Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a report written by Julia Graves and Thupten Jinpa after they returned from a second trip to Haiti in 2010 where they organized a community health clinic. An extended group of practitioners accompanied them and offered homeopathic, herbal, flower essence, aromatherapy and related treatments to all those who came to the clinic. Flower essences played a central role in helping with the emotional trauma still prevalent among the people served.

Part 1 features some of the major flower essences that were used in the healing work. Part 2 gives a deeper insight into the healing work and the collective needs in Haiti. This report has been edited for presentation. Photographs are courtesy of Sandra Lory. Read the report about the first clinic here .

Haiti's children have an immediate response to flower essences  

The traumatic effects of the earthquake  
on babies in their mothers’ wombs  

Soothing the heart of suffering: the role of Benediction Oil  

Using Five-Flower Formula to heal “bad blood”  

Haiti's children have an immediate response to flower essences

The most stunning thing for me this time was to observe how this host of serious, depressed children would break into a smile the minute I would drop a dose of flower essences into their mouths—usually Five-Flower Formula or Post-Trauma Stabilizer . To increase compliance and engagement of the child, if in doubt, I would drop or spray the two mixes of flower essences on them and ask which one they liked most. All children but one boy got very happy, engaged, and with indubitable certainty pointed to the bottle they preferred. That one boy leaned back in the chair, laughing: "But I love them BOTH!" Some parents said, "My child has had nightmares since the earthquake. The spray that you gave him/her cured the bad dreams."

“I was amazed to hear that doctors who went with the conventional medical relief teams felt that their work made no difference, and was not received with gratitude by the people. This was not at all the case for our clinic. However, the usual help organizations had pitched military-camp-like sterile tent cities far outside of Port-au-Prince (right beside the military camps in fact). We, on the other hand, went to where the sick were, finding the destitute children in the rubble heaps they call home, and speaking to them in their own language. How would an illiterate child of five from an impoverished broken home, with a devastating malarial fever, get onto a bus or taxi for two hours to make its way to admit itself to such a menacing looking place surrounded by armed soldiers? However, they were able to stand in line when all of their neighbors lined up and they could see the doctor from afar.” — Thupten Jinpa

The traumatic effects of the earthquake on babies in their mothers’ wombs

This time, we were seeing the infants that were just conceived or in utero at the time of the earthquake. I noticed to my surprise that they seemed to react to the Fear-Less spray more than to Five-Flower Formula or Post-Trauma Stabilizer . I think this is due to the Red Clover , because in a sense, a baby receiving a collective trauma in utero is a form of mass hysteria, where the fear jumps from one person to the next. The Green Rose will also help get them “back to earth.”

Here is a dramatic illustration of the power of the flower essences: a baby of one month was brought to the clinic, diagnosed at the hospital with yellow fever. The infant was breathing rapidly and labouredly, was entirely apathetic and limp, eyes closed, and covered in a heat rash. I gave him a dose of Aconite 200 C which matched the fever symptoms, which made him open his eyes a tiny bit for one second for the first time, revealing them to be turned up. While he also made a few movements with his limbs, I was not exactly impressed by the change in life force. As I was waiting for my translator to explain to a rather unwilling female (maybe a relative?) who had brought him in, about giving a sponge bath to the baby, I decided it could never be wrong to treat intrauterine trauma, even at the brink of dying from yellow fever. I put a drop of Post-Trauma Stabilizer with Evening Primrose added on his lips— and his eyes popped open—actually trying to focus, and he started to wave his arms and legs. Then he swooned back into his fever delirium. I then sprayed him with the Fear-Less spray. To my complete surprise, his eyes now popped open entirely, and in the way a one month old infant can, he looked at us, and did not cease to wave his arms and legs for the rest of the consultation. When we saw him again in the afternoon, his fever had gone down considerably and he no longer appeared limp or dazed at all. While this is the most dramatic effect I saw with the Fear-Less spray, I noticed with most other infants who received the trauma in utero that they reacted most strongly in terms of opening their eyes, becoming lively, or smiling, when sprayed with the Fear-Less formula, rather than receiving other essence combinations. By contrast, most children under ten who said they were scared and had nightmares from the earthquake, preferred Post Trauma Stabilizer over Fear-Less . This was strikingly true at an orphanage where some children had landed after the earthquake, but many children were already there during the earthquake and were very scared.

We added Evening Primrose to the flower essence combination of any child under two years of age.

Soothing the heart of suffering: the role of Benediction Oil

We decanted the Benediction Oil into 1 oz plastic containers so we could provide it to as many people as possible for their use at home. The little three year old girl who was under the rubble for three days with whom we left Benediction Oil last time, came back to the clinic. Unfortunately, she was not brought in by a parent, and I could not ask to what degree her trauma was reduced, but her intensely pounding heart that seemed to want to explode through the chest wall was at least 80% better.

Jinpa related the following: “I was treating a girl who had chest pain. Her description was pain, but none of the herbs tested right on her pulse. This seemed to be a rare case where the pulse testing technique did not seem to be working. So while I went off to consult the other herbalists just to give her something to do, I asked her to rub some Benediction Oil onto her heart. When I returned, she looked straight into my eyes and said almost shocked: ‘The pain is entirely gone!’”

I applied some Benediction Oil on a four year old girl living in an orphanage who had lost both parents in the earthquake. She was completely “frozen” and non-responsive, refusing to make eye or skin contact or answer verbally. She was standing next to my legs when I applied the oil on her, and then relaxed to lean over them. She fell asleep within a minute, into what seemed like a deep sleep, “renegotiating life.” During that time, I sprayed her with Grief Relief. When she awoke about 10 minutes later, she was (still with much reservation at first) willing to do a tickle game (at first with a stone-like face), and finally broke out in the most delightful happy giggle.

Using Five-Flower Formula to heal “bad blood”

Jinpa treated a very Haitian phenomenon very successfully. Many people here have hypertension, and then have extreme fits of anger which makes them very sick, a symptom picture known in Haiti as “bad blood.” This can lead to death. So in addition to giving them a homeopathic remedy, he gave them a bottle of Five-Flower Formula to take one dose just at the onset of an anger fit and said to them, “And then you can get as angry as you want.” Those people returned saying, “I no longer have fits of bad blood, please give me more of those drops,” which translates as no longer becoming so angry that their body goes out of control.

Read more here written by Julia Graves about the clinical work with people and the situation in general still existing in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Read the first report: “Helping the People of Haiti: Using Flower Essences for Earthquake Relief Aid.”