the healing power of homoeopathy
Love is not like cake.
The more you share it, the more you have.
You might not think it with the summer so far, but hayfever seems to have been affecting many people that are not normally affected. While I have been travelling around over the summer with the Travelling Homoeopaths Collective I’ve been given some amazing opportunities to treat hayfever as it appears. What a luxury to be able to say to someone to ‘Go away and come back in a few hours’ and how wonderful to be able to see the symptoms as they appear.
Maybe it doesn’t make for good dinner-time conversation but the quality of the mucous and the number of tissues filled provokes my enthusiasm no end. And you may not have thought it, but knowing your personality helps extraordinarily in finding the remedy.
Coming back to my practice I’ve brought my new found enthusiasm for all things mucousy and it seems to be met well by new and old patients. Its so great to see all your symptoms getting better and such a joy to see the principles I have learned be demonstrated in front of my eyes.
Homoeopathically, hayfever is a fairly complex problem so it has been fantastic to gain insights through others’ experience by working with a number of excellent homoeopaths over the summer. I look forward to milking their minds again next year.
Balance is not about being fixed in one place. It is the motion of the waves of the ocean.
This is the same when we talk about health. All the words we use in conventional health are part of this common attitude. We say things like ‘cure’ and ‘fix’, when both words are also used in pickling, in keeping something in the same state for a long period of time. Why would we want to do this? If life is all about growing and learning and changing ourselves then why would we hold the attitude of wanting a ‘cure’?
If you are learning a new skill, whether it is a baby learning to walk or an adult learning to drive you would not want to eliminate all difficulties in the task. If we were to move the baby’s legs for him and hold him upright he might ‘walk’ sooner but it would be completely pointless. As soon as we step away he would fall again.
We need to do things at our own pace.
This is the same in the world of health and healing. Using any therapy or medicine, you might get the end result you require, your symptoms are gone, you are walking. But as soon as that help is taken away can you still do it on your own? I feel that this is an important part of any journey, be it health, education or something as simple as cooking a meal. You can visit any therapist, doctor or healer and it will be a factor. Are they trying to do your healing for you? The intention of the practitioner is just as important as the intention of the person requiring the practitioner.
An example is a patient that goes to a doctor with depression and is sent away with a prescription for anti-depressants and no further help. They are simply standing at the same spot on their journey. They may no longer have depression, but they have not learned how to get themselves out of that state and to take the next step. Most people accept that if someone is depressed they would need some form of counselling as well as whatever medical treatment they may want. The counselling is one form of taking that vital step and moving on. In this way the state of depression was not a punishment or a fault on the patient’s part but something positive to help him move on to the next stage in his learning.
It is the same story with any other symptom, be it emotional or physical. Experiencing no pain, suffering or symptoms is not something to aspire to. Each stumble we make helps us to learn how to walk properly. While we are alive we might aspire to feel as much as possible. It is what we learn from this that helps us progress.
Every one of us will one day reach a state where we will no longer feel any suffering or pain or symptoms. Longing for this while we are alive is a waste of life.
‘Do I need to give up coffee?’
‘Do I need to change my diet?’
‘Do I need to change my exercise routine?’
There are many questions like those above that I am asked at the beginning of treatment.
I think that most often the question needs to be reflected back to the questioner…’What do you think?’ Even by having only a mild interest in any of the media focus on diet and exercise at the moment we can see that there are many inconsistencies and contradictions. One day it is bad for us. The next day it is the universal panacea, and can magically cure every problem under the sun.
I am not a dietician and rarely give any dietary or exercise advice. What I do say is have an awareness of what you need and what makes you feel better. If exercise makes you feel better then it is your responsibility to keep that up, likewise with diet and lifestyle. The awareness in itself if one of the best tools for health (I would even say its better than homoeopathy) but it isn’t easy and takes time. However, guilt over eating something bad for you or not exercising enough is much more harmful.
If you are honest with yourself then you are more than half way there.
Before the big bang we were all part of the same tiniest particle. Physicists say that if two particles are formed together they are always connected (Entanglement theory). So that means that everyone and everything is connected throughout all space and time.
Is this how one person can make a difference?
By healing yourself or doing something positive you are in fact healing and helping every other being in the universe. By helping someone else you also help yourself.
A fear of death is only a fear of a wasted life.
To be brave we must know what it is to be afraid.
To be strong we must accept our own vulnerabilities
To be wise we must also be the idiot.
By accepting our faults we allow our strengths to grow. They grow from the same soil.
This story (slightly rephrased) was told in ‘Like the Flowing River’ by Paulo Coelho.
A Moroccan tribe have this idea of how original sin came about.
Snake: Eat the apple.
Eve: No I mustn’t.
Snake: But you need to be more beautiful for Adam.
Eve: No I don’t. There are no other women, so it is just the two of us.
Snake: No. He has another woman. He hides her in that well over there.
Eve walks over to the well with the snake. She peers over the ledge and glistening in a pool of dark water, peering right back at her is the most beautiful woman she has ever seen.
Out of fear and jealousy she eats the apple.
The tribe say that paradise is to be regained by anyone who can look at their own reflection and feel no fear.
As with many questions in homoeopathy the answer is not so simple.
Homoeopathy treats every person as a complete individual. This means that it is nearly impossible to say how quickly or how well anyone will respond to treatment.
Everyone responds to symptoms in a different way and consequently everyone responds to remedies differently.
The aim of homoeopathic treatment is to treat from within, at the cause of the problem rather than simply ‘fixing’ symptoms, which helps to make any improvement more permanent. As the cause of a problem has stronger roots in some people than others this means that some people take longer to heal, some take no time at all.
Many patients will notice a change within moments of taking a remedy (often in more short term problems) whilst for others it may take a few weeks. A guide I like to give is that I would personally expect to see a marked improvement after three sessions if they are kept at 4-6 weeks apart. I have found from experience that spending more time initially allows for a greater improvement and thus subsequent appointments can be booked as you feel you need them.
Preventative healthcare is often the best way of keeping your health at an optimum. Where possible I recommend taking the time to do something (homoeopathic or otherwise) continually to boost your wellbeing, rather than waiting until you are unwell.