Flower Essences and Asthma

This is what the future doctor learns at university: To trigger an asthma attack, three components are required, namely 

• the individual allergic susceptibility, 
• the presence of an allergen and 
• the psyche. 

This means that we can influence two out of three points with the help of flower essences. If you consider the possibility of triggering an attack through hypnotic suggestion (‚you are walking across a dry meadow, each of your steps whirls up grass pollen‘ etc.), you come to the conclusion that not even the presence of an allergen in the air you breathe is actually necessary to make the body react.

Well-known ‚asthma remedies‘ among the flowers are Cherry Plum and Rock Rose. The first enables relaxation in spite of the greatest inner distress (asthma is known to be a spasm of the bronchi that makes it difficult to breathe out - i.e. letting go).

Cherry Plum

Rock Rose, on the other hand, has a particular effect on the panic states associated with asthma attacks. Both essences are suitable as a good first aid in an acute crisis - but they are already part of Bach’s emergency remedy, which must be the first thought when the emergency occurs. In order to prevent this from happening in the first place, the flower treatment must go deeper and start elsewhere. This is where the ‚other aspect‘ indicated above comes into play - a connection that has barely been taken into account by psychosomatically oriented doctors either.

The American scientist Herbert Weiner found that crying relieves asthma attacks if it happens for emotional reasons. Therefore, his colleague William Frey examined the tear fluid. He was able to determine that ‚emotional tears‘ have a chemically different composition than tears triggered by external stimuli, such as peeling an onion. Tears caused by grief, sadness or joy contain endorphins and other hormones that do not appear in tears from irritated eyes. This explains why ‚emotional crying‘ can relieve asthma attacks. Since the tear fluid cannot contain anything that is not also present in the blood, Frey concludes that tears remove excess, even toxic substances, from the body.

Rock Rose

For this reason people who cannot cry would suffer more from their asthma than others else who experience this kind of emotional catharsis. It would therefore be the task of flower treatment to resolve the emotional blockages in the patient.

The following combination is recommended for asthma patients:

• Agrimony - helps to allow feelings and to be able to show them
• Borage - enables mourning
• Mallow (no matter which one) - enables making contact to other people and has a liberating and deepening effect on the breath.
• Willow - takes into account the auto-aggressive aspect of the disease and the malfunction of the immune system.
• a trauma essence like Star of Bethlehem or Willowherb - can be added in order to adress the original trigger of the asthma readiness.

Like all formulas with flower essences, this one does not represent the ultimate conclusion, rather the individual personality of the patient must always be included in the considerations.

Variations with Gorse instead of Willow and / or Self-Heal instead of Mallow may take more account of the aspect of self-sabotage. And if you know the personality remedy of your patient, this should definitely not be missing in the mix.