FEP46 Sharing the Legacy of Flower Essence Therapy
Show Notes:
Kathleen and Rochana welcome Ruth Toledo Altschuler to talk about our current collaboration together—organizing the online Flower Essence Conference (coming up, April 29th, 2022!). We hear from Ruth about the impetus behind this project and the way that flower essence conferences of the past have brought people together in heartfelt community.
We also share an excerpt from one of our pre-recorded conference sessions, “Tending the Legacy of Flower Essence Therapy”. Join us for a fascinating discussion with Isabela Bisconcini, a flower essence educator, practitioner and psychotherapist from Brazil, on the multidimensional transmission and living legacy of flower essence information.
Audio:
Suggestions:
The Living Book of the Alaskan Flower Essence Project
Join us at the Flower Essence Conference – find out all about it here
Show Transcript
Welcome to this special episode of The Flower Essence podcast. I’m Kathleen Aspenns, and I’m here with Rochana Felde, and we are welcoming our dear friend, Ruth Toledo Altschuler. If you’re a regular listener, viewer of the podcast, you will know her. She has been with us a few times, sharing her insights from a decades-long practice of flower essence therapy. She shares and teaches on Essence Mentoring, and she is just such a gift to us and a mentor to us. And we were so delighted when she asked for our participation in her idea of bringing forth a virtual online flower essence conference. Ro and I were both just so excited to take part in it, and we’ve been working steadily and hard on getting this out into the world. We cannot be– we’re just so excited about the content that’s coming out, about the incredible speakers that we’re having to share with us their insights and wisdom and dedication on this field. And it’s just such an exciting opportunity. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about this conference and to talk about what we’re all doing to bring this into the world.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:02:07] Thank you. Thank you for inviting me back. And also thank you for embracing the vision and for the co-creation, the collaborative co-creation that is bringing this into manifestation that I’m really enjoying so much, the process of working alongside the two of you.
Rochana Felde: [00:02:33] We love working with you and are, as Kathleen said, just so grateful that you pulled us in to be a part of putting this conference on. As it’s part of our mission to get flower essence information out into the world. And that’s what we’re doing with the podcast and the conference being that next kind of logical step to bring– it’s such an amazing opportunity to bring forth, instead of having one guest at a time, for example, on the podcast, we’re bringing all of these experts together into one event. And so that is so exciting and so amazing. And I wanted to ask, so you did approach us initially for this. And what was sort of– what was prompting you to create a conference?
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:03:33] Yeah. Well, there’s a whole history to flower essence conferences and how significant these have been for our souls, for the souls of those involved in flower essence therapy. So we can go back as far as the conference mentioned by Ian White, who is one of our speakers at the conference, he mentioned the conference in France. And I know and I always heard Steve tell us about that conference as well because he mentioned how amazing it was, and that was an experience, especially for the producers to finally get together and know other people who are doing the same thing and thinking in similar lines, etc. And so that moment in France, that was the first flower essence conference. It was really a very vibrant and special moment.
And then in 1992, Sabina, who’s also one of our speakers, organized the second flower essence conference in Victoria, Canada. And this was a moment where vibrational essences were really coming into the awareness of people, and there was so much enthusiasm. And Sabina was very generous that she invited me as the speaker for a short lecture. She said, Oh, I don’t have anyone from Brazil, so I would like to have you as a speaker. And this brought me into the field, into the circle of the flower essence work and the flower essence producers, and the experience of how they brought in the whole environment, the whole ecosystem of the plants and the beings that they worked with into their presentations.
And so that was a moment of like the family coming together. I remember in that first panel in the opening, I sat right beside Steve, I was just getting to know everyone, and he started by saying, “The family is coming together,” and everyone had tears in their eyes. So flower essence conferences have had that quality, that energy of people really feeling that they are encountering soul family in multiple ways, I would say.
And so after that, there was a third flower essence conference that Ian White and the Living Essences of Australia co-organized in Australia. And so I was there as well at that time.
