Having just completed the first Energy Medicine training since 2019, my heart is still singing with joy three weeks later. For me, sharing this amazing environment and all her treasures with people who have been brought here because of the Essences has been an annual highlight of my life since 1995. Witnessing each person’s discovery of the Hemlock nursery or the Mother Tree or Red Huckleberry is a delight to observe. It’s like watching the astonishment on the face of someone tasting ice cream or chocolate for the first time! And seeing the cares and concerns of their regular lives dissolve as they immerse themselves deeply in Nature for a full week is a joy to behold.
My connection with Nature has been a slow and gentle awakening. Nature is patient and waits for us to notice her abundance.
My father taught me to love Nature. He was always more present when we were on summer holidays on a lake in northern Ontario. But what I remember with even greater love and respect was how he would get a piece of land together and instruct the architect to design the building around the trees that were already part of the landscape. Not for him to clear cut and mow down trees that had been growing for 20 or 30 years in order to make way for steel and concrete.
When Michael and I decided to leave our careers and survive on five acres in the 70s, it turned out to be not 5 acres but 25 acres, and not survival but full-on production! We had two 100-foot greenhouses where we grew all our own seedlings for the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers we grew on the land. We also grew bedding plants that all had to be ready for the May 24th holiday weekend so that Ontarians could plant their gardens.
Sowing the seeds in February, we tended these beings until they began to flower and went to market in May. Every day there was something new to observe as each tiny seed manifested its potential. Sweet Williams that looked like little girls’ party dresses. Lobelia in the most amazing shades of blue and purple that I have never seen duplicated in any computer software. Alyssum in pink and white and purple, with a fragrance that welcomed you as soon as you opened the greenhouse door.
While we were experimenting as farmers, we were in a bookstore in Toronto and a book about Findhorn (a small and very special Scottish village) dropped off a shelf. It was a serendipitous moment – reading this book about people growing things in the desolate climate of northern Scotland gave us the notion of plant spirits or devas, and the possibility of communicating with them. And so we did.
Not sure how, exactly, because anything we read about Findhorn certainly did not read like Talking to Nature for Dummies or Communicating with Nature 101. But somehow through the inspiration of these three adults, Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean, we began our own experiments with the devas and plant spirits and yes, even the machinery devas. In fact, our biggest laugh was Michael getting the tractor to work by communicating with the tractor deva!
In those days we were avidly pursuing a deeper connection with Nature and an expansion of our own consciousness. Reading about this experiment in the north of Scotland on a barren and windswept coast where they were ‘growing 40-pound cabbages and eight-foot delphiniums’ was indeed food for our souls.
That first Findhorn book had a beautiful golden cover with a tree on it. This image was shimmering and luminescent and I began to appreciate that this was how I perceived Nature most of the time.
Our subsequent move to Vancouver Island was like some kind of homecoming. The colours and energy of the West Coast spoke to us in a way we had not previously experienced, and we soaked it up with gratitude.
The call to make flower Essences was irresistible. It began as a fun thing to do while on camping trips, and turned into this international adventure where people in Brazil and Japan and Germany are using our plant vibrations for healing.
What was astonishing was the information I already seemed to know about these plants. So while we did research using kinesiology and provings to determine what each plant could be used for, and even had others do some independent testing with electro-acupuncture instruments to confirm meridians and chakras, the fact remained that the plants seemed to be communicating their gifts and intentions directly to us.
Imagine my surprise when I sat down in 1999 to edit a second edition of Energy Medicine – Healing from the Kingdoms of Nature. Wanting to provide more information about each of the plants, I found myself writing their messages. Take the one from Fairy Bell for example:
Let me show you the incredible lightness of being.
Let me light your way. Let me guide you with my bells.
Let me lead you on the path of Light.
Discard your heavy feelings. Discard your murky thoughts.
Come with me and dance the steps of life.
Where did that come from?
And then there is the story about Forsythia, and how I knew that its purpose is to transform addictive behaviours. Years later I was surprised and delighted to discover the same plant in my Chinese Medicine Pharmacopoeia being used herbally for similar detoxification over 2000 years ago.
While I often felt extremely insecure about what I was doing, the confirmations kept coming and eventually I just had to let go and trust!
Notwithstanding other people’s explanations of how I might have access to this information, essentially I just kept doing what made me happy. And what has been birthed by this simple act of trust and joy is truly magnificent. Apart from the healing that these amazing beings (the Nature Spirits) have effected, I truly appreciate each one of these Essences as conscious energies who are here on the planet to fulfill their own highest purpose. A Garry Oak does not try to be a Bluebell or vice versa. Each has its own unique mission and is 100% willing to fulfill their purpose.
So when people ask me about my journey connecting with Nature or how Pacific Essences® has accomplished such global recognition, I suggest they spend some time hanging out with a tree or a flower and just breathe in the life force and notice what comes up for them.
Imagine their surprise and delight when they discover that they too can connect with Nature, and that this connection can have profound results for their wellbeing. It may even change the course of their life path.
___________________
One way to connect with the healing power of nature is to explore Essences related to plants and flowers that are currently in full bloom. If it is the summer season, for example, these 12 Vibrant Summer Flowers are at their peak.
