A Tale of Two Flower Essence Therapists

Things usually turn out differently........



The first contact that I had with Lisa Bruens was when I telephoned the contact number on the flyer for Mary Garbely's workshop. It was June, 1992, and I had just arrived in Wellington, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to begin a new life in the big city.


Lisa and I had several interests in common: the flower essences, Reiki, the Organic Food Co-op. We gradually became friends, and then we drifted apart.
In January 1994, we met again at the joint birthday party of my flatmate, Petra, and me (Petra and I share the same birth-date, 22 January).



I can clearly recall meeting Lisa in the kitchen of the big house on the Horokiwi hill, and how we just stood there staring at each other. We had both changed so much! I had shaved off my beard (the beard that I had had for over twenty years), and she had had her hair cut short. However, it was much more than the obvious changes in our physical appearance: both of us had begun our
journey of discovering our true self, and we each
sensed this energy shift in the other.





Over the following year or so, Lisa and I followed parallel paths on our journey. We were both flower essence practitioners, using essences from a number of sources including Mary's "New Perception of New Zealand Essences", the "Perelandra" essences, and the Western Australian "Living Essences". We also trained in the "Zenith" energy healing system, and we would sometimes get together at Lisa's place to exchange therapy sessions.


In our sessions we would follow our intuition as to what was needed to be done. I recall one occasion where we had dinner at Lisa's place, and then settled down to do some therapy for each other. We discovered that Lisa needed to do a "peeling". (A "peeling" is an essence treatment technique where layers of energy are dissolved by taking as many doses of essences as are needed, one layer at a time. For details of how to do a "peeling" see the chapter on "Perelandra" in this Manual.)


We began Lisa's "peeling" at 7pm, and it was still going at 11pm! She had taken so many drops of essences (a single drop straight from the stock bottle for each essence needed is the usual technique used), that she became light-headed from the effects of all the brandy that she had swallowed!


This period of co-operation continued from 1994 into 1995, until Lisa left Wellington to move to Waiheke Island. She had begun a new relationship with a man who was from Waiheke, and they decided to move there together. Before they left Wellington they had an engagement party, and this evening was one of the most enjoyable parties that I have ever attended.





Waiheke Island is an island in the outer part of Auckland harbour, about 30 minutes by ferry from downtown Auckland, which is New Zealand's largest city, of about one million people. Auckland is 400 miles north of Wellington, our capital city, where I was living at the time that all this took place.


After her move to Waiheke Island, I lost touch with Lisa for a while. I was very busy: working full-time in the computer industry as well as being a part-time essence practitioner, and spending a lot of time on my personal healing.



During 1996, starting at Easter, I began making flower essences, the beginnings of what was to eventually become the New Millennium of New Zealand Essences. Late in 1996, it may have been for Christmas, I sent Lisa some bottles of essences that I had made. At this stage, I was calling my essences the "Wellington Set", and I can recall including a message "Have fun with the Wellington Set!" During 1997, we had a few telephone conversations, and I sent her a few more bottles of my essences, although our contact was sporadic.





One day in early 1998, I telephoned Lisa, and discovered that she had split up with her partner. I had also recently finished a relationship, and we were both working hard on resolving all of our unresolved issues from our experiences of the relationships.


We began helping each other, over the telephone, with our personal healing work. We had both made personal commitments to ourselves to use this opportunity to resolve all of our relationship type issues, and as this is a very big commitment, we both needed all the help that we could get! Our telephone conversations evolved into therapy sessions (somewhat like co-counseling) where we would help each other (pendulums in hand). Thank God that at this time our New Zealand telephone companies had entered into fierce competition for business, and the cost of long-distance calls had dropped dramatically!


During one of these telephone sessions, around mid 1998, Lisa mentioned that she had begun using essences for past-life therapy. And, she helped me with two issues of mine that had past-life karmic energy as their underlying cause. This was the opening of the flood-gates for both of us: over the next year we used essence mixes to assist us in the resolving of many past-life issues (for an explanation of how this works, see the article on past-life issues).



Right through 1998, and into 1999, Lisa and I both worked very hard on our own personal healing. We also both worked with clients, using the full range of techniques that we were mastering. At this time, I was living in a rented house in Buchanan Street, Wadestown, a suburb of Wellington, and I had a garden there, the first garden I had had since I left Nelson in 1992. In this garden I was making a number of essences,
which were all to become part of the New Millennium Essences.





From Easter 1996, when I made my first flower essence, until August, 1998, I had made a total of fifty-five flower essences. Six of these were duplicates of Mary Garbely's "New Perception of New Zealand" essences, and the other forty-nine were original to me.




From September, 1998, the pace of my essence making increased. From September during the four months to the end of 1998, I made thirty-seven essences (five of which were "New Perception" duplicates, the others original to me). And during January, 1999, in four weeks, I made forty-two essences!




As the pace of my essence-making activity increased, we discovered that Lisa had a real talent for obtaining the definitions for the essences. She could even do this over the telephone. I would just tell her the name of the flower (or I would describe the flower if I did not know the name), and the words of the definition would come into Lisa's mind.


Around this time, it became the usual practice for me to telephone Lisa with a new batch of essences to define. For example, on 13 December, 1998, I made two essences, Veilchenblau Rose and White Lychnis.
The following day, I telephoned Lisa, and she channeled the definitions......





Veichenblau Rose is “To reveal that which is hidden behind the mask. Bringing the true colours (both light and shadow sides) out into the light.
“I open up to Wholeness and welcome Truth”.





And the White Lychnis is.....
“To give the ability to stand in innocence.....
“In my defencelessness, my safety lies”
(A Course in Miracles).
“The meek shall inherit the earth.”
For when one is awakening and healing one's fear.”





By the beginning of February, we decided that it was time for me to make my first visit to Waiheke Island. I packed up my car with all my bottles of mother tincture and stock, and headed north. On the way, I made essences at two locations, the Stone Pine Creek Lavender Farm at Te Horo, and near Rathehi, up the Whanganui River.



I arrived on Waiheke Island about 5pm on Tuesday 2nd February, and I left the island at 2.30pm a week later, Tuesday 9th. While on Waiheke, I made six new essences, but, more importantly, Lisa and I spend the whole week, every day, channeling essence definitions and organizing the essences into categories.



I went to Waiheke with a miscellaneous collection of flower essences, many of which we had no definitions for, and I left a week later with the “New Millennium Essences of New Zealand”.





During that amazing week on Waiheke, Lisa and I worked like Trojans, we channeled the essence definitions for hours on end each day. Yet, it did not feel like "work". This was our life's purpose, our destiny! As the week progressed, and as the picture of the "New Millennium Essences" unfolded, we reveled in it! We were totally blissed out! I drove back home in a state
of total euphoria, and the euphoric state lasted for several months.



However, eventually reality reclaimed me, and in the time since those hectic days of the summer of  98-99, there have been thousands of hours of work put in to “The Project” (the name that Lisa and I use for the overall project that includes the New Millennium Essences).  Many more essences have been made and added to the New Millennium family, and the massive job of writing this Practitioner's Manual, and setting up this Web Site, has been tackled.





Lisa and I have used the essences intensively, working with all manner of clients, and, of course, for ourselves, and the project has now reached the stage where these essences are ready to be used by other practitioners.


More new discoveries have been made, the major one being the Super Essences.


So, here we are.....  The “New Millennium Essences of New Zealand”, in all their glory. I hope that you enjoy using them as much as Lisa and I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the unfolding story of their production.....