All About Flower Essences: The Holiday Edit
What Flower Essences can support us as we navigate the stress and emotional triggers of travel, shopping, and time with family this Holiday Season?
The holiday season is, typically, anything but relaxing.
Sure, you’ve got time off of work and “plans” to decompress, but the energetic reality of the holidays paints a very different picture— and one that requires a little help from our friends, namely flower essences!
Whether it’s fraught, frazzled days in and out of airports, settling into your family home (and its weird f*cking vibes), dealing with politically aggressive uncles at Thanksgiving dinner, the financial stress of buying gifts for friends and family, or just the battle to hold onto whatever happy brain chemicals you still have in reserves from a sunny summer, the holiday season is an energetically, emotionally and physically taxing time of the year.
For us energetically sensitive folks, the cumulative effects of air travel and sleeping outside of our respective spiritual Fort Knoxes is a bit like uprooting a tree— it makes us very vulnerable to illness and burnout.
But here’s the good news: Flower Essences can really, really help us navigate the holiday season without a cataclysmic meltdown:
Sweet Dreams, made of Valerian
Like most other working psychics and mediums I know, I’ve had a lifelong challenge with consistent sleep cycles.
Now, part of this is just a vague awareness of memories of hearing disembodied voices in the dark, but it’s also just a byproduct of a general sensitivity to the energies of the day— or the location in which we’re trying to sleep. One year, I went to Germany for the holidays and, in spite of having a prescription for Ambien, I couldn’t sleep at all for three straight days.
Yah. It was pretty hellish.
So, if you’re like me and struggle to sync up to the new circadian rhythms of different time zones or acclimate to a strange bedroom in a family house or hotel, I recommend our Sweet Dreams TOTEM Flower Essence, which is made of Valerian.
Valerian Flower Essence energetically supports relaxation and deep, dream-filled sleep. Valerian is often used as an herbal remedy for insomnia, and Valerian Flower Essence works much the same way in the energy body: encouraging you to relax and release the stress of the day, facilitating an easy sleep with enjoyable dreams. Valerian is a great flower essence for practitioners that get drained and/or overstimulated from doing psychic, emotional or other therapeutic work for clients, and is a great addition to any energetic self-care routine.
Positive Attributes: Able to enter sleep easily; pleasant dreams; capacity to cultivate tranquility at night regardless of day’s activities; easily release stress.
Patterns of Imbalance: Insomnia; overstimulated; propensity to have negative thoughts or anxiety when attempting to sleep.
Sometimes, when I need a double-boost of this plant medicine, I will put several drops of Sweet Dreams into a cup of Traditional Medicinals Nighty Night Tea— pumping up the volume on the sleep-inducing benefits of this magical herb.
Fair warning re: Nighty Night Tea: it smells like dirty, stinky feet. Because, honestly, that’s what Valerian smells like. I just kind of power through the smell;)
Self-Defense, made of Red Yarrow
Honestly, Red Yarrow Flower Essence is the standard bearer for all flower essences, providing critical energetic protection when surrounded by holiday madness— and angry, anxious travelers!
What’s more: do you have any emotional or energy vampires in the extended family? Yah, I thought so. Consider your bottle of our Self-Defense TOTEM Flower Essence the plant medicine equivalent of a bundle of garlic, a crucifix, and a bottle of holy water as you navigate the latent threat of someone energetically draining you at the dinner table!
Energetic and emotional vampires are a very real phenomenon, and Red Yarrow Flower Essence can keep them at bay! This Flower Essence is designed to "plug up" any holes or vulnerabilities in the energy body, spiritually warding off narcissistic abusers and draining energy vampires. Self-Defense is an ideal Flower Essence for any spiritual or psychic practitioner, energy worker, or anyone that comes into intense energetic or physical contact with the general public (such as hairdressers, massage therapists, and counselors). Got a toxic workplace? Dreading family dinner? Having trouble enforcing personal boundaries? Red Yarrow Flower Essence may be for you!
Positive Attributes: Healthy, robust boundaries; energetic separation from others; high energetic vitality; sovereignty over personal energy, emotions and thoughts.
