Healing Herbs

10/06/2026

“The form of the plant determines the qualities of light brought down into the earth. Differently coloured flowers absorb and reflect different parts of the visible spectrum. Photosynthesis generates in different plants varying forms of sugar, starch and carbohydrate. And if the form of the plant absorbs different energy patterns then the growth of the plant expresses different patterns of ascending energy. This is apparent in the gesture of the plant, be it structured like Impatiens or more random in growth like Clematis or Cerato. Plants with a strong geometrical structure radiate patterns of energy which order and structure the environment.

In this way plant life has an additional meaning and purpose. This radiant pattern of energy may be invisible but it becomes manifest when attention is focused upon the plant. The receiver is human consciousness. The physical plant can be utilised as food for the physical body. The energy form of a plant can be used as food for the light body.” Form & Function

Dr Bach spent considerable periods of time simply observing plants taking in their whole meaning. In this extract from Form and Function, the breadth of possible observation, that extends beyond what is physically visible into what we can intuitively understand, highlights the incredible richness of insight that plants can bring to our personal journey.

How do plants bring a deeper understanding to your personal journey?

https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/video-library/

03/06/2026

97 years ago, Dr Bach was making his first flower essences having observed patterns of behaviour and disease in people far and wide.

In today’s dramatically different world, have our fundamental patterns of behaviour changed and is our relationship to the essences adapting?

If Bach had created the essences as a rigid methodology, perhaps they might have become redundant by now. But he created them as a dynamic system.

The 38 essences are not limited in their use to set circumstances or symptoms, they are a fluid response to changing situations.

In his case studies, he demonstrated the flexibility by changing essence combinations according to how his patients were responding.

The key lesson from this is the importance of discovering your own relationship with the essences. Throughout his work with the essences, Julian Barnard hasn’t just sought to understand the intricate nuances of their effect. He has also sought to bring the essences to people to interpret them in their own way.

The mission of his book Bach Flower Essences and The Elements of Plant Life is to raise the question for every individual – what do the essences mean to me?

There is no right or wrong answer to this question – only the one that makes sense to you.

97 years ago, Dr Bach was making his first flower essences, having observed patterns of behaviour and disease in people far and wide.

31/05/2026

Issue 2 of the Journal of Common Life is now out featuring Chapter One in our serialisation of the very first in-depth, academically researched, biography of Dr Edward Bach, translated from the Spanish by Healing Herbs exclusively for subscribers to the newsletter.

Subscribe on any page of our website: https://healingherbs.co.uk

31/05/2026

If you have joined our Learning Programme, would regular Bach Flower discussion surgeries be helpful?
Let us know in the comments

27/05/2026

Wars, famine, extreme weather, economic instability, polarised opinions…

We live in a confusing world.

External influences can leave us in a state of instability and feeling overloaded. It becomes hard to sense the truth of who we are, let alone live in truth.

While we may not be able to solve the problems of the world around us, we can solve the problems of our inner world.

We can find our own internal balance.

Bach flower essences are a tool for achieving inner balance.

The simple structure of the essences actually offers a pathway to deepening self-understanding and accountability.

The Second Nineteen, the final group of essences Bach created, address the instability that comes in the wake of challenging situations - potentially ephemeral moments that have the power to reshape who we feel we can be. These essences are a tool to regain control of your sense of self.

The Seven Helpers were the second group created by Dr Bach for dispositions that have become habitual. They offer an opportunity to course correct and surface the truer aspects of self.

The Twelve Healers were the original group of essences created by Dr Bach. These are for the soul types aiming to restore the balance and harmony that is intrinsic to every human.

Dr Bach began with the deeper aspects of identity and emotion in his discoveries, gradually moving to the outer layers. But for us, it is often the other way around, like peeling an onion, we discover who we truly are by addressing the surface first, gradually going deeper until we can meet ourselves in honesty and choose to live in truth.

https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/learning-programme/

22/05/2026

Heather is a remedy for loneliness. This reflection from Julian Barnard in Form and Function, shares a unique perspective on how Heather can help transform loneliness to a sense of belonging.

“When we make a flower remedy, especially if it is a long way from home, there is not much else to do but sit and just be there. You sit and look at the sky, you look at the flowers, you sit and think and then you just sit. This morning it was so beautiful. The sky was intensely blue, the Heather vibrant pink-purple. The day was so warm and fine. Nobody else was there. Slowly, as I quietened myself, the quietness became immense – the silence stretched away over the great empty valleys below; the space filled with the warm, vibrant, living air.

The quiet joy of being there was so strong. Although it is hard to put into words, I felt that this is the remedy for unification. I felt a presence that is behind all individual things … like the spirit that is behind each species. There is the spirit that is behind the Heather or every other individual plant, animal or insect. Each plant knows how to be itself because it is connected to this spirit. The bees that were thronging the Heather flowers knew how to be themselves because of the spirit of ‘bee-ness’ that they are a part of. They fly up from the valley below, drawn by the scent of the Heather, gather the pollen and nectar from the millions of flowers and unfailingly navigate their way home. They know their purpose within this spirit and live it.

