Flower Essences + Yoga with Reverend Becca Medvin

Most people underestimate the profound power of flowers, prana, and subtle energy—yet these ancient tools hold the key to transforming your life from the inside out. In this episode, Reverend Rebecca Medvin and Brooke Sullivan explore the sacred intersection of yoga, flower essences, and prana vidya, revealing how nature’s wisdom guides us toward healing, empowerment, and self-trust.

Discover how flower essences act as energetic seeds that unlock your unlimited potential—whether you're dealing with perfectionism, overwhelm, or emotional sensitivity. Becca shares her journey from intense resistance to daily practice, illustrating how simple, playful connections with nature can shift your energy and deepen your self-awareness. You'll learn specific flower remedies like Sunflower, Pink Yarrow, and Olive that support grounding, confidence, and rest—practical tools to navigate modern chaos with grace and ease.

Reverend Becca Medvin is a mentor and educator specializing in meditation, yoga, and the transformative power of flowers. Based in Miami, she is a distinguished alumni and senior teacher of the Wild Temple School and certified practitioner from our Flower Essence Therapy Program, Plants Drop Wisdom. 

As a devoted practitioner of Meditation and the Himalayan Tradition, Becca brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her teachings, inspiring others to explore the profound connections between nature and self-awareness.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

It's the journey of being able to trust yourself. So being able to even access these subtle realms and move your own energy and empower yourself in that way, you have to have a level of certainty and self-validation. Like, of course, you can do this. Why wouldn't you be able to do this? Why is Joe Schmoe more powerful than you? And he has the answers, and you can't. This is just another human. So it's building the confidence in ourselves that why not you? And then realizing we all have this same capacity and potential for that connection and to be able to receive and have our own answers and trust ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

We've commentations transform. The body of the whole friend of the whole. Welcome to the Wild Temple. Welcome to the Wild Temple.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Right, hello, Wild Temple listeners. We have such a treat today, and I'm actually gonna start us off just with a centering poem, and this is by Rabindranath Tagore, who is one of our Himalayan sages from this lineage of the mountains. And it's a perfect poem that brings us into the subject matter for today. So if you can close your eyes or just receive the flower which is single, need not envy the thorns that are numerous. The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous. So a big passion here at the Wild Temple is weaving in our daily lives with Mother Nature and understanding the life force that is the illuminatore, the intelligence, otherwise known as prana in the yogic terminology, understanding that as the heart of everything that we pivot around, that we put on our own altars. And whether it's working with making our teas, whether we're designing a yoga asana practice, working with breath work, healing trauma, or working with flower essences, they all center around this life force. And so I was thinking the other day of who do I have that could have a nice conversation with me about this prana vidya, the knowledge of prana and this life force energy through the lens of yoga, tantra, yoga therapy, and the power of the flowers. And Becca came to mind. So today I'm joined by Reverend Rebecca Medvin, one of our senior teachers here at the Wyowell Temple School. Rebecca has completed both the flower essence course, Plants Drop Wisdom, and our Sage Apprenticeship. And she's currently the only person authorized to teach our 200-hour sage apprenticeship, which is Tantra Yoga Therapy. And what I love about Becca is that you really embody the integration of these teachings, the medicine of yoga, the power of yoga, the power of flower essences, and this relationship with the natural world all weave together as allies, not only for your own healing and evolution, but how you work with your clients. And so today we're going to explore this. We're going to explore this intersection of flowers, of prana and of yoga. We'll talk a little bit about this plantrop wisdom experience that I know this is how we met, and also the power of your own stories as a window to give people an understanding of how these nature's gurus truly work. So, Becca, will you tell us where you're from and then a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Wow, that was such a great bio. I'm calling from Miami, Florida. This is where I'm from. I'm from Coconut Grove. And I am a yoga teacher in the Himalayan tradition. I'm a flower essence practitioner. I specialize in meditation and breath work. And I, you know, we have all of these different genres. They might feel separate to some people, but they really all weave together. And what brings them together is prana. And that's what I want to talk about today. How all of these modalities are ways that we empower ourselves and empower other people to know that they can move their own energy. Once we know, once we have the tools and we know these different directions and we can identify what's what, then we have the power to shift our own energy to release what's ready to go and to receive something new. And anybody can do this. It's just whether you are certain of the tools or not, and whether you really embody them and use them.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

