The Essence of the Year 2026 is Lavender Wand Penstemon.
The botanical name for this flower is Penstemon dasyphyllus. It is a native plant that is a lavender-blue color. It can grow to about 12 inches in height. Dasyphyllus means having hairy, wooly, or thickly set leaves.
It mostly flowers in April and June (if we have enough rain), at altitudes of about 3,500 – 5,500 feet. Then, it might appear again in late summer if there has been a good monsoon rain in July and August.
It is considered very rare in the United States. It grows only in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In Arizona it is found in the southern part of the state in Pima, Cochise, and Santa Cruz counties.
It is also known as Cochise Beardtongue.
Lavender Wand Penstemon is an attractive plant with showy flowers. They are broad-throated tubes with two lips: the upper lip has two lobes; the lower lip has three clefts. The lavender color of the flower is set off by blue and white that fade into each other. The effect of seeing the flower up close is soothing and calming.
Lavender Wand Penstemon as an Individual Flower Essence
Lavender Wand Penstemon‘s flower essence is one of transcendence. For those who feel unable to deal with emotionally charged issues, this is a flower essence that can help.
Many of us feel emotional heaviness and wonder what we can do for release. Some of us, intending to find healing support, struggle with the heaviness and feel that it pulls us off our path of healing and evolving. This flower essence can bring us the grace of confidence, transforming attitudes of struggle and apprehension to ones of confident ease and steadiness of our intention.
This flower essence can be helpful for those who are overworked or who have too many things to deal with. If you feel that one more thing to handle would be too much, this might be the essence to consider. It can transform your attitude of difficulty and your struggle with emotional issues into a fresh sense of ease and emotional sensibility. One effect of Lavender Wand Penstemon is that it can lift you out of heaviness and feel that you are pure light.
One effect of Lavender Wand Penstemon is that it can lift you out of heaviness and feel that you are pure light. Having emotions brings color to your life. You can feel grace when you experience the transcendence of feeling and letting them go.
Experience Story 1
I took this essence for a period of six weeks in 1985-86. I had been processing a tremendous amount of old childhood issues.
Then a pause from all the processing came. In retrospect, the pause was probably a time of integrating all the changes that were now possible within me, now that I had processed and let go of so many old, unresolved emotions.
Yet to me, I had been feeling that there was more to do and I wanted to get on with it. I had become used to emotional processing and was feeling the rewards of finally feeling and resolving old stuff. But I had a sense that there was more to come.
And the truth is that the deepest work I would do with myself was yet to come. I sensed it, but had no idea of what was to ultimately unfold in this great process of unfoldment.
During this six-week period of using Lavender Wand Penstemon, I felt a true transformation of my struggle with having judged that I was off the path of deeper healing that I had embarked upon.
The essence helped me feel that I could get back onto the path of emotional processing that I had begun a year previously. I felt that I got back to my REAL growth path. It was a feeling that I could continue to process the deep old feelings so that I could relate to who I really was and then find what I wanted to do and be in my life. It was quite dynamic!
Experience Story 2
One client who used this essence for four weeks declared it created “the smooth move of emotional processing.” He was aware of heavy emotional issues from his childhood that he said he was “sick and tired of fighting with.”
He had recently gotten a job that he really wanted and liked, but the problem was that his mother also worked at the same place. Whenever he had to interact with his mother, he felt as if it was a huge drain. He told me that he just couldn’t manage. He really liked his work and didn’t want to leave because of his mother, but at the same time, he felt completely incapable of processing the daily emotional turmoil he felt around her.
“Lavender Wand Penstemon helped me know that I could process my emotions,” he told me. “It hasn’t magically made it all go away as I secretly hoped it would, but now I feel capable of coping and I am no longer anxious at the thought of going to work,” he told me four weeks later.
Experience Story 3
One client came for a session with a great fear of allowing her 10 year old daughter to go on a group trip to another country. Even though it was a well chaperoned and organized trip, she was feeling terror that her daughter would die on the trip. Her husband was on board with their daughter going but my client felt unready to support the trip. She said that she felt like she was giving away her power to others that she did not know, and also to her husband. She wanted to feel confidence in herself and to feel that she was making good parental decisions.
My client used Lavender Wand Penstemon for a period of two weeks, then came to me and reported that she had had a big emotional catharsis about her daughter going on the trip. She let go of the emotional mess she had been feeling and now felt confident that it was OK to let her daughter go on the trip.
She saw that her emotional disarray had been about her own inner feeling that she was emotionally chaotic and was projecting it onto the situation with her daughter’s trip. Lavender Wand Penstemon allowed her to sort through her feelings and find inner confidence.
