Show Notes:

Ruth Toledo Altschuler joins us for our 50th show!

As a returning guest of the podcast and partner in the Flower Essence Conference, you’ll most likely be familiar with the incredible depth of insight Ruth has in Flower Essence Therapy. She has been a practitioner and educator for over three decades, and has a unique combination of experience unparalleled in the field.

In this episode, we talk about understanding flower essences in the context of their botanical families.

When we are able to group essence plants this way, patterns emerge that can help us to find the right essence faster for a given concern.

And when we apply the observation of the plant signature, we can better see the distinctions of their healing qualities within their family.

This plant-centric system of learning about flower essences is something the three of us resonate deeply with, and we are honored to work with Ruth on new educational offerings (stay tuned!).

For now, enjoy this lovely conversation.

Audio:

FEP50 Botanical Families as a Guide to Flower Essences

Ruth Toledo Altschuler joins us for our 50th show! As a returning guest of the podcast and partner in the Flower Essence Conference, you’ll most likely be familiar with the incredible depth of insight Ruth has in Flower Essence Therapy.

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Impatiens – Bach
• Heather – Bach
• Mariposa Lily – FES
• Showy Lily – Flora of Asia
• Star Tulip – FES
• Alpine Lily – FES

Resources:

Ruth Toledo Altschuler can be found online at Essence Mentoring. From there, join her free monthly Essence Circles, see her courses, and book a session.

Healing Herbs founded by Julian Barnard, our recommended source of Bach Flower Essences (available in the US from FES). See the vast range of free online educational materials, and his excellent (dare we say essential?) books:

Bach Flower Remedies: Form and Function

Bach Flower Remedies: The Essence Within

Show Transcript

Welcome back, flower lovers. We are here for what is to us a very special episode. It is our 50th episode. So essentially our golden podcast anniversary, and we couldn’t think of who we wanted to celebrate more than with Ruth Toledo Altschuler. We have been so excited to be working with Ruth over the years and especially in the last year. It has been such a beautiful flowering of flower essence therapy awareness and we’ve together as a team, Rochana and I and Ruth have created the flower essence conference this spring and we are developing online courses for bringing the community together of flower essence lovers and to really bring out even more education and awareness and helping give flower essence lovers like yourself the tools that you need to really practice at a high level.

So I think many of you who’ve listened over the years know Ruth because she’s been on the podcast at least two times before this, maybe even three. And Ruth has been a leader in the field of flower essence therapy since 1989 she’s been in practice. She’s certified by The Flower Essence Society, and she is a native of Brazil and developed flower essence therapy as a widely accepted modality there. Her work in bringing forth education and opportunities for practitioners to develop their skills there in Brazil, for decades she’s been doing research and developing educational content. The beauty is that the fruition of flower essence therapy in Brazil is such that it is accepted by the National Public Health, it’s taught at university level. And Ruth has been so important in bringing that up to the level it has. And so it’s really a delight for us to be working and co-partnering with Ruth on bringing that to the United States and honestly to the world because everyone can join us. We’re really happy that you’re here today, Ruth. And we’re going to be talking about Botanical Families.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:03:02] It is my honor, and also it is my joy because this flourishing of flower essence therapy in the realm of the English-speaking world, I mean, this growth, this expansion is something that I’ve always hoped would happen and since I’ve been residing more on this part of the world and more connected to these communities over the last few years after commuting between the US and Brazil for many years, I’m so happy to be part of really bringing what we have acquired in Brazil as far as this expansion of flower essence therapy. It’s just a joy to be witnessing it happening now within the realms that we are connected with. So thank you so much. Yeah.

