my notes on bach flower remedies // olive tree



i had a favorite place to nap, last summer on vacation in provence. every day, i would drag my sun bed to the shady spot underneath a huge olive tree and just spend hours staring up at her leaves and branches, her mightiness and steadiness. see, i have this thing for olive trees. they can grow hundreds of years old, and just imagining the things these trees have seen over that span of time, being rooted at that exact same spot, never wavering, always seems to inspire me. i guess doctor bach felt the same way, as olive is one of his 38 remedies and one i find myself reaching for very often. allow me to tell you a little more about this miracle worker...

usually, a person in need of olive will feel exhausted, overwhelmed and permanently on edge. it’s almost as if they can’t find the off switch anymore and they tend to have a hard time relaxing and falling asleep, or wake up in a frenzy, overly ready to tackle the day. to survive this way of living, a person in a negative olive state has turned off any connection they have with their body, any openness to the messages their intuition is trying to communicate — after all, there’s no time for tiredness, fear or anxiety, they have things to do, goals to accomplish and places to visit! as a result, and without fully realizing it, they have been falling back constantly on their reserves, getting stuck in fight or flight mode, deregulating their nervous system and wreaking havoc on their natural energy flow.

this way of living, or, surviving really, has usually been going on for years and it’s difficult, sometimes even impossible, to remember what life was like before being constantly on, on, on. more often than not, people in need of olive get their wake up call in the shape of burnout, insomnia or even anxiety and panic attacks. the more subtle signs, after all, were not listened to, even completely missed and this more extreme result ends up the only way for the body to communicate, ‘i need a break and i need it now.’ this is where olive comes in.

olive brings regeneration and revitalization by restoring the connection between mind, body and spirit. all is brought back into balance, moving and working as one. suddenly, it is not only easy to connect with your intuition, or hear the messages the body is sending, but it becomes quite effortless to heed them, too. with the help of olive, rest will come naturally and without guilt, or having to try too hard. and when there’s need to double down and work extra hard to accomplish something, olive helps with making that experience quite joyful too. after all, there’s organic peaks and valleys now and with the guidance of olive, the body knows and trust that work will be followed by rest and the other way around.

finally, there is flow, after a long time of force.

olive remedy is something we can all use at least few times in our lives. apart from helping with what i described earlier, i have also recommended it to kids feeling overwhelmed with starting school, people caring for their partner with long term illnesses and students just graduating after a strenuous couple of years at university. quite simply, it is rest and rejuvination in a bottle.

and if we learn the lessons of olive well, at some point we don’t need to go through burnout before allowing ourselves rest. instead, we listen to the earlier warning signs and let those guide us to the type of action we need to take, or the lack of action we need to take.

work life balance is a popular term right now, and something we desperately need in this day and age. i think olive is the embodiment of exactly that balance and something we can all be a little more inspired by.