Chrysalis Healing Foundation

23/10/2025

Peeling the layers. We can never know precisely what may be hidden in the layers of emotions that we’ve spent decades covering up as a defence mechanism or coping strategy to deal with situations and relationships that have left their mark. With the Bach flowers, you don’t need to go digging for those imprints. You simply listen to how you feel right now, in this present moment. Willow resentment? Heather neediness? Holly spite? Or any of the other Bach flowers….

Unhealed emotions can, as time goes on, become embodied and contribute to destabilising our health. If after difficult times you have a tendency to just push on with things, rather than allowing yourself the quality of time and attention you need to holistically heal, you may be surprised by what is still with you. In my own experiences of deeply embedded ‘flower states’ I’ve discovered some (including Sweet Chestnut) when coming around after surgical intervention — which is an extreme way to discover them. Not recommended! However, certainly a catalyst to become more tuned in to the wake-up calls when there is a lot going on in life, and adjusting and taking the flower mix as required.

When you take your drops on a regular basis, they will gently do their work in helping you to resolve your current imbalances and reveal the next layer. And so you progress, learning about yourself, recognising what you need to heal, let go of, reconcile, forgive, love….

None of us are the finished masterpiece, we are each a work in progress, layer by layer, emotion by emotion until, as Dr Bach said, the soul and personality are in harmony and all is joy and peace, happiness and health.

What layers have been revealed to you on your healing journey? 🌺

10/10/2025

20/09/2025

Where have you noticed any of these Bach flower emotions on display?

After the previous post on Rock Water, here's a little review of the other 4 Bach Flowers that are also in the same group: Over-care for the Welfare of Others. When we initially look at the harsher qualities of ...

Beech: Intolerant, critical
Chicory: Manipulative, possessive
Rock Water: Self-denial, perfectionist
Vervain: Zealous, opinionated
Vine: Controlling, forceful ...
..then it can feel quite contrary to the notion of over-care that Dr Bach applied to these remedies. In my book, I summarised this group as:

"When something or someone matters to us a great deal, it can fuel a drive and determination that has the potential to seem intimidating to those who experience the world differently. There are rarely half-measures in the motivation influence, inform or inspire, and yet this output can be tainted by our own unmet needs where we demonstrate our care of others by being too controlling.

The five remedies in this group highlight how we can smooth out our rough edges, and through emotional wisdom learn the nuances of the ebb and flow of life. You can discover compassion for yourself and for the people in your life. With a renewed lightness of being you can respect their story, accept your own, and discover new ways on how the journey could be shared."

In peeling the layers to your lived experience, you find that:

Beech: Tolerance, compassion
Chicory: Loving, generous
Rock Water: Flexible, accepting
Vervain: Broadminded, inspiring
Vine: Wise leadership

How have any of these Bach flowers helped you? 🌺

07/09/2025

The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Sunrise, County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

03/09/2025

We might well envy Dr Bach’s freedom to wander in nature communing with plants and discovering their language of healing.

Life today makes it hard to slow down and find peace. Noise and technology make their way into every nook and cranny of solitude and peace.

Perhaps this lack of true peace is why society is becoming less patient and why tolerance for different views can be so hard to come by.

And perhaps this makes Impatiens increasingly important as an essence for our times.

Impatiens brings peace and gentleness, which is quite in contrast to its behaviour.

Impatiens grows at tremendous speed. Over the space of a couple of months the early germinating seedlings will go from a few millimetres to 6 feet or more. This is a plant focused on taking action for itself and not being deeply rooted in the ground. The explosive growth will shade out other plants as Impatiens races to flower.

As the seed heads form, tension builds up until the slightest touch causes them to explode shooting seeds out far from the parent plant.

The balance to all of this can be seen in the way the flowers hang in delicate balance on the stem. The message of the pale mauve flowers selected to make the essence is to have a little more patience and awareness of the needs of others.

Impatiens is an essence of patience and compassion, understanding that there is space for all if we just come back home to ourselves.

https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/the-language-of-plants/impatiens/

31/05/2025

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from 'A Morning Offering' found in his books,
To Bless the Space Between Us (US) / Benedictus (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

22/05/2025

If we set everybody and everything around us at liberty, we find that in return we are richer in love and possessions than ever we were before, for that love that gives freedom is the great love that binds the closer. [Bach]

This is the message of Vine essence.

Vine types are extremely competent, focused and decisive. Whilst this makes them dependable in some situations, it can lead to rather rigid views and an intolerance of alternative approaches. They believe their way is the right way, the only way.

In more extreme cases this resistance to alternatives and inflexibility can lead to bullying behaviour.

