Yarrow is a plant skilled in clearing and repairing boundaries. I’ve long relied on Yarrow Flower Essence to help strengthen my own energetic boundaries, and I’ve seen it help other sensitive people find relief from the emotionally cloudy and often exhausting and debilitating effects of weakened boundaries with it as well.
Yarrow: Herbal Uses and Energetics
In herbal practice, Yarrow’s affinity is for clearing away that which has invaded to the core and helping to repair boundaries afterward. Medical herbalists use yarrow to staunch bleeding in deep wounds, reduce fever that’s reached the point where it causes delirium and restlessness, and to aid in healing digestive disorders with strong inflammation like colitis. In energetic-based herbal traditions, yarrow is described as cooling and drying with an affinity for moving deep, stuck energies. Most herbalists who work with yarrow have at least one story in which yarrow seemingly performed rapid and almost miraculous healing of a deep wound or fevered conditions.
One of the seeming contradictions of yarrow is that it can cause the same conditions that it cures. Anyone who’s tried yarrow for a nosebleed knows exactly what I’m talking about. Yarrow can cause bleeding because it moves clotted or stagnant blood (or other fluids or materials) as well as it helps to create them (as when it helps deep wounds to clot and begin to repair quickly). Yarrow can induce a fever or help alleviate one, too. I’ve experienced that first-hand. For the most part, it seems that yarrow causes the conditions it eases when those conditions are the best and necessary path to a stronger, more deeply healed state. In herbal practice, yarrow doesn’t just work randomly, it works specifically.
Yarrow Flower Essence Properties and Uses
As a flower essence, yarrow’s affinity is for Empathic or Highly Sensitive individuals. We’re a lot who are naturally more open to the energies of the world around us than most, making us both more powerful and more vulnerable at the same time. As such, we’re prone to letting the world too far in. We may feel the emotions or physical conditions of our loved ones (human or non-human) as if they are our own. We may pick up on the energies of the room, home, neighborhood, or place we’re in…or that of the places that are most closely linked with the homes of our hearts. We may pick up and internalize some or all of that without realizing it, giving rise to chronic depression, anxiety, and a variety of vague diagnoses we can’t quite seem to cure. Truly, it can be quite frustrating, lonely, and enraging to be so open in a culture where sensitivity is often scoffed. Yarrow Flower Essence is suited perfectly to helping us clear away the invasive energies that throw us off balance, releasing the anger and frustration that’s built up, and repairing our energetic boundaries.
I see Yarrow Flower Essence as a battlefield medicine of sorts. Early in my own experience, I relied heavily on it to get through daily life. As I began to change my lifestyle to better support my nature, and I got used to what it feels like to be just me, I found I relied less on Yarrow to just get through the day. Now, I return to Yarrow Flower Essence during times of growth, transition, stress, or change, but it’s no longer a daily or even weekly partner. As I grew and came into my own, so to speak, my own boundaries strengthened and I grew into my capacities, making my life less a daily battlefield filled with invading forces and more a playing field with appropriate opportunities for time-outs and proper protective gear. I suggest Yarrow Flower Essence when I suspect someone has not yet grown into his or her own on an empathic or intuitive level, as is often the case with Highly Sensitive adolescents as well as with a surprising number of caregivers and folks in the healing professions.
How-to Use Yarrow Flower Essence: Formulas
Try Yarrow Flower Essence when you notice that you’ve got lingering anger, depression or sadness, or other emotions that don’t seem to have an origin, particularly when you notice that those around you seem to often have those same emotions. If you notice that you tend to feel the emotional vibe of the room when you enter, like knowing before anyone says anything how folks are feeling or recognizing the general feeling of the party before or just as you join them, you may find Yarrow Flower Essence helpful as well. Even if you don’t identify yourself as Highly Sensitive, Empathic, or Intuitive, you may be picking up on the energies of the group and resonating with them unconsciously, creating a situation in which your boundaries become unclear and muddled with others. Yarrow Flower Essence can help you bring that to a conscious level, allowing you to learn how to let it go so you can bring your own energy to the table rather than being overwhelmed with that of the group.
Yarrow Flower Essence pairs well with flower essences that help release deep-seated emotions, like Yerba Santa, Larrea, and Crab Apple. Folks who struggle with feeling ungrounded or spacey in accompaniment with overly sensitive may want to try pairing Yarrow Flower Essence with Manzanita flower essence to help them integrate more strongly with their physical existence while clearing and strengthening their boundaries. Queen Anne’s Lace flower essence can also be helpful when paired with Yarrow Flower Essence to help one make sense of the emotional-energetic mess they’re clearing, making it easier to stay balanced, recognize what needs to go, and let it go so that boundaries can be made clear.
