 Hi, I'm Jackie Weirach and welcome back to another episode of You and Your Health. And our focus is to bring information to the public about other alternatives for an individual to really be into complete wellness. And there are so many modalities that an individual can choose to experience. And one of those today that we'll be talking about is Bok Flower Remedies. And I have to say I'm a novice, so join me in welcoming Tara Traffany. Thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to learn about this subject which I know tiny, tiny, tiny bit about. So I know you do this and you also do Reiki Master. I'm in the process of getting my Reiki certification and spiritual healer certification. So I'm looking forward to bringing all of them together. So how did you start this journey? What brought you into exploring and studying this? About 20 years ago. Wow. I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I was walking through a bookstore in Philadelphia. I was at a really emotionally challenging point in my life. And wishing, you know, asking the universe for some help. And literally this exact book dropped off the shelf in front of me on the floor. No way. You got really good, divine answer. So I picked it up and I said, the only thing I was familiar with at that point was rescue remedy, which is what a lot of people are familiar with. And so I took the book and I went to the cafe and I sat and I read the whole thing. And from that point on I was hooked. I was convinced that this was the answer I'd been looking for. Pretty powerful. Yeah. And so did you start practicing on yourself? Myself, my family. Then I went and did my Bach certification, Bach practitioner certification, the first two levels. And then throughout the years I would help different friends or colleagues, but mostly just kind of keeping it in my own circle. And then I went back and I finished my practitioner certification a few years ago and now I'm doing it with clients. And where does one go to get certified or where did you go to get certified? So it's all by the Bach Center in England, but they have people who come here to major cities in the U.S. and do the trainings. So like Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, Portland, and Denver, I think. So can you give examples of success stories and somebody having some kind of an illness or an irritation or unease and you just determine that this will work for them? How does the whole thinking process go? So Bach remedies work on the emotional body. So Dr. Edward Bach, who was the inventor of Bach flower remedies, he was a regular MD. He was also a bacteriologist and immunologist and a pioneer in the field of homeopathy. But he felt like all of that was not getting to the root of the problem. So he discovered when he was working with his patients that he started seeing kind of long before, now it's kind of an accepted thing, the mind-body connection, but he was seeing it back in 1900, 1910, 1920 that he could make clear correlations between the emotional state of his patient and then when an illness developed later on. So he sought to kind of take his training back a step and not be treating the illness but be treating the emotions and the fear state or the grief state that he felt was leading to that illness later on. So that's why he developed the Bach system. And we were talking before we started about some of the cards that you have. You pulled out different, it looked like flowers. Yeah, so it's mostly flowers. There are also some trees and there is only one that's neither, which is in its water. It's rock water from a specific spring in England. Yeah, so like this is chestnut bud. So yeah, it'll tell you the botanical name and then what it's indicated for. And you'll often see questionnaires or there's some wonderful posters the Bach Center puts out and they'll tell you, for instance, like chestnut bud is for breaking old patterns, breaking bad, repetitive, harmful patterns. So one of the reasons people come to a Bach practitioner is that it can often kind of be challenging to shed a light on our own stuff and it's helpful to talk it out with someone, especially someone who has a really in-depth knowledge of them. So chestnut bud is actually a great example because sometimes people look at these charts and things and say chestnut bud will often say addiction, so breaking these bad patterns. And that is true, but it's really more important what is causing the addictive behavior. So if the addictive behavior is, say, a reaction to grief or a reaction to overwhelm, then chestnut bud actually wouldn't be the appropriate. It would be more appropriate to treat the cause behind it. So how do you get to that? It's a dialogue process. It's a dialogue process, definitely. With the Bach system, he believed very strongly in one-on-one, really, they called it the onion effect, peeling the layers away. And that will often happen. You'll give somebody a remedy and whatever was presenting the emotion or the challenging situation will peel away and kind of reveal another layer beneath and then you can treat that. So how long does it generally take to get to finding out what is underneath? It all depends. I mean, it depends on the person. It depends on how deep-seated it is, too. If this is something they've been struggling with for 20 years, it will definitely take longer to peel it away. But if it's really an acute situation, like, say, a close family member passed away a couple months ago and they're still struggling with the grief, that will actually be a lot easier to bring back into balance because it's much more recent. It also depends. People have different desired outcomes. Some people are like, I'm having this one problem. I just want to take care of that problem and I don't want to dive into my psyche at all. And if that's what they want, then that's all we look at. It's really led by the client. And often people will say that and then they go through that initial peeling away with the first remedy, the first personal remedy I make for them. And then they'll be like, oh, all this other stuff came up now. So maybe we should deal with that. Or some people are just like, nope, I wanted help with my insomnia. My insomnia is gone and I'm good. So it all depends on it's really client-led how deeply we go. So do you see patterns or is it very individual? It's very