Exploring flower essences for common travel challenges
Did you experience any challenges the last time you took a trip? What happens when you are out of your normal daily routine? When you travel, how do you respond when faced with situations that test your abilities?
There are many reason why we travel. Some of us travel regularly for work, others for vacation, sometimes we travel to visit friends or family members, and some of us have significant relationships with others who do not live nearby. Whether you travel frequently or only occasionally, travel can present challenges and opportunities to adapt to new and unexpected situations.
When you travel, you step outside of your normal daily routine or schedule and set off on an adventure that includes many unknown factors. You are given an opportunity to notice your inner response to these unexpected situations and you can gain important personal insights.
Travel also gives you an opportunity to view your life from outside of it, as an observer. You can often be inspired in new ways. You have the opportunity to be influenced or inspired by things that don’t normally happen to you.
Some people travel well while others may have a particularly difficult time. However, there are certain challenges that anyone can face on a trip. Following are a few common situations and flower essences that can create an optimal experience.
Airline Travel
When you travel on an airplane, you have to contend with being in a small space with a relatively large number of people, often for hours on end. Breathing dry, recycled air and being unable to freely move about can be physically challenging. Moving through time zones can have a disharmonious effect on your body cycles and rhythms.
I discovered a combination of three flower essences that have an amazing effect, helping you stay in harmony with the challenges of travel, whether in an airplane, a automobile, bus, boat, or train. This combination includes Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus, Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Remembering Starry Origins Formula. I like to use seven drop of each of these essences in a little travel atomizer with plain water. I found that if you mist yourself about once every hour, you can arrive at your destination and feel in sync with your new surroundings. It is especially helpful on long international flights through multiple time zones. This travel combination is excellent to use on any trip, even driving long distances in a car.
Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus is a very unique plant.
This cactus has an unusual adaptation strategy. It is one of the few that can tolerate cold temperatures. Most cacti are not able to withstand freezing temperatures because they hold water in their fleshy bodies. When a cactus freezes, the frozen water expands and bursts its cells.
In the autumn, this cactus goes through a process of losing water. This is essential for its survival into winter because it grows at higher altitudes, 4,000 to 5,000 feet (1,240 to 1,550 m) elevation, where danger of frost and snow exist. Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus appears to wilt in the autumn and winter, but it plumps out again when warm weather returns in the spring.
As a flower essence, the flowers of this cactus offer us regeneration. It helps you feel revitalized at the core of your being, an important gift for those who travel. It can help you arrive at your destination feeling ready to experience whatever you find there. It is excellent for jet lag and recovery from the exhaustion of any type of travel.
Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula is a flower essence combination that keeps you centered and in the present moment. When you change times zones and climates, it is essential for your body to be present with where you are now. This essence does exactly that.
Remembering Starry Origins Formula was a bit of a puzzle for me when it was first indicated to be included in this combination. It soon became very evident why it is so important an element. This flower essence formula helps you remember your essential self, the you that is unchangeable, that is always present. This essence can help you maintain a sense of connection to who you really are, even when the reference point of your normal routine is no longer present. Your reference point becomes your inner self and your consciousness of it is ever present. For this reason, I also suspect that Remembering Starry Origins Formula is an important assist with jet lag and time zone changes. As you identify with your essential self, your physical body seems able to adapt more easily to things.
Misting yourself every hour or so with this combination of three essences can combat dryness in a airplane, provide some hydration for your skin and lungs, and leave you feeling refreshed and in the moment. It also helps you arrive at your destination feeling refreshed and ready to go.
On a recent international trip of twenty-eight hours length, I discreetly sprayed myself once every hour with a combination of these three travel essences. There was a young, twenty-something man sitting in the same row, one empty seat between us. Every time I sprayed myself, the air movement carried the spray lightly towards him. He didn’t seem to notice what I was doing as he was playing video games or asleep most of the time, but in the morning just before landing he turned to me and said, “I make this trip three times every year to visit family, but this time, it seems to have passed more quickly and I feel really great. I’m not tired at all. I wonder why?” I quietly smiled and silently thanked nature for the gift.
For those who have a fear of flying (or traveling in a boat or other conveyance), Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula is the flower essence to use. It has an amazingly calming effect, bringing you into the present moment and calming fears, anxieties, and worries.
It can be frustrating when your flight is delayed and you have to spend your time differently than you expected. Dealing with missed flights, delayed connections, lost luggage, cancelled flights, difficult weather, and any other number of frustrations is helped with the Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula. By bringing you into the present moment, it fosters patience and the ability to find ways to resolve the frustration.