And so becoming a student of the flowers, which I know you have been, it's a really impactful modality for the subtle realms. And so you spoke to this being able to let go, being able to bring in what is new. And so from your own experience, will you just share how you feel flowers access the subtle realms and perhaps even in light of what I call psycho-spiritual and emotional healing? So that can be very jam-packed if you'd like to unpack it from your lens.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Yeah, I like to speak in metaphors. Sometimes it's easier. So how I see it is we all have unlimited potential. It's like we all have this garden inside of us in our subtle body energetically. And what have we planted? What seeds have we planted, right? So when I take a flower essence, an easy example is always sunflower for confidence. If I can plant sunflower, if I can, whether that's taking the essence or like just sitting with the plant or even meditating with the plant or having it in the house, I'm planting that frequency in my inner garden. And as the longer I sit with it, the more I allow that frequency to grow. So we have this unlimited potential, this soil, and what are we planting in there? And that's how I see flower essence is it's like, oh my god, this whole library of frequencies. And it's it's so fun, it's endlessly interesting because there's always different ways I can grow, different avenues to grow into. And you know, there's so many flowers. So it feels so infinite. And that's how I see it. We're accessing our unlimited potential. And then in terms of how I weave it in with the yoga and the movement of prana, often I'm using flowers to ground. Maybe that's my excess vata. But also I think it's being in a city, and maybe it's the clients that I tend to attract also attract. They tend to have excess vata. So constantly with yoga asana and breath work, I'm grounding people and myself and then using flowers to ground us. And like, for example, something like echinacea. Let's say I'm feeling like I'm discombobulated and pulled in a million directions by people and things and traffic and whatever. It's this bringing into the self and then grounding that self. And that's where I would start with someone that has never tried flower essences before or maybe is new to yoga is practices that are just grounding and stabilizing. Once we feel grounded and stabilized, then there's a lot of fun places we can go. Grounding is fun too. Grounding is very fun. Grounding and releasing is the foundation for everything. Whether you're working with flower essences, yogasana, breath work, you have to have that sort of openness and clean slate. And um then you can just hop right into Silversword and plants that are like bringing it in. But yeah, it's about how I also see flower essences and yogasana is I'm just connecting to nature, which is already who I am. I am nature, I am not separate from nature. And as I use these modalities, I'm finding that rhythm of nature. I'm becoming more like the elements, you know, like rain. It's just dropping. It doesn't need to overthink. It just does the thing, it just knows how to release and receiving from the sun and just you're becoming like a flower. You're becoming more simple and more in tune with the rhythms of nature. And I think that's what healing is all about. It's just finding that essence that's already who we are.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

I love that. It it brings me to the order of operations, like a methodical way of stepping in for healing when perhaps there are a lot of pieces that are needing to be healed. And the older model is to look at it like the onion peel. And so, where are we addressing on this onion? Which layer are we addressing for that healing? And it does feel like this modern time needs just to ground first. And once there's the grounding, then the layers start to be revealed. And maybe that layer is to go down deep into the roots, or maybe it's to go directly into the heart, or it's something that's more on the surface and it's an acute symptom, not a chronic symptom that one is dealing with. So I love the vata groundedness that you brought in of the Ayurvedic lens through the flowers, and then also the building of this soil as the garden of both body and mind. And it reminds me too of the latest neuroscience with polyvagal system and how important it is to just feel safe and grounded before we can do the work. So if we're safe and grounded and we're resourced, then we can start to bring in the exciting energies of silver sword or, you know, whatever the plant is, or whatever the joyful practice might be, or the movement of bigger pranic energies. And those can be very destabilizing if we haven't found our ground first. So I love that intelligence of the methodology. And then I wanted to just go back to Sunflower because that is one of the ones that I've found personally again and again to really help people. And I know people listening are teachers, wellness providers. People are writing books, people are trying to promote themselves on social media. And what Sunflower, I feel, really offers is the natural effulgence of self, not the self-aggrandized ego, but the humble ego of I have these gifts, I'm going to share them. And so the first time I took sunflower, it was just the first dose. And I felt like my solar plexus became almost like an inner tube. It was like this tube of light, and it was like I was like beaming everywhere. My belly turned. And it was right before I had to teach a yoga class at Asheville Yoga Center, and I was still a new teacher, but it was my third year in. So I should have been over the humps of the shyness, and I wasn't. Every time I would design a class, I'd feel like I'd want to puke. And I was all up in my head and I felt it was all about me, you know, gotta get it perfect, you know, or I suck. And it was in that moment that the true idea and essence of teacher came through, which was I I just share. I'm just a conduit and I'm just sharing. So I love I love sunflower. I have so many stories around sunflower, and I'm curious if there is one that really helped you step into this fullness of teacher, of you know, being a yoga teacher in Miami, in the city, and you know, working with the public and intimately with one-on-one clients. It takes a lot sometimes to work on our inner selves, to heal the critic, to battle those uh unstable emotions, right? To get there. And is there any particular essence or a few essences that helped you?

