An exploration of flower essences that can support
your intention and ability to nurture your physical being
physical self-care
- the provision of what is necessary for your body’s health, welfare, maintenance and protection
How adept are you at taking care of yourself? Do you make self-care a priority or do all the things and events of life seem to push it to the bottom of the list?
Taking care of yourself seems a fundamental part of life, yet for many of us it is our biggest challenge. In our fast-paced lives we may find it difficult to know our needs and have them met. We may rush through our days without taking time to understand ourselves and our changing needs.
Our desert environment presents extra challenging growing conditions, creating difficulty for plants to grow here. However, the plants here specialize in unique ways of providing themselves with all they need not only to survive, but to thrive in this climate. I have found that flower essences from the desert can provide specialized support for understanding our needs and devising ways to assure that they are met.
The main, or key essence for all issues of physical self-care is Hedgehog Cactus. This small cactus produces a flower that is amazingly large in size relative to the size of the plant. The flowers can be half as big as the body of the plant and sometimes as large as the plant.
This flower essence offers support for helping you overcome self-neglect, especially when you know you need or want to take care of your needs but somehow you just don’t do it. Hedgehog Cactus can help pull you out of being too focused on details of life that matter less than your own physical self-care. It can be that inner push that encourages you to take the time to nurture yourself.
The Foundation
Self-esteem is essential to self-care. When we build the foundation of unconditional self-love, caring for ourselves becomes natural. Without self-esteem, self-care seems unimportant. When you care enough about yourself, you naturally want to be sure that your physical needs are met.
Inmortal flower essence addresses the root of problems with self-esteem. It helps us to know our innate beauty and inner Self so that we respond to life from a center of deep self-confidence.
Star Leaf helps us if we fail to recognize or appreciate our unique contribution to life. It helps us to realize the power of being ourselves and shows us that we can contribute positively in any situation.
Saguaro Cactus flower essence supports us in knowing that all wisdom and answers lie within ourselves. It shows us that we can help ourselves, no matter what the situation.
Our sense of our own beauty is directly related to our sense of self-esteem. Evening Star helps us build confidence in our essential beauty and worth. Crown of Thorns is excellent for those of us who think that we have to suffer or pay a price to be beautiful.
If you need further help and insight with self-esteem, check The Core Issue: Self-Esteem.
Nutrition
For many folks the challenge of physical self-care is a big one. Some of us were not taught proper eating habits as we grew up. Busy, missing or working mothers may not have had the time or inclination to provide balanced meals, and many children were left to fend for themselves.
Even those who did have good role modeling around food may find that their busy lives leave little time to shop, organize and plan meals. Cooking for your family or yourself requires creativity, organization, planning and patience. It may often seem like a thankless job if family members take it for granted.
Yet before you can even begin to plan your meals, you need to be in touch with your innate wisdom that can lead you to the foods that are most appropriate for your body type, disposition and age. Hedgehog Cactus flower essence is an excellent flower essence for this. This flower essence helps you overcome self-neglectful attitudes and supports you in uncovering nurturing qualities for yourself and others.
This cactus essence is also wonderful for another challenge that many of us have around food: the challenge of understanding the difference between over-indulgence, under-indulgence and balanced self-care with food.
There are many emotional issues we may have to deal with around food. Some of us may have eating disorders that can be addressed by flower essences that deal with self-esteem (see The Core Issue: Self-Esteem) which is most often at the core of difficulties taking care of physical needs.
Food addictions may also play an important role in your inability to properly feed yourself. Harmonizing Addictive Patterns Formula is for supporting the recovery from food addictions. While recovery from addictions is a multilayered process too complex for covering in detail in this article, you can use this composite formula for all stages of recovery.
For those who were rewarded for good behavior with sweet things, or who have an addiction to sweets or desserts, Hairy Larkspur is a supportive flower essence. It helps us to untangle our association between sweets and self-nurturance.
Exercise
Another important physical need is that of the proper amount and type of exercise. For some of us competitive sports and physically demanding games are very relaxing. Some of us find the gentler and more meditative exercise of Hatha Yoga or Tai Chi more appropriate. For others, a combination of both is most satisfying to achieve physical release from daily tensions. Once again, Hedgehog Cactus can help us to find the wisdom within ourselves that leads us to the self-care actions that support optimum health.