If you find yourself annoyed by other people on an airplane, Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula can be your friend. This essence helps you assess your needs and then communicate them in a way that give others the information that they need in order to honor you and your needs. If you are unfortunate enough to have someone seated by you who is invasive of your space, try using this essence.
Concerns about Illness
It is normal to feel concern when you are traveling and see someone near you who obviously has symptoms of being ill. If you are exposed to others who are obviously ill and circumstances keep you in their presence, you can use Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula to fortify and protect yourself.
If you are traveling to receive any type of medical procedure, Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus is excellent to use for recovery. It’s regenerating effect supports garnering your strength and building yourself back up.
Adaptation and Culture Shock
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges when you travel is your ability to adapt to new situations, people, and cultures. It can be disorienting to find yourself in a new place, way of life, or around people who have a different set of attitudes. Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Prickly Pear Cactus used together is the solution. Crisis Formula brings you into the present moment, giving you a sense of grounding. Prickly Pear Cactus is the essence for culture shock, the feeling of disorientation when you are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture or way of life. It helps you surrender to the flow of how things work in your new situation or place.
Prickly Pear Cactus flower essence is also for those who tend to overly adapt to a new place and lose a sense of themselves. The essence can support you in finding the balance point between surrendering to what is and giving over your sense of self.
Sleep Challenges
Many of us find that our sleep is challenged when we travel. There are many different reasons why this happens. If you have difficulty because you are used to your own room and the newness of a place challenges your ability to fall asleep, you can use Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Prickly Pear Cactus together. The qualities of adaptability of Prickly Pear Cactus unite with Crisis Formula’s centering and grounding, providing the calmness required for sleep.
Often when we travel, we are overstimulated by the new adventures that we face. When we have a lot of new input, it taxes the nervous system, which is difficult to calm down. Fairy Duster used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula can soothe nervous system so it can become inactive for sleep. The combination of these two flower essences can also help you if you have trouble shutting down your mind, when it is operating in over-drive and keeping you from surrendering to sleep.
One deterrent to sleep can be exhaustion. There are times when you become so tired that once you do finally get to bed, you cannot sleep. Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus can help you let go into sleep. It can help you unwind when you have pushed yourself too far, taken on too much, tried to be heroic but just over-extended yourself. Many folks have also reported that it helps them fall back to sleep if they wake in the night.
For some people, travel is tremendously challenging because they become hyper-vigilant in a new bedroom. Those who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder many be triggered into this intense state and find it impossible to feel safe and secure. Many people have reported that the combination of Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula, Remembering Starry Origins, and Fairy Duster used together, has helped them feel comfortable enough to sleep in new places.
Clearing Spaces and Unwanted Energy
A great concern for sensitive individuals who travel is clearing room of previous occupants’ energy. How many times have you found yourself in a hotel room or a rented car where you were conscious of others’ energy? Since the mid-1980’s, we have used the Clearing & Releasing Formula by spraying spaces to clear them. It makes a refreshing difference in a space. This flower essence combination is one of our most popular flower essences. Just add seven drops of the composite formula to an atomizer with plain water and mist the room.
You can mist any room in which you find yourself. I like to lightly mist the bed before sleeping in a new place. If you are in a situation in which you do not like the energy but cannot mist the room for any reason, mist yourself instead.
You can use the Clearing & Releasing Formula to clear yourself of energies taken on from others. If you have this tendency, use it together with Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula, which will help you overcome the pattern of taking things on from others in the first place.
Knowing and Honoring Your Needs
It can be challenging to know your needs when you are out of your daily routine. You can attempt to anticipate them, but when you are traveling, there are so many unknown factors as to make it impossible to know all of them. If you have difficulty knowing your needs in new situations, use Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula. This essence can help you assess your needs and find the best way to communicate them to others.
If you are traveling to take care of a family member, you may be invited to do more than you know you can handle, but you might be tempted to do it anyway, either from a sense of heroism or because you know it is expected of you. If you are faced with this situation, use Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula together with Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus. The former essence helps you know your limits. The latter essence is excellent at helping you be your own best friend and take on only that which you truly can handle.
Falling Into Old Patterns
Who hasn’t gone to visit family or other people from the past and found themselves falling into old behavioral patterns? Even if you tell yourself before going that, “This time it will be different!”, you often fall into the old behaviors anyway.
You can use Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula. Crisis Formula can bring you into the present moment where you are less likely to act out behaviors from the past. Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula can help you be more conscious of your needs and observe how others may not be honoring them. Using these two essences together may help you observe the old patterns, understand the dynamics behind them, and give you the chance to respond differently as a result.