Rochana Felde: [00:03:57] We could not be more thrilled to have you on and to be working with you with the school for flower essence studies and some of the amazing learnings that we’re co-creating. And it’s such a beautiful meld of all of our experience and our different perspectives and our different studies with the plants, all the different kinds of plant studies that the three of us have done with different ranges of plants. And then personally, especially you with all of the study you’ve done over your years, with all the different ranges and bringing in, synthesizing all that information together. And I just wanted to start out and be curious about how that really started for you and how that came about.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:04:49] Yes. So I was already being really called by the plants. It was a time in my life that I wanted to learn and know everything about plants. And I didn’t really know why. And at the time, I was fortunate to have a mother-in-law who was a landscape designer. So I had access to her libraries and I could ask her all kinds of things. And I was involved in a different activity that took me in some travels, but I chose to travel in the spring and because I went in the spring to the Netherlands and I was so fascinated with the flowers, I met a person who gave me a book about the Bach flower essences. But I wanted to tell this story because it started with this connection with the book, and right after, with another book in which I started reading about the essences and their descriptions. And this, I think, is what usually captures every one of us. That’s how we begin. We all start reading. And I can’t, of course, forget how the impact of reading about Impatiens was for me. So I read about Impatiens and that line about, Oh, this person can’t wait for someone to finish a phrase and they will interject and jump in and complete that phrase, oh, this is me. So I was quite enraptured by these descriptions and the whole range of descriptions of the Bach flower remedies. And I had been very much called by the plants, but I wasn’t yet really making the correlation of that because these descriptions were very much mental descriptions, they were very much mental patterns, and sometimes even very critical of the people who would have these personality traits. It seemed like you would be describing these horrible personality patterns.

So as much as this was interesting and helpful and really useful to have these keywords and these key patterns in detecting how to select an essence that could help a person, and I was already myself benefiting from the effects and the results of the essences that I took, it was only in 1991 when I went to take my practitioner training at Terra Flora in FES, and I started to learn in the garden, amidst the plants, with the plants, and from the plants and from my teachers, Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz. And then that’s when– what happened was, for instance, even though they didn’t– or maybe they did have the actual Impatiens plant growing there. But that’s when I saw, that that presence of that plant that grew so fast and prolifically in the summer with all these seedlings that it projects out and all of that, which was certainly something that Dr. Bach was watching happening, but it wasn’t described in the writings that he left behind. And then the presence of that flower suspended in the air in that pale mauve color. And this really, I feel, brought me into a state of reconnection with this greater whole of the web of life of which we are a part. So understanding the quality of the essence through the gesture of the plant and through the actual way that connecting ourselves through the plants reconnects us and pierces that separation made all the difference.

However, there was an added layer in the evening lectures. Richard Katz will take us into the sections in which he would show us the plants in their interconnection amongst plants’ botanical families. And that’s when I started to see plants that were interrelated and some plants that had come from other places and had adapted in other countries but were related to that, so there were more interconnectedness in the world of the flower essences. And this brings us into much more of an understanding of the qualities of these essences and also of the role that they– of the healing way that they impact us in making us realize our interconnectedness in so many ways.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:10:36] Like you, the essences really came alive for me because of that– I predated my interest in flower essences with a degree in horticulture science. Plants have always been a source of solace for me long before I knew about essences. Just to understand them and for me, it’s really been interesting because horticulture is about the science of growing things, of giving them the environments in which they can thrive. And so for me, plants were always like, so interested in new varieties and the families and the interrelationships between them, but as much as anything, it’s about finding out what they want, what they need in order to thrive.

And so when essences came along for me later on and learning about, like we all start with a little tiny brochure and the two-line description, which is very judgy sometimes like you said. Nobody wants to cop to that. It’s not a nice experience to think like I’m a whatever person, but to get to know the plant behind that little brown bottle, to get to really experience the presence of the plant, it’s just like, Oh, I see it in its whole self, not in the snapshot of the challenging situation. I can see how it helps me to harmonize that part of myself that might be experiencing that challenging personality trait or behavior trait and to recognize, Oh. And it also relates to these other plants that also ripple out into the same overall dynamic of the challenge state.

And so Impatiens, it’s so interesting that it was Dr. Bach’s first essence because it really does have that very cardinal water energy, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s like it starts things and it has no fear of jumping into new things. So there’s some quality about that being the initiating essence in the world of essences, don’t you think?

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:12:49] Absolutely. And it was my first flower essence, the first one that I had to take, right? Yes.

