Beauty

Anxious or feeling out of sorts? A Bach Flower Remedy might be the answer

Lift the mood with a Bach Flower Remedy

The treatment

A Bach Flower Remedy/ Aromatherapy appointment, £35 for 45 minutes, with Rose Morley at Neal’s Yard Therapies, Edinburgh.

Why go?

Bach Flower Remedies are used to “harmonise the emotions to create a state of health and happiness”. They were designed in the Thirties by Dr Edward Bach (pronounced “batch”), inspired by homoeopathy and using extracts from 38 flowers.

Our spy says

When I arrive at Neal’s Yard, I’m presented with a little cup of herbal tea before Rose meets me and takes me through to a jasmine scented treatment room.

She tells me all about being a Bach practitioner. Apparently, she has treated animals (and houseplants, since these essences can be used on anything living). Grumpy cats have been cheered up and difficult dogs chilled out.

She asks me a few questions about what I want to treat, and I decide to get something for travel related anxiety, since I usually get jittery, sleepless and nauseous before any trip away from home.

In the end, she chooses three flower extracts: mimulus (as it says in the booklet she gives me, “for fright of specific, known things: animals, heights, paint etc, nervous, shy people”), aspen (vague, unknown, haunting apprehension and premonitions) and white chestnut (unresolved, circling thoughts).

She opens her folder of remedies, and selects the glass containers, each of which contains the soul of a flower preserved in brandy. Two drops of each goes into a little brown apothecary bottle, with water. I’m told to take four drops four times a day, on the run up to my next trip and during. I can add it to liquid or take it neat. (It’s almost completely flavourless).

Also, for nausea, she makes me up an oil to rub on my stomach, or neck and shoulders. I choose from her selection of three of Neal’s Yard’s own aromatherapy oils – peppermint, ginger or grapefruit. Since I’m an indecisive sort, I can’t choose between the latter two, so we go for a ging-fruit cocktail, which smells slightly odd but pleasant.

The results

I can’t help it, I’m a cynic when it comes to these things, but I do use my drops, and don’t feel particularly nervous on my next trip. Maybe it was the friendly flowers that helped. n Neal’s Yard Therapies (102 Hanover Street, Edinburgh, 0131-223 3223, www.nealsyardremedies.com)