PeterEmmerich.de - BFRP - Bachbluetenberater

The Bach Flower Remedies in my Life - so far
The first time I encountered the Bach Flower Remedies was in early spring 1983. I was still at school. My English teacher had taken me and three classmates with his club on a two weeks holiday trip to Ireland. On a rainy day in Dublin I saw the yellow Bach Flower Remedy display of Nelsons in a really big pharmacy and took a leaflet with me. Later that day when browsing the shelves of an even bigger bookstore I saw some books on Dr Bachs remedies and started to read the jacket blurbs. I didnt buy a book, but I went back to the pharmacy and bought a bottle of Rescue Remedy. In some special way I was attracted by that bottle, it "wanted to come with me". So I let it come - after paying some Irish Pounds for it.
Rescue Remedy became a part of my daily life. It helped through my school examinations and especially the A levels, it helped through the farewell address at our grammar school graduation and through my time at university and apprenticeship.
I am a person with stage fright and there were quite some stages in my life to be afraid of but Rescue Remedy helped to make this first minutes out in the light bearable. The moment the curtain opened, the moment I was out there in the light lost its horror to me. There still was the nervousness in the moment before the curtain opens but even this became much more manageable.
Rescue Remedy made my trembling fingers still and my voice steady.
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Rescue Remedy had become a part of my wife's and my daughter's daily life, too. I always had a small bottle of the "magic potion" with me. For us adults it was a helper through times of nervousness or any kind of stage fright, for our daughter it was the miracle cure for all injuries and falls. Four drops of Rescue Remedy on the tongue and the world would look brighter again. It really worked and it is still working today. Our second daughter was born three years later and became used to Rescue Remedy in exactly the same way. Sometimes I felt like Getafix, the druid of the comic series Asterix, with his magic potions.
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With the complete set of remedies my most read book on the remedies entered our house: "The Bach Flower Remedies" an anthology of "Heal Thyself" and "The Twelve Healers" by Edward Bach, M.D. and "The Bach Remedies Repertory" by F.J. Wheeler, M.D..
Dr Bach's short and clear 30 to 100 word statements for the single remedies and Dr Wheeler's Repertory became a guide to my feelings and emotions and helped to influence them with the remedies.
Other books followed. Good ones, mostly recommended by the Bach Centre and some not so good, distracting ones mostly written by people who didn't have any relations to the Bach Centre. Dr Bach's short and clear statements were replaced by long chapters in relatively thick books. I needed some time and some books to see the new ideas as an extension rather than a replacement. With the more I read the more I came back to Dr Bach's simplicity. Stefan Ball's "Bloom - Using flower essences for personal development and spiritual growth" was an eye opener in 2007 when I bought it in the same bookstore in Dublin where I started browsing 24 years earlier.
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With the decision to take the courses a lot of new books came and I realised, there must be more than this short term thinking.
By nature I am a short term thinker. Journaling, keeping a diary, making notes of any kind about my personal feelings isn't part of my personality. Looking at my weaknesses and failings isn't part of my personality, too.
But how can a personality develop without looking, without recognising the own self?
And how can anybody help other personalities without knowing his own?
I did quite a lot of reading - and thinking.
Again some of the books helped in a positive way and some helped in the way that I turned their ideas down. Too many writers either never read Dr Bachs writings or were too keen to develop something new with their own name written on it to follow Dr Bach's path of simplicity. I started reading books on personal development not related to Dr Bach and flower remedies or natural healing. Zen and sensual awareness entered my world. Another approach to simplicity opened my eyes for the world around - and for me in this world.
I found a lot of Dr Bach's ideas in this other "systems", but his was the only system with answers that really spoke to me. The ideas of Zen seemed right to me, but Zen showed no way to help yourself and others in day to day life of a standard European working class family. To gain more sensual awareness seemed a really good thing, but to come to a life that really helps to stay healthy and solve some emotional problems it would not only rule the whole day, it would cost the whole day. With every new idea about living a better life I came closer to Dr Bach: Dr Bach's philosophy was clear and simple to me - even if I didnt agree with all of his thoughts about the eternal world.
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By this time I started to think about people - and problems - in remedies. I started to see the impatient Impatience types around me in the city, to hear the critical and intolerant Beech types at some meeting spots of old Ladies, to feel the resignation and lack of energy and ambition of my Wild Rose neighbour and endure the talkative self-centeredness of a Heather type relative. Not only types came to my mind, also the momentary moods of people yelled for some drops of the one or other remedy. It was hard not to speak to people about the remedies.
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In most countries this would have been the moment to start any kind of practice as a non-medical practitioner, a healer or something like that. Here in Germany things are a bit different: You need an official permit to provide any kind of medical or psychological service. To gain that permit you have to study medicine or at least to take a quite expensive course in healing and pass an examination by the local public health office. I could have started a service as "life coach", "counsellor" or "consultant". Something nobody knows what it stands for and what to expect from. But this isn't my way. So here I am, helping myself and my family and some friends with the knowledge I have about the Bach Flower Remedies and trying to become a Bach Foundation Registered Practitioner.
What will be the difference once I am a registered practitioner? To be honest: I don't exactly know. I still won't be allowed to provide any kind of medical or psychological service here in Germany. I still won't start a service as life coach or counsellor.
But I will have a paper that says I have learned the basics of Dr Bach's system and the trustees of his teachings find me worthy to use his teachings to help other people and to introduce his system to other people. It will be easier for me to speak about the Bach Flower Remedies and what they can do.
To me a Bach Practitioner should be a type of missionary - in the good sense of the word: somebody with a mission.

The mission will go on…