Candice Covington | Secrets of Vibrational Healing with Plants

Friends,

After reading Candice Covington’s book, Essential Oils in Spiritual Practice: Working with the Chakras, Divine Archetypes, and the Five Great Elements, I reached out to her to see if she would be interested in writing a blog post for the Bathtisma Droplets blog. To my pleasant surprise, she said yes. In her recent post, Candice shared how to use one of the Five Great Elements to create mindful outcomes in your life.

It was my great pleasure to meet Candice, and now, she has opened the door for us all to get to know a little bit more about her in this post, A Conversation with Candice.

-Gina Payne, Founder of Bathtisma

Candice, in addition to being a published author and Founder or Divine Architypes, you are a healer. Can you tell me how you got started as energy worker?

I was born with a strong natural predilection towards energy healing with plants as the vehicle. My mother tells stories about me, grade school age, where I would wander the surrounding area picking weeds and wildflowers; bring them home and lay my mother on the couch, rub them on her feet, and tell her elaborate stories about what they were doing for her. She is always quick to add that I was self-directed in these activities! I believe my dharma is energy healing with plants and I incarnated with lifetimes of experience.

I just turned 50 in July (to give you context) and when I was coming up, it was more difficult to find courses that taught formal energy work. So, a lot of my knowing is from mentorships and self-experimentation. In fact, my first book Essential Oils in Spiritual Practice: Working with the Chakras, Divine Archetypes, and the Five Great Elements started out as my journal exploring my own healing journey. As classes became available, I did seek certifications in massage therapy, aromatherapy, panchakarma, and herbology.

That being said, I have been blessed to work in amazing environments, the foremost is the Chopra Center. I would say this helped me understand energy work more than anything. I was the aromatherapist for Chopra Center events and my job was to listen to lectures, including Deepak Chopra and guest speakers (such as Eckhart Tolle, Marianne, Williamson and Ervin László) take the core of their lecture and translate that into what essential oil(s) would help facilitate whatever the topic was into our guests lives. The topics explored were always esoteric in nature and often had an Eastern philosophic bend, this was a profound way to learn energy work.

Thank you for sharing your personal story, and what an amazing experience you have had with your work at Chopra Center!

I am glad you brought up your book, Essential Oils in Spiritual Practice, in it, you talk about vibrational healing; Can you give a summary of this concept for readers?

Sure! It is well established that who we really are is not only the physical molecules that make up our body, but also the energy that suffuses our being and expresses itself through our thoughts and feelings. The subtle layer of who we are: a field of energy, one can be influenced by the vibrational and energetic qualities of nature. Since we are vibrational beings in a constant state of flux, a significant key to our well-being and growth is reinforcement of our desired energetic patterns, as these lead to behaviors, thoughts and feelings.

In my book, Essential Oils in Spiritual Practice, I highlight the role of essential oils (distilled plants) and the specific vibrational pattern of each oil profiled. This can be understood as an energy pattern with a precise and unique structure or signature. When these energetic signatures resonate with our own natural vibrational patterns, we can use them to fine-tune our own energetic bodies and create states of being. This is very impowering for cultivating positive states and healing discordant ones.

I found what you wrote on essential oils very interesting. I have been working with essential oils for the past few years. I have small collection of oils that I use for aromatherapy, healing, and in my daily rituals. Speaking of rituals, do you have any go-to rituals, an if so, can you talk a little bit about what it entails?

Bathing! I take a ritual bath daily; the tenor of the bath depends on what I have going on. I find the combination of essential oils, salt, and water incredibly powerful. For example, before I worked on our Q and A, I took a ritual bath using Blue Chamomile (helps you to communicate your understanding from your knowledge base) and Frankincense (helps you find the right words). It is more difficult for me to sum up a concept then to write a chapter, so I harnessed the power of these two oils to help me. Bathing is also my go to for meditation, working on my emotional body, adding or getting rid of behaviors, and exploring new concepts.

I often use my bath blends as on oracle, to see what either my deep-self or the Universe has in mind for me. I suggest to your readers they spread your Bathtisma Bath Soaks out along the counter top--close their eyes, take a few deep breaths—and then ask: “what does the Universe or my deep-self want me to know/understand/work on today?” Using your left hand (without peeking) hover over each soak and feel for which one is more energetically active. You may feel a cold tingling sensation, heat, or just a strong knowing. Then read all the information and affirmations provided and meditate on this while you bathe and see what comes to light.

Bathtisma Balanced Bath Soak | Clary Sage + Geranium

Editor note: In her blog post, Mindful Outcomes, Candice recommends Balanced because of its "infinity for working with emotions, both dissolving heavy aspects and amplification of positive ones. Also, bringing into vivid focus the sensual aspects of life have that be ripe sexuality or sensual earthy pleasures such as art, fragrance, food, music, poetry, and so on. "

I see we have something in common- bathing rituals! And thanks for that great tip to readers about choosing the right Bathtisma bath soak for their ritual bath!

In one of our conversations, you told me you are working on a new book. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

I will be exploring floral absolutes. Many flowers are too delicate for steam distillation (most essential oils are steam distilled. Instead, they are created in a similar manner to the ancient method of enfleurage. The extraction process uses only certified organic solvents such as fixed oils and alcohol to coax the aromatic essence out of the plant material. The resulting bio-available essence is extracted very gently without added heat and captures the intricate aroma of the original plant material.

A few of the absolutes I will be profiling are: Madonna Lily, brown boronia, orris root, narcissus, and black current bud. The scents are transcendent and each energetic signature is refined, addressing some of the more fascinating aspects of being human, such as: since our thought processes is not neutral, how do you gain fresh insight and have ah-ha moments? How do you get to the nexus of a first cause that creates a ripple effect, then understand and work with that energy? How do you look through the, mirror darkly, and examine internal shadow energies? What flower imparts passionate love rooted in another?

Also, I think the blending section is fun! I will teach the reader how to use the absolutes profiled to blend the essence of a poem, a work of art, and select myths.

I am working on the art section right now and Mars and Venus United by Love (1570) Paolo Veronese, will be one of the featured paintings.

The Met describes it as such: ‘In this visually opulent and sensual painting, Cupid binds Mars (the god of war) to Venus (the goddess of love) with a love knot. It celebrates the civilizing and nurturing effects of love, as milk flows from Venus’s breast and Mars’s warhorse is restrained.’

The image will be provided in my book as a prompt and as you can see these are universal themes and depending on where you want to go with it, you can pick a vein and focus there, or blend the painting as a whole.

Where it gets interesting is many flowers will have a direct correspondence to a god or goddess, other times you will choose your absolute based on the feeling and/or vibration of the plant. Imagine how incredible it is to diffuse the essence of this painting or wear it as a natural perfume! It is too deep to get into now, but I hope I gave you a big enough bite to pique your interest!

Oh, my Gosh, I absolutely love the concept of blending the absolute essences with art and literature! I can't wait to read the book when it comes out!

Candice, thank you so much for taking the time to let me and readers get to know you a little better!