure for the whole formula. This make sense because as Judy Hall states in The Crystal Bible – “A crystal is symmetrical along its axis. Its regular external planes are an outward expression of its internal order.” Gems and crystals not only contribute their own unique energy to a formula but also enhance the bio-availability of the other essences. Alone or in combination with other essences gem essences restore order to the Body/Mind. And that’s what all healing strives for – the restoration of balance and harmony.
Essentially the gem essences work in the same way as flower essences in that they either “attract” some new energy into the Body/Mind or they resolve some blockage or dissolve some challenge in the Body/Mind which leads to balance and harmony and enhances well-being.
In my clinical practice I have had some amazing success with Smoky Quartz for adrenal overload, Apophylite for cleansing the residue of anaesthesia and other toxins, and Opal for moving sluggish lymph.
Another of my favourites is Fire Agate which happens to be the only gem essence for the Triple Warmer channel in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Triple Warmer has a unique function in the Body/Mind and essentially is the communication network among all the organs and systems. The resonance of Fire Agate is “Inter-Being”, that beautiful notion originating from Thich Nhat Hanh. When our Body/Mind is infused with this energy our zest for life and joy in life increases exponentially and we are able to offer this quality of our being out into the world we live in and effect change by modelling coherence and happiness.
I have given teething babies the Amber Essence to calm the fussiness and discomfort and discovered it was just as effective as the Amber necklaces which are prescribed for the same purpose.
Rhodochrosite is a gem which has helped patients with Nervous System disorders like Polio, Cerebral Palsy and Parkinson’s disease and Rubellite, also known as Pink Tourmaline switches on the parasympathetic nervous system and triggers the relaxation response. Rubellite is the same frequency as the heartbeat of Mother Earth. And Black Tourmaline grounds us and protects us and used as a bath therapy for 10 – 14 days will increase our energy, enthusiasm, joy, and compassion.
Essentially the 60 gem essences are almost a complete apothecary in themselves with so many physical, emotional, and mental correlations. And even the word gems translates as precious. I see the 60 gem essences as a precious collection of healing energies which can be used by anyone to help them to heal and to transform.
With love and blessings
Sabina
]]>
Tazuko K, who has had amazing success with our Essences for Animals.
Susan D, who used Sea Essences, Tree and Plant essences to regulate her thyroid function.
Gayle
“I always take my annual stressful test with anxiety, but pacific essences saves the day and my career!
I start taking Optimal Learning, Balancer and Fearlessness about 2 weeks in advance of my big day, and I just breeze through it with a perfect score and results. yaaaaaay!
I am so happy I know about the power and gentleness of these essences.
thank you mother nature and planet earth. and for Sabina being the beautiful channel to share it with the world and planet. anytime I travel I take my essences and I can face the world and everything goes easy and effortlessly in a perfect way. what bliss and blessings! or for any challenge it will give u an armor of protection and attract good and happy vibes into your aura and all around you. I am so lucky for these gifts to help make life a lot easier and to spread the love and light that we need these days and all the shifts
going on. so start taking the essences and give a big smile to the world!
cheers, g”
Nicole
“My name is Nicole, and I started using Pacific Essences at a time where I needed to boost my confidence and tap into a wisdom that came from beyond myself and my earthly teachers.
I found my altar filled with the Goddesses Set, and every morning and night would sit by my altar and pray with and to the Goddesses to receive their support and wisdom in my life. I enjoyed 10 drops morning and night, along with 3 drops into a "dream" vessel that I would dip my finger into and touch to my 3rd eye, throat, heart and mani pura (solar plexus). This ritual supported my transformation into a confident, strong woman, ready to offer my skills into the world. They helped me remember my own Goddess nature. And I can still feel the goddesses with me, a year later! They are continuing to support and nourish my experience here on Earth. I am grateful for the energy medicine of the goddesses and the creators of pacific essences ~ thank you!”
Melissa
“An essence combination that really showed me their profound effect was one with Fireweed in it.
Within a few weeks, I started to feel this intro-cellular tingling, a releasing and letting go of old stories and trauma held in my physical body. I compared this to a previous similar experience that took several months of being in massage therapy school of touching and being touched every day.
What took a few weeks with essences, took several months in physical touch.”
Tazuko
“I have been using Pacific Essences for quite some time, the most remedy I use a lot is "Endings and Beginnings" and "Balancer" I work with animals, especially with senior dogs and cats. A lot of time I face that animals are in transitions, so I recommend their owners to use these remedies and be prepared for themselves. Even for myself, I have lost many animals, one of my beloved animals, a 23 year old cat Pistachio, she was aging and had a bit of dementia, I knew it was her time soon, so I kept spraying the "Endings and Beginnings" on her a few times a day, one day while I was giving her Reiki, she peacefully went into the rainbow bridge in my hands, that was the best moment I was able to witness. She did not suffer through the transition and she left this world with the right moment. These remedies have been helping my animals and my clients and myself. Ever since I keep recommending these products to my clients and friends.”