Patterns of Imbalance: Energy easily drained; food for energy vampires; poor personal boundaries; uncontrollable empathic abilities; loss of identity.
You can also purchase Yarrow flower herbal tea online and on Etsy if you want to supercharge this routine during your holiday travels and events!
Reclaim Yourself, made of Desert Rose
Desert Rose Flower Essence is the perfect companion for Red Yarrow Flower Essence.
While our Self-Defense TOTEM Flower Essence plugs up holes in your energy body, our Reclaim Yourself TOTEM Flower Essence acts like a magnet to call back the bits of yourself lost in the hustle and bustle of life’s everyday “traumas”.
Long story short? The more of yourself that you integrate back into your energy body, the less vulnerable you are to emotional and energetic fuckery;)
Do you feel scattered? Burned out? Like you have too many browser windows open? Or perhaps like you’re carrying energetic burdens for others? Then it’s high time to get some Desert Rose Flower Essence, the ultimate serum for those seeking to reclaim their own energy and take back their spiritual real estate. Energetic squatters, spiritual parasites, and emotional vampires are REAL, so we need a REAL solution: Desert Rose Flower Essence! This flower essence facilitates soul part recollections, energetic cord clearings, and the “calling back” of your energy so you can be the one using it!
Positive Attributes: Consistent energetic boundaries; clear understanding of appropriate dynamics with others; feeling whole and healed; high energy levels.
Patterns of Imbalance: Tendency to give too much to others that don’t reciprocate; leaky energy body that drains energy levels; poor boundaries with others.
Reclaim Yourself TOTEM Flower Essence is optimally aligned with the upcoming holiday season, offering tremendous support just when and where (and how) you need it!
Peace, made of Olive Tree
Peace is one of our newest TOTEM Flower Essences, offering users the calming, soothing, restorative energy of the Olive Tree.
The phrase, “extending an olive branch,” has long been used as a metaphor for seeking out peace and deescalating tensions, and our Peace TOTEM Flower Essence imprints this intention onto the energy body.
Do you feel a bit frazzled? Overwhelmed by what seems like incessantly bad and stressful news? Are you sensitive to the animosity and aggravation that seems to permeate society? Olive Tree Flower Essence might just be for you, infusing your energy body with a renewed sense of optimism and tranquility, as well as a deep and palpable peace. Take a break from the negativity and slide back into a positive outlook with Olive Tree Flower Essence.
Positive Attributes: A hopeful, optimistic outlook on life and the world as a whole; deep sense of peace and tranquility, regardless of the day’s events.
Patterns of Imbalance: Stressed, pessimistic and cynical outlook; inability to cultivate sense of inner peace during day; generalized anxiety about world events.
I personally love taking Olive Flower Essence after long travel days to restore my energy levels back to their previous highs. It’s a soothing, calming herbal ally that never lets me down, and I highly recommend it for your “return” home to recalibrate your system before heading back to work in the New Year.
A season of self-care
The holidays are a weird time in our modern society.
In theory, we should be mirroring Mother Earth’s withdrawal from activity, embracing the longer nights and our own kind of seasonal hibernation ahead of the activity of spring. In practice, many of us slingshot ourselves all over the country (if not world) to engage in hyper-social activities.
And, while we all can’t be antisocial hermits in November and December, we can find ways to ensure we’re getting adequate self-care. Flower Essences are generally small, travel-sized magical potions that we can simply infuse into our day’s drinking water or herbal tea, getting the support we need without modifying all of our holiday plans.
Check out our Etsy Shop HERE if you’re interested in these or other TOTEM Flower Essences, or our TOTEM Flower Essence Deck.
The TOTEM Flower Essence Deck is also available on Amazon HERE, and makes an awesome holiday gift to yourself OR someone in your life that could use an infusion of beauty, herbal insight, or a starting point for self-care.
Please note: our Etsy Shop will close in mid-December so that we can chill out before hitting the ground running in the first week of the New Year.
And stay tuned for upcoming Flower Essence posts featuring the best essence for each sign of the Chinese Zodiac in the upcoming Year of the Wood Snake!
-Rachel