And after that, there’s been a few, but we’ve gone many years without having this bigger coming together, and especially in the English-speaking world. It’s been a long time since we have not had this kind of event. And I had just been feeling that there was an emerging interest in flower essence therapy, that there was a momentum. And we know that in Brazil this momentum has happened decades ago. There was this exponential growth of interest and this spreading, like quick-fire interest in flower essences. I have a feeling that this is beginning to happen in the English-speaking world now, and this is why I kind of threw the idea. And I was just so delighted that you guys said, yes, let’s do it. And even more delighted as to how it is all coming together in our collaborative work.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:07:58] Yeah. It’s really been a pleasure working with you to create this from just this little seed of an idea, and to be working on what we’ve created or what we’ve initiated was a conference all about recovery and resilience. And our framework of having spent the last few years in very challenging times, in times of feeling really separated and feeling really frightened, it’s been a scary and distressing time, and to be able to focus our conference on working to heal this. We’ve brought in speakers who are speaking to these issues very directly and bringing content about helping sensitives navigate this world. This is so timely. It’s not just that we can get together as a community in this virtual way, which is accessible to everyone. Going to a conference in real life is, you have to stop your real life and travel and it’s not accessible to everyone, but that we’re able to do this in a way that really anyone can take part and can be a part of the family while supporting their own families without having to leave home, to me, that’s a really valuable aspect of what we’re able to bring in this conference.
Rochana Felde: [00:09:31] What’s so amazing to me about it is that, well, Ruth, you’ve been in this world for so long, so many decades, and you know so many people. And even with all my flower essence training and what we’ve been doing here with the podcast, it’s just a very small amount of the community that I’m normally in touch with, and for you to sort of bring in, basically, you’re bringing the worldwide community together. I mean, we’re doing that with the conference, but it really is because of you having such a part, being such a part of this community for so long, that we’re able to bring so many amazing people together. And there’s so many experts and people I would maybe not have been able to learn from without this. So just being so– going through this process, I’m so grateful. We’re like at the feet of these people that have been doing it for so long. And it’s so excited to then take that and give it to others, to let other people do that as well, especially people who may not have, maybe they want to learn more and they’re not sure who they want to learn from or what essence ranges they should work with to begin with, this could kind of give them that whole sort of smorgasbord to then be able to discern maybe the path that they want to start out with in their journey on flower essences. So that’s such a beautiful thing, especially with the flower essence, the way that flower essence learning happens right now, which is usually with a producer and it’s usually only with a certain line. And then, you go down that path, maybe not knowing what else is out there and available. So, I’m really excited about that.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:11:37] Yeah. And for me, a big part of my work of serving flower essence therapy has been as within the context of being a partner distributor of flower essences in Brazil, where I used to live, when I first went to that second flower essence conference in Canada and I got to meet the producers and I became their distributor. One of the major things that happened was that I organized many seminars with producers as well as with practitioners over time, and I was kind of an editor of the content that they were going to produce for a very demanding audience, because in Brazil, people wanted more and more and more because they were going very deep into the knowledge of flower essence therapy, and the producers had to come up with courses that they had never taught before because they had never been faced with such a demanding audience that wanted even more in-depth content. They were so used to teaching the basic practitioner training, and that was it. And they had the demand of doing more. And so I had this opportunity of being this bridge between so many researchers as well as so many practitioners and watching their work grow over the years. And so this is what I have brought to this opportunity. Now here it’s this web of connections, but also this experience of being almost like an editor and a curator of content in the field.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:13:45] And that does bring forth the topic that this conference does have something for everyone, whatever level of expertise and experience you might have with flower essences. We have talks that are really wonderful places to start. If you don’t know a lot about flower essences or you’re just really sort of dipping your toes, but then again, we also have talks from people who are going at very deep levels or very specific applications for flower essence therapy practitioners. So there’s really this broad range. We have, Rochana, how many speakers do we have at the conference?
Rochana Felde: [00:14:30] We have 33, I believe, at this count. Yeah.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:14:34] Yeah, so it’s a lot.
