The Alternative Healer

Bedwetting

Occasionally I get follow-up “through the grapevine.”

About a month ago I treated a patient in his late teens for intractable bedwetting. Scheduling of follow-up had been delayed, and I had made a note to call the mother. Then I got a message from a woman regarding treatment for her grandson who had bedwetting. The second part of the message was that this particular teen had a dramatic response to his remedy and that his bedwetting was gone, therefore the call.

So that’s how I got follow-up on this bedwetting case. It brings to mind a couple important points:

1) People generally cling to a 1st level understanding of how healing occurs. That is, when they seek to understand if treatment in my clinic can restore health, they check to see if someone else with the same diagnosis has had results. From my perspective, the critical factor is whether I can take a crystal-clear case down to the 4th level. Any number of different prescriptions could cure a case of bedwetting. The diagnosis becomes more important when the disease on the physical level becomes severely debilitating or life-threatening, e.g. cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus, other severe auto-immune disease, and such. At that point, diagnosis becomes more important in prognosis. In general, if a person’s health is not yet severely debilitated, assume that it is curable with good homeopathic treatment. Moreover, many cases of severely debilitating illness can still go to cure.

2) Many assume that when their physical diagnosis is better, i.e. when they are better on the 1st level, it makes sense to cease treatment. This creates some tension, because from my perspective, treatment should stop when the 4th level has clearly shifted. Often this occurs long after the physical symptoms are improved. Using this case of bedwetting as an example, there are some obvious emotional issues that go along with a young adult who wets the bed. In taking the case, there will likely be issues of dependency and fear. You can usually get a clue to the deeper aspects of the case by asking what the bedwetting prevents him from doing; this often opens a door down to the 4th level.

The important thing to realize is that treatment should conclude when the person is free from the deep fears. Of course, the fears will likely have had a significant shift when the bedwetting resolves, but it is usually not all the way gone. This is to look at health from the perspective of “inner freedom,” rather than simply a freedom from physical illness alone. Physical disease always has certain “inner hooks” within the psyche of the patient. These inhibit at the emotional level as well as the physical. In the case of this teen, there were confidence issues that I wanted to see resolve. Usually it takes a number of months longer for this inner freedom to occur after the physical ailment has resolved.

The Unhealing Wound: The Patient's Story

In my last post, I briefly described a case of homeopathic Agathis australis (the New Zealand kauri tree). I gave the doctor’s side of the case. Today I am posting the patient’s side. As promised, she sent me her detailed account of what happened after she took the remedy. You may want to review my last post, The Unhealing Wound, before continuing.

For people unfamiliar with classical homeopathy, I should mention that intense reactions occur to a correct remedy less than 5% of the time. I do not often see it. Nevertheless, this is such a case. Realize that taking a homeopathic remedy does not produce anything that is not already there. If the body (and mind) has held on to a lot of toxicity, a good remedy helps in expelling it. Realize also, in relation to this case, that classical homeopathy is the best way to cure someone of herpes outbreak. This patient is very unlikely to see an outbreak of it again. Her outbreak, in some mysterious way, needed to occur for her to heal.

Detoxifying reactions exist, and this is such a case. This patient’s reaction to the remedy was dramatic in a holistic way; that is, both the mind and the body reacted vigorously. In spite of its difficult content, I am happy to post what she has to say, because it shows first, just how complex healing can be when it is deep, and second, how profound classical homeopathy is when the healer hits the mark. The point is that the emotions life brings to us can be terribly complex, and healing may take us straight into them. Those who are interested in an unvarnished look at the complexities involved are in for a treat. I thank her for her candor. Her story follows:

The night I took the Kauri remedy was like any other night. Nothing stood out of the ordinary. In fact, I dreamed nothing and, upon waking, I still felt the same. Perhaps this day I woke up feeling more tired than usual. What I did know was that it was still very wintery cold outside and I was slightly depressed.

Another day passed and I still felt bad. I found myself wading around in a thick soup of emotions surrounding an incident with a minister who I had seen for spiritual counseling. It was nearing the one-year anniversary of when I filed paperwork that would start another difficult ethics investigation into his sexual misconduct. During the investigation, this man had promised the Ethics Committee that he would set up a meeting so that he could apologize to me face-to-face. Said meeting never happened. This man and his ethics violation robbed me of four years of my life and vitality. I was angry that I never got an apology.