Susan
“I have literally for the third time, been able to shift my personal blood lab results, from abnormal levels to normal range.
I have my life back because of Pacific Essences. Thank you Deeply Sabina Pettiitt. With your attention to healing with vibrations through the essences, you have made a difference in our world. SO.. How did I do it ?
Through the use of choosing specific Essences, usually 5-6 of them at a time. I would choose ones that spoke to me the loudest making a list of al their properties, chakra meanings, as well as meridians/organs / systems. in other words All 4 bodies ( physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ) for the most part the Sea Essences group, although the last couple of times I have added plants, and a tree Elderberry.
In all three cases of my story here, with my blood work, I would come back with TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Range), Free T3, and T4 Thyroxine That were showing abnormal highs and or lows. I would then be pinned with Hypothyroidism. Which was not correct.. All 3 times. I had blood work that read the said title, only I would say, wait I don't have those symptoms.. I have Hyperthyroidism. systems?? Yet something else is at play here ..First time, 2013.
I did take medicine for Hypothyroidism, I got very ill it wasn't the answer. New Doc took me off the med said I should have never been on it, I did the 5/6 Essences and Pinal tuning fork daily, within 6 weeks my doctors saw my blood work read normal. Second time 4/2021 again this happens with my blood work I ask my now doc, please give me 6 weeks, and draw my blood again He said okay.. Results. Normal!! I then decided to stop the essences, to see what would happen.. I wanted to show the doctor it wasn't just luck or a fluke. my blood work slightly went back.
SO.. I Started again Results. Normal again ! Translation proven I did not have Hypothyroidism. I did add the adrenal tuning fork to the pineal one. Here is an example of blood work :TSH Date 04/20/21 9.16 m/u/mL HIGH, Date 06/16/2021, 2.68 normal. Stopped Essences I love data! 10/12/21 5.18 HIGH, restarted forks, added new pacific essences results : Date 11/21/21 Same 5.8 HIGH, Date 01/18 2022 ( my most current ). 4.11 Normal ! T4 Thyroxine, had been low, 0.56. now normal., Free T3 Date 10/12/21, 2.55ng/mL LOW, Date 11/23/2021 2.55ng/mL LOW, 01/18/22 ( my most current ) 3.18 Normal !! Dr Wilford trusted me to try my way. No easy Feat with Western Medicine I am grateful !!
This Does require courage, not accepting defeat, listening to one's own heart/ intuition. Today I soar. I feel great !! brain fog, fatigue, feelings of stress. etc. have lifted my doctors all agree she doesn't need medicine Nor am I diagnosed, with either Hyper or Hypothyroidism. I am quite the success story, I have nearly died more then once. Yet I am here. I love to inspire people, we are boundless, in possibilities.
We are given the many blessings of Mother Earth, and all her kingdoms, a long with the Cosmos of heavenly beings of Love, and Light. May we find our power is in Love beyond measure. May we be kind, filled with compassion. Unity as One, peace within. and may we never forget to take care of our dear planet Earth. I am beyond grateful of Pacific Essences.
You have been my lifeline..
Thank you from the deepest center of my Divine Heart. Many Blessings, Susan”
]]>
Another factor to consider is that human beings are born with an innate cellular intelligence of how to function together to maintain health and well-being. In western medicine this intelligence is largely controlled by homeostasis which can be defined as “any self-regulating process by which an organism tends to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are best for its survival.” In other words, our bodies know what to do at a cellular level in order to maintain life and well-being. As the quote above goes on to say, “If homeostasis is successful, life continues; if it’s unsuccessful, it results in a disaster or death of the organism.”
However, when we factor in that there has to be harmony and equilibrium in the mental body and the emotional body as well then, a broader definition must be applied. I coined the term “multi-dimensional homeostasis” to include all three energy bodies and to introduce the notion of personal choice.
Multi-dimensional homeostasis is where the human being exercises his power of choice in order to promote and to maintain health and well-being. For example, we do not choose to hold on to our anger for a minute longer than is necessary to release it. For instance, we don’t speak ill of ourselves or another person because every negative thought pollutes and in some way threatens the well-being of all our energy bodies.
Multi-dimensional homeostasis is when each of us develops the capacity to choose who we want to be and how we want to be in response to all of the events and experiences in our lives.
And this is where essences can assist us. In a nutshell this is how I understand essences to work.
