FEP19 Pandemic Stress

Flower Essence Practitioners Kathleen and Rochana talk about the stress of the pandemic and how to use flower essences and a variety of wellness tools to steady your nervous system, calm anxiety and worry, and get grounded in your body. Managing your stress will help your immune system work better, and help you feel better as we all work our way through this time of great challenge.

Flower Essences and Resources Discussed

Key

  • AK: Alaskan Essences
  • FES: Flower Essence Services

Previous Podcasts

Acute Stress / Emergency Rescue Essences

  • Soul Support (AK) – contains Cattail Pollen, Chalice Well, Cotton Grass, Fireweed, Labrador Tea, Malachite, River Beauty, Ruby, White Fireweed
  • Rescue Remedy (Bach) or Five Flower (FES) – contains Clematis, Cherry Plum, Impatiens, Rock Rose, and Star of Bethlehem

Root Chakra / Grounding Essences

  • Bloodstone (AK) – unstick lower chakras and brings up nourishing earth energy
  • Ruby (AK) – for survival issues and times of intense transformation, helps cultivate life force energy
  • Smoky Quartz (AK) – grounding, stabilizing, clearing – helps when feeling out of synch
  • trees of all kinds

Nervous System / Stress Response Essences

  • Lavender (FES) – depleted by physical stress and tension, nervousness, restlessness
  • Albizia / Mimosa / Silk Tree – overstimulated nervous system, helps process negative emotions. Picture
  • California Valerian – helps to calm nervous system, be in the moment and be in the body
  • Flora-Sleep (FES) – contains CA Valerian, Chamomile, White Chestnut, Red Chestnut, Olive, Aloe Vera, Alpine Aster, St John’s Wort
  • Linden (Woodland Essence) – calms emotional turmoil and high anxiety
  • Harlequin Glorybower (Flora of Asia) – developing a sense of trust to initiate and maintain the relaxation response

Fear / Paranoia Essences

  • Fearless (FES) – contains Red Clover, Mountain Pride, CA Valerian, Oregon Grape, Mimulus, Rock Rose, Green Rose

Courage / Resilience Essences

  • Borage – strength to confront emotionally taxing situations
  • Blackberry (FES) – strength and perseverance, meet challenges
  • Scotch Broom – for sense of world doom, helps one accept circumstances and grow
  • Olive (FES) – exhaustion from challenges and prolonged stress, esp. as relates to health

Support / Faith / Hope Essences

  • Calling all Angels (AK) – contains Angelica, Chalice Well, Chiming Bells, Kunzite
  • Angelica (AK) – Helps to feel connected to spirit, guided and watched over, great in times of crisis

RESOURCES

Root Chakra

  • Muladhara (means root support); located at the base of the spine.
  • Issues: Survival, grounding, trust, health, nourishment, home, family, boundaries, safety. “Feeling safe and secure, sense of trust in the world, ability to relax and be still, good health, the right to exist.” (Judith, 1996)
  • Ways to work with: Physical activity, exercise, get outside for nature walks if you can, get out of the head and into the body, body oiling, self-massage, foot rubs, foot rollers, grounding foods (protein)
  • Affirmations
    • “It is safe for me to be here” (Judith, 1996)
    • “I love my body and trust its wisdom” (Judith, 1996)
    • “The earth supports me and meets my needs.” (Judith, 1996)
  • Judith, Anodea (1996). Eastern Body, Western Mind – Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self: Celestial Arts

Flower Essences

Vagus Nerve

Highly Sensitive (HSP)

Tapping

Show Transcript

Rochana Felde [00:00:43] Hello, friends, and thanks for listening to the Flower Essence podcast today, Kathleen and I are going to talk about flower essences that may be helpful to combat the stress of what’s happening in the world right now, something that’s on everybody’s mind. Of course, the pandemic threat of the COVID-19, or the Coronavirus, and how that’s affecting the whole world, basically. And a lot of us are having different reactions, different emotions coming up, different fears, and ways that our body and minds are responding to the stress, and the concern over what may happen to people. So we’ll go through some of the essences that are helpful with these emotional states, and getting us back to ourselves, to a grounded center, things that can bring us out of that acute stress situation, of worrying. Helping us to ground, and giving us courage to get through this crisis and this very challenging time. We’ve covered some of these subjects in previous podcasts and we’ll link to the pertinent ones in the show notes. Dealing with our stress can help boost our immune system, and we do know that. But otherwise, it’s more of an indirect effect. We are just talking about the energetic and emotional support that these techniques and these essences bring to nourish our body mind connection. And also since both Kathleen and I, we have more members of our household home than normal right now when we record this podcast from our respective individual homes. And there may be more noise in the background, just to be aware of that. Times have changed and now there are more people in the house, along with the normal animal noises that we’re used to hearing coming from Kathleen’s sweet singing birds. So, Kathleen. Boy, you know, we’re here just having our second state of emergency. Within the last, you know, five months, we had the Northern California fires here in Sonoma County. And at that time we had to evacuate and we couldn’t be in our houses. And now we are going into a potential shelter in place in the Bay Area. Actually, it’s been mandated for most of the Bay Area. And our region has a lot of people also volunteering to work from home and businesses are shutting down that are nonessential. So this is really sort of an opposite thing. We’re now in our homes, but we have this stress that isn’t a raging fire coming at us, something we can see. We’re dealing with something that we can’t see. And so there’s a whole different component to it. But yeah, once again, we are in a crisis scenario. So where do we go from here? 

