How to take Bach flower remedies

Here is the whole method in three lines. For one remedy, put two drops from the stock bottle into a glass of water and sip it through the day. For several, mix a personal bottle: two drops of each into a 30ml bottle of spring water, then four drops from that, four times a day. For the crisis formula, four drops as often as the moment asks.

Everything below is detail, and none of it is difficult. Bach designed the method to be used at a kitchen table, and it shows.

What you are working with

The bottle you buy in a shop is a stock bottle, usually 20ml with a dropper, and it is concentrated. It is not the bottle you take drops from directly, or rather you can, but two drops of it go a long way, which is why the traditional methods all start by diluting it.

One stock bottle lasts months even with daily use. Whatever a remedy does or does not do for you, nobody ever went broke on the dosing.

One remedy, the simple way

Put two drops from the stock bottle into a small glass of water and sip it through the day, topping up the glass if it runs out before the day does. Any drink works, including tea or juice, and hot drinks are fine.

This is the method for trying a remedy out, or for a mood you expect to pass: the Hornbeam Monday, the Gentian week after a setback. If you find yourself refilling that glass for the third week running, it is time for a mixing bottle, which is cheaper on drops and easier to carry around.

The personal mixing bottle

This is the method Bach actually intended for anything that lasts, and the one worth learning properly. You need a 30ml dropper bottle from any pharmacy, still spring water, and the stock bottles of your chosen remedies.

1. Fill the 30ml bottle with spring water, leaving a little room at the top.
2. Add two drops of each remedy you have chosen.
3. If a ready made crisis formula is going in, it counts as one remedy and goes in at four drops instead of two.
4. Take four drops from the bottle, four times a day. The tradition anchors the first dose to waking and the last to turning out the light, with two spaced through the day between them.

Four drops on the tongue is the usual way, but into a drink is just as good. The bottle fits a pocket or a bag, and four times a day is a floor rather than a ceiling: in a hard week, take it as often as you think of it.

An unpreserved bottle keeps for about three weeks, which is conveniently about the length of a fair trial. Keep it somewhere cool, or in the fridge in summer. A teaspoon of brandy in the mix extends its life if you want it to last longer, and glycerin does the same job without alcohol.

How many remedies at once

Up to six or seven fit in one bottle, and that is the traditional ceiling. But fewer, chosen well, works better than the full allowance taken on principle: a mix is a portrait of how you feel, and portraits lose likeness when you keep adding to them. Two or three is the sweet spot for most people. If you are unsure which two or three, the quiz exists for exactly that, and the blends are worked examples you can copy or adapt.

Timing, and the questions everyone asks

Meals do not matter. There is nothing to take it with or without, and no time of day it works better, beyond the tradition of bookending the day with the first and last dose.

Frequency beats quantity. Six drops are not stronger than four, and a doubled dose does not do double the work. If a day is hard, take it more often rather than taking more. This is the single most useful thing to know about the method.

You cannot take too much. There is no known overdose and no interaction to plan around. The remedies sit alongside anything else that is helping, and they have no opinion about what that is.

Missed doses are nothing. Pick it up again when you remember. There is no schedule to break, only a habit to keep loosely.

The alcohol question

Stock bottles are preserved in brandy, and a dose from a mixing bottle carries a trace so small it is a rounding error. If you would rather have none at all, alcohol free versions exist: glycerin based droppers, pastilles and gummies for people, and the pet versions are glycerin based as standard. Children take the remedies in the tradition too, usually as drops in a drink, where the trace becomes smaller still.

How long to keep going

Give a mix two weeks before you form a view, and refresh the bottle if you are carrying on. Some people notice something in days, some after the second bottle, and some notice nothing at all, which is honest information too.

The traditional sign that a remedy has done its work is that you forget to take it. The bottle sits unreached-for on the shelf because whatever kept sending you to it has quieted down. Nothing needs to be tapered or formally stopped. When a new stretch arrives, you mix a new portrait.

Where to go from here

If you know your remedies, mix the bottle tonight, because the method rewards starting more than it rewards reading about starting. If you do not, the quiz narrows 38 to a shortlist in about a minute, the groups reward a slower browse, and what Bach flower remedies are covers the ground this guide assumes.