Returning Home
One problem with travel is that you may enjoy yourself so much that you don’t want to return home. You might love the feeling of being freed from your daily life and want to keep traveling. Or, you might have truly fallen in love with a new place and the lifestyle there and not want to return home. Remembering Starry Origins used together with Prickly Pear Cactus can help you adapt back to the reality of your living situation at home.
Travel can help you view you daily life from outside of it. It may give you inspiration to make some changes in your daily routine. Using these two flower essences together can help you put into place any changes that a trip has inspired in you.
Seven Wonderful Gifts
These seven flower essences that I have covered in this travel article can be combined in so many ways to provide amazing support for any type of trip, whether it be short or long in duration. For convenience, we have a seven-essence Travel Kit that includes a handy travel-size atomizer. How fortunate we are to be able to carry nature’s healing grace wherever we roam!
How to Use Flower Essences When Traveling
I have long been an advocate of using flower essences in an atomizer and misting them around you or in a room. I particularly like doing this when traveling because the mist provides an uplifting refreshment in a closed space. In the dry, recycled air of an airplane, for example, the water rehydrates your skin and lungs. I also like how powerful an effect spraying a room has on changing the energy.
Personally, I prefer to use plain water without any type of scent. I think that if you are going to use an atomizer, you should be aware that if you use a scent, such as an aromatherapy oil, it can be intrusive to others around you. Using the flower essences for yourself in an atomizer with pure water removes the danger of provoking adverse reactions in others.
The general travel combination, useful for all stages of any trip, is combining Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus, Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula, and Remembering Starry Origins, seven drops of each, in an atomizer filled with plain water, and misting yourself as often as you like. You can also take them internally as you wish, four drops of each at a time, either directly or by adding them to a little water.
You can use any of the other flower essences I mentioned, taken internally, four drops at a time, as often as you like. I recommend using seven drops of any of the essences in an atomizer of plain water if you want to mist them. You can use any of the combinations as I have presented them, or combine them as you are inspired.
List of the Flower Essences Mentioned in this Article
- Clearing & Releasing Formula
- for clearing any space, such as a hotel room; clearing any disharmonious energies you have taken on from others or your surroundings; “taking on” energies from people (used together with Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula)
- Crisis-Desert Emergency Formula
- impatience; faced with a physical, emotional, or spiritual crisis; for any situation in which you need to remain calm and centered; over-excitement that keeps you from being able to sleep (used together with Fairy Duster); inability to sleep because you nervous system is overstimulated and your mind is on over-drive (used together with Fairy Duster); inability to sleep because of hyper-vigilance due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (used together with Fairy Duster); helping your body rhythms keep up with time zone changes (used together with Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus and Remembering Starry Origins); losing a sense of your essential self while faced with new and different cultures and people (used together with Remembering Starry Origins Formula); falling into old behavioral patterns especially when visiting family or people from your past (used together with Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula)
- Fairy Duster
- overstimulation; over-excitement that keeps you from being able to sleep (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula); excessive input that leaves your nervous system on hyper-alert; inability to sleep because you nervous system is overstimulated and your mind is on over-drive (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula); inability to sleep because of hyper-vigilance due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula)
- Making & Honoring Boundaries Formula
- challenges making boundaries in any type of situation; difficulty knowing your needs and making sure they are met; annoyance when others don’t give you private space; in close contact with someone who is ill; “taking on” energy from others (used together with Clearing & Releasing Formula); taking on more than you can handle (used together with Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus); falling into old behavioral patterns especially when visiting family or people from your past (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula)
- Prickly Pear Cactus
- adaptability; culture shock; difficulty adapting to a different environment or different ways of doing things; being too adapted to new environments; not wanting to return home (used together with Remembering Starry Origins Formula); difficulty adapting to home (used together with Remembering Starry Origins Formula)
- Remembering Starry Origins Formula
- remembering your essential Self; disharmonies resulting from traveling through different time zones (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus); losing a sense of your essential self while faced with new and different cultures and people (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus); uncomfortable sleeping in a new room (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Fairy Duster); not wanting to return home (used together with Prickly Pear Cactus); difficulty adapting to returning home (used together with Prickly Pear Cactus)
- Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus
- regeneration; helping your body rhythms keep up with time zone changes (used together with Crisis – Desert Emergency Formula and Remembering Starry Origins); exhaustion; difficulty sleeping; for being your own best friend; recovery from medical procedures