ITEM NO. 2 RESCUE REMEDY – A BACH FLOWER BLEND
When my sons were growing up, the unstoppable march of red imported fire ants descended upon Austin. Without Rescue Remedy, our summers would have been long painful hopping and jumping contests to avoid trampling ant mounds and when not avoided, stomping crazily once they found our tasty feet. We never left the house without our treasured dropper bottle of Rescue Remedy. Regulars at Barton Springs and Zilker Park and all the neighborhood pools and parks, we met those pesky ants everywhere. One drop on a newly stinging bite and the pain (and fire ants bite with EXTREME pain) was nearly instantly dissipated – and another child went from tears to smiles.
Parents, take Rescue Remedy with you wherever you go. You can also bring along or ‘substitute’ Rescue Cream (the same 5 flower essences in a cream base), which is easy – maybe easier – to apply to bites and stings and bruises. A fallen down tot, scraped and bruised legs or arms, tears and wails – can all be calmed with a little drop or dot of Rescue Remedy.
So WHAT is RESCUE REMEDY you say and WHAT is a Bach Flower Remedy? And why would it be Item No. 2 in the well-stocked Green First Aid Kit? Are you familiar with Homeopathy? I find that when I first introduce this little miracle worker to my patients, I am hearing or asking these questions every time.
Homeopathy is another complementary medical healing system, developed at the end of the 1700’s in Germany and based on two theories: ‘like cures like’ meaning that illness or disease can be cured by a substance that will produce symptoms in a healthy person that are similar to those of the disease; and the ‘law of minimum dose’ – the idea that the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness. Many homeopathic remedies are so diluted that no molecules of the original substance remain. Remedies are derived from plants, minerals and animals, and are most often taken as sugar pellets placed under the tongue. They are also made into ointments, gels, creams and liquid drops.
In the early 1900’s Dr. Edward Bach, a British physician and bacteriologist, followed his work in vaccine therapy and homeopathy with the discovery of the flower remedies which he believed would help to harmonize the emotional imbalances he came to see as the real causes of physical illness. Each flower that he chose embodied a positive and harmonizing force for a negative emotional state (fear, resentment, despair, for examples). To transfer the ‘healing force’ to a patient, Bach prepared essences from the flowers to be prescribed as medicines for his patients. He saw that as the remedies affected and changed negative moods, his patients’ lives turned back towards health.
Two methods are used to make remedies. The more delicate flowers are prepared using the sun method: floating the flower heads in pure water for three hours in direct sunlight. Woodier plants, and those that bloom when the sun is weak, are generally prepared by the boiling method: boiling the flowering parts of the plant for half an hour in pure water. Once heat (from the sun or from boiling) has ‘transferred’ the energy in the flowers to the water, the energized water is mixed with an equal quantity of brandy. This mix is the mother tincture. Mother tincture is further diluted with brandy at a ratio of two drops of mother tincture to 30 ml of brandy to make the flower remedy stock bottles.
I go to all the ‘trouble’ of explaining this background information because, as a user and consumer of medicines and healing myself, I want to know where techniques and medicines come from, how something was discovered or is made, how and/or why things work…and I imagine that my patients, family and friends want to know too.
Ok, and now specifically on to Rescue Remedy…
The traditional crisis (or RESCUE) remedy is the most famous of the flower remedies while not actually being ‘a remedy’. It is a blend of five different remedies. The mix was created by Dr. Bach to deal with emergencies and the moments when there is no time or mind to make a proper individual selection of remedies.
Use Rescue Remedy to calm nerves in a panic or after an accident, to get through a stressful incident or event, to allay fears and tears, for children crying after a fall or a bump or an insect bite, when the mind won’t stop to let you sleep. There are so many moments for Rescue Remedy!
These are the Five Flowers that compose Rescue Remedy:
• Star of Bethlehem – for shock
• Rock Rose – for panic, fear, terror
• Impatiens – for impatience, irritability
• Cherry Plum – for losing control
• Clematis – for dreaminess, drowsiness, lack of focus or attention
And directions for taking Rescue Remedy:
Put four drops directly onto (underneath) the tongue (without touching your lips or tongue…if possible!) or put four drops into a glass of water and sip at intervals. You can take Rescue Remedy every fifteen minutes for the first hour at the time of ‘crisis’ and then every hour or few hours if needed after that. You may discover that one dose is all it takes.