Yes, But that's not actually the question that matters
When I had started teaching Bach Remedies, someone commented on my advertisement that a course is not needed, you can learn it from a ₹500 book. And I agree. You can learn a tremendous amount about Bach Remedies from a book.
You can learn the names of the 38 remedies, the traditional descriptions, the seven groups that they are divided into and also learn from the author's own comments. Also, you can underline (printed copy), compare, and come back/ refer to the same pages for as many times and as long as you want.
So if a course is going to do nothing more than read those same descriptions back to you in a slightly different order or few change of terms, the objection is completely fair.
The More Interesting Question Is What You Mean by 'Learn'
Let's say that you read the book, know the remedies by heart and are confident that you understand the system. And then, someone comes to you, and says "I have been doing ‘Haramkhori’ (Roughly, translated -“I'm wasting time, being useless and not doing what I should be doing”), can you help?”.
Which page of the book would you open then? What emotion will you look at?
Maybe you would like to treat motivation or guilt? Or maybe exhaustion or discouragement or that favourite word - procrastination? It could also be loneliness, boredom or indecision. Or would you like to play the guessing game, against the interview method, pick the closest-sounding remedy, keeping your fingers crossed?
The book can be a really useful reference about what each of those remedies means. What it can't do is help you decide which question to ask next to decipher a messy, half-formed human sentence.
Information is cheap but the actual skill is in recognition.
Actual learning usually begins when someone asks you a specific question. Let's say you chose a remedy and then you are asked “Why that remedy?”, and then are shown something that you may have overlooked, and your answer changes due to it. That moment is difficult to reproduce through reading alone, because the skill being tested isn't recall but discrimination.
Books and Live Training Aren't Enemies
Of course books are a treasure trove. There is only so much that you can learn through a course, and the authors have tons of experience that they use while writing. A serious student should still read, both before and after a course, but not instead of one. Live training does what a book structurally can't: questioning your reasoning, learning how other students view the same situation differently, and making you explain why one remedy fits better than other three that also seem to fit.
That's the actual distinction Soulvyom's Bach Flower Remedies training is built around.
About the Author
Lt Col Abhinav Sharma, SM (Retd.) is a Bach Flower Remedies practitioner and educator at Soulvyom Research LLP. He teaches Bach Flower Remedies through live comprehensive programme and also provides personalised BFR consultations. His teaching focuses not on learning the remedies but recognising and distinguishing similar emotional states and applying remedy knowledge to real conversations.