SPEAKER_03 12:46

So many. I don't know where to where to begin. Um took me so many years of teaching to just not be overcome by my shyness and pretending I'm not internally so nervous. But actually, I could talk about flowers for confidence. I definitely needed those. But I think my most helpful essence for teaching is pink arrow because what would happen was I would get into a room with a bunch of people to lead, to teach, and I'm hypersensitive and I would feel everybody's emotion in the room. And one thing that they maybe don't warn you about when you're becoming a teacher is when people are practicing, they're not giving you their nice face. They're giving you their face of, you know, I'm suffering. How could you do this to me? They're giving you stink face. Yeah, you get faces. So just having energetic boundaries. Pink arrow is a flower essence for energetic boundaries. So if you're a sensitive person, if you tend to take on the emotions of others, it is the best ally for that. And I I was so hypersensitive, it really got in the way of my life. And Pink Yarrow allowed me to be able to teach without taking on the energy of my students. So I'm holding the space and I hold that space in a way that feels safe for everyone in the room. But there are always going to be things I can't control, like the emotions, thoughts, outbursts can happen, unexpected things, and to just not take to not take everything so personally. And also it helps me learn that other people's emotions are not mine to digest. Meditation teacher Lisa French always says if you're trying to digest someone else's someone else's emotions, it's like trying to digest someone else's food. It's not going to work. And then it's just sitting there fermenting. And growing up, I was so sensitive, felt everyone's emotions in the room, everyone processed emotion. And I just assumed I was, there was something wrong with me for feeling so much. Why do I feel so much? And then I finally got clarity and was able to see what's mine and what's not mine. And Pinkiero helped me really see that clearly. And now I'm I'm really proud. I just went on a, you know, imagine I was just at a big family reunion. I'm really proud of how I'm contained in my space. I, you know, I'm letting people be who they are instead of like, oh, don't be that way because it's triggering me. You can kind of just, you're you, they're them, and it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Yeah. Yeah. You know what's interesting listening? I have an opposite experience with Pink Yarrow, although with like the family gatherings, the people being able to not be such a bleeding empath and, you know, picking up on everyone's moods. That on an average day is really helpful for me. But what I've found is as a sensitive, it feels like a superpower for me to get into a yoga classroom without the pink yarrow. I almost feel, I think because I didn't know I was an empath for so many years, this wasn't talked about when I was young yogi and young teacher. And I had no clue that I was picking up everyone else's stuff. And so what I started to do is as a, you know, synesthetically, I would say. So being able to kind of see the energy through a clear sentient way, it was like I was orchestrating the sadness. Let's move the sadness with this backband. Let's kind of, you know, spin the energy here. Now we're getting a little dense in the room. I'm going to do some more pranic activation. And so it was just this like beautiful orchestration of let's do this and then guide people towards their deeper rest and shavasana. And so I took pink yara one time before I did a yoga class and I was cut off. I, it was the wildest thing, Becca. I literally couldn't feel what people needed. And I didn't realize that that was actually how I related. I was in the relational field. And so I think both of our stories hopefully is very, you know, helpful to hear from people. Because what is our talent and skill? What are our proclivities, right? And then how can we work with them? But if you're in the ocean of everyone's emotions, you can it can freeze you. It can be completely overwhelming.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