Rochana Felde: [00:12:58] I love what you’re both saying about that experiential aspect of learning about and from the plants. And for me, it was also that way. I started getting into herbalism a long time ago, and it didn’t really come alive to me until I started growing some– or wildcrafting some of my own herbs making my own herbal medicine. And in the same sense, with flower essences, I had decades ago run into the Bach flower remedies in the health food store and read the little self-questionnaires and thought, wow, I was just so fascinated and enthralled by it and the checkboxes, but it was such a mystery. And why would one plant have this quality versus another plant? And then when I started getting into– when it really called to me, it was the plants that called to me in the place that I lived where I had been able to grow a lot of plants and there were a lot of wild plants around me, and that’s what made flower essences come alive to me. And in those first years, in the beginning, I didn’t even want to work with anyone else’s essences or read about them from their books. I just wanted my own experiences and I really went down that path of plant communication and making flower essences and researching them. So that’s what made it really come alive.

And even if I don’t do that with every flower essence or plant that I work with, just having done that with the ones that I have or the families or there’s something from the same genus or the same family, it gives me more insight. It gives me that insight into something that maybe I don’t have the opportunity to ever see live in the wild or in a garden. And I can now also look at pictures and start to even virtually kind of get more of that sense of a plant because I did that practice and had that experience. And I don’t know– and I know with Ruth, you offer this amazing group share every month showing your beautiful photography, which is such a wonderful part of what you do, your history, you have a background at doing photography. And capturing the essence and the energy of that plant and bringing it to life in a photograph is another way of helping to communicate that. I’d love you to talk a little bit more about that because we’re so used to it now working with you sometimes I– but I want to bring that out because it is really a unique piece of what you bring to the flower essence community.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:16:03] Oh, thank you so much for bringing this up. Before I talked about this, I want to say that I have so much appreciation for the synergy of the collaboration that we have, the three of us in the projects that we’re doing. And I need to say some– this is something that I never mentioned as we go along, but I’ve never been a person who actually really grows plants beyond when I was like seven years old that I had my Rose plants by the window. So I had always been someone who had walked and enjoyed and been amongst the plants and had a great connection being amongst the plants, but I was not someone who really grew plants. And I always felt that this was a limitation that I have, and that’s something that I admire so much in many of my friends who actually have that as part of who they are and what they do.

But now that you bring up photography, it actually makes me know that there’s a piece that I bring that is my own unique way. And I think what has been a role that I’ve played is this ability to connect information, to transport information, to be a bridge of information between levels, between people, and between realms. And so the ability to capture the image is something that I’ve learnt as a photographer, it was really important for me to get that moment when the human individual really expressed their essential beingness, and I would be there watching while I was doing these portraits, which I did for many years professionally, for those singular moments where that essence is being transmitted visually. And I know that is very much what I do with plant photography as well. And it’s something that is kind of inbuilt in me and it’s also part of what I do in my work with clients when I’m really attuning to their essence and listening to what they’re transmitting. But this is this ability to capture it through imagery. And I also love to edit the images. So oftentimes I’m digging out and finding images by other good photographers whom I like to appreciate and honor with the credits. So I love putting together the presentations that really transmit and convey the closest we can have to the experience of being with the plants, but sometimes showing things that with the naked eye we don’t see.

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Kathleen Aspenns: [00:19:23] And it is these depth studies of the plant. It’s not a quick snapshot of the face, you know, the mug shot. It’s more than that. Being able to experience the plants in this way is a gift of now, right? We can do this now. We don’t have to all transport ourselves to its locale, even though that might be great, but in this way, you’re able to express and show and kind of capture these moments in time where the plant is fully expressing itself in a way. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate bathing in the images that you share during your classes and during your open circles. Like I was saying, this monthly open circle, that’s a community service. There’s no charge. You can just join and it’s delightful. And you can just bathe in this experience that you create, which is very much– it’s perhaps even better than being there in person because like you say, you get to see these details that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to spot when you’re just sort of walking by or on first glance. So I really appreciate this gift that you’ve given to the flower essence world of these in-depth portraits where it’s so much more than just that one little shot of what the flower kind of looks like, or the short little one-sentence description of what it does. What you’re doing is to create this deep picture of the entirety of the plant, which I think that’s how we all want to be seen, right? The plants really want to express that also.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:21:10] Yeah. And on those lines, I really want to bring in and honor another one of our dearest teachers, Julian Barnard, because Julian Barnard, through his book, Bach Flower Essences: Form and Function, and also Bach Flower  Essences: The Essence Within, and I just want to give a snapshot because it was this one lecture that I had with Julian in which he was teaching about Heather. And so he was telling us how he went up that mountain that had only Heather. And he sat with that plant and he just stayed there in silence while the essence making was happening. And the experience he had of how his whole being settled, how that silence ensued within himself, how that whole field of Heather really held him in a place where he could calm down and feel that true silence within himself, this is when I finally got the Heather and then in through his descriptions of the structures of these plants and all the findings that we have as they express themselves through the cycles, through the months, through the years, all of this is so helpful for us to really understand the archetypal expression of a plant as a flower essence. And these are teachings that we never forget. So I wanted to honor and bring in, but also it’s a study that’s never-ending. We’re always discovering more. So whatever flower essence you begin learning with and from, just know that it’s an ongoing process that will continue to reveal itself to you and to us.

