Bach Flower Remedies List: All 38 by Emotional Group

A client sits down and says she is “stressed”. That word covers at least twelve of the 38 remedies, from Elm (overwhelmed by responsibility) to White Chestnut (thoughts that will not stop) to Impatiens (everything is too slow). The list below is what a practitioner has in her head during that conversation. The rest of this article is about how she gets from 38 to five.

If you want the short version of what the remedies are and how the essences are made, read our plain-language introduction to Bach flower remedies first. This page is the reference list, the consultation method, and the honest evidence position.

What are the seven groups Bach used?

Bach grouped his 38 remedies by the emotional state they address, not by plant family or symptom. The seven headings are his own, published in The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies (final edition 1936): fear, uncertainty, insufficient interest in present circumstances, loneliness, over-sensitivity to influences and ideas, despondency or despair, and over-care for the welfare of others.

The groups are uneven. Despondency holds eight remedies, loneliness only three. That imbalance tells you something about the man: Bach was a physician working in England in the 1930s, and he built the system around the states he saw most, not around symmetry. In practice the groups matter less than the individual indications, but they give a new practitioner a first sorting question: is this person mainly afraid, mainly unsure, mainly absent, or mainly worn down?

The full list of 38 Bach flower remedies

Each remedy has a one-line traditional indication. These are the indications as taught in the Bach tradition and in our course manual; they describe a mood, never a medical condition.

What is in the Rescue blend, and when is it used?

The emergency combination Bach made himself contains five remedies: Rock Rose for panic, Impatiens for agitation, Clematis for faintness or dissociation, Star of Bethlehem for shock, and Cherry Plum for fear of losing control. It is sold under trademarked names by several manufacturers; in class we simply call it the five-flower blend.

It is the one product most of your clients will already own. That is useful and a little dangerous: useful because it opens the conversation, dangerous because a client who has used it for years often assumes the whole system works the same way, as a quick fix in a moment of stress. The rest of the 38 are chosen for a person, not for an event, and a practitioner's first job is often to explain that difference.

How does a consultation narrow 38 remedies to five or seven?

By listening for the present state, not the history. Our course manual describes the consultation as four movements: intake, listening, recommendation, follow-up. Most of the hour is the second one. The Bach tradition also holds that a mixing bottle should contain no more than six or seven remedies; beyond that the choice becomes a shrug rather than a decision.

1. 1

   Intake (10 minutes)

   Name, what brings her in, what she has already tried, whether she is under medical or psychological care. You write down her words, not your labels.

2. 2

   Listening (25 to 30 minutes)

   Open questions only. “What does a bad day look like?” “What do you do when that happens?” You are listening for the current mood, because Bach's system addresses how a person is now, not how she was at twenty.

3. 3

   Sorting (5 minutes, often silent)

   You run the seven groups in your head. Fear or uncertainty? Absent or worn down? Then you pick the specific indication inside the group. Two remedies from the same group is common; five from the same group is a sign you have not listened enough.

4. 4

   Recommendation (10 minutes)

   You name each remedy and say in one sentence why you chose it, using her words back to her. If she says “no, that isn't me”, you drop it. She is the authority on her own mood.

5. 5

   Follow-up (2 to 3 weeks later)

   A shorter session. What changed, what didn't, what new state has come forward. The blend usually shifts by two or three remedies.

How are the remedies taken?

The dosage tradition is simple and consistent across makers. The concentrated stock bottles are sold in a brandy or glycerin base. From those, a mixing bottle is made: 2 drops of each chosen stock remedy into a 30 ml dropper bottle of spring water, with a teaspoon of brandy or glycerin as a preservative if the bottle will be used for more than a few days. From the mixing bottle, 4 drops, at least 4 times a day, held in the mouth a moment or added to a drink.

• Directly from stock: 2 drops in a glass of water, sipped through the day, when no mixing bottle has been made.
• Five-flower blend: 4 drops from the stock bottle, repeated as wanted; the one exception to the 2-drop rule.
• Duration: the tradition says a mixing bottle lasts about three weeks, which lines up with the follow-up interval above.
• Alcohol: a mixing bottle contains only a trace of brandy; glycerin-based stocks exist for clients who avoid alcohol entirely.

You will notice there is nothing to measure and nothing to get wrong in any way that matters physically. The doses are homeopathic-scale dilutions of flower-infused water. That fact is central to the next section.

What does the research say about Bach flower remedies?

That they perform like placebo. The systematic reviews published in the peer-reviewed literature, the best known being a 2010 review of the randomised trials, concluded that the available controlled studies show no effect beyond placebo for the conditions tested (mostly anxiety and attention). The trials are small and few, so the honest phrasing is “no demonstrated effect”, not “proven useless”. But the direction of the evidence has not changed in fifteen years.

I want to be plain about why we still teach this. The remedies are inert; the consultation is not. A 45-minute conversation in which someone names her emotional state in her own words, has it reflected back without interpretation, and leaves with a small ritual to repeat four times a day is a well-structured act of attention. That is what clients pay for, and it is what we train.

Why do people still use them, and how do we teach the skill?

Because they are cheap, safe, portable, and give a vocabulary for moods that most people have never been asked to name. In our cohorts, the students who do best with the remedies are the ones who already work in a listening role: nurses leaving bedside care, teachers, coaches, hospice volunteers. They add the 38 as a structured way to talk about feeling, and they keep the scope narrow.

The U.S. training market is tiny. Our May 2026 survey of U.S. providers found that only the Bach Centre in England authorises the registered-practitioner title (BFRP), that its approved U.S. teachers number about four to six at any time, and that a single one of them teaches in person. The full three-level path costs roughly $1,800 for about 10 contact days plus 6 to 12 months of home study. Our own certificate is a private one and is not the Bach Centre registration; the two are different documents, and you should know which one you want before you pay for either.

If you want the 38 remedies taught with the consultation skill in the same live session, our live online Bach Flower Remedies program runs 3 teaching days (21 teaching hours), plus about 19 hours of personal study between sessions, for $1,500. It is one of our shorter full programs, and most students pair it with something broader; our scope-of-practice guide explains what a non-licensed practitioner can and cannot say in either case.