Flower Power

Health Blossoms with Lila Devi's Flower Essences

by Livia Cole

Lila Devi, founder of Spirit in Nature Essences, developed her product line in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California in 1977. The oldest essence line in the U.S., it was inspired by Paramahansa Yogananda’s interpretations of the subtle qualities of food.

Lila has authored two internationally acclaimed books, The Essential Flower Essence Handbook and Flower Essences for Animals. She teaches nationally and abroad through lectures, workshops, radio shows and television appearances.

Lila, what are flower essences?
Spirit-in-Nature Essences are herbal infusions that stimulate our positive qualities. These essences stimulate our life force—and it’s our own life force that acts as the true healer.

How do the essences work?
They work on the emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual levels. They create a vibrational resonance. For example, if you have two stringed instruments in the same room and you pluck the A string on one of them, the same note on the other instrument will begin to vibrate simultaneously. Metaphorically speaking, if we are the second instrument and you pluck the first one—which is like administering the essence—that same string or same quality within our own life force will begin to vibrate.

One of our Home Study Course students asked if there is any relationship between Banana Essence, for humility, and the human ears. That’s an odd question, isn’t it? The answer is, yes, there is. Interestingly, one clue that we may need Banana Essence is that we don’t “hear” other people, because our own ego is in the way!

The student wrote: “It seems that my sense of hearing has been diminished, so I have been taking banana. Especially my husband’s voice seems not to reach me. I felt that the deep part of my ears opened when I took Banana Essence.”

Who are these remedies intended for?
They are for people of all ages, from newborns to seniors. They also benefit animals, both domesticated and wild, and can be helpful for plants as well. In fact, flower essences have the potential to help anything that has life force.

Do you need to believe in the flower essences in order for them to work?
No, and that’s the beauty of giving them to animals. It’s irrelevant if they believe or not—they don’t know the qualities of the essences, or even if they are being given an essence. Yet I’ve collected documentation about many animals who respond through strikingly observable behavioral changes. There’s a cat in England who actually likes to nap with her paws wrapped around a bottle of Pear Essence! Animals can sense these subtle vibrations.

Skepticism is a human quality, a process that occurs in the pre-frontal lobes of the human brain, which animals do not have. And skeptics make some of the best flower essence clients! Why? Because they generate the energy to question. Where there’s questioning, there’s interest—and quite often, positive results.

As an example, a registered nurse, medically and allopathically trained, said, “I absolutely do not believe in these things and I want nothing to do with them.” Then someone convinced her to try an essence. She emailed me a week later and said, “What is this? I've never had such a powerful reaction even from allopathic medications.”

How did you figure out the properties of the flowers and what they would be good for?
Spirit-in-Nature Essences were initially interpreted and inspired by Yogananda. He never actually made flower essences. He did, however, explain that pure food sources are composed of sattvic energies. He provided the initial interpretations of the psycho-spiritual qualities of fruits and vegetables. He recommended, for example, eating cherries if you want to develop cheerfulness and eating grapes if you want to express divine love and devotion.

People who use Spirit-in-Nature Essences develop great magnetism, and oftentimes more quickly than by simply eating the food, since the blossom that produces the fruit or vegetable contains the highest concentration of prana. I prepared the essences and administered them to hundreds of people for about 12 years before embarking on major marketing.

Can you tell us why the flower part of a plant is used to prepare flower essences?
The flower is the most vibrationally potent part of the plant; it’s the reproductive system of the plant and that’s what contains 90 percent of the life force of the plant.

Do you have a large following outside of the U.S.?
My essences are very popular in different pockets of the world such as Italy, Scandinavia, Brazil, Japan, and India. There is a tremendous resonance between the Indian culture and this kind of subtle, vibrational product. n

Lila will be giving two free talks in Fairfield: Thursday May 7, 2009, 7-9 p.m., on animal essences, and Saturday, May 9, 10 a.m.-noon, on people essences. Both lectures will be hosted by The Mainstay Inn, 300 N. Main Street. For more information, call (641) 472-9815 or visit www.Spirit-in-Nature.com.

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