Rochana Felde: [00:23:31] Absolutely. And the plants are that way. I notice something different every season that I didn’t notice the last season, or maybe I didn’t notice the plant at all the prior season when I was on that walk or in that place. And then when developing that relationship and looking at it through all its growth cycles, not just the flower, not just when it’s flowering. The flower essence, while it’s made from the flower usually, it’s encapsulating the energy of the whole plant. But to understand it, I like to look at the energy of the whole plant of what its roots are like, what its seed is like, what its leaves are like, what its ecosystem is, its environment, what it likes to grow. And so I know this is something that you speak so much about and probably why the three of us resonate so well because we’re always looking and observing and doing that sort of just looking and learning over time with these relationships with these plants.

And so what you and Kathleen have been working on now, bringing it to the Botanical Families is even expanding on that. And that is, what are the rest of the family like? And then do they interrelate? And I’d love to hear more about what you’re doing with that.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:25:02] Yeah. Maybe Kathleen would like to begin that thread.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:25:07] Sure. We are putting together a really beautiful deep dive into what we’re calling botanical families and flower essence therapy. And this concept that you opened with, Ruth, that you’re talking about Heather. Heather is one of those essences that tends to be, it’s the least acceptable essence. Even presenting the idea that somebody could use Heather is very hard because it’s a very wounded place. Heather, I often think of it as being an essence that really soothes the wounded child, the child that needs love and attention and care. And for an adult self, that is really hard to admit to.

And I’ve always looked at Heather, and like everyone else, you kind of push it away a little bit. You might see that in somebody else, but do you see it in yourself? Well, no, shadow much. So I think Heather and now we expand into what we’re bringing forth is talking about the whole family of Heather, the Ericaceae. And the Ericaceae is this family of plants that all speak on some level, they’re all resonant to this early wounding in my opinion. That’s something that I’ve been working with and really exploring and delving deep into because Heather kind of sat by itself for a long time, but your insights on bringing forth the really studying plants from the other angle. Classically, flower essences we look at it from individual plant, what its remedy state is, what it works with. But your insights sparked by the FES insights of the Botanical Families having relevance to the individual remedies and that they all have some interrelationship by family.

So one of the essences that I started looking at was from your sharing of Madrone, which is also in the Ericaceae family. And so it really speaks to this wounding, or this need for being cared for by the Earth Mother. So that’s one of the things that we’re going to be bringing out in our course, talking about how each one of these members of the plant family inter-relate and how they– when you know that there’s a wounding on this level, then you can much more precisely figure out what the essence is that will soothe that, that will help to heal and bring that into the positive side of that state. Is that a good starting place, do you think?

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:28:04] Yeah. Yeah. And I would like to bring into that– I don’t know how many of you who are listening love studying and love learning, but that’s something that’s probably a thread that connects the three of us. And I know that Kathleen and I have in common the sign of cancer. She has the sun and I have the moon. And so we love to learn about the ancestral lines and about the correlations. But when I went to FES and I took the first classes with Richard Katz on the Botanical Families, I was living in Brazil at the time. I went back to Brazil and I just couldn’t stop digging into the books to see who was related to who, and to start almost like drawing these ancestry family trees of the plants. And this has never left me. So this bug of really wanting to see and understand the correlations, but especially with the plants, these correlations have to do also with these healing, with these specific traits of the adaptations that these plants have developed and how these translate into healing benefits that they share with us, with which we can resonate and reconnect to the web of life through these many healing patterns that the essences offer.

But I really wanted to emphasize the curiosity and how fascinating the study is, and it’s something that once you begin to learn, you just don’t want to stop knowing more and seeing that map and how it all comes together and correlates.

