About Rebecca Hunter
I have had an interest in plants and healing all my life
When I was very young, my favourite thing to do was mash up herbs and wild flowers to make potions and I spent hours absorbed in creating wild plant art – mandalas of leaves and flowers, twigs and grasses. I made my first few pennies by selling heather to passersby at the age of 7.
Healing runs in my family
My grandfather was an osteopath and naturopath and I grew up with natural healing in my family. My mother practiced shiatsu, massage and aromatherapy, my brother is a physiotherapist, my husband is an acupuncturist and my step-father was a hands-on healer and flower essence creator.
My work with flower essences began in my teens
I became interested in essences through my step-father, Arthur Bailey, who was already making his own essences and using them in his healing practice. I was fascinated by the whole subject and gave a talk as part of a school project when I was 18.
It wasn’t long before I started helping Arthur packing up the essences for his clients and creating a leaflet for him.
In 1993 we officially set up Bailey Flower Essences Ltd together
We made and sold the growing range of Bailey flower essences and also Bach flower essences.
Arthur and Chris (my mother) made the flower essences, wrote the descriptions and chose the essences for the customers. I ran the administrative side of things, learning at Arthur’s side the way that he worked and what the essences were for.
Arthur taught me to dowse and soon I began helping to prescribe essences for people over the phone, in person and on courses that we ran together.
I began to make my own essences in 2008
Sadly, Arthur died in 2008. The first essence I made outside the Bailey range was Amaryllis and it was made on the day of Arthur’s funeral. Over the next few years I made several essences and I use them in my practice today.
Making my own essences re-kindled my interest in plant communication and it’s a subject I continue to find fascinating. It never fails to make me smile (or roll my eyes) when I am drawn to a particular plant and then realize how deeply I need to learn the lesson that it has to offer.
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I am also a qualified massage practitioner and reflexologist
I qualified in Swedish Massage in 1995 and Reflexology in 1991. After having children in 2000, I stopped giving massage to the public, but continued to work with family members. I have been slowly building up my practice again starting in 2018.
We moved to Nelson in 2010
We chose to join the wonderful homeschooling community here and so inevitably family life, for me especially, became very child-focused and my flower essence business took a back seat.
I continued to run the flower essence business in England and write for the business, focusing mostly on living healthily with the five elements through the year. In 2016 I sold the Bailey business which is now run by Jenny Haworth and Nicky Whitehead under the name of Yorkshire Flower Essences.
I have been married to Stephen for 25 years and our lives have been steeped in flower essences and five elements about which we both feel passionate.