Nature and Animal Essences
In the early 1980s, Steve Johnson, one of the originating partners of Alaskan Essences, created the “Solstice Storm” essence - the first of a series of essences that the Alaskan Flower Essence Project called Environmental Essences. Steve watched an approaching summer squall in Alaska and set a bowl out to capture the rain. He left the bowl in the sun for a period of time afterwards and found that the resulting water had a potency and a pattern he could identify. After that, Steve made several essences of places and natural events.
Dr. Bach was actually the first to explore environmental essences when he created Rock Water, a departure from the rest of his flower essence program. Bach followed his intuition and made an essence from a sun-infused spring that ran through a rock bed. The essence, he felt, could help very structured personalities soften and expand.
Since Bach's early efforts and Steve’s projects, a number of flower essence producers have made essences from sacred places, celestial events, rituals and elements - to name a few. One way of creating these kinds of essences involves positioning a bowl in the vicinity of an event or place that the essence-maker wants to capture. Another method requires the maker to form a connection to the place or event and transfer this connection into the water. In this case, the essence’s potency depends upon the maker’s ability to access and sustain a clear energetic channel.
In 2006, I made a series of essences imprinted with animal energy. My experience creating this collection (now the Uganda Animal Spirit Set) came as a complete surprise to me. It was completely unplanned, nothing that I had ever thought of doing.
During an essence-making trip to Uganda, I had a powerful near-death experience after which I had many close encounters with wild animals in a game park in the western part of the country. It seemed to me a little odd that this was happening, but I gave it no serious thought - nor did I pay attention to an internal voice that told me I was being “imprinted."
At the first full moon after my return home, I received instructions from the same inner voice I’d heard in Africa. It told me to place 8 jars of water outside in the moonlight and label them with the names of animals I had seen on my trip. A group of wild turkeys appeared in the garden and surrounded the jars after I set them up. They remained, making gobbling noises, for the entire three hours that the jars were in the moonlight.
I've used these essences in a number of classes with students. I’ve given participants the same animal essence (unknown to them) and asked everyone to take a few minutes and notice the effects. To my astonishment, there was overwhelming clarity about the character of each essence and which animal it related to. In one class, a woman “felt” what it was like to be an elephant, only she could not (until much later) get rid of the feeling of being an elephant.
How do we use the animal essences? Each essence provides a “felt” sense about an animal, about what the experience of being this animal might be like. So these essences offer a means of supporting a personality that could benefit from an energetic association with a particular animal. For instance, a person who feels like a victim might find support in the Lion essence.
These essences help us understand the energy that these animals embody and allow us to access to a deeper connection to the animal experience, beyond what our human consciousness or imagination will allow. The essences can also be used to enhance shamanic work, enabling us to receive information, advice and wisdom from the animal kingdom.
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David Dalton
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