How Flower Essences Led Me to Museflower

The name “Museflower” was inspired by my own healing journey with flower essences.

In fact, it was because of flower essences, I was led to Chiang Rai to experience my first ever retreat back in 2011.

In today’s blog I want to share with you my story of how flower essences led me to Museflower.

To learn more about what flower essences are and how they work, check out my last blog here:  https://musefloweretreat.com/how-flower-essences-can-balance-your-emotions/

I first heard about flower essences from my boss Linda when I was working at a resort spa in Phuket. She was studying Australian Bush flower essences in her free time and she showed me her books. That’s when the seed was planted in me.

A couple years later, I was curious if anybody offered flower essences in Thailand. I googled and found a teacher who offered flower essence retreats in Chiang Rai. I was immediately drawn to her courses and retreats, but I didn’t know when I could go. I also never traveled solo before and I didn’t have the guts to go somewhere unfamiliar by myself. I’d just keep it on my bucket list, I told myself.

Then my dad passed away suddenly in March 2011. I was already working as a successful spa manager by then and my life was tossed upside down. I resigned from my job six months later, and found that I had some holiday to clear so I contacted the teacher and decided to go to her center in Chiang Rai in November 2011. I was going for a private flower essence retreat as there were no other group retreats going on at that time.

In that retreat I learned to make flower essences, but most importantly, it was a time of self-discovery and healing for my grief. After that retreat I was inspired to sign up for a Bach Flower Essence practitioner course in Hong Kong to learn how to share this beautiful gift of nature with others.

Since then I returned to Chiang Rai a few more times for retreats, as I really loved the natural environment here and I also connected very much to my teacher. Long story short, I had the opportunity to build a new retreat center with my teacher in 2012. But then our partnership fell apart and we split the business in 2014, I again turned to flowers for help.

It was one of the darkest times of my life. I was stuck in a business project that I couldn’t leave. I became the villain in my teacher’s life. I lost complete faith and trust in myself, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt powerless and helpless. I had some support but I was far away from my family and friends back in Hong Kong. Luckily I met my husband who was helping me a lot to rebrand the retreat center.

I had to revisit my own intention of setting up a retreat center and spa. Why did I want to do it? Initially I was doing it to support my teacher. What was it for me?

I remember my dad’s depression, and how powerless and helpless I felt when I couldn’t do anything to help him. And how powerless and helpless he must have felt too, in a time when talking about emotional and mental health was still a stigma in the society.

My dad resisted a lot of the idea of taking anti-depressants, and it just made him feel more like a failure when he did take anti-depressants. All the physical and emotional suffering led him on the road to suicide.

When I was walking in the gardens of Museflower pondering my next step and my intention, a flower caught my eye. It was magenta in color with small star-like yellow flowers surrounding the center. That was it. The flower was called Zinnia.

Inspired by this flower, I started sketching the new logo. I drew a stick figure in the center of the flower reaching up to the stars. The stick figure was also in a shape of the Chinese character 火 which meant fire. There were exactly 13 tiny star-like yellow flowers in the Zinnia flower I saw, and I kept that in the drawing. The number 13 was a magical number to me.

I gained clarity with my intention of why I wanted to do this. I wanted to recreate the flower essence retreat experience that helped me tremendously, and also to add in my own twist.

Emotional health is a very important topic to me, and everything is connected to our energy. In our society, we don’t really get to learn about energy healing, intuition, and how to honor our emotions.

So I really wanted to create a safe and peaceful sanctuary for people to reconnect with themselves, and to learn holistic healing tools to help themselves.

Nature is such a powerful healer. That’s why this center is called Museflower – every flower, plant, tree, stone and everything else in nature can serve as a muse for all of us. To live with inspiration, with purpose, and with love.

It is my wish that we remember as humans, we are all part of nature, and there is so much to learn from nature about living consciously. And to remember that we are all here for a reason. We are all here to grow and evolve, and to use our unique gifts and talents and sensitivities to serve the world with love.

And it all begins within, starting with ourselves.

Book an intuitive healing session with Tania during your stay at Museflower where she always begins the session with a flower essence consultation. The intuitive healing session can also be booked as the private wellness session included in the Yoga Retreat Chiang Rai and Spa Getaway Thailand retreat package.

In our upcoming Cacao + Bhakti Yoga Retreat from Oct 3 – 6, 2024, Tania will also guide each retreat participant to pick a flower essence to help support their emotional healing journey during the retreat.