Vines have been cultivated for wine for millennia and the sight of regimented rows of is one we can all recognise.

Wild vines, on the other hand, have a fluid and free form. They ramble and explore.

This is the message of the essence – let go of the need for control and live life. There is a softening of the heart that comes with Vine essence which is so necessary to be present with the fullness of life.

Julian Barnard shares more of the lessons of Vine in this video on the Bach Educational Resource.

https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/the-language-of-plants/vine/

01/05/2025

“We must gain our freedom absolutely and completely, so that all we do, our every action – nay even our every thought – derives its origin in ourselves, thus enabling us to live and give freely of our own accord, and of our own accord alone” Bach from Collected Writings

Walnut has often been used in new or challenging situations, a trustworthy companion on journeys to new places or when just unsettled. It is perhaps especially useful in the turbulent wake of the global dynamics at this time.

It has a clear role in helping us to settle and calm but its purpose runs deeper still. Walnut is an invitation to come back to yourself.

When all around you is on shifting sands, there is one constant that Walnut asks you to cling to.

Yourself.

Walnut will help you to be true to yourself and to stay on course with your personal mission in life.

When you feel disconnected from your truth, Walnut will guide you back home.

https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/the-language-of-plants/walnut/

26/04/2025

The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

23/04/2025

World Earth Day was today which, if a reminder is needed, is to think about how we connect with nature on this planet we share. Dr Edward Bach MRCS was a man ahead of his time in recognising the essential role nature plays in our lives. As a physician and bacteriologist, he was determined to discover a system of healing in nature. Through his work with patients and in his research he saw evidence of the synergy between nature and humanity that could be life-enhancing. And yet we often remain blind to Earth health until there is disaster, and meanwhile chaos, wars, illness and greed prevail. Yet we are each the microcosm of the macrocosm, nothing exists in isolation.So when the world feels dark, shine a light. Be a light.✨

Dr Bach was that light for the very sick soldiers returning from the trenches of WW1. He successfully treated many with the Bach bowel nosodes and in 1920 the proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine published his discoveries on intestinal toxaemia. However, he had another vision, as Nora Weeks wrote in The Medical Discoveries of Dr Edward Bach:

“It had ever been his wish to replace the products of disease (the intestinal bacteria for the nosodes) by purer remedies…. He set himself to discover the new remedies amongst the plants and herbs of Nature…”

In a paper that was published in the BHJ in 1929, Dr Bach wrote, “the remedies of the meadow and of Nature, when potentised are of positive polarity; whereas those which have been associated with disease are of the reverse type….” It was two years later that he discovered the new form of potentisation (the sun method).

He went on to say: “Science is tending to show that life is harmony — a state of being in tune — and that disease is discord or a condition when a part of the whole is not vibrating in unison.”

Our Earth is far from being harmonious. Imagine if Earth and its inhabitants resonated at the highest purest frequency…🌳🌏✨🌺

16/04/2025

“The way negative patterns act upon the body (both physical and emotional) can be visualised. A shock will tear the fabric allowing life force to flow out like blood from a wound. Rigid mental attitudes progressively remove the suppleness from the body just as ageing makes the bones brittle… Fear restricts the flow of life force so that change is less possible just as it creates shallow breathing and so reduces the exchange of gases. The effect of this can be traced through the whole metabolism: less oxygen (and so the pallor fear), less efficient digestions, poor circulation and so cold, fatigue and poor health are inevitable. These are all physical effects of a poor pattern of breathing. But the breathing is a result of a more subtle cause – the restriction of the life force that a prolonged pattern of fear or nervousness will induce.” Extract from Patterns of Life Force

In Patterns of Life Force, Julian Barnard explores the ability of Bach flower essences to alter the patterning of illness by going beyond the obvious.

Intense emotions slow the life activity within the body because localised pressure of emotion leads to physical imbalance within the body which opens the door to illness. Rebalancing the emotions becomes the starting point of restoring health.

It is a logical progression but how does an essence, which has no chemical compounds of the plant, achieve the necessary rebalancing.

The flowers confer upon the water used to make the essence a patterning that the subtle fields, the emotional body of a person, can read or understand to reharmonise the emotions. This restores the flow of life force and allows the body to come back into health.

How the body reads this message is the subject of Julian Barnard’s Book Bach Flower Essences & The Patterning of Water. Julian has formed his own opinions from considerable research on this topic but recognises that the path to healing is unique.

So perhaps it is more appropriate to ask, how do you think the body reads the message of the flower and what have your experiences shown you?

https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/product/bach-flower-essences-the-patterning-of-water/

12/04/2025

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all. Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:

'And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Anam Cara,
25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

Killarney National Park
County Kerry, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill