Show Notes:

We went to the movies! And saw Barbie! This was a rare treat for us, as we live on opposite sides of the county. We laughed so hard, then had a great chat about it during lunch, and we knew right away we wanted to discuss some of the themes in our next podcast.

We address some typical challenges experienced by those of us not at the top of the patriarchy:

• constant feelings of not being enough and having to work twice as hard to get less
• feeling obligated to do more for others than for ourselves and letting our self care suffer
• being too “nice” and putting on a happy mask to appease those with more power

We talk about essences for these states and to boost a general feeling of empowerment.

There’s no spoilers except for a certain kick-ass monologue that we just had to repeat. But if you haven’t seen the movie, go take some self-care time and do it!

Audio:

FEP59 Feminine Empowerment with Flower Essences

We went to the movies! And saw Barbie! This was a rare treat for us, as we live on opposite sides of the county. We laughed so hard, then had a great chat about it during lunch, and we knew right away we wanted to discuss some of the themes in our next podcast.

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Gold – Alaskan Gem Essence
• Lady Banks’ Rose – Flora of Asia
• Leichtlin’s Lily – Flora of Asia
• Pink Monkeyflower – FES
• Mimulus – Bach
• Agrimony – Bach
• Centaury – Bach
• Hematite – Alaskan Gem Essence
• Round Leaf Vitex – Flora of Asia
• Green Jasper – Alaskan Gem Essence
• Yellow Jasmine – Flora of Asia
• Queen Anne’s Lace – FES
• Rosemary – FES
• Grace, Flourish Formula – FES

Show Transcript

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:00:17] Hello flower family. Ro and I are here today and we’ve been thinking about something. We had a lovely day out together watching the Barbie movie. And it was so much fun. Such a good time, so many great laughs. And after we finished watching that and we went to have lunch together, we were thinking about the themes and the topics, as we’re thinking about what our next podcast would be. And so we wanted to share some ideas that were brought up by the film and brought up on this whole concept of feminine empowerment. And that’s kind of the words that we’re using to frame this conversation. But there’s just so much more to it that’s not so specific. Really, the way I’ve been thinking about it is, what does it mean to be me? There is this archetype of women that our culture wants us to fit into, and that’s part of the message of the film. And we’re going to try not to do too many spoilers, but it could happen. But what does it mean to express “me”, who I am? And I can speak from my experience of being heavily conditioned to be somebody, something that I was not, and how hard that is to walk through the world in a way that’s not authentic to my being. So I really want to speak to what my experience has been and the work that I do and we do with flower essences to help people become more who they are and less impacted by these imprints of who they’re supposed to be, what they’re supposed to look like, how they’re supposed to act. All of these messages we’ve received are all of our lives that just are contrary to our true nature. And so we’re going to use the terms women and feminine, but I don’t want it to be only about gender because that’s such a small and now we realize it’s so much more fluid than perhaps when we were growing up. And so we don’t want to exclude anyone because that’s not the point. It’s about expressing and being true to your nature and exploring and discovering who you really are. So we wanted to dive in and thanks, Ro. It’s going to be fun to talk about this.

Rochana Felde: [00:03:06] Absolutely. And oh my gosh, there’s already so much in there in that beginning intro that you just expressed to respond to. But I want to go back to just the sheer joy it was to be able to go to a movie with you. That was so much fun. And for those who might not know, we do live in the same county, but we’re about an hour and a half apart. We’re on opposite edges of the county, so we actually don’t see each other in person very often. And it’s always such a pleasure when we do. And it was just sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision to go see the Barbie movie. My sisters had brought me. So I had already seen it and Kathleen hadn’t. And I just wanted to share it. I was so pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it and how much fun it was and how funny it was, and yet with such deeply profound points that it addressed. So that’s the backstory of that and the conversation that has ensued between us, between other people that have seen it has been really interesting and I’m just so glad it’s out there and that we’re talking about it.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:04:21] Yeah, I just can’t agree more. Just to frame the person I am, I never really played with Barbies as a girl. I was not a girly girl at all. Never had any interest in that sort of thing. Certainly had no interest in baby dolls and that sort of thing, like never. Thank you very much. I was hanging out with my stuffed animals and my Breyer horses. That’s all the mothering I wanted to do. So I really missed on the whole Barbie thing, not part of my worldview. And when I heard the movie was coming out, I’m like, right, I’m never going to go see that. And yet when I learned a little bit more about the director and the theme, I thought, okay, I’ll give it a try. It sounds fun. And I loved it a lot more than I thought I would. And I really appreciate how much it speaks to the experience of being a woman, of becoming a woman, of developing who we are in all of its diversity and beauty and glory. And so I really appreciate how clearly and well done this film brings all these issues to the fore.

Rochana Felde: [00:05:39] Absolutely. And what you said about working with some of these issues in our practice, I as well, it seems like what it boils down to is the conditioning and with mostly the women in my practice feeling like they’re not enough, feeling like they’re just not doing it right. They’re not enough. They’re doing too much for others. They’re not taking care of themselves. They feel like they should be different. And it’s such this large part of the conditioning in our society. And there was a really great monologue in the movie that I think we’re going to read to you because it really encapsulates all of it. Kathleen, you want to go ahead and read that speech?

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:06:38] I’d be happy to. And this is Gloria’s speech. “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we always have to be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say that you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane. But if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood, but always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that, but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard. It’s too contradictory. And nobody gives you a medal or says thank you. And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

Rochana Felde: [00:08:30] Yeah, it just encapsulates so much. And I mean, unfortunately, it’s still here today, but especially in our formative growing up years and the generations of women before us if you can just imagine how little agency that women have had through our history. And it makes my heart hurt to think about it. It really does. My whole life, I guess, has been an exercise in trying to prove myself that I could do anything a man could do, but better. Like, I really had that as a mantra in my head as a young teenager and growing up into the corporate world and competing in the business world. And as a programmer in the ’90s and early 2000s in that tech world in Silicon Valley, I mean, it’s really something that I have just feel like I’ve kicked and clawed my way up to whatever success I did have. I had to work twice as hard as any man around me in order to get the crumbs, it felt like. And it’s so embedded in me, that fight. I never really considered myself a feminist, but I guess I really am. I mean, I just through and through, and this movie sort of reinvigorated that in me. And so I feel more than ever now how important it is to empower, especially younger women coming up in the world, and empower all women, of course, and all people who are being repressed in some way. But I do look at some of the younger women who don’t have the confidence that I would hope for them to have in the world. And I just would love for flower essences and just our consciousness to help change that. So that’s what we’re going to talk a little bit today is about some of the flower essences that can help with that.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:11:27] Yeah, as I was mentally preparing for today, I’ve been thinking about how many of the essences that I’ve made in my Flora of Asia line that’s really speak to this issue. And of course, realizing that making essences and learning with the plants and the plants who have drawn me have spoken so strongly to this issue because this is so much an issue that it has been part of my process and journey. So a lot of these essences I’ll be mentioning are from my essence line because they speak to this so very clearly. They speak to this whole topic so very clearly. And they come up over and over again in my practice because so many people are feeling this. So many people are realizing that there isn’t anything wrong with you. There isn’t. You don’t have to turn into somebody else in order to be okay, in order to be enough. It’s so painful to carry that wound that you were told from an early age whether it was overtly or just quietly that you needed to be somebody that wasn’t you in order to be enough, in order to be okay. And I know that painful feeling so well, and I know that there are essences that are so good at helping this problem and helping us to bloom who we are, who we are meant to be. The plants teach us about this. There is no Oak tree. There is no great, beautiful Pine tree that’s like, “Damn it, if I just tried a little harder, I could be a Sunflower.” They know. They know who they are, and they express themselves in their environment to the best of their ability. And so essences can help us to find our true form, our true nature, and express it as clearly and with the integrity that it would have had if it weren’t affected otherwise.

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Rochana Felde: [00:13:45] And that is the same message I get from basically every flower essence I make is that in that moment of attunement with the plant, you really get the sense of them and how comfortable they are in being themselves, that they are never trying to be something else. And it’s so funny because it feels like a revelation every time. But over and over again that is part of their vibe, their overall message and then whatever specific energies that they have from their species and their genus of plant, right? But every time it’s just I get that feeling, I get that vibe from the plant and I feel it myself. And if that is the one thing that I could say about flower essences that it helps you be yourself, it helps you to be okay in being yourself. And no matter which one you use, there’s an aspect to that. So yes, right, these are a modality that works with this challenge.

And that being said, I also love the gem elixirs, the gem essences, and the one especially that comes to mind is Gold. So the Alaskan Essences makes the Gold gem elixir because that is exactly for helping us to see our true selves and to see the value in our true selves that transcends the conditioning and the filters from society, things that we’ve been taught to think about ourselves and it gives us that fresh eye to look at ourselves that way and others. So anyone who’s dealing with low self-esteem and trying to embrace their own identity and have confidence in what they’re creating, Gold is a really great one and it’s so great in blends to mix with other actual flower essences. And I know that you have some great ones to recommend, Kathleen.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:16:11] Yeah, I’d love to. I completely agree that Gold is essential in this context. And I was thinking about the two deepest messages that we received that there’s something wrong with us. You’re not enough the way you are. You need to keep working and transforming yourself so that you can be acceptable, like bare acceptability, just bare passing grade essentially. And as a practitioner, I like to work with this on more than one level. If we were kind of thinking about chakra centers, the Roses are really important for the heart center, and then the Lilies are really important for the lower chakras, the second chakra, and I think both of them merge, second and third. But the Lady Banks Rose is so important for that message that you’re perfect just the way you are, and it fills your heart with this unconditional self-acceptance and self-appreciation. I mean, I kind of hate the whole focus on self-acceptance when we hear about that all the time. And it’s just like the base assumption there is, is that you have to accept it. It’s like, “Oh, it sucks to be me, but I have to accept it.” Like, no, no, it’s great to be you. It’s like, let’s uncover more of that awesomeness. And the Lady Banks Rose helps you to connect to that heart spirit of like, “Yeah, I am great. Yeah, I am beautiful. Yeah, I am enough.” And the Leichtlin’s Lily, one of the many Lily essences. But the Leichtlin’s Lily specifically speaks to this, “There’s something wrong with me physically with my appearance. I don’t look the way I’m supposed to. I need to lose some more weight or I need to change my face,” all of these things. And the Leichtlin’s Lily gives us this message, this clear and strong message that your physical expression is beautiful. It’s perfect. You don’t have to change in order to be better or somebody you’re supposed to be. Who you are is just right. So those two essences are so important for helping my clients and people I work with and encourage to help them bloom as their truly unique selves.

Rochana Felde: [00:18:55] I so agree, especially with the Lady Banks Rose, because I use that a lot. That’s one of your essences. It’s one of the Flora of Asia essences, and it’s probably the one I use the most, I think, out of your whole line and I get the most feedback from it from clients. It’s just, people really resonate with it and it’s such a lovely essence. It’s just got such a wonderful energy and that and Gold together is the power combo. It really is. It’s really nice. So yeah, I really do appreciate that you have that essence. It’s perfect.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:19:41] And I don’t think we could have this conversation. And I know that you’d love to maybe share some Monkey Flower stories, but the Pink Monkey Flower, I think, is a truly essential essence in the practice. And the Pink Monkeyflower is primarily for this idea of shame, of your heart needing to be armored because if somebody saw who you really were, they would judge you and shun you, that if anyone really knew the real me, it would be over. They wouldn’t be able to accept me. Is that your experience also?

Rochana Felde: [00:20:26] Yeah, the Monkey Flowers in general, they each have such an interesting aspect to this fear concept. And even the Bach Mimulus is useful in this situation. I didn’t really understand that until I made a Mimulus flower essence. And they grow natively in California. So just in a creek bed near me, I found the Mimulus guttatus I think. And it’s called Seep Monkey Flower. But it’s the same as the Mimulus Bach flower. And when I sat with that flower, I really felt that the fear of doing the wrong thing, of saying the wrong thing, of making the wrong decision, that really came through to me. And it’s not something that I usually thought more about the Bach flower Mimulus as, okay, I’m afraid of spiders or I’m afraid of this kind of outward event or external thing. That was a known fear and used it that way. But I got a lot more insight into it sitting and making it and it’s this internalized fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, making the wrong choice. And oh my gosh, what a big part of that is so embedded in us from the conditioning and all the issues that we just talked about, everything that was laid out in that speech, this fear of doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, it’s so big. And so, yes, the Pink Monkey Flower, I think, speaks to the shame part of that. But even the Bach Mimulus flower is so great at deconstructing what’s happening there with why that’s– and I think what it showed me is I have so much of that that I don’t even realize is happening under the surface. I don’t even know that my brain is thinking that because it’s so embedded and I love deconstructing that and getting that, kind of like moving it out so that you can see it and work with it.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:22:56] Intriguing. I would agree Mimulus is a pretty broad remedy. And I agree that its quality of being able to flow with the water if you’ve never experienced it growing in the wild, it grows right up, like you said, Seeps, right against the water. And it has this ability to flow courageously with water. It drops its little seeds in the water and they follow downstream anywhere they can. And they have this ability of flowing with the emotion and yeah, whenever we get stuck, we get tight and contracted and terrified and we just can’t move. We just can’t express and we can’t flow with our experience. And yeah, the Mimulus is really helpful there.

I’d like to keep going back to that speech and talking about this quality about being nice, this appeasement really. I mean, it is very much that women are conditioned to fawn. They are conditioned that they have to be nice all the time. They have to appease and placate and never speak up, never get out of line, she says. And Agrimony is such, for me, an important primary essence for almost everybody. It’s not just a narrow essence that Dr. Bach made. Agrimony gives all of us who have to put on a face for whatever circumstance, whatever our life told us that who we really were, how we really felt, wasn’t okay to be that way. We had to put on a smile and sing and dance for people. It’s a burden to carry that and it’s a burden that isn’t even recognized. And the Agrimony state, it’s the burden that’s not even recognized by the individual oftentimes. They’re so conditioned to be smiling all the time. You’d be prettier if you smiled more. Yeah, Agrimony, there we go.

Rochana Felde: [00:25:08] Yeah, that’s a big one. And that’s, gosh, so appropriate. It’s especially for women who exactly– how many times have you been asked to smile? I mean, it’s just crazy. I mean, I just never understood that. And I never understood when I was younger why people said it to me so often and all men and why I had such a angry reaction to it because I was conditioned to not question things like that. So yeah, I really appreciate Agrimony’s use in that.

Another one is the Centaury and that is another Bach essence. And I really see people who need that, but they’re usually not the ones coming to get a flower essence made because they don’t do anything for themselves and they’re always doing things for other people. I think there’s a classic description of that as being for the doormat types, which is sort of like, I don’t like that because why– if somebody, especially a woman, is being called a doormat because they’re allowing someone to control their life and they’re going with that flow of appeasing all the time, my question is, why is that and what is the conditioning that created that? And is that their fault? I mean, it’s not a personality defect. It’s a condition. It’s conditioning that is happening either through just complete programming or as a response to trauma. And it’s something that we would really do well to help those folks find their power and be able to start creating boundaries, to be able to look into themselves for answers and to be able to have some confidence in their own selves and their own identity and to start to strengthen that.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:27:50] I completely agree with this aspect of the doormat because it’s so damn insulting, right? The person who is in that Centaury state is walking a tightrope every day, getting it from both sides and having to lay down in the middle. And it’s really exhausting. And it’s really, they’re trying so hard to make everything okay for everybody else in hopes that then, okay, then I can be okay. And I think we all know that that just never works out very well. It’s one of the things that I love to do because like you said, not very many people come to us when that’s the state because they’re so busy taking care of everybody else. So I love to, certainly with my animal clients, I can sometimes talk people into the, you and your pet, let’s talk to both of you. Let’s do essences for both of you. And I certainly do that for you and your child too, for my kid clients because it’s so important to take care of the individual, and also the caregiver really needs that support to be able to do this in as non-exhausting a way, non-depleting a way as possible. And that certainly leads into the doing too much category because like you said, Ro, it’s like, in order to do well at work, in order to do well in the culture, you had to be so much better than everybody else around you. It’s like, you have to be exceptional in order to be just making the grade. And we can do that for a while, but boy, does that ever have a cost? 

Rochana Felde: [00:29:50] Yeah. I mean lots of chronic illness and burnout and nervous system depletion, and the list goes on for me and everyone else in that situation. It’s not sustainable. It’s absolutely not sustainable. So, hence I’m not in the industry anymore. But what I think about with what you just said is the need for boundaries and Hematite comes to mind for that, the co-dependent situations where we’re kind of swept away by other people’s needs and the Hematite helps to strengthen your energetic boundary so that you can start to feel more independent rather than being in this co-dependent situation. And that really is it’s true not just like personal relationships, but I mean, I saw this in the workplace quite a bit. And in the workplace, when everybody else’s emergency becomes your emergency, that’s that same situation, and so it’s just in a somewhat more professional environment than inside a personal relationship. So I love the Hematite not only for helping, it helps that with that boundary, that grounding. And if you look at the stone of Hematite, it’s just got this almost mirror surface. So energetically I feel like it helps to mirror those other emotions and energies coming at you before they get into your own system. So it kind of reflects them back and it’s really a powerful gem elixir to work with.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:32:01] And even just as an ally to carry a stone in your pocket, to have them nearby, it can be– exactly.

Rochana Felde: [00:32:10] Keep it on your desk. Held up a Hematite sphere for the camera.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:32:14] Yeah. Keep your allies nearby to assist you with that. I see the Roundleaf Vitex as being so important for this process of– and it’s always in retrospect that we realize that we did too much, that we were pushing too hard, that we were leading that adrenalized lifestyle because we could do it, we got away with it, but we ended up spending our resources down to zero and then well into the negative figures before your body kind of crashes on you. And the Roundleaf Vitex helps with that sort of fire-water relationship of doing too much and burning through all of your yin, burning through all of that essential nutrition, that essential qi that you must have in order for your body and your spirit to do well. That is one of the ones I, over and over and over and over again, that particular essence because it’s just so prevalent. Especially, we are in a technologically based culture. We spend so much time on the computer, we spend so much time dealing with tech, this is all fire in the theme of elements. All of these technologies are fire. And so we have an overabundance of fire in our daily lives. And it sort of exacerbates the lack of moisture, the lack of cooling water tendencies. So using essences that help to support that, having the gems around, taking essences, paying attention to that overheating quality is part of the restoration process.

Rochana Felde: [00:34:10] It’s so interesting. And you know what? It’s actually not one I don’t know if I’ve used it or used it much of the Flora of Asia. So I’d love to get a little more intimate with that one. And it’s interesting, it’s a same genus as the Chasteberry Vitex that’s taken herbally, correct? Yeah. And which is for balancing. And it’s used for women for balancing hormones, the hormonal system. It’s a reproductive tonic. Yeah, it sounds perfect. And I’d love to know more about that and try it.

I think of Green Jasper in this doing too much piece as well because it gets into the area of when you’re weighed down by work and responsibilities, that reminds us that we can feel uplifted with what we’re doing and to take some space for ourselves, to connect with nature and to connect back to our rhythms and helps that synchronization of our body’s rhythms. So I was just reminded of that when you were talking about the Roundleaf Vitex. And with that connection to the earth, for those who are familiar with the tarot, I think of the Empress card. And I picture that when I picture that gem entity, the picture of the Empress card, which is this woman sitting on the earth and she’s just embodying this motherly female regal royal energy and nature is all around her and she’s just connected and one with nature, but yet she has this strength and this empowerment. So I love the Green Jasper as part of that picture.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:36:32] So much Green Jasper, agree. And bridging off of that, that restoration of the normal, the natural rhythms, the natural rhythms of the feminine body, of the embodied earthy experience, the Yellow Jasmine is one that I use, in addition to the Green Jasper. A lot of times those two are very connected because they have a very similar kind of a dynamic. The Yellow Jasmine, oddly enough, Jasmine is in the Oleaceae, in the Olive family. And so we use all of the Bach Olive essence for that deep restoration of depletion, of the yin forces, where it ends up being, you’re just fried, you’re completely physically exhausted and fried. And that’s that deep restorative quality. And the Olive, the Oleaceae, that family speaks to other pieces of that. The Yellow Jasmine has the ability to help us restore rhythms, but particularly restoring the rhythms of when it’s time to work and when it’s time to rest. And culturally, we get all these messages of like, are you feeling a little tired? Get an energy drink, have some more coffee, just sort of goose your adrenals a little bit more every single day until they’re down to zero because of course, that’s fine and there’s no possible repercussions of that, right? Yellow Jasmine helps you to recognize, okay, today I have energy. Today I have the energy to do all these things and then maybe the next day you don’t. And you can’t keep spending energy you don’t have. And Yellow Jasmine helps to regulate those cycles. Just like the Green Jasper works on the gem essence level, it helps you to recognize, okay, when is it time to get help? When is it time to ask for somebody to do something for you? Or maybe it’s just not right now.

In my process of working with Chinese medicine, I’ve become aware of my cycles through my acupuncturist and herbalist. So awesome. Learning about these different daily cycles, the different cycle of the day. And there’s a certain time in the late afternoon where my energy is very low and if I try to push through, it’s not good, but then it comes back. So learning how to find these cycles, maybe you don’t have the energy right now and it would be a bad idea for you to try to do it anyways. Maybe your energy will be back up in two hours or an hour. And so learning how to listen to your body rather than hearing these messages up that you’re supposed to behave every single hour of every single day exactly the same. It’s not true. Learning to listen to your body is such an important part of this healing process.

Rochana Felde: [00:39:35] Yeah, I would add Queen Anne’s Lace to that conversation. It’s spoken a lot about as an essence for clarity and being able to see more clearly. And where I really connected with it was again, with the plant and making the essence and that plant has such a fierce, strongly rooted independence. And I always think about it, there’s a fun little rhyme for plant identification that, because it’s in the Apiaceae family which also has very toxic, deadly plants like Poison Hemlock and people can get that confused. So one of the differences is that it has hairs on its stems. And a fun little rhyme is the queen has hairy legs. So I love that visual. I just love thinking about this queen, this woman in power, and she doesn’t shave her legs. She doesn’t give an F to what anybody thinks. And it’s just a fun little visual image that I have. But also in making the essence and really observing really closely this plant and how it grows over time and its different signatures also taught me a lot about the cycle and how Queen Anne’s Lace helps you honor your own personal cycles. And if you see a lot of Queen Anne’s Lace flowers growing together, firstly, they’re all going to be in a little bit different stages of their opening, their blooming. They’re going to seed and then closing up. So they have these bracts under the flowers and they’re kind of like an umbrella-shaped flower. And as they get older and they start to go to seed these bracts close up into a bird cage to protect these seeds. And so you’ll see a patch of Queen Anne’s Lace in these different stages of either being open or closed and all the different permutations in between.

And so the real message from that and the energy from that is each one of us has these individual cycles and that we can learn when to open up and be completely out there and open and vulnerable and when we need to close up and protect our energy. And we have control over that. That’s our choice. And interestingly, those seeds are used in herbal and traditional herbal medicine in helping the woman choose when in her cycle– let’s put it, it’s not like an abortifacient and please don’t try to use it that way. And it works with helping make the womb either a good place for a seed to implant or not, I guess is how I would ineloquently put it. There’s a lot to it. You’d have to go to study about it and read about it. But the fact is that there’s an element of choice here, and I really appreciate that and I appreciate that plant mirroring that with its own signature that it’ about choice and it’s about your own cycle and whatever that if it’s an energy cycle where it’s working, it’s doing things for others, it’s doing things for yourself, it’s about putting the power back into you. And so I see it as a really lovely essence for women’s empowerment. It feels strong and it feels like a good place to start and to work with.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:44:18] I’m so touched by that. I’ve been watching the Queen Anne’s Lace all summer. And that’s such an interesting reflection. I’ve been using it more and more of late because it seems like– and I’ve been using it more for that quality of discernment of messaging. And I can see how there’s a through line there of, you know what’s right for you. You don’t have to listen to these messages for things that are right for other people or it helps you really connect to that sense of self, to that sense of who you are and what’s true for you, and when it’s a good time for you and when it’s not a good time for you. I appreciate you bringing that really important piece in because this is part of being a woman is being able to make those choices and to have the power to decide what and when. Thanks for bringing that in. It’s really important.

