Article by Flor Taboda,
Bath, England
This response was submitted by Flor Taboda in Bath, England, in completing Level I Certification. Here, she explains the subtler meaning of affirmations and what can be accomplished when using them in conjunction with flower essences.
Affirmations are a way to help “overwrite” subconscious negative messages and old mental patterns. Affirmations can therefore be very helpful to change negative beliefs and assumptions about ourselves. By repeating an affirmation out loud and consciously, we are impersonating the message, boycotting the “inner critic,” and creating direction and focus. When saying an affirmation at the same time as we take an essence, we are reinforcing the properties of the essence and making the whole process more conscious and powerful.
My Strawberry essence person (Gill, see question 2) said the affirmation while taking Strawberry Essence. Then I gave her Grape (to deal with feelings of isolation) and asked her to take it for a week without doing the affirmation. Her response to both essences was very different but I’m not sure to what extent this is only due to doing/not doing the affirmation or the fact that she was more in need of Strawberry that she was of Grape. In other words, it is difficult to know how different her response would have been had she not done the Strawberry affirmation or had she done the Grape one. What is certain is that her response to the 2 essences was very different.
Here is what she said about Grape:
“Just to let you know that I’m not influencing myself, no affirmations, no looking it up……. Actually I wondered whether there was essence in the bottle (!) but last night (day 4) felt my first connection with it – a warmth and fullness which tickles, around my heart, which reaches my smile!”