Learning with and from the Plants
[Green Flowers, Green Hearts] A major breakthrough in my path of learning
Still a beginner in awakening to Plant Archetypes
Through an almost organic process, one thing leading to another: I continued to listen to my clients at my store, while learning about each one of the flowers, by pursuing that irresistible interest in this discovery. Still very much as a beginner.
When I heard the stories of individuals moving through patterns and emotions that were clear matches to the essence flowers, I would ask if they would be interested in trying flower essences. I offered them as a gift.
This is how I began helping people with flower essences, at first in very simple and informal ways. It all came from listening: I was hearing them talk about their lives, their challenges, and I knew there were essences that could enhance their journey.
Essences were helping people cope and feel better
People who felt helped by the flower essences began sending others to talk to me, who also needed the benefits offered by the flowers. At this same time, in Brazil, there was a growing public interest in flower essences, that kept bringing my way invitations to speak at different places and interviews for papers and magazines.
From seeing my first essence clients for private sessions, to having people on waitlist and scheduled for weeks ahead, this line of work began taking over my professional life. All I did was to respond to the demand, and it kept coming.
This work was so much needed then, as it is needed now!
What was missing in my work with the essences
I had so much demand from people wanting the flower essences, that my path was already being redefined. And I was gaining experience in this work.
However, at that stage, I was studying as much as I could, but I was mostly self taught: I had not taken any training, and in Brazil at that time there were no courses.
In June 1991, I was part of a group of 12 Brazilians who enrolled for the intensive Flower Essence Practitioner Training offered by Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz at their property, Terra Flora, located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, near historic Nevada City. I had just recently met them at the Second International Flower Essence Conference, and by then, I knew I wanted to really learn with them.
I felt strongly called to be there, and I brought with me the experience I had gathered from giving the essences to people who had been coming to me referred by others, day after day. Around that time, I was literally seeing 6 to 8 people every day, watching their processes and receiving their feedback.
I had memorized the qualities of each essence, as a result of daily use and from studying the few books I had been able to access. I already knew so much by heart about the essences.
But something major was still missing, that I was yet to be initiated in.
In the gardens and mountaintops, it all came to life
Guided by the presence of my mentors, Patricia Kaminski and Richard Katz, founders of the Flower Essence Society, a fundamental expansion in my understanding would unfold, one that would never stop evolving in the decades that followed.
I will add that a vivid element of JOY was an important part of this initiation!
In the gardens, Patricia engaged with us with her inspired country woman radiance. Raised on the prairies of the US Midwest, a vast agricultural region, as a child she lived in direct communion with the land and the plants. She recalls seeing tall luminosity emanating from the Goldenrod plants of the prairies, a perception that years later she was able to retrieve and cultivate to ever more refined levels.
Once she and Richard Katz started working together in 1979, she found herself entering fully into her soul path, working with plants very directly, with increasingly finer levels of awareness of both the visible and invisible levels of this deep work.
The practice of biodynamic agriculture and the preparation of compost is one of her passions, that she speaks about with great enthusiasm, highlighting the making of compost as one of the main ways of caring and healing the land and the Earth.
From books to learning with Living Plant Archetypes
Between daily classes at the gardens, classroom sessions and a few visits to the high mountains, Patricia and Richard led us through the science and study of Living Plant Archetypes, revealed through the many aspects of their manifestation.
Resonance with their embodied understanding was the initiation I needed.
From being around them while they showed us this way of learning with and from the plants, I established my own connection with these Living Archetypes.
In early evening lectures, Richard shared with us the living science of plant signatures, as well as studies on botanical families and common qualities shared by plants in the same family. This was one area of further research that I became passionate about, and have continued to expand on to this day.
Finally, it was all coming together: the knowledge I had gathered from books, the experience of applying the essences, the observation of the human Soul Journey in its many passages, all of this was now being integrated with an awareness of how to learn with and from the Living Archetypes of Plants!
After three decades, I can articulate this a bit better
The ways that I learned, that have been crucial to my path, helped me awaken the ability to allow plants to show me their ways of being, by observing their gestures, how they take form and grow, and how this unfolds over time on multiple levels.
Rather than having assumptions, we are called to watch and be touched by the full presence of a plant, in its environment. With a beginners’s mind, with no need to categorize or impose interpretations, we open our awareness to be taught by the plant, whenever possible in its living presence.
Truly honoring each plant as a teacher and mentor.
Over the years, this multilevel approach has been clarified by Richard Katz and Patricia Kaminski through their Twelve Windows of Plant Perception lessons.
This attitude of respect, that relates to the living being of a plant, allowing for the discovery of their Archetypal intelligence, is the one that taught me the most.
This continues to guide my work both as a practitioner as well as a teacher.
Commitments in service to Flower Essence Therapy
At that time, in June 1991, the interest on flower essences in Brazil had boomed: Brazilians were passionate about working with essences and this contemporary research needed to be shared. A bridge needed to be created, and I was the one who was there, in the right place at the right time.
Throughout those decisive days at Terra Flora, my professional life was redefined, both through the understanding and depth of what I had learned and experienced, as well as the responsibilities and commitments I was about to take on.
At the end of these days, agreements were established based on mutual trust, that gave birth to the company I co-created with a partner to bring these essences into Brazil. My main role in this partnership was to develop Educational Projects, which I curated, organized and translated over the following years.
Not only I was initiated as a Practitioner, in the ability to learn with and from the Living Archetypes of plants, but as things unfolded, I also became a distributor and organizer in Brazil, of courses by FES and several other flower essence developers.
So many of us are eternally grateful for your stories of wisdom and the deep healing available to us through the support of the flowers. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.