Experience Story 4
Another client told me that she was feeling uneasy with how to deal with social situations in her life. One of the situations involved the fact that every day she would drive her daughters to school, and in the process, interacted superficially with other parents dropping off their own kids.
She told me that one day a man dropping off his child approached her in the school parking lot and told her he had a crush on her and knew that they had been together in a past life. My client had an emotional melt down and felt that she did not know how to handle the situation. Lavender Wand Penstemon came up for her.
In her next session three weeks later she reported that she was feeling much more confidence in herself. She said that a friend that she had not seen for some years visited her during the time that she was using Lavender Wand Penstemon and she noticed that she had much more confidence in being herself.
She said that the essence helped her see that she did not edit herself in her interactions with her friend. She said, “This was different. I felt like I could just be myself, which is a new feeling for me. I hadn’t been aware that I automatically try to edit myself according to the interaction I have with another. This was why I was so undone by the man at the school parking lot.”
She shared that this new feeling since taking Lavender Wand Penstemon was an empowerment and confidence booster and a resolution to her initial melt down. She was now fine with whatever reaction she had. This was a brand new feeling for her.
Experience Story 5
One client brought a baby picture of herself to a flower essence session. She said, “This is how I want to feel, as free as I am in this picture!” She was feeling guilty for how negative she was toward herself for her interactions with her husband.
She felt that he was the source of her problems. He was always in contact with their two children, who shared what was happening in their lives. He never shared with her what was happening with them.
She felt left out, like she was not included in the family. She would become angry with him but then she would blame herself for the negative feelings that would arise. Lavender Wand Penstemon was indicated for her.
Three weeks later when she came for another session she shared that she a had plenty of opportunities to get angry with her husband, but oddly enough, she didn’t. She stayed centered in herself and felt that she could support herself. She did not feel the need to judge herself or project her feelings onto her husband.
Lavender Wand Penstemon in Composite Formulas
In the Integrating Being & Doing Formula
Lavender Wand Penstemon is one component of the Integrating Being & Doing Formula.
The purpose of this composite formula is:
This combination of essences is great for workaholics or those who “do” in order to escape being present with themselves. It helps us find the balance of stillness within action, being conscious of how we are feeling and interpreting events while we are doing things.
When you are caught up in the doing of life it is easy to become overwhelmed. When you are overwhelmed, you feel like you are struggling with life and you may put your feeling nature to the side in order to accomplish more tasks. We forget that we are human BEINGS and not human DOINGS.
Lavender Wand Penstemon helps us with the feeling that we are struggling with emotional heaviness. This feeling usually accompanies overwork or the state of doing. We may feel as if everything is too much for us, as if we just can’t handle one more thing. The smallest incident seems to set us off.
Lavender Wand Penstemon can transform our attitudes of difficulty or struggle. It brings a fresh sense of ease and steadiness. It restores us to emotional sensibility. We reconnect with our initial intention and feel free to just be.
In The Water Element Formula
Lavender Wand Penstemon is also a component of the Water Element Formula from our Plants & Planets Kit of flower essences. This kit has flower essence composite formulas that support the cycles and elements used in astrology.
The elements are a way of understanding people and how they think and react to life. There are five element formulas in the kit, one of which is water.
The Water Element relates to emotions and feeling. Sometimes, those who have a lot of the water element in their astrological charts find that they can get stuck in their feelings. They may feel their feelings over and over and have difficulty resolving them.
Lavender Wand Penstemon enhances your ability to move into and through issues which have strong emotional charges. Some water imbalances leave you feeling unable to deal with emotionally charged issues or processes.
You may become entranced in emotional heaviness, unable to know how to move ahead. This flower essence transforms attitudes of difficulty, struggle and apprehension to ones of confident ease and steadiness of intention.
Others who have less water in their charts may find it difficult to relate to the sensitivity of their emotions and tend to intellectualize them. They can develop a pattern of holding their feelings at bay because they feel they are too difficult. They may not have been taught how to process feelings because they are caught in the way they think about them as difficult or a struggle to feel.
Lavender Wand Penstemon can bring a sense of emotional objectivity. You can feel the feelings and refuse to label the process as difficult. In that way the essence can replace the struggle with confidence and ease.
This New Year 2026
This New Year 2026 is a fresh opportunity to empower ourselves. One aspect of self-empowerment is to have confidence to be fully who we are, despite our own judgement of ourselves and our capabilities.
Confidence is the inner feeling that we can rely on someone or something. It is a feeling of self-assurance that arises when we recognize our own abilities and qualities. Confidence is when we feel trust in our self, no matter if we know what is ahead or not.
This flower essence can help you find that you are the someone upon whom you can rely. Lavender Wand Penstemon can help you have confidence to be right where you are in awareness and know that it is perfect for right now.
