the Bach Flower Remedy:
Vine

Vine: Remedy from the set of the Seven Helpers

About this music

Realised once only in performance for flute and piano.

Rhythmically, this is one of the most challenging of the Remedy pieces with an opening section in a fast 13/8 metre (3 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2). Gradually the manic energy slows down and settles and then energy slows down and settles and then expands into a strong 4/4 melody with syncopation.

Lyrics for Vine

Vine is an instrumental piece.

About Vine, the Bach Flower Remedy

Noah after his long voyage in the Ark was the first tiller of the soil – he planted a vineyard. The domestication of the grapevine began in the Caucasus region and spread throughout Europe and the Middle East.

Bach seemed drawn at this stage of this journey to plants which quite specifically had a long history of association with people; plants whose basic patterning had been modified by the demands of human cultivation. One quality of the Helper remedies is that they relate to the circumstances of adults who have grown sick as a result of their way of living. These are remedies for people who have been ill for a long time. Vine is for people who are ‘critical and exacting’. But the vine itself has lived in a chronic relationship with human beings and suffered at the hands of civilisation.

Left to grow in the wild, a young grapevine might be thirty or forty metres long; an old one might be hundreds of metres. Vines hang climbing over and through the branches of trees trailing across the ground. But these wild vines bear no useful fruit and so cultivated forms were bred to carry more favourable characteristics: plump fleshy fruits which are full of juice and flavour.

To grow grapes the plant must be approached with a defined purpose; getting from it what is wanted. Pruning, tying, forcing the growth into a chosen form. Whatever the age of the grapevine it is always cut back to a stump. When the spring comes a few shoots begin to grow. The farmer selects the ones he wants and the rest are removed. The same process continues with the flowering stalks and then with the fruits. Constant cutting and interference, limiting natural growth. Propagation is by cutting or grafting: more manipulation.

If we could identify with the grapevine, what might we feel? The depression and hopelessness of the Helper remedies; despair perhaps and maybe a sense of fury and frustration. The Vine emotional state is said to involve a need to control, to dominate and enforce the will upon others – precisely what grapevines suffer at the hands of man.

What has happened to people in the Vine state? They have found every impulse to self-expression ripped out or limited. Each time they put out a new shoot it was cut or tied or trained into a particular form. Whatever the individual story, the Vine types begin to learn that the only way to gain control is to follow that example and become in turn bullying, dominating, forceful adults. It is a learned approach to life.

Before the interference of cultivation, Vine contained the basic disposition of the remedy state. The growing shoot searches for a support and ‘after a tendril has clasped any object with its extremity it contracts spirally; but this does not occur when no object has been seized.’

This reflects the habit of the Vine person who only bullies those who can be seized upon.

Vines are made to grow in many different soils, but wild vines grow naturally where the soil is red. The strength of the Vine remedy state owes much to the powerful soil in which the plants grow. The colour comes from iron, and links with the fire and fury of the emotional state.

People in the Vine state: ‘are sure that they know what is right, both for themselves and for others. They wish for everything just in their own way.’

This urge for dominance is observable in the vineyard where every other plant is eradicated. Wild vines run riot by comparison in a fluid growth of freely-expressed form; let it be, let it explore the life opportunity, that is the message. Vine people give orders to those helping them, and it is this domineering control which is damaging. Where Rock Water is strict with self, Vine is strict with others. Like Rock Water, the Vine remedy softens and soothes the heart. The positive side of the Vine remedy is based upon a need to give. If each tree is known by its fruit, then grapes are renowned for their flavour and usefulness. Vine therefore is a story of almost violent contrasts.

‘For very many their greatest battle will be in their own home, where before gaining their liberty to win victories in the world they will have to free themselves from the adverse domination and control of some very near relative.’

It is in the family that Vine behaviour will be learned and reinforced and in the family that gentleness, love and freedom can shape the future life. The Vine remedy has the potential to break the powerful legacy of dominance and control so often handed down from generation to generation.

This account of this Bach Flower Remedy is based on the book Bach Flower Remedies : Form and Function by Julian Barnard.

For full information see HealingHerbs.co.uk→.

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