I think that also that shows how flower essences are really like people and your relationship with them is your personal relationship with them. I take pink arrow every day. I'm still, I I would say that's how I teach. This is a little bit, you know, I am very unique, maybe. I'm sure there are other people who do this, but I don't plan my classes because I don't know who's going to show up. You know, I might plan a little bit one-to-one with people, especially people that have different things going on that make the class harder to teach. But with group classes, that's how I teach. I just sense the energy and it's like I'm orchestrating this movement, and it's very intuitive. I, you know, the reason I don't plan is also I've been practicing for 20 years and I've been teaching I don't even know, a long time. 15 or something. And so, yeah, so the structure's in there, but that's exactly the way I do it. And the pink arrow doesn't limit me. I think it allows me to not be overwhelmed. My my second chakra is so intense. I need to turn it down a little bit. But also it's interesting because I would need to think more about this. But the the meditation school that I practice, which is actually outside of the Himalayan tradition, it's all about being able to see energy and know using your third eye and using your crown to move that energy to be the conductor, right? And it's not, we're not saying the other chakras are bad, but what happens is we think of it like a building, right? If I'm on the second floor of a building, my view is limited. And if I'm on the sixth or seventh floor, I have more perspective and more power. I can, I'm, I'm higher up, I can see what's going on from above instead of being in the muck of it. And so I think Pinkero helps me not stay in my second chakra. So instead of feeling everyone's emotions in the room, I'm just, I wonder what chakra I'm using. I guess it's it's seventh, maybe, to just sense the energy in the room moving. And it's more of a collective movement than like one person's personal. Sometimes I'll go into one person if someone's having a hard time, right? But if I if I'm trying to hold space for the whole room, I I don't want to do that too much on one person so intently. But yeah, I'm gonna talk too long about all this.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah. Along with being a sensitive, I'm curious if you would maybe think of yourself as like an overachiever, like a person who works very hard, maybe that's the type of perfectionist.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Absolutely. Yeah, the the flower essences for perfectionism are very helpful. Um still that is still an impediment for me learning how to loosen up and not do everything right and allow myself to fail. I remember once I was being interviewed right after college for Peace Corps, and the guy was like, Tell me about a time you failed. And I was blanked. I didn't expect the question, and I said, I don't know. And it was like a failure that I hadn't failed. And it's not because I'm perfect and amazing, it's because if I don't feel sufficient, I don't try, you know? There's so there was so much fear holding back my voice in general, my writing. I love to write, but the perfectionism kills the writing. So it was like I couldn't the thing that actually helped me the most with perfectionism is freestyle writing. Yeah. Consciousness writing, just letting it be a mess. This is going nowhere, you know? And that sort of practice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Oh, perfectionism kills the writing. I I hear that. And I'm just thinking of all of the things that I've started and haven't finished, kinds of projects that we continue to move from one thing to the next, very vata-like. And I would say personally, impatience has been really helpful for me for the reduction of the need to like drive, drive, drive, you know, focus so intently on something that I start to berate myself or criticize myself if I didn't accomplish that. And I think what I love about the flowers, and I'm not sure if this has happened for you too, where I can just take an essence for just a couple of days. And then I it's like I've learned my lesson or it becomes a part of me. And so then I can just know okay, if I'm in this mode of perfectionism, I'm just gonna call on impatience. And I feel that my whole inner being shifts. And it's like the response of the spirit realm of, oh yeah, we got you, Brooke. You can relax. Perfect imperfection is the way to go. From here. Cool down, honey. Yeah. So are there other essences that you've worked with for the high high performative typing mentality?

SPEAKER_03 22:10

And like I could just sit here and list them, but the one that's coming to mind is olive. Oh, olive, nice. For me, that perfectionism equals burnout and exhaustion. You know, I'm like juggling so many things. I'm I'm in that vata just depleting myself. And then all of a sudden, when I have a moment to breathe, I would realize I am really overworked. And Olive is this permission. I think that type of person also doesn't always give themselves permission to rest. So for me, Olive was permission to deeply rest and to not need to have everything finished and completed before I rest, but to actually be able to take a moment in between or days. Or honestly, I'm having a year right now. I've been, I was dealing with burnout maybe three years ago pretty badly. And the last couple years, I'm just letting myself be so much slower with everything and not this steep speed to try to make it happen quickly. I'm just letting myself be slow. It's healed me more than anything. And I think Olive taught me that in a way, how to just allow it. And even in the way I teach people, I call on that frequency. A lot of people bring that perfectionism into their practice. So with meditation, especially, if I, you know, I gotta sit here, I gotta do it perfectly, or it's not right, or I didn't do it. And something that's really healing for people like that is how can you weave meditation into your life as it is already? For me, I love I'm in the shower. That's a space for me to just enjoy. Here's my down and out. Here's the water, washing my day off, washing whatever's clouding my mind off. I'm grounding and releasing, I'm receiving the blessing of this water. I can't believe I have a hot shower every day. And so, you know, I'm I'm always gonna shower. So I might as well make the shower a moment where I can pause and receive and release. I also I use the elements. Like I like to be outside as much as possible. And I feel the wind on my skin, it's helping me release. I feel the sun, it's helping me receive. If I'm blessed and I can go put my bare feet on the grass, then helping me ground. So it's just weaving, it's not even about how much time necessarily. Obviously, I would love to be able to meditate for three hours, and that would be incredible. And it feels really good the longer you meditate, but also you can weave it in in tiny little moments and not put so much pressure on yourself to do everything perfectly because at the end of the day, it's depth that matters more than okay, how many hours did you? I forget what teacher it was, but he was telling a story of he once had a student who was like, I've meditated X hours. That was just okay. You know, it's not, you're not gonna get a prize when you get to a hundred thousand hours. It's you're gonna be the same person. But how how are those hours spent, you know, not more?