Rochana Felde: [00:30:07] I have to say, when I first started making the flower essences in that phase where I wanted to learn everything from the plants, and I had put together a spreadsheet, and that was one of the first things I did was, what botanical family were they in? And I started looking to see if there were patterns and groupings. And some of them grouped well, and some of them didn’t, I wasn’t able to quite get there. I thought, God, there’s something here, there’s something to this, and I want to decode this. That’s sort of how my brain works as well. But I quickly realized I didn’t have enough data. I didn’t have enough information because I hadn’t deep-dive studied into all the other ranges. I had only been working really on my own. And so I knew that I couldn’t really, truly do that work until I had a broader experience and understanding of the different ranges. And so this is what’s so exciting to me about what the two of you are working on because this is exactly where my brain 10 years or so ago was going, “Ugh, I know there’s something here. We want to put it together and decode it.” But I didn’t have all the information that I needed to do that or the experience. So I’m really very excited about this and just love how you’re pulling this together and thinking about it.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:31:37] Yeah. And I wanted to add that some of this plant study, it originates from approaches related to the Goethian ways of looking at plant evolution and plant expression and plant signatures. There’s a lot of the research that I have received through Richard Katz and Patricia Kaminski that derives from these studies. But in this particular program, Kathleen and I are also expanding that, bringing in a lot of insights of what we have observed through our own study and practice, through our own observation of these plants in our practical work over the decades. Yeah. So we’re adding and bringing in extra pieces. It’s like we’re opening the frontier of this idea of Botanical Families, bringing in new pieces.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:32:49] And that is, like you were saying, Ro, that more data is needed, and what Ruth has in just abundance is this experience, this deep experience from bringing in teachers and essence ranges from all of the big names and all of the big ranges. And you’ve been able to have that study directly with the people who’ve co-created these essences and worked with them for decades with your clients. So you do have that information and you do have that breadth of ability to go, oh, in this family, this system, FES has these essences, but the Alaskan system has these essences. How do those interrelate? So, coming from that breadth of experience of seeing all these different companies and ranges and ecosystems, which is kind of my thing, seeing where these things are interrelated, how this family expresses in these different geographical and ecological niches, and how that relates to their qualities as essences and how they interact with one another, it’s really quite beautiful.

I know we wanted to talk a little bit about the Lily family because that’s one of the big families that we’re going to be talking about in the course. And the Lilies, I mean, they’re so beautiful. They’re so elegant. They’re so graceful. And they have these beautiful, nourishing bulbs that are used in Chinese medicine, the Chinese species of Lilies are used as medicine. And I know that the Lily family is one that has been researched from very early on by FES. What would you like to share about the Lily family kind of as a whole?

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:34:46] Yeah, I would say perhaps one of the first plant studies that we did that showed, contemplated the plant signature, and that just really came in and entered forever into my awareness and understanding of plant expression was the Mariposa Lily. And the Mariposa Lily is a native Lily that grows in the high altitudes of the Sierra Nevada. It is part of those plants that are called monocots, the ones that have– when the first sprout opens, it’s only one little leaf that comes up. And they usually have kind of straight leaves with vertical parallel veins, but the plant grows from a little or larger bulb that contains all the nourishment that the plant needs to develop into a full plant. Almost all. It just has these little roots that connect with the ground and pull up some water and some nutrients, but very little is needed, really. Almost everything is there contained within that bulb. And so that bulb sits inside the earth and allows that plant and its Calochortus family, the name in Latin, is related to beautiful grass, that’s what it means. So it’s a little kind of blade of grass, blade of beautiful grass but that produces this creamy flower with the signature of the three petals and three sepals, and there is a moisture quality to it. There is a receptive chalice quality to its shape. And the fact that there is this gentleness and this delicacy sitting in the context of a very rocky environment where the snow takes a long time to melt and there’s a lot of really extreme weather until it becomes the blooming season for the plants. And so this quality expressed by this Lily and then learning that there were other Lilies that were related that Kathleen can talk about as well, and then I could see the common thread between them and also how one can help in one instance and the other essence can help in the next instance, or they can support each other in the combinations. And this understanding is just absolutely essential to my way of using the flower essences. And after Kathleen adds, I might tell a little story about the Mariposa Lily healing.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:38:15] Yeah, I’d love to hear about that. The Mariposa Lily is kind of if you’re looking at the basic description for those who maybe haven’t experienced the Mariposa Lily, it is one of those essences that we use a lot. I certainly have used it many, many times when there’s been sort of a disturbed gestational experience or an early life experience where the bonding with the mother wasn’t ideal. So it’s certainly something that comes up endlessly in our practices. Certainly for animals, I use it a great deal, and for people as well. So the Mariposa Lily is almost a beautiful starting place when you’re exploring and going deep into the Lily family because it is one that has been used maybe more than most and has had a long experience of how we use it and what the gifts are of the Mariposa Lily. And there have been many other Lily family essences made and I’ve done deep dives into the Chinese species mostly, where I’ve developed an essence from what I call the Showy Lily, which is basically a translation of the botanical name, which has this beautiful, pink, luscious, voluptuous flower, which is very much like the– visually looks a lot like the Stargazer Lily from which some of the genes were used to breed the Stargazer Lily.