individual. I mean, there certainly are patterns. There certainly are. That's why, unlike some systems. And I do like other systems of flower essences. There are certain ones that I appreciate, certain individual essences. But unlike something like flower essence services where they have hundreds of them, Dr. Bach had, there were initially only 12. Now there's 38 plus rescue remedy. There were initially only 12 because those were the 12 main emotional challenges and patterns he saw coming up over and over and over again. What were those 12? I'm not going to be able to do the round off the top of my head, but it's like grief was a huge one and trauma, grief and trauma and depression and sadness and being stuck in life. And that is actually, if you read the writings of Dr. Bach, his original writings, a lot of what he says is that our illnesses, our dis-ease comes out of not fulfilling our soul's purpose. And that if we are in alignment with our soul's purpose, we can bring ourselves back into balance much more easily and that we can avoid illness. So how does one find what their soul's purpose is? I mean you have this really great book falls in. It took a long while to realize that was my purpose though, that healing was my purpose. It was more something that I used for me and my family. It took a long time to get there because, and I should have been taking wild out because that is the remedy that will help you if you're feeling like you can't find your path, if you're feeling like what you're doing isn't nourishing you, wild out will help you find the path that is your purpose, your nourishment. Okay, so how long does this take to work? Well some people, like I said, if the issue is a more surface issue and it's more recent, they'll come to me, I'll make a, you know, we'll talk for an hour, an hour and a half sometimes depending on how much they've got to get out and I'll make their personal remedy for them, which can be up to seven essences in one remedy but the fewer the better, the more you can kind of pinpoint the issue and they'll go and then in two to three weeks we'll often have another checkup and for something that's very, very recent, that may be enough, but if people really kind of want to peel back those layers and get down to the root of things, some people just do it continuously as kind of a tuning up so they may come to see a practitioner a few times a year and tweak their remedy a little every time and say, you know what, I've made great progress on my, you know, finding my life's purpose but I still have a lot of sadness about even though my mother's been dead for 10 years, I have a lot of sadness about the fact that she and I never had a good relationship and I'd like to address that now. Wow. So it can go as deep as they want, it can last as long as someone wants to keep doing that kind of self-discovery and growth process. So how do you get the word out? Well I'm just kind of starting to do that more and more. I mean get the word out in terms of I'm only, I'm one of only two registered Bach practitioners in the state of Vermont. Really? Yeah. So it's definitely, I definitely have to get the word out more that's for sure. Well this video will help. Yeah, that's wonderful. You're going to put it on your website. Yeah I have a website and a Facebook page and I'm gonna get back, I was doing a little blogging, I was doing like highlighting a different remedy every few weeks and kind of talking about my experience with it and some of my favorite ones, some of the ones, I mean they're all wonderful and all address specific needs but the ones that I find that I turn to more often. Which one are they? Well Star of Bethlehem is a really beautiful one and it's for trauma and grief primarily and I find that I would say 75% if not more of the people that I work with need Star of Bethlehem at least to start with because there is some kind of trauma in there that is causing an energetic block and it may be you know from something that happened last week and maybe from something that happened when they were five years old. And when you're talking trauma you're talking emotional trauma because of physical trauma. Right, although they can often go hand in hand, yeah. Do you find in general that individuals know what those emotional traumas are or is it through sitting down with you and talking that it comes out? I'd say 50-50. I'd say some people come in and they know you know my father was abusive to me and I'm still carrying this and some people come in and they're like you know every November I get so sad and feel like I can't you know get up in the morning and it only happens at this time of year what what is going on and it may take that may something like that that's deep-seated may take you know a number of sessions to kind of peel away those layers and get to the root of it but Star of Bethlehem is a big help with that. That's one of my favorites. Wow, now he was he started studying this in the 60s did you say? No he was actually um early 1900s. Wow. Yeah I think he was born in the late 1800s he was really active in the early 1900s and he died in the 1930s. So why isn't it you're one of two in Vermont why isn't it all over? It's much more common in Europe because he was British. It's very I mean you walk into any you know like what would be the equivalent of our Rite Aid or Kinney and Bogflower remedies are in there. So it's much more like just a natural like you know we may take aspirin in England it's just as common to take rescue remedy for an issue as it is to take you know ibuprofen. Wow. Yeah it's much more I mean it's in Ireland I remember I was in my 20s and I was so impressed I walked into a drug store a tiny drug store in Ireland and they had a whole array of bok remedies right there at the front of the counter like this is your first line you know we carry some other stuff but this is what we think you should start with and I was very impressed with that. I wish we you know here it's great that you know we've got co-ops and health food stores and everything that that make the bok remedies available to people but but I would love to see it be more the the first line that people go to instead of you know reaching for for medications prescription or otherwise. Heavy prescription oriented society yeah I don't remember how long ago it was when that started to be the norm to see commercials