Eg. Someone has been injured in a relationship and as a result refuses to feel able to trust a new person coming into their life. But they are sad and lonely and at some level of their being really want to be in a relationship. Cultivating the attitude of trust may resolve this issue and lead to a new fulfilling relationship. Note: when you search for the word ‘Trust’ on the pacificessences.com website, 12 essence results relating to Trust appear for you to choose from.
Some essences seem more focused on physical healing – e.g. Salmonberry as a physical tonic and specifically for spinal alignment. Some essences are more focused on emotional healing – e.g. Mussel for releasing the persistent reaction of anger when things and circumstances do not jive with your expectations of how things should be and anger has just become a bad habit. And some essences might be more aligned with the mental realm where our persistent habit of judging leads to guilt, shame, and blame. So if you search for ‘judgement’ on the pacificessences.com website, you get 13 different essences to choose from.
So far we have not addressed Spirit. Spirit is not so much an energy body as the activating or enlivening force in every living thing. Like an essence it is the unique expression of life within each of us and within every living thing. In Traditional Chinese Medicine there are 5 Spirits associated with each of the 5 Elements – Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. Very briefly Earth is our Physical vehicle. Fire is our Consciousness. Metal is our rhythms – breath, craniosacral, cerebrospinal pump. Water is our DNA blueprint and our ancestral energy. And Wood is our Life Purpose. All of these 5 Spirits work together to maintain balance and harmony and to support our ‘Spirit in Matter’ to experience joy and fulfillment on our journey through life.
I am always amazed at the results people have achieved when they get the essence which is perfect for them in that moment of their lives. I have witnessed physical, emotional and mental healing. And the best thing is that you can actually choose for yourself an essence which calls to you without concern for any side effects. Some of the most powerful healings have occurred when someone has just been attracted to an image of one of the essences or merely keyed in a word which describes a particular challenge they are experiencing or something more that they want in their lives.
And every day I am grateful for these living energies in Nature which come to us with carefree abandon and infinite healing possibilities.
With love and blessings
Sabina
]]>There have been many in my life but none as empowering and curious as the experience which lead to the creation of Abundance.
It was the early 80s and we were researching the first essences in the Pacific Essences repertory. Our research included kinesiology, simply taking the essences and noting any physical or emotional responses, independent research with an electro acupuncture machine (VEGA) to determine meridian resonances, giving them to students and clients in response to s particular challenge and then finally one day I decided to have a reading with a woman in Victoria who ‘channelled’ a couple or more different entities. The one that came through in my reading was a being called Abraham, affectionately called Abe – and not to be confused with Abraham Hicks of current fame. My intention in doing this reading was to substantiate what I thought we understood about the essences so far. For instance was Bluebell (endymion non scriptus) essence really for healing issues to do with the Lung and Kidney channels in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine)? - Things like, shyness, low energy, panic attacks? But after Abraham concurred with over 90% of our subjective findings he said “But you must make a prosperity essence. It will go far and wide and help many people.” Even as I heard these words I felt the resistance in my body and my thoughts screaming – “That’s not me. That’s not my job.”
However, in gratitude for all the other information in the reading and in honour of the work of our friend and the entity she channelled we did go so far as to make the essence as described by Abraham in the reading and then labelled it Prosperity and put it on the shelf with all the other Mother essences. It was not until 5 or 6 years later that I took my first drops.
It was 1991 and Pacific Essences had volunteered to host the Second International Flower Essence conference here in Victoria. I was also finishing my last year of Acupuncture school and preparing to write the Provincial Board exams to become a licensed health professional. We had engaged the University of Victoria’s conference services to manage all the logistics of registration, accommodation, scheduling etc. and so we didn’t really have our finger on the pulse of the financial matters. One night when I was studying and simultaneously feeling a little bit concerned that we were ‘on the hook’ for all these expenses, I looked over at the shelf of Mother essences and saw the Prosperity bottle and felt called to take a couple of drops.
In the moment something shifted. I’m not sure what but definitely I was able to return to the task at hand of memorizing acupuncture points instead of worrying about what kind of debt we might be in after the conference. I continued to take drops every night when I was studying just because it felt good. The conference days arrived in June and we had attracted over 235 participants from all over the world to a conference without internet and social media and on a topic which was little known at that time.
But the real surprise came in September when the University conference services sent us a cheque for our share of the profits. What a surprise! And it gave us more than enough money to publish the first book about Pacific Essences. When I shared our unexpected abundance with our dear friend David, he asked well what did you do. And I could think of nothing special except taking the Prosperity drops every night which at the time I thought was to help me stay focused so that I would not fail my exams and have to mortgage our home to pay conference expenses. In hindsight I believe that I was unwittingly tapping into one of the 7 Spiritual Laws of Success (Deepak Chopra) which to paraphrase says – put out your intention and then let the universe handle the details.