And it has that quality also of supporting that wounded experience of not really being wanted, of not being really cherished as a not yet born human, right? When your gestational experience was stressful and troubled and you just weren’t loved, you weren’t wanted, so the Showy Lily is such a beautiful gift for those who’ve experienced that, to help them start to experience what it’s like in their bodies, in their physical experience, to feel that, because what we’re doing in our work with essences is a lot of helping to transfer that experience, that maybe ideally, or if things had gone great would have been received from our family structure, and instead, it didn’t happen. And what the essences can do is to go back and to create that bridge within yourself and connect you to the earth on that level and connect you to this gift of the flower who can give you that gift that you didn’t receive.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:40:58] Yes. And so I had written a piece of my own story of healing with the Mariposa Lily, of being this child that was born from a traumatic birth, and also that was born at a time that they believed that you only pick up a child to feed the child, and then you put the child back and you let the child cry as long as needed until the next feeding time. And so I know that this was what happened to me, that I was left hours and hours crying in the crib and not picked up. And I really finally connected to my inner child. And I was beginning to heal that lack of a loving, nurturing bond with the mother as I was taking the Mariposa Lily and healing my own inner child journey. So I wrote about that, and a person read this article that I wrote and really connected. She felt very called to the Mariposa Lily healing. And so this person came to me to work with me with the essences. And it turned out that there was this very dramatic situation in which this person was allowed to be abused by a caretaker in the house. That was truly terrifying and harassing this young person for years. And she would tell the mother, but the mother wouldn’t do anything and wouldn’t really believe her. And so this healing of really having that mothering care was something that had been so hurt and disrupted in this person. And she spent quite some time receiving the healing of the Mariposa Lily in a way that was profoundly transformative, as at the same time she was actually configuring this healing in the surroundings of her own life. And this was a really beautiful story of conquering the wound and transforming the wound into a life redesigned and recreated for herself. And that was the story of the Mariposa Lily, and that she came to me because of the story that I was telling about the flower and about my own journey.

Rochana Felde: [00:43:49] It works on such a profound level. And also, to me, there’s a real epigenetic– if there’s any of that trauma that’s coming in, maybe it didn’t happen to the individual, but it happened to the mother, I feel like we’re just finding out now, right, that that epigenetics are a thing and that trauma can be passed down through generations. And so I’m sure it’s very common. If it didn’t happen to you, maybe it happened to someone in your line. And I’ve seen that and had that experience with the Mariposa Lily. And I think there is a real connection with the mother line as well. Just there’s something that’s happening there with what’s coming from the mother line and doing that sort of healing, not just for the individual today, but kind of going back and doing that ancestral healing.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:44:51] And then there’s that connection between the feminine of the inner child and the feminine that evolves from there into the mature woman that’s also supported by many of these Lily family members. So how does that feminine grow and evolve?

Rochana Felde: [00:45:16] And so what are some of the other members of the Lily family that you might want to highlight that have that similar but different and related energy?