Rochana Felde: [00:14:35] Yeah. And there’s 22 at least unique sessions where they are presenting or we’re interviewing them on a specific topic. And then, we also are bringing together people for the live panel. So we have six live panels. That will also be recorded. So everything is recorded, and you don’t necessarily have to attend that weekend of April 29th. So it is something that we want to curate, not just for a specific moment of time, but as something that can be accessed for at least the next year and be a body of work that people can learn from. So it was really important for us to be an educational conference that people could get a lot from on all those levels that you’re talking about, Kathleen.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:15:40] Yeah. And what I love about how it’s coming together is that it’s not like these summit-style things that people throw kind of a little bait, and then they want you to get a lot of emails so that you pay for the real thing. This is not what this conference is about. There is real substance and richness in each lecture.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:16:12] And has a gift for the listeners of the podcast. We’re going to be offering some excerpts from one of the discussions on the legacy of flower essences and flower essence therapy. And Ruth, would you be so kind as to introduce Isabella for our audience, and you’ll be hearing her voice in these little segments, or you might be hearing a few voices in this segment of excerpts from this upcoming talk.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:16:47] Yeah. One of the conversations that we’ve had has been with Isabela Bisconcini, who is someone who has been on a spiritual path for a very long time. She is trained in language, she has two majors in Portuguese and in Italian. She’s also trained as a psychoanalyst. She’s a Jungian psychoanalyst and a psychotherapist, and she’s also a systemic constellation practitioner. And one of the things that is quite exemplary in terms of her contributions to flower essence therapy has been the amazing work of compilation that she has done of several workshops that have been demanded from Steve Johnson of the Alaskan Essences over the decades, in which he went very much in-depth into knowledge. And so she has been someone who has tended to that legacy in a very unique way and brought forth some contributions to our discussion that are quite meaningful for me.
Isabela Bisconcini: [00:18:10] Thank you so much, Ruth, for the opportunity to be here with you and to have this possibility for us to think about and to discuss and to reflect and contemplate about the legacy of flower essences that we all love. And it’s good for us because we share the same passion. We share the same love for the flower essences. So I’m very honored to be here with you and thank you so much for the opportunity.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:18:45] So, one of the things we would like to do in establishing context for this conversation that is the first probably of many, is to talk about what is the body of knowledge of flower essence therapy and what is the unique nature of this body of knowledge? And so what we know is that we’ve had the work of Dr. Edward Bach, and we know that Dr. Bach had burnt most of his papers. We know that he did a big bonfire and burnt mostly everything. And so we were left only with the few pieces of his body of work that he thought were the ones that should be preserved, as well as with the living transmission of the people who worked alongside Dr. Bach. And so we were left with his biography, as it was told by Nora Weeks, with those few writings that were preserved, of course, with the essences, but also with that direct transmission, of which Julian Barnard is one of the ones who received that in a more direct way. So we’ve had his contact with some of the people who learnt with Dr. Bach– with the ones who learnt with Dr. Bach, and he had this direct contact.
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So, the work that Julian Barnard has done is so important for us in terms of ensuring that this body of work continued to exist and be alive and available to the public. On one level, he really helped to make available the instructions on the preparation of the essences that, as some of us know, at one point had been subtracted from the publications that were in existence. So he really worked in making available all the original pieces of writing. But the other thing that he really did an immense work on was following the footsteps of Dr. Bach and looking at the plants and his experience with the plants, his experience in the places where he visited and made the essences. And he was able to create records in the form of video and in the form of plant observation that really brought to life the experience that Dr. Bach and his apprentices were having in a way that we can tap into that living experience as it came through to us in these transmissions from teachers to teachers. And through the Bach Educational Program, we actually have this opportunity of connecting with what exists in terms of writing, but also with the stories that were told by Nickie Murray and also with a lot of the anecdotal stories, that all of this brings forth the living transmission of a knowledge.
And so, what to do about the contemporary teachings of flower essence therapy? Most of it has been experienced through workshops in which the teachers and researchers did this oral transmission of the work. And we’re going to talk a bit more about how this work is multidimensional in its nature and how these oral transmissions have a lot of living and experienced knowledge that is transmitted in multi-dimensional ways. But the fact is that we all have been exposed, who have been studying flower essence therapy for quite some time, to the living knowledge carried by the teachers with whom we’ve learned, and we’ve been exposed to their living knowledge, to their materials. And I think all of us here, the four of us here today, all bear in our souls kind of a feeling of a responsibility to be record-keepers and transmitters of this legacy in a way that is very multi-dimensional and comprehensive. And we have ahead of us a big task. And this is a conversation on this challenge and what it involves.
Isabela Bisconcini: [00:24:33] Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it is so important, everything that you are presenting to us. And yes, because exactly the way you said, I believe we do not exactly know that we are immersed, we are in a living knowledge. So I felt the same responsibility as you were saying. But since 2014, when Steve actually invited me to be a teacher, an Alaskan Essence teacher, I felt that sense of responsibility inside of me. But then it took me some years. And then, after Steve’s passing in 2017, I felt that urgence inside of me, like, well, it’s a must. It’s something that we all received in a very pure way, in a very crystal form of teaching and of receiving what he was giving us.
