Medicine for the Wounded Spirit: Buddleia Davidii

Alex Kay

Feb 14, 2024

2 min read

Updated: Aug 25

Buddleia; The Butterfly Bush

Buddleia is a fast-growing, hardy plant. You've probably seen it bursting out of the cracks in the pavements of your local town or city.

The butterflies and bees absolutely love the flowers.

A Dose of Inner Peace

Over recent years, Buddleia has attracted growing interest among homeopaths supporting people whose symptoms seem to have begun after overwhelming or traumatic experiences.

It’s sometimes affectionately referred to as “the homeopathic tranquilliser” because of the sense of calm practitioners observe when it’s well indicated.

My homeopath prescribed Buddleia for me a few years back and I remember the feeling of safety and peace it brought me.

Just as Silica often comes to mind when physical vulnerability is at the forefront of a case, Buddleia reminds me not to overlook the vulnerable spirit.

It’s one of the remedies I often find myself considering when acute emotional shocks and overwhelming experiences are at the centre of the case (alongside aconite, arnica and ignatia).

We can think of Buddleia for acute emotional distress following an overwhelming or traumatic event, or a series of life changes that felt too big or too quick to process.

Buddleia; Homeopathic Uses

Buddleia is known to be useful for symptoms which are centred around:

Spirit/Soul
Emotions
Spine
Head
Pituitary gland

Buddleia keynotes:

🌱 Never Been Well Since (NBWS): traumatic birth (mother & child), A blow to the head, Road Traffic accident, Abuse or alienation, General anaesthetic, Multiple changes all at once.

🌱 Absolute dread of hospitals, surgery, dentists or childbirth.

🌱 Desires sugar which makes them worse (especially nauseating headaches)

🌱 Emotional distress that seems to have remained “stuck” following an overwhelming event (or a series of big changes).

🌱 Frequent overwhelm and rising panic feelings.

🌱 Feeling emotionally or physically waterlogged (fluid retention, puffiness)

🌱 Craves tranquillity - mental congestion (mind talk has a mind of its own)

Home Prescribing Ideas:

For acute (intense or recent) emotional distress matching the Buddleia keynotes, you might give:

🌼 Buddleia 30c or 200c single dose only.

🌼 You might repeat this dose a week later (but only if distress improves, only to relapse later).

When Buddleia is the right remedy, changes are often noticed quite quickly.

So, if there’s no improvement after the first 1-3 days, this probably isn’t the remedy for you.

In practice, I find myself thinking of Buddleia less because someone has experienced a particular event, and more because their whole system still seems to be living in the overwhelm of it.

The original shock may have passed years ago, yet the body can continue reacting as though it never really found its way back to safety.

Sometimes, healing isn’t about forgetting what happened, but gently rediscovering a sense of safety.

Warmly,