“The worst that can happen is that nothing will happen,” says Sharmee Divan, while addressing my doubts about Bach Flower remedy, an alternative stream of wellness therapies developed by an English physician, bacteriologist and homeopath in the 1920s.
Mumbai-based Sharmee got inspired after reading about Bach therapy in 2012. By 2014 she upgraded herself from a student to a teacher and was enrolled in the Bach Foundation of Registered Practitioners in 2016. “I took it throughout my pregnancy;I was calm and less anxious,” she says.
Also a life coach, she says it’s important to understand a person’s state of mind before deciding upon the combination of flower essences. Trauma, fear, despair, a feeling of uncertainty, lack of confidence or motivation, are all taken into account.
The Bach flower remedy is practised worldwide including India where there are about a dozen practitioners who have completed the three levels of Bach International Education Programme from The Bach Centre in the UK and are certified as the India coordinators. They help learn and heal with flower extracts. The Bach remedies are natural, non-invasive and can be used as complementary to other medicines. “Every house should be equipped with a Bach kit as it is like a first aid kit,” says Sharmee and adds, many cancer, psychiatric and trauma patients take to the Bach therapy to keep depression and panic at bay.
She cites cases she has taken on where people were on the brink of a nervous breakdown due to a loss in business or the loss of job. It helps people who have anxiety, those apprehensive of flying, or those who feel overwhelmed by a crowd, for instance.
- Dr Edward Bach studied the early-morning sunlight falling on the dew drops on flower petals. He would collect the dew drops from plants and if it was insufficient, he would suspend flowers in the stream behind his house and allow the sun’s rays to pass through them. In the absence of sunlight, the flowers would be boiled. Essences are made by infusing natural spring water with wildflowers.
- Each original Bach box consists of 38 bottles of different flower essences and four bottles of the crisis mix that combines five essences (of Star of Bethlehem, cherry plum, clematis, rock rose and impatiens). They are not designed to treat medical problems.
A case a day is her schedule. “It requires lot of time, patience, interaction and counselling. It is like an interview and a freewheeling chat,” she says. She calls the flowers friends with positive energy that gently soothe. She admits that the Bach flower therapy may also have a placebo effect. In fact a critical evaluation of randomised clinical trials concluded that the most reliable clinical trials do not show any differences between flower remedies and placebo.
(Sharmee Divan was in Madurai on the invitation of Thiagarajar College of Engineering to help students deal with unresolved trauma, unhealthy behaviours, relationship dilemmas, academic and peer pressure)