Rochana Felde: [00:45:31] Well, on that note, I would love to just bring in Rosemary because that’s another one that I feel is a really strong women’s empowerment herb and flower essence. And it even has traditional lore about it, that if there’s a Rosemary plant growing in by the front door, that means the woman rules the house. And that is so fun to think about because it’s a really old piece of lore. I don’t know how far back it goes, but you’ll find lots of variations about it. A woman wears the pants in the house, a woman rules the house, that kind of thing. And if you’ve met a Rosemary plant, you’ll know what– I mean, I’m sure most people have and have smelled Rosemary and used Rosemary in their food. And it’s a very strong plant. It’s got a very strong smell. And it’s traditionally used herbally for the memory and for mental concentration and alertness. And the flower essence works on that level as well, but there’s an added piece to it that I don’t think gets talked about a lot, and that is this empowerment thing. It’s like, it’s really hard to kill that plant. It’ll grow pretty much anywhere, at least here where I live in California, which it is a mediterranean plant. And California has that Mediterranean environment. So can’t speak for the whole world, but I’ve had different Rosemary plants growing over the years. And they’re really sturdy plants. I’ve transplanted them like a million times. And I put them into pots, into the garden, back into pots, moved house so many times. And they persist, she persists and yeah, I think that part of it is also about self-expression and creativity and smelling that scent of the Rosemary. I think you can feel that empowerment of like, yeah, I’m going to go do that in this creative, divine, feminine, energetic way. So I’d love to see the flower essence used more in these situations.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:48:13] Yeah, that’s right because I love how you brought the Rosemary in because we’ve been talking about lower chakras. We’ve been talking about the heart. We’ve been talking about the higher chakras, perhaps. And this is really the middle. The Rosemary, the Lamiaceae family, it’s the center of our being. And they get overlooked. These humble, ordinary, everyday kinds of plants get overlooked, especially as essences because we’re always looking for the thing that does the thing. And Rosemary supports the things that do the thing, let’s say. The Rosemary supports your warmth and embodiment, supports your groundedness, your rootedness, your centeredness. It is really an important essence to be using in formulas. And I appreciate how you’re bringing these other aspects of it. So I’m really in agreement that paying attention to these centered issues because it is very easy to focus on, the big shouting issues instead of like, how do you feel in your body? How is your digestion? Are you able to rest? Are you able to relax? Do you just feel crappy all the time? And Rosemary is one of those essences and one of those plants that supports our everyday life, our everyday interactions with the world around us in our bodies. So thanks for bringing that piece in. Would you like to talk about, there’s one formula that’s particularly useful for this whole encapsulated issue, the Grace formula from the Flower Essence Society. And I know that that’s a favorite of yours, perhaps.

Rochana Felde: [00:50:03] Well, yeah, I do love this formula. I got a bottle of it, and I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really have a super specific reason for using it. I saw it on the FES site one day and decided to try it. And what I love is– I mean, the smell is amazing. It’s got a little bit of a rose scent to it. And I guess what you could say is my intention for it was helping me with my own life transition of perimenopause and menopause. And that is the context for which I began using it. So what I had really felt with it was a real centering into myself, especially in the second chakra area and hard to articulate this quiet strength that I got from it, this feeling of being part of the divine Feminine. So it helped me connect to this energy that was a little bit bigger than myself and giving me support to go through what I was going through and it’s a formula that it has the White Trumpet Lily, the Mariposa Lily, the Splendid Mariposa Lily, there’s quite a bit, there’s Star Tulip, there’s Shasta Lily, Fawn Lily, Desert Lily, and then Star of Bethlehem. So it’s working on a lot of levels together and hard to kind of encapsulate into one sentence, but it really helps with healing those relationships, those soul relationships with the mother, the grandmother, your whole mother line. I would see it as working with your whole mother line. And that work, it feels like to me it came up for me as part of the menopause process. I mean, that’s been ongoing for a few years now that those issues and that work has come up more and more as I’ve been going through my own life change and also coming to terms with sexual trauma that happened in my 20s. So it’s encompassing a lot in that and at the same time, it’s not a hard or heavy thing to work with. It’s not like a big shadow work kind of, okay, we’re going to do this kind of formula. It’s more like an, ah, I am relaxing into myself, into my divine feminine, into my self as a woman. And I have the support and energy from all those women who came before me from the collective. And that feeling of support from it is really lovely.

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Kathleen Aspenns: [00:53:19] Wow, that sounds like an amazing formula. It’s not one I’ve ever worked with personally, and now I’m thinking, I guess I need to do that. Appreciate your insights from the trenches, as it were, figuring out, experiencing that for yourself. Wow. Well, thanks for spending this time together and thanks, listeners, for being with us. It’s been really beautiful to share with you some of our thoughts and experiences and some essences to bring into the field. Working on yourself, working through your things, it’s not selfish. It’s not self-centered or narcissistic to heal your wounds. We want to support everyone to heal these cultural and ancestral wounds because it changes the world. Every time you work on your things, on your stuff with essences or whatever way you do it, everything you do impacts the collective, it changes the world. It changes who you are in the world and who you are changes the world. So give yourself permission, give yourself agency to do this work because we need all of you. Everyone needs healing in order to heal this whole world. So we’ll see you next time. Thanks for being with us.

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.