But there are many, many other lives just as complex and purposeful. The spiders laying webs, the minute insects that crawl, buzz and hover, the gnats that hang like a mist suspended over a particular rock as if pointing a meaning to it. Then there are birds that curve and call in the air, the skylark thrilling high and clear. They come like the spirit of freedom that lives there wild and remote.

Many of us, I suppose, know this experience, the joy that we can have in such a place. But at the same time I saw that while the plants, the insects and the birds were each connected to their own spirit and knew their nature – I saw that human beings so often were not. It seemed that some people failed to contact this spirit in themselves and that was why they felt lost and confused. That was the message of the Heather. The negative state of the Heather remedy was this feeling of isolation, of loneliness, of being unable to endure the wild and open space of the soul, alone.

Then I saw that there really is a ‘universal mind substance’ that each of us can reach into and be a part of. That is the spirit that lies behind or rather within human beings. To reach the spirit one had only to move towards it, rather than turning away. It carried all within it. It knew all, saw all, and was all. To be a part of that unity was to be no longer alone. It was the comfort and blessedness of communion, being one with all life, separate but part of a united creation. Sitting up there with the Heather that morning I felt that I was no longer a stranger in the land, no longer apart and isolated but one with it all. I didn’t want to leave. I sat there for three hours while the remedy was making and they were like minutes, warm, rich and beautiful.”

Form and Function, Julian Barnard pp 161 – 162
https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Form-and-Function-book.pdf

13/05/2026

When Dr Bach came across Cerato, it was in a quiet garden in Cromer, Norfolk.

A very different environment to its home in the gorges of the Tibetan plateau.
There it lives on steep, scree slopes with fast flowing rivers demonstrating a tenacity not required within an English garden.

Perhaps it was this contrast that spoke to Dr Bach, perhaps he sensed something within the plant that spoke of the heart of the plant in its home.

This is the question Julian Barnard aimed to answer in 2004 when he travelled to western China with Graham Challifour and Glenn Storhaug, expertly guided by Annie Wang.

They travelled up into the Ming valley to find the plant Wilson had admired so much.

What they found was an environment in constant change. Cerato was growing on thin soils with sharp rocks, yet totally at home.

What Dr Bach saw in the plant was a remedy for not trusting in yourself, what the group witnessed in China was a plant that was not afraid to hold its truth in a seemingly inhospitable landscape. In searching for Cerato, they discovered the journey that the essence encourages us all to take.

https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/flower-essences/searching-for-cerato/

06/05/2026

We are very excited to announce our new subscriber newsletter, The Journal of Common Life.

The newsletter explores the ideas, traditions and attitudes that that inform our relationship to the world around us and how this might impact emotional and physical health.

The Journal of Common Life features guest articles and is currently serialising a biography of Dr Bach written by Ricardo Javier Mateos Sainz de Madrano.

The Journal is sent out 4 times a year. Subscribe via any page on our website. https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/

29/04/2026

March saw our first online workshop for the Equinox, with Bach Flower Practitioner, Kate Clyant.

There will be 3 more workshops this year, with each session offering practical insight into the remedies relevant to each season.

You can find details of upcoming events on our website.

Join our online seasonal workshops exploring Bach flower remedies and emotional wellbeing. Led by Kate Clyant. Limited places, recordings available.

22/04/2026

Dr Bach’s focus in his work was always restoration.

From his early work on gut biomes and immunology through homeopathy to the flower essences, his motivation never wavered.

He wanted to bring about the restoration of health, as a whole being. This was his entire focus.

Dr Bach was working on this decades before the scientific community began to even consider the causal links between gut, brain and immune system.

Whilst we might look at some of his conclusions as being oversimplistic today, nearly a hundred years ago they were challenging the most basic assumptions of allopathic medicine.

What Bach saw clearly was the link between emotional states and physical health. This in itself was not simplistic because it entailed a huge amount of time watching and learning about different characteristics of behaviour.

He explored which behaviours are effectively baked in, which are habitual and which are reactive.

He started with the Twelve Healers for behaviours that are so intrinsic to the person that they define the trajectory of health.

Then he created the Seven Helpers which were designed to release patterns that had become second nature but blocked a return to health.

And finally, he created the Second Nineteen, which were designed to restore balance after shock in order to prevent it from becoming an embedded pattern.

In today’s language, Bach might be talking about the nervous system, the vagus nerve, psychoneuroimmunology and so much more. In the 1930’s he worked with the language and knowledge he had and even now it has so much to teach us.

Today, the essences continue to remind us that every person is unique and how they reacts to the challenges of life is just as important as assessing physical symptoms.

You can read Bach’s own thoughts in The Collected Writings of Edward Bach, which is available to read for free in the Julian Barnard Library.

https://www.healingherbs.co.uk/learn/julian-barnard-library/