When I see Banksia, I see a psychic image of a young aboriginal girl combing her hair. Banksia as a spirit remedy combs tangles out of the vertical fibres in our aura. This can remove knots and tangles caused by over-thinking and “getting our wires crossed”, which can happen when there are misunderstandings between ourselves and others, but also when we have experiences that scramble or confuse our energy lines.

Going through an experience where you trusted someone and was then betrayed, is a classic cause of scrambled energy lines. Often in these situations the last person we have to restore trust with is ourselves. We wonder if we can trust ourselves to see clearly and we doubt our sixth sense. This can be especially damaging when our intuition has been telling us something is wrong but we have spent years dismissing it or being reassured by someone that everything is fine and we are just “imagining things”. In short, the intuitive fibres throughout our being become confused and start to doubt themselves. Banksia straightens the fibres back out, realigning our intuition with reality.

Another classic cause of scrambled energy lines is childhood abuse. In some situations, it’s the feeling of living two lives that muddles our energy lines. The energy field desperately wants to believe in the “normal happy life” and in a way, it’s almost as though we have two different energy patterns functioning within the one. An abuser can be someone who loves you and provides you with protection in one moment and then turns the knife on you in the next. This Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde contradiction is extremely confusing for the aura, so it’s no wonder our auric fibres might get tangled!

Having to keep secrets and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t, is another cause of tangled or scrambled energy lines. A dual life always disturbs internal alignment if we can’t find a way to integrate and makes sense of the two very different stories and identities we have running through our aura at the same time. Likewise, post-traumatic stress can have a similar effect, giving us the strange sense that we are living two lives simultaneously with the past trauma vividly replaying itself against the backdrop of normal daily life in our present reality.

Another image I always see with Banksia is the sleeping beauty story. For me this image contains two references relevant to the spirit medicine of Banksia. The first is sleeping beauty herself: Banksia wakes us up from slumber, from deep sleep, from a sense of not really being present here in this moment. Perhaps the sleep in question is a post-traumatic nightmare from which the client can be awakened, or perhaps it is a romantic dream that keeps sleeping beauty from being fully present in her more mundane daily reality. This brings the second ‘sleeping beauty’ reference to the fore: the idea of being rescued by a hero.

Banksia helps us to be our own hero and rescue ourselves, rather than waiting, in a slumbering half-lived state, for someone else to come along and do it for us. This aspect of Banksia’s spirit medicine is for the romantic inner child who doesn’t really want to have to grow up and be strong and responsible for him or herself. The romantic inner child is waiting for external validation to know that he or she really exists and is worthwhile. These wounds can have their roots in childhood, often in our relationships with parents.

The flip side of the coin with a hero wound is the martyred need to be the hero for everyone else whilst neglecting to be the hero for ourselves, or just about destroying ourselves in the process of needing to prove ourselves (and our worth) to others.

Omanisa makes all of her own flower, gem and colour essences from scratch. You can order essences on her Aura Remedy page.