How dance and Bach flowers came together

Anastasia Geng

I have never made a dance specially for a Bach Flower. Flowers and dances have always come together in a particular way. My first Bach Flower dance was Aspen. I had just had my first experience of the remedies when Hilda invited me to dance in Tübingen, begging me to bring the dance Marga that we hadn’t done for a very long time. Really it had been kept in a drawer for ages. I got it out and saw that it corresponded to the healing properties of Aspen, as though it had been created specifically for this purpose. Everything that Bach wrote in relation to this flower was visible in the dance.

From my visits to Latvia I have often brought back simple elements from folk dances, and this simplicity is closely connected to the flower dances

or example, last summer in Riga I saw a very nice, light, simple circle dance. After a demonstration by the dance group, the spectators were invited to join the dancers. When I showed it in my group, everyone enjoyed it but no one thought of the Bach Flowers. One day when I didn’t feel very well I took my bottles and tested with my pendulum. It reacted strongly on Sweet Chestnut. I was very surprised because my inner perceptions were different, I didn’t need Sweet Chestnut and at the same time it was as though the veil was lifted and I glimpsed the dance in front of me.

In Weinfelden in Switzerland I showed one Latvian dance, without any expectations. At the end of the seminar a woman came up to me and said: ‘according to my perceptions, this is the dance for Walnut‘ and it was true, and it was absolutely right, without a shadow of doubt.

One day I showed a dance that I had seen at my Latvian friends Skandinieki. In my country we don’t always name the dance but here I was expecting people to ask as soon as the music stopped, ‘ what is it called?’ And I didn’t know what to answer. This went on for a long time, everyone loved the dance and we did it often. And there was still that painful question. One day I got fed up and said to a friend, ‘If anyone asks this question once more I’ll say : the longer it lasts, the more I like it (Je länger, je lieber).’ I had hardly said it when I had a flash of inspiration — wasn’t that the name of one of the Bach Flowers? Honeysuckle?

I quickly checked in my book and read how this flower helps us and it is exactly like this dance. At this point I was really happy to have a witness, someone who could confirm that it had happened exactly the way I wrote it. I could hardly believe it myself. I’ll quickly add the next story. One winter when I was ill, I woke up with the music of Skandinieki in my head and I saw it danced. I immediately felt better and I was happy with this beautiful dance and all the variations that were being offered, not to say imposing themselves.

What else did I want? I could hardly wait to dance with a group. And this is when I received a twig of holly in a little parcel from Marie-Luise Soltmann and I realized that this was my dance for Holly. Marie-Luise had also found a dance for this plant and this is for me an indication of how much we need the help of this remedy today.

There is a second Bach Flower Dance that is linked with Marie-Luise. I had been intensely longing for a dance for Willow but none came up. None could, since one was already in existence. As I see it, it is absolutely impossible for another dance to express the message and meaning of Dr Bach’s Willow as well as Marie-Luise’s dance for the Beatitudes. To my great joy she immediately agreed to us dancing her dance for willow and even wrote a poem in which she finds the link between the Beatitudes and the message of Willow. Edward Bach who was profoundly Christian would have been really happy.

In Latvia we say that there are neither shapes nor steps that have not yet been danced and that new dances only exist through new choreographies. That is why it is common over there to make new dances from certain existing elements. I certainly feel in good company when I make up dances for the Bach Flowers from particular dance forms that I observed in Latvia, when they come together through me without my doing it intentionally, and when the right music comes up, too. Our Latvian artists say that a work of art is good when native people approve of it. This is what I do with the dances. It is only after a number of groups have accepted a dance for a certain flower, that it becomes valid for me. Among these dances for example are Agrimony and Water Violet.

There was a very intense dance that I had brought back from the ‘Lives’, an ancient Latvian ethnic group which is disappearing fast. Once again there was the problem of a name. So I started to collect names. For a long time, it was called ‘the dance with many names’. All these names were condensed into the dance for Olive. This is how Reinholda perceived it in Augsburg, without knowing that the flower of this tree had been discovered by Edward Bach as a flower whose vibrations help us when we are worn out—truly mentally and physically exhausted.

As I was telling this to Rainis and Helmi who are the founders as well as the heart and soul of the music group Skandinieki, Rainis pointed out that as there were no olive trees in Latvia, he had difficulty imagining how this flower could help him. We dance to a song which talks about the fact that God gives fertility and a good crop to the rye fields and the way He does it. And then we understood how we could use another image to represent the strength of Olive.

Let me come back to Holly. I took some Bach Flower Remedies to my friends in Latvia and, as a first step, taught them to use a pendulum. Rainis’s ring started to turn very strongly and clearly round a bottle, so we looked at what it was—Holly, the flower corresponding to the dance that I had seen them dance in my dream.

Walburge Sprang in Cologne told me one day that the world has experienced help in times of extreme needs and threats, thanks to the spiritual strength of small peoples. I see the Bach Flowers acting in a similar way. A few years ago they were not well-known but now more and more people turn to them, live and recharge their batteries with them. So for me it is not by chance only that the dances, the Latvian songs and the Flower Remedies attract each other. I have already got 23 dances for the Bach Flower Remedies and in order not to lose their stories, I’ll keep noting down their evolution.

One day when I was showing the dance for ‘Round Moon’ in Augsburg, I added another element as the group was so large. This is when Claudia said she could see elements for Rockwater in the dance and it was just right. And Jürgen in Lausanne added something at the end of the dance. He did it quite simply and everyone followed because it was right.

I had brought back a very beautiful dance from Latvia, Mugurdancis, ‘the dance for one’s back’. It is possible to find many images for things that reinforce one’s back and I was really looking forward to showing it and I didn’t need any Bach Flowers for that. On my way to Gudrun’s place I found a twig of larch and thought that it was not just by chance, so I picked it up. Gudrun then told me that Larch is a fundamental flower as it reinforces the sense of self. And she showed me the book where she had found that. It was described in a very explicit way.

July 1992

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