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Yeah, the competitive drive that we have even within our own selves, and how just pushy that is. And it's the opposite of what we're working with with yoga, meditation, and flowers, prayatna shaitilya, right? This effortless efforting, slow down, create the space, feel the simplicity. I was just listening to Huberman Labs, and I'm just loving, loving these podcasts. And the name of the episode was emotional regulation. He was talking about we don't need to just have a moment, we need a mega moment these days. So taking these mega moments and feeling the wind. I was sitting actually underneath an oak yesterday, just before I went to bed. I'd cleaned the whole house, like really went deep, deep dive into kitchen, guest room, closets, got rid of so many things.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Great new moon activity.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Right, right. And so I'm I'm just like the end of it all, sitting under the oak, and it's just such a perfect oak tree. It's my neighbor's, but we get to we get to view it, and it just covers the portion of our front of our house. And to me, it looked like Dorga, this beautiful, just full-on embodiment of a character, where then all of the arms were just waving in the wind. And so I just closed my eyes. And much like you with olive, I'm an oak person. So I have seen that some people who are overachievers work better with olive, and some people who are overachievers work better with oak. They're both for very similar depletions and refillings. And so I'm more of an oak person. Olive doesn't really work for me. I know a woman who's a flower essence practitioner, Lupo. She is an olive person. Oak doesn't really work for her. And so, uh, but the oak medicine was exactly everything that you just shared. It was this kind of like being in the shower, just this letting go and this receiving, but then bringing into the gratitude. And so I loved how you've said this in a number of different ways, Becca. It's this letting go, this receiving, and this gratitude. And to me, the Trinity of a mega moment, we don't need a lot. We actually just need key reminders to really show up well. And that can do so much on every level, whether it's physical, whether it's nervous system, whether it's emotional, whether it's mental, whether it's relational.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

It's what is my life? It's the quality of one single breath at a time. Am I able to exhale? Am I able to release? And am I able to receive and inhale? And that's to me, that's that's the whole thing. If I had to condense it into a light little seed, yeah, it would be that.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

And the gratitude for that. And then that brings us back to life force, right? If everything is truly about prana, prana vidya, and we have this simplicity of the breath, but we can expand it to include the natural world and our daily. So our daily rhythms, the shower, the food, the toilet, you know, all of the ways, everything's sacred. Yeah. So I'm curious about your experience as a meditator. You did just share how it can be very stressful. Uh, showing up on the cushion and having to sit can be very challenging. And then maybe some people meet that with the competitor in them. I can do this, I can beat this stressor because I'm going to fill in the blank. I'm just curious your experience in guiding people in how to enter this subtle realm softly, sweetly, but also successfully.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

I'm going on a little tangent here, but it made me think, you know, when I first started practicing daily, I was lifting myself up out of some pretty heavy coffee energy. So at the time I had this we could call it competitive discipline. Like it was, I gotta do this every day. I was a little bit strict with myself. And as I've deepened my practice, as I've become more grounded in it over the years, now I'm able to have more flow and I practice because it feels good, which is that was always there, but I I just had to push myself in the beginning. I I remember when I first started practicing, I was 13 and I was already dealing with depression. And and I spent a summer, I must have been 14, going on 15 or something like that. I spent a summer just practicing. At the time, there was one free online video yoga. It was called Yoga Today. That was the only one I found. And I did that all summer in my room. But I remember I would have to crawl out of my mat and force myself to do it because I was so heavy. And also in Miami in the summer, it's kind of like our winter. It's very heavy, it's it's very humid, very hot. And when it's not humid and hot, it's raining. And also, you know, it's ever we're living in a swamp. So you got that heavy marsh energy, and it can create a lot of excess coffee in the summer here. I didn't know that then, but that's partly what I was dealing with. And I would just force myself to do it for years. But then I knew in my head that there will be a day when I will do this every day and I won't feel this intense resistance. And that day did come, came many years later when I was like 23. So it took me a decade of practicing with resistance. You know, I will the ages probably had something to do with that too. Obviously, I'm so young that it was different. But I I work with people that I often work with people for many years at a time. And I'll see them in the beginning. There's more of this resistance. It feels harder to do it, and it just lightens up over time. And that will happen no matter how much resistance you have currently. If you are consistent, you will lighten that load over time. And flower essence can they can help us, they can give us a push on that too. So, you know, if I had had that tool when I was a teenager, that would be crazy.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