Kathleen Aspenns [00:04:07] Being in the middle of another crisis, and experiencing the stress, and experiencing the uncertainty of it all right now, and that’s, I think, what the biggest thing is. You know, both of us live in the North Bay area of California. And as probably a lot of our listeners also are in the United States, we’re certainly watching what’s going on overseas. And, we are in the middle of something that’s a worldwide crisis. And I think that that’s also a useful thing for us to remember, that we’re not being singled out, that the whole world is going through something very, very similar. And to be recognizing how we are all one together in this concern, and in order to take care of our vulnerable and our elderly, we’re having to make a lot of sacrifices. And it’s really uncertain and really frightening. I’m having a lot of conversations right now with clients and friends on what we can do to help ourselves endure this difficult time, to go through it with as much grace and resilience as we can possibly manage. And I just think the more that we can take good care of ourselves and help keep our mental and emotional state stable, the better off we are going to be. And certainly, you were mentioning Ro, the element of our immune system, directly attached to our emotional state and the calmer we are, and the more we manage our stress, the better off our body will be at working with what’s out there, and taking care of our own bodies is valuable. And taking care of our minds and our spirits is really also valuable right now. So just throwing that in there, neither one of us are medical professionals. And so we’re only able to speak to something that’s also really important, the emotional self, the soul, the spirit, and what we can do to support that. So one of the things that I’ve been having a lot of conversations with friends and clients about are different types of rescue formulas to help us stay stable and calm during the crisis all around us. Use whatever you have on hand. Please start using that. Something like Rescue Remedy is incredibly useful. And we’re going to put a lot of notes in the show notes about different resources that we’re going to be referring to. We’ll have a lot more individual essences that are available, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with all the different essences. There are some great formulas out there. Rescue Remedy is probably the easiest to find. I’m recommending a lot of Soul Support from the Alaskan Essences right now. And then also be thinking that all of these experiences and these fears, they’re triggering traumatic history. So everybody is having a different response to this, and to try to be compassionate to the ones that are around you and be compassionate to yourself. Because like you mentioned earlier, Ro, the aspect about how in the North Bay, it’s our second go around within the year of crisis and uncertainty and fear. And it’s bringing up a lot of the same stuff. So those other episodes that we’ve talked about, these things will give some insights for those as well. I’ve been watching and following Lissa Rankin a lot lately on Facebook. She’s a physician and she’s written a book called Mind Over Medicine. She has written a number of books. But I really appreciate her perspective on the mind body interaction and on the limits of Western medicine, and the benefits of medicine. And I have a quote here that I want to read. 

Kathleen Aspenns [00:08:11] And she says, “I’m noticing that a lot of people are feeling painful emotions about all the change caused by Coronavirus and others are not doing a great job offering genuinely empathic responses to their distress. Many are feeling fear, sadness, anger, grief and other uncomfortable emotions. And it can be hard to feel those emotions if others are trying to make you bypass your emotions. Yes, there is a silver lining to this viral outbreak and we will get there as part of our own journey. But first, we have to rumble with the feelings that come up. We can’t skip that part where it actually makes us more vulnerable to disease. Feeling our feelings is good medicine and we need others to help us feel safe to feel them.” What she says is just so profound. Being there for your loved ones is really valuable. 

Rochana Felde [00:09:08] I really, really like that. The “feeling your feelings is good medicine” is beautiful. I really resonate with that. Thank you. 

Kathleen Aspenns [00:09:23] Yeah, it’s really important because it is something that we try to get past. There are times when you don’t have the space to have all the feels because you are in the middle of a crisis where you have to handle things and do things and engage with things. And, you know, when we were in the evacuation, yes, stuff had to go in bags. And, yes, the animals had to get looped up. But the interesting part about this one is that we’re home. You know, we’re kind of stuck where we are right now and we’re just kind of in a waiting phase. And so it’s giving us a lot of opportunity to sit with our very uncomfortable emotions and the emotions of our family members as well. So, you know, give yourself some space on that. Do kind things for yourself as well. 

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[00:37:34] This podcast is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not physicians and do not diagnose, prescribe or treat medical conditions. Please consult with your own physician or healthcare practitioner regarding the suggestions and recommendations made by the hosts and guests of the Flower Essence podcast. 

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