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:45:28] I want to share the Star Tulip story a little bit because I think this helps to illustrate how a common name can be a little confusing because when you hear Star Tulip and all you have is maybe a little description or the bottle name, you wouldn’t know. It’s a Calochortus, you wouldn’t know. It’s a Liliaceae sort of extended family member. So you might look at the description and go, you wouldn’t be able to see the correlations between the different family members. And for me, I really for years didn’t quite get Star Tulip. Like, I don’t quite understand what it’s for or how I might use it or how that’s relevant. And when I experienced through your images and then also through actually meeting the Star Tulip in person, and it was sort of a cumulative experience, spending time in the presence of these images really brought forward to me, was this message, and I think this was maybe my personal message, but also maybe perhaps a little bit more universal as well, but this quality of, it’s safe to be sensitive. That maternal, feminine holding of– and I’m getting all verklempt, that holding of the feminine, that holding in the embrace of the universal mother, that my sensitivity is valued and it’s safe to experience it, it’s safe to feel things, it’s safe to open up to other realms because my wounding required a lot of shutting down, and the Star Tulip has helped to open that for me, has helped me to express that in ways that I wasn’t able to before.

Rochana Felde: [00:47:23] I love that. And the Star Tulip as well for me, I didn’t really quite have enough information to use it until I met it and worked with it in the wild. And I have a little funny story because I found it on the coast of California and I had parked near a place that I hiked and I saw it on the ground. It’s so small, you almost miss it, and it blends in and it’s just on this rocky slope that you wouldn’t expect it to be, with the way that it looks. And so I got my journal and notebook and I went to sit down and attune with it. And somebody came along and parked next to my car and came out, and they were kind of running toward– not running, but coming towards me kind of fast, and I thought, Oh my God, am I in trouble? What’s happening here? What’s this person? But I saw that they had a flower name, I can’t remember now what it was on their license plate, and it was a woman and she had a big smile on her face. So at first, I was scared, but then I thought, okay, this is fine, but I still wasn’t sure. And she said, hey, did you know there’s Star Tulips over there? And I said, Yes, I just found them. So it was this wonderful kind of feminine coming together of plant people just completely excited and enjoying and out of the blue connection with the Star Tulip. But also it was an extremely windy day, and I had trouble hearing her at first over the wind. And then when I sat down and attuned with the Star Tulip, I could hear and feel the wind in my ears. And that really helped to– it talked a little bit about its message with that listening, I think, as well. So there’s a reception, a receptivity happening with being receptive to messages and things coming from outside.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:49:39] And what’s so fascinating about the Liliaceae family is the way that the essences that we know will touch us by helping to create that sense of bonding and nurturing on the emotional matrix, let’s say that we have within ourselves with these essences that are some of the most delicate Lilies, like the Mariposa Lily and the Start Tulip, that, by the way, Star Tulip is also a major essence on the work with men and women as well. So both of these essences work on that inner feminine of the receptivity and the ability to feel held and nurtured and to be able to open, to receive.

But then as we go through the scale of the different Liliaceae, we will have someone like the Alpine Lily, and that is a Lily that grows high up also in the Sierra Nevada and also from a bulb. However, that one grows a plant that is actually quite taller and that will open up some flowers that have this very vivid orange-reddish color. So there is this exuberant color in that high altitude, and there’s also the moisture and the fragrance. And so that one is one that as a flower essence, it’s very helpful for women who have not felt safe to be fully and exuberantly the female that they are because it wasn’t safe for them to grow into that regions of their femininity. So their femininity stayed very abstract and very mental and sometimes even in their fantasy life, but they haven’t really lived it all the way down to their organs and uterus and belly, really feeling that aliveness of the female alive in them. And that is another octave, let’s say, of a Liliaceae. And there are other ones that we’re going to see in this program. And so that’s the beauty of it, is that we can see the chords, the scale, and the different moments, that we can be touched in a healing way by these energies that bring so profoundly the nurturing of the feminine within us.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:52:55] It’s really going to be a pleasure to share this with people, this really profound learning that’s going to help them, whether they’re looking for essences to more accurately select for themselves or for working with others. It’s enriched my practice so much from studying with you and from learning this approach. I know I apply it every time I work, and it certainly helps me think about and understand the essences on a whole additional level. And also, it requires a lot less memorization when you can see the patterns that connect to them. And then you go, oh, well, it’s in this family somewhere what I’m looking for, the essence that I’m looking for, rather than feeling like, “Oh my God, there’s so many essences out there, I have to restrict the number of essences I work with because I have to memorize the listing of what everyone says.” No, you don’t. Give yourself a break and realize that there’s another route through that you can learn the essences and use them very effectively without the Rote memorization. So that’s another piece of what we’re sharing, this isn’t a class on botany. This isn’t a class where we are going to go into like, you have to learn the petals versus the sepals. That’s not what we’re doing here. What we’re doing is we’re looking for the patterns of life expressing. And those patterns express in these channels that we’ve called plant families. Plants show their ability to thrive. In every ecosystem, in every part of the world, they thrive and they thrive in certain ways. They’re our best teachers at learning to work in a changing world because they’ve been here for so much longer than we have. One of my favorite families, the Magnolias, 100 million years old. Modern humans have been here for maybe 50,000, you know? The scale is kind of ridiculous. And these teachers can be such guides and helpers for us to learn how to adapt and to shift. And that’s one of the things that I think is what’s sort of activating so many people like us, like you, dear listener, to become interested in flower essences, to really feel the call of nature, to feel the call of nature’s healing through flower essences, because we are in times that are just vastly changing and we’re all having to learn how to adapt and to thrive when things aren’t like they were. And the plants have such a gift for us in helping us navigate this because they’ve done it before and they know how.