being advertising prescriptions but no I know it's crazy it's so widespread it's crazy yeah so um you talked about one that you use a lot what other ones white chestnut and what is that wonderful it is for and this is something almost everyone I talk to can relate to is kind of those racing mental thoughts those circular thoughts that kind of torture us and often people who come to me for insomnia issues white chestnut not always because it depends on the individual and what's causing it but I'd say a lion's share of the time white chestnut is a great help to people with insomnia because it's those racing thoughts that are keeping them from being able to settle into a restful state. Interesting now you're you're on a journey now of um pulling this together with the Reiki and spiritual healing yeah how how do you envision growing this uh to help the central Vermont community yeah we're in the process of building a healing yurt on our property and that's gonna be uh in middle sex okay yeah yeah we're um we're really close to like Romney school on the bandstand wonderful it's only about 10 15 minutes outside of Montpelier wonderful yeah and so that's gonna be um my new treatment space where I'll be able to do both because I find that they work really well together so if I'm either doing a Reiki session or a spiritual healing session or a combination of the two on someone that's right then and there we're dealing with someone but then I can make them a remedy to help them keep working on whatever we worked on in that healing session and then they take that every day for the next few weeks and then we check in so it's sort of um you're getting your treatment rate then and there and then you're supporting it with the remedies so that just reminded me I used to do um American Indian sweat lodges and at one point it was suggested that I take this tea and I think it was echinacea that sounds right and I over I over boiled it and I did too much and it was just the taste just it was just horrific for me and so now I think about anything that I'm tasting like this remedy is it sweet is it how does it taste and how do you take it so when you take these here this is my kit and this is what the remedies look like and they're little bottles and so when you take one this is the stock bottle and I will make people's personal remedies and like a um like a two ounce glass dropper bottle but it's mostly water and then you've got a number of drops of each of the remedies I choose for someone up to seven okay so it's very dilute it has a very lightly sweet taste and it's but it's very dilute so most people can't even detect a flavor so are they doing a dropper full or putting it into another drink or either there are no contraindications it's not like homeopathy you can take it with food you can take it with drink you can take it on its own there's no warnings the only thing is that there is brandy in the stock bottles for preservation so if someone has can't even tolerate a tiny bit of alcohol that's the only issue you said contraindications what does that mean um say with homeopathy like you cannot if you take homeopathic remedies you shouldn't have coffee or mint or anything strongly flavored like that okay close to it because it will negate the positive effects of the homeopathic remedy but you don't have to worry about that with box flower remedies okay you can take it anytime anywhere wow yeah I found really helpful for some people um I do usually use dropper bottles but some people like the spray bottles okay and find that you know because it's kind of unobtrusive people think it's breath spray so they can be there in their work meeting and just go you know if they're feeling tense you know and go spritz spritz spritz and people think it's breath spray and they don't have to know that they're really you know trying to bring themselves back into balance nice so um because you're not working out of a space right now but you do have this traveling show are you seeing many people in the area or are you yeah I'm still seeing a few um I will yeah I will like come into Montpelier and go to people's homes now once we have the year it up that will be it'll be great because I'll be able to have like my rakey table and everything and all of I have a huge healing library so I'm hoping to kind of make that available to people what a great idea yeah I have a lot of books I used to run bookstores so like real honesty goodness books honest to goodness yeah so what are some of your favorite books that you've um gotten a lot out of that you don't hear about from in general or specifically Bach in general well I am a lately I've been drawn a lot to to the spiritual healing work so I've been Anita Morjani um I did a workshop with her at Omega a couple months ago where's that Omega Institute it's on the Hudson okay right back yeah uh with her and John Holland and both of their books have been very very instrumental in kind of the way my path has gone what's the names of the titles of the books so she has two books the first one is about her near-death experience at like the actual um all the events that led up to it the experience itself and the impact it had on her life and then her second book that just came out is more about the teachings the learnings the wisdom she received when she went to the other side we spell her last name yeah M-O-O-R-J-A-N-I Anita Morjani and his name John Holland and he is a world famous medium uh but he does a lot more um he does a lot of healing work too it's not just uh spirit communication though he does a lot of spirit communication fascinating yeah well I can't wait for you to get this you're up and running yes we're working on it we're putting the platform up now what's the estimated we're hoping to have it up by winter but we'll see if this rain will hold off a little and let us do it it's been a weird summer for weather yeah well thank you so much I really really appreciate your coming in and and talking to our audience about this it feels like there's so much more that could be discussed and maybe we'll have you back for another session later on I'd love that awesome afraid that that's all the time we have today dear ones thank you thank you thank you for joining us for another episode of you and your health I hope that you found something here that will be helpful to you and until next time namaste