So I felt that commitment inside of me. So I went back to all my notes, to the notes of the workshops and courses we have been doing for many years. And one thing that was very interesting is exactly what you are saying, because what happened when I open my notes, I felt exactly the same energy that I was feeling on the day I was taking the workshop. That is so amazing because you really step into the field and you receive the information, and exactly the way you are saying, you go back to that multi-dimensional transmission of information, and that is so amazing. So, I felt completely, let’s say, enchanted, because we are all, everytime enchanted by this information. But I felt that Steve was there, completely there. And then it was, let’s say, a world for me too. Because this is also interesting, when we are listening to the teachings from the teacher, from the creator, the co-creator, we are receiving, as you said, the living transmission, the oral transmission, but we are not aware of so much information that is in the background. We are not even– we are not realizing that we are receiving that information.
So, one thing that was very important for me to do and that took me a lot of time, was not only to, let’s say, rewrite or compile all his writings then what he had said, but also to reflect and contemplate about his world view, about what actually he was talking. And as I said, when I go back to the notes, I just feel the same energy, and I feel the same inside, the same quantum of energy that was there when he gave us and when he transmitted that to us. So it is still an alive process. And I remember when Steve said to us, we are just beginning. We still need perhaps 100 years of working and experiencing flower essence and vibrational essence until perhaps we are able to come to a point where we can have a whole puzzle, let’s say.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:29:20] For me, the experience of being a student of Steve and being in that place of receiving that wisdom transmission, essentially, there’s the words, he shared the images, and in his gift for capturing evocative images that I would be sitting there and bathing in the energetics of the plant. So it was coming through on multimodal levels, but also from that– I feel like it’s like the imprint of his heart as he’s saying the words, that imprint of that experience of being in the field of that plant comes through so strongly that you can really develop more layers. And like you were saying, you’re going through your notes, like, oh yeah, you can drop back into that field and be able to be bathed in that experience, that firsthand experience of he had, that it can come to you second-hand, but it’s alive. It’s still living, that you’ve received it.
Rochana Felde: [00:30:29] For anyone who doesn’t know who we’re talking about, since we did not mention his last name, we’re talking about Steve Johnson, the founder of Alaskan Essences, who is no longer with us in the physical realm. And with me, I’m maybe a third– I guess you could call me more of a third-generation from Alaskan Essences Learning because I wasn’t able to do the training from Steve and I’ve done it with Judith now. So, what you’re saying about that transmission, that multi-dimensional transmission coming from him is also how I feel when I make essences directly from the plant, that multi-dimensional transmission. And there’s that challenge of, we want to be clear channels, like you say, to bring that information forward to our clients or who we’re training.
And what are some of the ways that you– what I wanted to ask you next was what are some of the ways that you found that help best do that? And I think you were just about to talk about the videos, like the actual videos. But for you being that sort of clear channel and bringing that information coming from Steve, and then before that coming from the plants, that came from Steve, right, it’s just sort of this like, I can see this thread, this thread of this deep plant wisdom going from the plants to the person and then from the person out to other people. But we don’t want to lose that original transmission and those feelings that you’re talking about and how we feel maybe when we go look back at our notes and we have that memory of how we felt.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:32:24] May I just add a little bit of what’s coming up for me? These stories that we receive, both in our own experience with sitting with the plant, with sitting with the essence, with sitting with the transmission, we’re reaching into the realm of mythology and fairy tales, which is the original wisdom transmission, right? This is how humans have been doing this for thousands of years to connect to the truth that resides within a story that may have these elements that don’t track in linear reality. When you sit with a plant or when you sit with an essence, you try to explain that to somebody who’s coming from a very logical, this has to be this way, this way, this way, it sounds like a fairy tale. It sounds like nonsense, but there’s deep, deep truth within it. And the truth is what resonates to the soul of the person we’re working with. As we’re working as practitioners, when we’re connecting with our clients, they hear that and they get goosebumps. This is where the healing takes place, not necessarily in the logic centers, so.