The will that you had was really beautiful. So, not everyone has that kind of will to have the discipline to do the sacred sit, you know, which can be such a challenge and not always feeling like you've accomplished something at the end. Often you go for days of meditation where you're like, ooh, that meditation really sucked. I had a hard time the whole time. But then that consistency is the little bite of getting closer to what it is that you're seeking, what you know, the goal, the peace of mind, the calmness of your heart. And so, in these increments through the moments of efforting, you start to receive. And I think that's so beautiful. It doesn't seem that um that doesn't seem to be an easy thing in our modern day because typically people who have a strong willpower are also strong people in the world, like runners, athletes, type A go-getter CEO running the companies. And then you have typically people who are more attuned to softness and the subtle realms. And so to have that willpower to move to then move into stillness is a pretty beautiful thing. So no wonder you honing on that natural skill has enabled you to be a teacher and a guide for so many. Because I think you're a bridge, you know competition, you know how to force things, and you also know how to sit and to receive. And this reminds me of the poem that we began with Rabindranath Tagore, which is the flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous. Right? So, with flower essences, there is this divine spark, or the most beautiful aspect of that plant is coming into this form. And that's what we're taking when we're ingesting or putting onto our skin or in our bathwaters these essences of the flowers. And yet the thorns they cover the plant. There's so many, they can also be very abrasive. We can get caught in them. And it really in the Kali Yuga makes me think of this day and age. We do have both. We have very thorny people out there, you know, a lot of hate, a lot of greed, a lot of manipulation of power, a lot of warmongering. And we also have beautiful, insightful, progressive, spiritual, loving, kind-hearted people that are these flowers that are also everywhere. And so I'd love to speak a little bit into this ability to be soft amidst the thorn or the ability to be soft amidst the density or the harshness of the world and how softness actually is power. I'd love to hear your view of this.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

I want to answer it in a way that is not the exact, you know, it's not a perfect answer. It's an imperfect, perfect answer, but I love it. It just makes me think of, you know, when you're I believe all of these modalities are also, we can talk about them as ways to connect with our own answers, our own higher self. And it's the opposite of something like, you know, I have a religious or whatever leader, and he tells me the answer, that's the answer. And I don't have direct access to the divine. That's this person's job, right? When we're connecting to our own higher self, it comes through to me, it it is like a whisper, you know, it's it's subtle, it's there, it's just quiet. And the these external voices can be really loud yelling at us often. It can even be people, you know, it could be family or friends, or just people around that they have such strong opinions and they want you to believe those opinions. And those pulls can be really intense. But when we're connecting to our own truth, it's it's quiet, it's a whisper, but it has a different type of resonance in the body. And the resonance is like the resonance of truth. And also it's the journey of being able to trust yourself. So being able to even access these subtle realms and move your own energy and empower yourself in that way, you have to have a level of certainty and self-validation. Like, of course you can do this. Why wouldn't you be able to do this? Why is Joe Schmoe more powerful than you? And he has the answers, and you can't. This is a just another human. So it's building the confidence in ourselves that why not you? And then realizing we all have this same capacity and potential for that connection and to be able to receive and have our own answers and trust ourselves. Because of the work I've done with through the Himalayan tradition and also my meditation school, I actually prefer not to ask people's opinions. Like I just sit, you know, be still and know. If I have a decision to make, I am still and I wait to receive it. If I were to go ask five people what they think, I'm very confused. Because they're always telling me something different. It's it's really this process of being able to just be trusting of your own self and knowing.