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [00:56:01] Yeah. And we’re all learning how to thrive and how to– and one of the only ways forward that we have as humanity to thrive is to co-create and collaborate. Because if we stay in our bubble of isolation, thinking that through the constructs of our minds, we’re going to be able to find the path ahead, we’re still enclosed in that separation, and this separation really needs to be pierced so that we re-discover ourselves as part of this web of life and as co-creators and collaborators with the plant kingdom, with all these other kingdoms that are alive and that are part of this web of life, of which we are an integral part as well. So there’s no way forward if we don’t really listen and learn how to collaborate and co-create. And so our flower essence work is part of this awakening.

Rochana Felde: [00:57:14] So true and such powerful words. Nature is our ultimate teacher. And every time throughout history, and especially modern times, the farther we get away from listening to nature and working with nature, and not trying to think we always know what’s best or overwrite it with our own technology, I think we can come together. I think there is a place that we can come together, but we can’t do that without honoring and listening and learning from nature. So this way of studying and way of looking at plant medicine, in general, is the way to get that picture, I feel. Like, there’s a lot of scholarly work on plants and it’s all helpful, but in the end, getting that information and understanding it on this visceral level, like I’m a human and I am part of nature, I’m not outside of nature, is the way that we get there.

And so this course that you’re working on is such a wonderful way to do that because not everyone can even go out and have these experiences and go out into nature in that way or have the time to spend hours attuning or making an essence or whatever it is. So to have that visual immersion that you provide and be able to see at a glance what the plant looks like, what its flower looks like, and its different life cycles and where it grows and what’s around it and all of that information that you’re bringing together with what you’re saying, Kathleen, about it’s the life of experience and how that relates to us and our life, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s just a beautiful thing. And I don’t know really where else that is other than here and with you. And I’m just so grateful and honored to be a part of it.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:59:49] And just bringing this together, it’s such a privilege to be in this team. It’s such a privilege to be in this community of flower-loving people, of nature-loving people, of people seeking healing for themselves and for their community, for the world, so that we can all be interconnected and work better together.

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Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [01:00:23] Well, that we’re so grateful that you are here in this world at this time. You are needed, and your awareness is so much needed. So, thank you. Thank you for your curiosity, for your interest, for your passion, for your involvement in this work, for your commitment, allow flower essence desire to learn within yourself to guide you. And come on over, be with us in these co-creative circles that we have been putting together and will continue to as we go. There will be many opportunities for you to be with us as a community. And this is one of the special ones, the Botanical Families in Flower Essence Therapy.

Rochana Felde: [01:01:20] Wonderful. So we’ll of course put links in the show notes to your open circles that we were talking about, Ruth, and also the Botanical Families in Flower Essence Therapy course that is coming up starting, what’s the date that we’re starting?

Ruth Toledo Altschuler: [01:01:40] September 15.

Rochana Felde: [01:01:41] September 15, if you want to join. And all of that information will be in the show notes. So thank you, and thanks for joining us, Ruth. It’s been a pleasure, as always.

Rochana Felde: [01:01:56] Thank you.

Kathleen Aspenns: [01:02:01] 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.