When people ask me what makes Pūraka different, I usually start with tissue salts. They're the ingredient that surprises people most — the one no other skincare brand is using. But there's another ingredient I include in several formulations that raises just as many questions when I mention it: Bach flower essences.
I've worked with Bach flower essences throughout my career as a homeopath and naturopath. I understand why they can seem unusual in the context of skincare. So I want to explain what they are, why I use them, and what I believe they bring to the products I make.
Who was Dr Edward Bach?
Dr Edward Bach was a British physician and homeopath who practised in the early 20th century. He was trained in conventional medicine but became increasingly interested in the relationship between emotional states and physical health — a connection that mainstream medicine of his era largely dismissed, but which is now considerably better understood.
Over the course of the 1930s, Bach identified 38 plant and flower-based preparations that he believed addressed specific emotional states. Not symptoms in the conventional sense, but the underlying emotional patterns that he observed in his patients — fear, uncertainty, loneliness, grief, oversensitivity.
He believed that addressing these states was fundamental to supporting the body's own capacity for balance and recovery.
His preparations are made by infusing flowers in spring water, either by sunlight or by gentle heating — a method that retains the energetic imprint of the plant without using the plant material itself. They are then preserved in brandy and used in highly diluted form.
Bach flower essences have been used in natural health practice for nearly a century. They sit within the same tradition of energetic medicine as homeopathy — working not with the biochemistry of a substance, but with something more subtle.
What they're doing in skincare
I know this is the question most people want answered. Skincare is about the skin — a physical organ. So why include something that works on an emotional level?
My answer is that the separation between emotional and physical is less absolute than we tend to assume. Stress, anxiety, and emotional depletion have well-documented effects on the skin. Cortisol — the body's primary stress hormone — disrupts the skin barrier, accelerates collagen breakdown, and contributes to inflammation. The skin is not separate from what we're experiencing internally. It reflects it.
Bach flower essences work at a level that conventional skincare ingredients do not address. I include them not because I expect them to replace the botanical oils, peptides, and tissue salts that do the structural work in my formulations — but because I believe they add something those ingredients cannot. A quality of care. An intention that the person using the product is supported in a fuller sense than just the surface of their skin.
I am aware that this is not easy to quantify. But after more than 20 years in practice, I have learned to trust what I observe, and what I observe is that the preparations I include Bach flower essences in feel different to use. There is a quality of calm that is difficult to attribute to any other ingredient.
Which essences I use and why
I don't use Bach flower essences in every Pūraka product — I use them where I feel they are specifically relevant. The Hydrating Super Serum and the Activated Charcoal Deep Cleansing Mask both contain Bach flower essences as part of their formulations.
The essences I select are chosen for their relationship to the emotional states most commonly associated with skin stress — overwhelm, depletion, hypersensitivity, and the kind of low-level anxiety that many of the women I work with carry quietly and consistently. I'm not going to name specific essences here, because the selection is part of the formulation and reflects years of clinical experience. What I can say is that nothing is included without a reason.
A note on evidence
I know that Bach flower essences are an ingredient that some people will question. That is fine — I welcome the question. Pūraka is built on the premise that every ingredient should be able to justify its presence, and I am always happy to explain my thinking.
If you have questions about the ingredients in any Pūraka product, you can reach me directly on our contact page.
I read every message, and I respond personally. That is not something many skincare founders can say — but Pūraka is not like many skincare brands.
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