Isabela Bisconcini: [00:33:43] And I feel this mystery is, for me, what keeps me alive. We never get bored. We can never say, oh, I got this. We can never say, oh, now, I understood everything, I got it, I got it. We cannot. And that’s why we love it because there is this mystery. So, yes, I feel that we are doing this, but I do trust that this living body, this living experience, it speaks to itself, and it speaks directly to a person. Because we have so many interesting experiences, because I remember when I gave to a client– a small example, I remember I imagine I already told this to Ruth. I gave Mangano Calcite. I don’t know if you guys know this essence, it’s a mineral elixir. And let’s say the essence creates a warmth in the heart. And my client was in this process, and I think we gave the essence to the client. And after a few weeks, she came back to a session. She’s a psychotherapy client, so she comes every week. So after two weeks, let’s say, she came and said, Oh, I had a very weird dream, which, by the way, is one of the most spectacular channels for flower essence or vibrational essence to speak. She came and said, I had a very weird dream because my sister, she was pregnant, but she was pregnant in the heart. So, I could see the heart growing, growing, growing like a belly. And that’s exactly what the essence does.
So, when the person came with an image so literal of what an essence does, well, I believe we have to trust in the voice of the essence because there are so many different levels of communication. But I trust, I really believe– and no, I don’t believe, I feel that the essence has this voice– not the essence, but the plant. And as Ruth said, the being, the living being of the mineral and the nature and the environment, well, there is this voice that speaks so generous, in a very generous way, exactly the way the person can receive. Of course, sometimes it comes with a symbol and then we have to be able to read about the symbols because there is this, as Kathleen was speaking, this is the language of the psyche, the symbol, the archetypes, the fairytales, the stories. Then, we have to be able to understand this language because this is the language of the soul, the symbols, the stories. And then, when we are given a flower essence or a vibrational essence, we are opening the field because we are talking directly to the unconscious and we are talking directly to the soul. So we also have, as Ruth said, we have to become like good storytellers, but we have to become also good story unconscious listeners because we have to learn how to understand and how to receive the message the being is giving us, because otherwise, it’s like a dream.
Rochana Felde: [00:38:09] And thank you, Isabela, for all that you’ve brought, all of this information and your perspective. It’s so valuable for us to hear that and to find out what’s going on in other parts of the world since we are US-centric. And it’s always fascinating to me and very helpful and hopeful to know how flower essences are used and appreciated in other countries. And I really appreciate the work that you’ve been doing there.
Isabela Bisconcini: [00:38:38] Thank you so much, Rochana. Thank you, Ruth and Kathleen, for the opportunity for us to put elements together in this flame and to share our love for the vibrational essences and to exchange our experiences. So thank you so, so, so much from the bottom of my heart. And we will continue. We will continue because we love.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:39:20] So we’re deeply steeped in the love for the work that we have embraced. And it is our deepest commitment to understanding more and more on how we can become living storytellers who emanate this experience, this living experience, and communicate and transmit and take this legacy with a lot of care and tend to it with a lot of love so that it can be passed on. And this conference that we have co-created is one moment in which we feel a lot of joy because it’s so special that several producers and practitioners are coming together now after decades of work and bringing in that kind of collected richness. It’s more synthesized now. It’s more concise, there’s more substance to it. And we are in this moment, I would say, of the momentum on flower essence therapy. We’re gathering momentum in terms of this approach is now much more relatable for more people than it was before. And so we really look forward to all the work that we have ahead as storytellers and record keepers of the living legacy of flower essence therapy. And I’m so glad we are creating this conference together to spread out this understanding to a lot of people.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:41:26] So thank you so much for joining us, Ruth, and for sharing the opportunity for me and Ro to take part and help you bring this conference into the world. We are so excited to be sharing this depth of knowledge with our audience and with the world. It’s really why we do this. It’s why we create this podcast is because we feel it’s so important to share the messages of the flowers, the healing of nature, and the possibilities that come from that. And so thank you for letting us take part in this next flowering, this next gathering. And we really hope that you, listener, are, check it out, see if this might be a good fit for you, a good place for you to learn more about the flowers and to become part of the community. We hope you join us.
Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:42:20] And especially to join us live also in the panel live discussions that we’re going to have, because this is going to be the moment in which you’re going to see all the faces of the community in these big screens, one after the other. And you can ask your questions and receive answers live from the panelists.
[/ppp_patron_only]Rochana Felde: [00:42:46] Check out thefloweressenceconference.com for more information and to see all of these amazing people that are participating in this conference.
Kathleen Aspenns: [00:43:05] 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.