unknown 37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

I don't remember what you asked.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Yeah, it was around the power of the subtle. And what I love is you've given some beautiful insights with examples on different ways of understanding this power. And you begin with truth. And I love this because this is something that we were just talking about in our Sage Apprenticeship last week, where the idea of the practices bringing you back to the ultimate truth, whether it's you're looking at Kundalini Awakening or you're looking at breathwork practices that are like fires, right? They're they're burning away the dross of whatever habitual thinking might be ruminating in the mind, or whatever is lurking as shadow, as like a hefty emotion, right? And we're kind of excavating. But in that excavation, whether it's through yoga asana, breath work, meditation, or flower essence therapy, the essential goal or what we are actually just reaching to is truth. And so that truth, you called it a resonance, which I really love. And this brings me into what I really feel self-mastery is. When we are aligned with nature as nature, our nature, right? When we are aligned to this sacred law, this dharma, we are standing in the light of truth and we are a part of it all. And there is no need to question because we're in the current of that truth, which is like being a drop in the ocean, right? As we know the metaphor for ourselves in comparison to the divine. And the second thing that you shared was this trust in yourself. And I love that because that also is the like the goal of self-mastery is self-realization. So we can't have self-realization. We can't even access that truth and feel its resonance if we don't bring ourselves along, or if we don't have one foot in our own higher knowing. And so when we are including that higher knowing of the part of us that is untouched by the suffering or not colored by greed or manipulation or harm of some kind, then we start to really have faith in our choices, have trust in the power of our own seeing and it being truthful and not an illusion. And it's a powerful practice to sit and meditate or even to do yoga asana. Sometimes I can it can feel like it's cutting away everything that is not truth or anything that you cannot trust within yourself and in your environment. And yet with the flowers and with the prana, we start to also sense that it's not thorny, but sometimes it is the flower, like a divine force, will come in where maybe normally it's a whisper. I often feel the divine as a whisper, but sometimes she's like a tornado, you know, and it's like boom, you know. Or as uh my mentor from my flower essence mentor, Patricia Kaminsky. She was like, Sometimes you just take one flower essence and it's like you hit a jugular, and the next thing you know, it's just like woo, your entire life has changed, and it can be that forceful, that powerful, that beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

Yes, I have experienced that too. It's a whisper and sometimes it's a big ol' slap. And sometimes it I sometimes meditate, you know, I like to meditate with the elements. Sometimes I meditate and I am in in a flame, in a volcano, and whatever is not you is burning away. And sometimes that process, whether it's you know, a couple of years of your life and feeling like that, or a single meditation or both, it at first it's really scary. Like, is this am I gonna be okay? Am I going to survive? And also it's the the ego, the fear that the ego has of dying. Um but what you realize who you really are is so infinite and expansive that it was a blessing. Maybe in the beginning it felt otherwise, but we're always in this process of this burning off. Not always. I think once you decide to move upwards and onwards on a path of self-realization, then you're continually, the universe is like, what can we burn off once you start going that direction? But I want to tell this story of the first flower essence I ever made, which was it's it's in a story of I realized I can make them myself. I was taking them for years. I loved flowers. I had a for many years I would have an emotional reaction. I would be with a flower and sometimes I would cry and I'd be with a friend and they would say, Are you okay?

SPEAKER_01 42:18

What is going on?

SPEAKER_03 42:19

So I was always a little weird, but then I was taking flower essences and I was living in New Hampshire in this old little cottage, and there were at the time I didn't realize it, but you know, it was winter when I moved in. There was a plot in front of the little cottage I lived in that people, I guess, had just been throwing seeds in there for like hundreds of years. So it was a really magical, I was every day a new surprise. And it was the transition from winter to spring. Spring had not begun yet, and but it was just getting a little bit nice enough to sit outside. So I'm sitting outside, and all of a sudden I see out of the corner of my eye this tiny little flower that from far away looked like a light blue, but when you get closer, it had little blue stripes. It was a white flower with little blue stripes, and it's called striped squill. And I saw the flower and I just went, this is so cute. This is so sweet. I was overcome with, but it was it was a different emotion. It wasn't necessarily maybe in the past when I'd had really strong emotions from flowers, it had been helping me release and let go. This was a new moment. This was a new flower, and it was just this fresh energy, like the energy of spring is coming. There's new life. And so I said, you know what? If not, me who? Wait, I'm gonna pause right now because sorry, I'm still on my call.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

I'm gonna start my sentence over once he comes in.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

I guess he got kicked out of. Of his office. So I'm looking at the flower and thinking, if not me, who? I'm gonna make a flower essence from this flower. And it it totally changed my life because I went from someone who was, oh, someone else can make that flower essence. They know how to do it. To you know what? I'm just gonna figure this out. I'm gonna look it up, figure out how to make one, make one. And it I actually think the most powerful flower essences are the ones we make ourselves. And that flower essence, it's not one that has a lot of case studies, I don't think. But how I experienced it was here's spring, and here's this new chapter for me. And also it had a very like playful, childlike energy for me. Like, oh I can get out of it. I was stuck in like a serious energy. It was a heavy, serious winter can feel like that sometimes in New Hampshire. And it was a whole new chapter of this next phase of my life can be playful and fun. And flower essences kind of feel like magic potions. So it begun this whole chapter for me. Then I Googled Flower Essence course, and that's how I found you because I couldn't find many other flower essence courses online at the time and loved you, then found out you were from the Himalayan tradition, which is the exact type of yoga I was trying to do my 500 hour in, and was trying for many years to study with a teacher. It didn't work out. Found you, bada boom, bada bang. And you knew exactly how to weave all this together. And it was really striped squill that brought us together. Helped me walk this path. So thanks to Striped Squill. Just wanted to give a shout out.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

