Re-Valuation Flower Essence
Radical Transformation is a powerful theme that is coloring 2020, a year marked by a rare triple conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. We’re unearthing the roots of our resources and resourcefulness, calling out BS, and connecting to what we truly find to be elemental and essential. All the while, we’re tapping into the power of our communities and seeing how individual well-being is inextricably linked with that of the collective.
Against this backdrop, we are currently moving through a Venus Retrograde cycle (May 12 - June 24) that has us re-evaluating all that we value. It’s encouraging us to find treasures from the past, as we reconsider just what has richness, yields beauty, and forges inspiring partnership/s.
To help you move through this time of radical transformation with strength, courage, and an open heart, my friend and client Chavi Hohm and I asked Karyn Schwartz of Seattle’s SugarPill Apothecary, a master herbalist and fierce bastion of community love and support, to design a flower essence elixir that addressed the opportunities and challenges of this current climate. Re-Valuation is the gift that she has created for us all.
Below I want to tell you all about Re-Valuation, sharing Karyn’s words about the essence of the flower essences that she chose for this transformational elixir.
Before that, I wanted to let you know that I’m so thrilled about its healing potential that i’m gifting it to all clients in May and June (while supplies last) when you schedule a 75-minute Stellar Guidance Session. Yet if the timing isn’t right for that for you, know that you can order it through SugarPill Apothecary by calling or emailing Karyn at her shop.
RE-VALUATION
Flower and Plant Allies for Relentlessly, Necessarily Transformational Times
Flower Essences are whisperings of the entire history of survival intelligence of our vast and beautiful plant world. Because they work energetically, it is only necessary to take a drop or two at a time, rendering the remedies safe, gentle and yet profoundly effective. When using flower or other essence remedies, imagine that a new piece of advice or guidance is being offered to every cell in your body in an instant. If the advice is not needed, it is simply acknowledged and released. If useful, it offers instructions about how to perceive possibility where before there was only immovable patterns; how to see doors where perhaps before there only were walls.
Practicing with Essence Remedies is a meditation on the part of the practitioner of allowing new strategies for perceiving, understanding and being, as older, familiar ones have become less useful.
RE-VALUATION is designed to support the collective transformation we are experiencing currently, with the intention of providing resilience, comfort, tenacity but with ease, and courage always with the softness and vulnerability required for meaningful connection and collaboration.
YOUR GUIDES include:
Fireweed
One of the first plants to reappear on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens after the decimating eruption decades ago, Fireweed offers encouragement when we are suddenly tasked with creating ourselves anew. Whether we are literally having to recreate our jobs, businesses, art-forms and livelihoods, or whether our roles or our priorities are shifting in response to the new demands placed upon us, Fireweed helps us to sort out what we value as the fundamentally most important part of redefining our purpose here. This tiny flower is the embodiment of the phoenix rising from the ashes of destruction, taking root and sending up life and beauty when nothing seems possible, and repairing the barren dust so that other life might soon follow.
Hawthorn
There is heartbreak that is acute and urgent and hemorrhagic, and there is heartbreak that is ongoing and relentless and seems like it will never end. The Rose family attends to it all, and Hawthorn is my favorite for when you feel like you just caught your breath and here come three more waves and how the hell are you going to hold your head above the water this time? The thorns of the Rose family plants provide insulation from the harshness of the world, so that we do not have to harden up and relinquish our own vulnerability just to get through the day. Where Hawthorn, the plant, provides balance to the physical cardiovascular and nervous systems, the flower essence speaks to the heartbreak of living in a world that is unjust, inequitable and ruled so often by people who seem to have no regard for humanity or the very world they somehow have been empowered to lord over. Hawthorn helps you stay soft when it feels dangerous, open when it feels overwhelming, and compassionate when the hatred and willful ignorance of some threatens to destroy everything that really matters.
Hollyhock
The unknown is daunting precisely because it lies beyond what we have already imagined for ourselves. We fear change because we can never be certain of what it will bring or mean, and yet to become whole and to heal by its very nature requires change. Hollyhock gives the courage to welcome change, especially when it feels too difficult and when you are reaching for something that you cannot yet even imagine or name. It attends, like so many flowers, to the heart, and gives us courage in the process of trying to locate hope where it seems absent, and tenderness for one’s own self when we feel as though we are failing at every attempt to move forward on a new, unfamiliar path.