I started sharing the essence with people in our circle who were facing some kind of challenge or wanted more of something in their lives. Every single person had an amazing result. Word began to filter out and by Christmas of 1991, the astrologer Donna Cunningham rang me and asked when we were going to release the new essence. I was completely perplexed and said “What new essence?” And she said the one you made for success and abundance.” I told her I was not going to ‘release it’ and that I was just giving it to people who needed to get past some hurdle in their life or manifest something new in their life. And when she persisted in asking why I wouldn’t release it, I blurted out “because it’s not a healing essence.” She challenged me – “How can you say that when so many people are suffering because of some kind of scarcity in their lives – poor health, unhappy relationships, lack of financial resources? People are killing themselves because of their investment in scarcity.”
I heard her. And thus the Abundance essence was born. Because I really did not want people to think they were magic drops whereby they could take a couple and go out and buy a lottery ticket and all their problems would dissolve, I felt compelled or perhaps just ‘guided’ to create a program to help people to ‘re-frame’ their reality. I knew immediately that it had to be 22 days because 22 is a Master number in numerology for creating a structure and I knew it had to be a tool for examining and erasing fundamental beliefs which were preventing someone from living the life of their dreams. And I knew that it needed to have an essential oil aromatherapy associated with it as well as the essence drops so that every time someone smelled that fragrance they would further ‘anchor’ abundance into their consciousness.
Just a few weeks ago I had that moment of realization that now in 2022 the Abundance Program is 30 years old. It has helped so many people around the world to realize more of their potential and to manifest the life they want. It has interfaced at so many different levels – physical challenges, relationship challenges, financial challenges. Indeed over the past 30 years the Abundance essence has proved itself over and over again to be a healing essence at every possible level. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) it is understood that every person has their own unique purpose to fulfill in a lifetime and when we as therapists see illness at the physical, emotional or mental levels of our patients that there is dissonance somewhere in the Body/Mind which is creating the dis-ease. A non-alignment with Being will create all sorts of illness.
Even more today when everyone is so externally connected and possibly disconnected from their inner world, I think that giving oneself the gift of stepping back for 22 days and focusing on what you really want and the unconscious barriers that may be preventing you from manifesting your heart’s desire, is a priceless gift to yourself and will no doubt contribute substantively to your health and well-being.
With a heart full of gratitude to Shaari and Abraham for opening me to sharing the infinite possibility in every precious moment……………………
With love and blessings
Sabina
]]>
But first, a little about where the idea and practice of Spring Cleaning came about. I always thought it was the Middle Ages and earlier where people were coming out of cold winters where there was very little air flow inside their shelters, and they had fires burning inside all winter for heat and cooking.
In fact, a Google search says that spring cleaning may have begun in Iran for the celebration of Persian New Year on the first day of spring. Everything in the house is thoroughly cleaned and this practice of khaneh tekani literally translates as “shaking the house.”
Other researchers attribute spring cleaning to the Jewish culture of cleaning the home in preparation for Passover and purging the space of anything leavened (chametz) or fermented. And in fact, after doing a thorough cleaning of the space orthodox Jews would do a candlelight ceremony the night before Passover to hunt for the last crumbs of chametz.
Pagans did cleaning in preparation for the Spring Equinox where they celebrated new life and fertility.
And later Christians did cleaning and clearing in preparation for the feast of Easter, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the 21st of March (Spring Equinox)
Japan, Scotland and many other countries do cleaning and space clearing before the New Year – traditionally the first of January to clear the way for new possibilities and manifestations.
All this to say that it seems that spring cleaning is a multicultural experience. And that’s a good thing, right?? Because the more things we have in common the easier it is to focus on co-creation of the world in which we want to live.
I already feel like I am on a new trajectory since I began this Blog a couple of days ago. And I have already half-filled two boxes of recycling – stuff which we have not used in a while and which someone else might be able to use right now. Just imagine how I will feel by the end of March!!!! I await with joyful anticipation.
Seriously though, I think there are huge benefits to be derived from spring cleaning and decluttering. Some of these are:
And remember Spring is the Wood element in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Every seed has a purpose to become the best expression of what it is supposed to become – an Oak, a Cherry, a Maple. Just like the plant kingdom each of us began as a seed and each of us has a Life Purpose. Spring cleaning and Decluttering may well help you to find yours.
With love and blessings
Sabina
And to celebrate Spring Cleaning at Pacific Essences we are having a clearance sale on all the Precious Jewels and mini sprays. Uplifting essence enhanced aromatherapy to lift your spirit and nourish your soul. 50% off while quantities last. Shop all Specials
Tell Us Your Story and enter a chance to win a $150 gift certificate to our store.While we have volumes of case studies from my own practice and from our practitioners, we would love to hear how something shifted or changed for you after using one of our essences.
]]>