One client, a former Hatha Yoga instructor who used to teach classes in vegetarian cooking, found himself in a completely new life situation. He found himself so busy in his new career that he no longer fed himself properly or exercised as he needed. He had gained a lot of weight and his blood pressure was high, typical symptoms of a stressful lifestyle. Even though he knew what he needed to do for himself, he just couldn’t get it together to start a more healthy diet and exercise plan.
He used the Hedgehog Cactus for just five days before he found himself spontaneously wanting to practice Hatha Yoga again. He also began to pay more attention to his food needs and returned to his formerly healthy diet. He was able to hear and follow his inner wisdom about his physical needs.
Hedgehog Cactus has been used by many folks who have weight problems, eating disorders, or an inability to motivate themselves to find their personal balance of health in relation to physical self-care.
For those of us who always say we will begin an exercise program but just never manage to do it, Cliff Rose can be of great support. This flower essence helps us to initiate an activity by helping us to unite our intention, our will and the power to act.
Clothing
Some folks have an inability to clothe themselves properly. They may suffer from the cold, from the heat or the sun, from humidity or other climatic conditions because they do not focus on their clothing needs. Once again, Hedgehog Cactus can be a special support.
One client of mine decided to ride his motorcycle on a one-hour trip to Mexico one hot summer day with no shirt on. He never considered the intensity of our desert sun and ended up with severe sun poisoning.
Another client moved to England where she was always miserable and cold. Until she used Hedgehog Cactus, she didn’t realize that she needed to dress in warm socks and woolen sweaters in order to protect her body from the damp cold that permeated her few light layers of cotton clothing.
Rest
How much rest we need is dependent upon our age, how balanced we feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually, as well as our own particular needs for our physical bodies. If we can hear and honor our body’s specific rhythms and cycles, we will be able to honor our need for rest. Hedgehog Cactus can help us to ascertain the proper amount of sleep or rest that is important for us.
Prickle Poppy is an essence that helps us to be in tune with our body’s natural cycles and rhythms of work and play. It can help us to see the signals our bodies give us as to the appropriate amount of time and space we need for convalescence, for rest, for play and for relaxation.
For those of us who have difficulty sleeping, especially because of an over active mind or because we have had too much mental stimulation, Fairy Duster can help to soothe and calm us into sleep.
Rest is not only the amount of sleep we get at night. Rest is also something that we need throughout the day in the form of small breaks from what we are doing. Often when we are doing something we really love we may remain intensely focused for a very long period without a break. Sometimes when we feel a need to take a break, we think that we will “just finish this one more thing”, which often becomes more time consuming than we thought. Using the Integrating Being & Doing Formula can help us to balance our focus from “doing” to the awareness of “being”. If we can remain conscious of being, our actions can flow more naturally.
Sometimes we are unavoidably pushed into a situation where we cannot get the rest or sleep that we need. Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus is the essence for times when we are burned out or exhausted. It helps us to regenerate at a deep level and can leave us feeling refreshed and revitalized.
Medical Attention
Another challenge for some folks can be in knowing when to seek medical attention. Some of us can go overboard, running to a doctor for the smallest complaint. Others shy away from any sort of medical support and allow irreparable damage to their physical bodies. Once again, Hedgehog Cactus can help us out.
When we know what we need to do but cannot activate our self-healing capability, Desert Jointfir flower essence can help us by activating our will and our innate self-healing capacity. Sometimes our innate healing power may guide us to seek support outside ourselves.
If we need to better hear or trust our intuition, Queen of the Night is the essence of choice. When we really listen inside ourselves, we can find all the answers we need. Some of us doubt our intuition and let our heads decide what is best. Queen of the Night Cactus can help us to hear our intuitive voice and trust what is right for ourselves.
Where to Begin
If in doubt about which flower essences to use, begin by using Hedgehog Cactus and Desert Jointfir together for any situation in which you want to find appropriate inner balance for physical self-care.
Selecting the Most Appropriate Flower Essences
Though you can use more than one flower essence together, you probably will not need to use all of the ones mentioned here. After contemplating your relationship to this issue, select the flower essences that apply for you, or use an intuitive method to select among them. (For more information on how to do this, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.) A general guideline is to use four drops at a time, four times a day, in water. However, it is fine to follow your intuition and use them as often as you like. Most people find that they tend to use them more often in the beginning and less often towards the end of the cycle. Unless otherwise indicated, a cycle is usually two to four weeks. [more]
For information on how to clearly evaluate the effects of the essences you have used, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.