Yeah, now I have to meet this flower. I don't know that plant. It's really cute. Highly recommend looking it up. That sounds so good. I love that. Yeah, and I love that you found us in Plants Drop Wisdom. And I love that you continued on with the Sage Apprenticeship and that you are also a weaver in a very big way of Tantra, yoga therapy, nature, and flower essences, and bringing this into the world in the way that you do, including the 200 hour, which is, you know, if anyone's in Miami listening, please find Becca and then possibly New York, if you move to New York, then that could be a way to find you. But I was just wanting to close with actually a little honoring of the magic of flowers. And then you just said, you know, they're basically magic potions. So for those listening, I know that many people are really believers of magic and want more magic in their lives. And so, yeah, Becca, what would you say would be a way that they could do a simple connection with either a flower essence if one pops into your mind? Maybe someone that you have been working with has worked with particular essences that brought them magic, or just, I don't know, just being outside of nature, any kind of tool that you would give right now before we sign off because we're at time.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

You know, one of my favorite things about flower essences and flowers in general is sometimes the flower you need the most is already growing where you live. And so I would say the most magical thing you could do is go outside, find a flower, maybe the closest one to you, even one that looks very, if it looks mundane, oh, that's not special. I see it every day. Maybe just give yourself a moment to really look at it in flower us, as we talk about the doctrine of signatures. So the ways that flowers communicate to us, the medicine, the pattern that they hold. We can actually, we can meditate on it and use our intuition, but also we can open our eyes and see, okay, what's the color? What's the pattern here? What's the shape? How does it grow? What does it look like in relation to everything around it? And that is information and it's telling us about the medicine of the flower. You know, someone was showing me a flower the other day. Oh, what do you think this is for? Well, it kind of looks like a windmill. So you think it would move vata? It would help you just move stuck energy and create that wind inside. So we can actually trust our own intuition, sit with the flower and realize that this magic is already all around us. It's not something that you need to go find and you know, become you study for 10 years to become an expert in, and then maybe all be good enough to know. No, just go outside and be with it, but be with it in a different way with eyes wide open. Like I think it's Kierkegaard that says praying is actually listening. It's finally being quiet enough and listening. And I think that's how flower essences really work is they're placing us in a position where we're listening and receiving instead of speaking, talking, doing always on that offensive, you know. So that's that's what I would say. Just go outside. Love that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 49:04

Well, thank you so much for just talking about the flowers and yoga therapy and tantra. And I hope that all of the listeners received Becca, Reverend Becca's wisdom and are inspired to pick up some, I don't know, any of this. Uh sitting with the flowers, being out under the oak or olive trees. If you're listening, maybe from Italy, going outside in the nature and feeling the wind on your skin, having the consistency to show up to your meditation practice, being in the fire, meditating in the shower. Yeah. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

Thank you so much for staying here this long. And just to close, I wanted to say that our course, Plants Drop Wisdom, which is a flower essence certification course, is in enrollment right now. So we offer this one time a year. It's called Plants Drop Wisdom because they do. And it is perfect for meditators, people who love yoga, people who love nature, people interested in an emotional healing or mental well-being. It's great to weave in as a yoga therapist or as a taunch yoga therapist, especially people who love prana, right? So, you listening, this may be the course that you have been looking for. We go over almost a hundred flowers and we meditate on each flower that you receive in a kit. If you order a kit or you can purchase one of your own, and we meditate, we reflect on this one essence and how we receive that relationship with the plant in community. So we reflect, we hold one another, we listen to one another, and we learn from each other as mirrors on this journey. I would love to have you join us if you're interested, even just to check it out. It's the wild temple.com forward slash plants. If you've been wanting to sign up for a while now, maybe for years, now is your opportunity. We do offer this once a year. And this is Plants Drop Wisdom Level One. We do have a level two coming right around the corner, and this will be focusing on Dharma Essences. This one is focusing on the chakras and just learning a whole compendium, a beautiful toolkit of flowers that you can use for the rest of your life. All right. Please go visit us thewildemple.com forward slash plants and then roll now. Enjoy today.