Oregon Oak
To be strong both in purpose and in joy is a testament to knowing that one’s work matters in the world; knowing that no matter how big or small the result, it is necessary; and knowing that everyone needs to rest in order to keep doing what is needed – most especially when rest seems like the last thing there is time for. In urgent circumstances, there will always be people who OVER-DO. The self-importance of trying to take control of all things is an impediment to sustainable effort. Nobody has to do it all. Nobody CAN do it all. Nobody should try to do it all. When you take time to find JOY, even in the midst of sorrow and suffering and hardship and loss, you become the medicine that is most needed. To slow down, to delegate responsibility in a comprehensive way, to accept advice and assistance and to model good, not extravagant, self-care is something we will all need to do in the long journey ahead. Oregon Oak helps us return to the JOY of our efforts, and restore our sense of PURPOSE when we lose faith. Like all Oaks, it reminds us that strength is not the only virtue, and in fact becomes a liability if we strive so hard to keep going that we break.
Pink Protea
When you hit the wall of exhaustion from trying so hard to do what is required, and you feel like any reserve of energy you had is being so plundered that it is becoming a threat to your own resilience, Pink Protea is the flower both for solidifying your will to keep going while also fortifying your vital force so that you do not become more susceptible to the harmful effects of prolonged stress. That feeling of doing so much but accomplishing so little, and the frenetic feeling in your mind and your nerves from never really being able to step away from the overwhelming demands of all-encompassing change leaves little ability to relax even when you are tired to your very core. This flower soothes our minds in times of inadequate rest, and helps to keep our thinking clear when it becomes hard to know what to think of anything.
Tiger Lily
In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, there is a whole lot of blame and shame assigned to Eve for causing all of humanity’s suffering - and for what? For being curious about knowledge and nature and truth? For being interested in what is divine and sacred? Tiger Lily is your ally when you feel as if you have been forced out of your own beautiful garden of life for knowing that there are things that are real, honest, undeniable, truthful and sacred that need to be understood, protected and defended. She is your guide for harnessing the exact kind of anger that leads to the demolishing of what is unjust, untrue and inhumane, offering the prayer to harness that anger in a way that allows you to be unapologetically determined to fight to the death for justice, but without becoming a danger to yourself or to others. Tiger Lily is the Feminine Yang principle; the paradoxical combination of softness as strength, anger as love, collaboration as leadership. She helps keep us able to work together towards the common good, even when she is told she is the root of all evil and the embodiment of trouble. As the incredible Civil Rights leader and Congressman John Lewis would call it : Good Trouble. Keep on making that.
Valerian
So much time spent alone, or confined with just a few others and longing for the casual contact of friends and family and even the strangers and acquaintances you used to see every day as a part of the fabric of daily life, is painful and challenging. We are experiencing a very collective grief over the loss of what we knew as our “normal” day to day, and the loss of simple in-person connectedness and community is truly frightening and disorienting. Just as the herb Valerian is helpful for tension and the inability to rest, the flower essence attends to the difficulty many of are struggling with due to having too much time away from our people. It offers an opportunity to relax into and even revel in the solitude that has been forced upon us, and provides softness when the tension of navigating close quarters and limited movement becomes way too hard. Valerian will be an essential guide for the long road ahead of adjusting to a new way of being that is unfamiliar, awkward, painful and frightening. Let her whisper in your ear about how to revel in the space around you even when it feels too wide and far away from those wish to be closer to. Let her make less frightening the chasm between how we have known ourselves to be in the world, and how we must now be in the world in order to protect and care for one another, especially when it seems like too much effort for too little reward. Hold the line. We truly are all in this together, though are experiences will not at all be the same.
These essences are in an herbal base, non-alcoholic, of Rose and Devil’s Club Rhizome Bark. These herbs were chosen for their ability to offer the strength to dig deeper into what we must look at even if it scares us or threatens the way we understand our lives to be, and to keep our hearts soft while we do the most difficult work of personal truth telling in order to insure that we point ourselves in the best direction as we move forward into the unknown.
To use, place a drop or two of the formula directly upon (not under) your tongue. Take time to taste it, and to breathe as you allow it to melt into your mouth. Remind yourself why you are using it. Re-set your intention, and use the flowers and herbs as a way of anchoring your own meditation and prayer. Be well. Be safe. Be honest. Be so softly strong.
* Re-Valuation comes in a 1/2 oz bottle and is $15 plus tax and shipping/handling. Contact Karyn to order or write me to schedule a 75-minute Stellar Guidance Session with me to receive a free bottle of this gorgeous elixir.