Flowers As Medicine - Are They?
As soon as someone comes to my house, visits my IG account, or peruses my website, they know.
I've got a thing for flowers.
Is it because I was born in the month of May? (April showers bring May flowers, you know.)
Or is because I've simply figured out that they can promote incredible healing in the mind, body, and soul?
When someone gifts you a batch for a special occasion, sends you a bouquet when you're deeply ill, or when you pass by a field of blooming wildflowers in a springtime field, can you deny smiling, even just a bit? Even if that smile is on the inside only?
When you search for studies on flowers and their benefits to the human being, there is no lack.
Go ahead. Try it.
Yet, how many of us pass by the flower section in the grocery store every week and decide: Too expensive for just a regular day. I'll wait for....(fill in the holiday of choice).
To me, that's like only being a spiritual person on Christmas and Easter (Or Hanukkah. Or Eid al-Fitr. And so on...)
I may be crazy, of course.
I have flowers in vases all over my house, all year round.
Fresh. Dried. Colorful. And Subtle.
And beginning this spring I'm creating a substantially large plot in my garden just for flowers.
Some may call that a waste of money.
Nothing more than a placebo (see last week's post).
But is it?
Some may say, yes, I love flowers, but the feeling is fleeting. It's only but for a moment that I am perked up by the notion of flowers. Then it sets back in. Illness. Depression. Reality.
So today I ask: Are you sure?
Could they be more?
Could they be a therapy in and of themselves?
Below are some studies on flowers and their health benefits to get you thinking...
Flowers:
As edible plants.
As an herb (dried, sipped as tea, immersed in a salve.....)
As a flower essence (seeped in water and preserved with alcohol to be used in droplets, like an herbal tincture).
As a hydrosol (seeped in water and used as a topical spray).
Simply purchased for a vase on your bedside table, your kitchen counter, or dried and hung on your wall.
Even photographed and displayed as more permanent decor.
Read the studies.
Try them on for size.
What have you got to lose?
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STUDIES & RESOURCES:
(The studies below are nowhere near an exhaustive list. Always continue your own research and read the papers within each paper below.)
1) Humans’ Relationship to Flowers as an Example of the Multiple Components of Embodied Aesthetics
4) The Physiological and Psychological Relaxing Effects of Viewing Rose Flowers in Office Workers
5) Exploring Plants with Flowers: From Therapeutic Nutritional Benefits to Innovative Sustainable Uses
6) An Update On The Health Benefits Promoted By Edible Flowers and Involved Mechanisms
7) The Biodiversity of Edible Flowers: Discovering New Tastes and New Health Benefits
8) Phytochemicals, Therapeutic Benefits and Applications of Chrysanthemum Flower: A Review
9) An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers
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