The third day greeted me with an overall sense of fatigue and lethargy and a menstrual period that arrived a week and a half early. I dragged myself out of bed (like I usually did on cold dark mornings) and managed to get myself to work on time. Mid-morning, I felt as though I suddenly hit a brick wall. My joints ached and every bone in my body hurt. Then the chills emerged. The rigors I experienced nearly shook me off my chair. These symptoms manifested so quickly that I at first thought it was a nasty case of influenza. To be safe, I phoned Dr. Branch to let him know what was happening.

The drive home was long and painful as the intensity of my physical symptoms brought me to tears. I felt as though my joints were filled with searing hot liquid and that they would explode if I exerted myself too much. Strangely, I also felt as though all my bones where completely separate from my joints and that everything was stacked on top of itself with only my skin holding everything intact. Once home, I piled blankets on top of my bed and crawled inside and shivered myself to sleep. By evening, my fever burned brightly and continued for three days. I slept a lot and ate little.

During this time, my body started expelling all kinds of toxins. I was constantly changing my bedclothes as “night sweats” soaked the sheets. No longer able to smoke cigarettes because I was so ill, I was coughing up mucus continuously. And then I was coughing so hard that I discovered what “stress incontinence” was all about. My urine smelled like horse urine and stung like acid every part of my skin that it touched. My throbbing lymph nodes were nearly the size of large marbles. I had never been this sick in my life but I also knew that toxins and built-up stress chemicals were exiting my body. I began to marvel at my body’s healing ability until I got out a mirror and discovered what the stinging urine was really trying to tell me. I was horrified and repulsed by what I saw.

Herpes.

Intuitively, I knew what it was even though I had never before seen it on my body or anyone else’s. I didn’t even know where it came from. I had been in a monogamous relationship for the past two years and both my partner and I thought we were clean. In disbelief, I sat down and cried—my head started to spin from all of the emotions I was feeling. After confirming with a Nurse Practitioner that it really was Herpes, I called Dr. Branch to fill him in on this latest development. In his usual inquisitive fashion, he asked what I was feeling.

One word came out of my mouth: “SHAME.”

“…Now everyone will know what I’ve been doing. I am dirty and tainted. No one will love me ever again.”

After hanging up, I started to cry again and once these tears started, they flowed for three days. I never felt more alone and abandoned in my life. I felt such overwhelming emotional and spiritual pain as though I was facing complete annihilation. Shame poured out with my tears and continued to flow out of every pore in my body. Then the grief came.

At first it was a trickle. Then it became a torrent. Waves of grief poured from the depths of my soul. With my body being so weakened from four days of fever, I could not maintain old defense systems that previously kept these emotions at bay. I cried so freely and easily that for the first time in my life, big wails and sobs came deep from within and shook my entire body. Tears tasted old and mucus ran thick like molasses.

Memories of past sexual abuse floated to the surface. I sat and witnessed myself as a little girl losing my sexual innocence in a swimming pool to a cousin. I mourned lost innocence. I saw myself again being drugged and date raped and sat with myself in compassion despite my poor choices. I sat there witnessing the many sexual transgressions and victimizations that peppered my life and felt myself filling up with love and compassion. I sat there holding myself in the light as I watched how time and time again I put my health and safety in the arms of another man—how I would blindly trust him with my life—how I gave away my power in exchange for what I thought was love. And at the same time, I took a good look at myself and how I used sex and my seductive power to manipulate and meet my needs. I saw victim and victimizer all at once.

The more I watched these scenes float by, the more compassion I felt for myself. By the time that I had no tears left to cry, my heart felt like it expanded three feet outside my chest. It hurt to have a heart this big and to love so much. I felt so exposed and vulnerable. Simultaneously, I felt tender and sweet. Illuminated in pure white innocence, my past ended and my future began. I reclaimed my virginity.

Once I was able to process these intense emotions, I realized how much my toxic shame colored my relationship with the world and myself. I had always felt that there was something inherently wrong with me—that if people knew who I really was, that they would not love me. I was so dirty and tainted that no one could love me anyway. After all, I was an illegitimate child born in shame to a 14-year old mother and given up for adoption. I had experienced sex at a very young age and even then, I inherently knew it was wrong. I remember as a child wanting to become a nun in the Catholic faith that I was raised in—but I sincerely believed that God would not want me because I was sexually impure and, therefore, unworthy. As an adult, I still felt this way. This barrier of shame and unworthiness kept me from loving myself and from truly connecting with others in a positive healthy way. Robbed of my joy, I would attract relationships and life situations based on this woundedness.

I struggled to disown my shame. In doing so, I became even more disconnected from my Self. I felt as though my personality were fractured. As strange as this sounds, I was well aware that different aspects of my Self had never really gotten acquainted with one another. This lack of integration diminished my power while keeping me in a perpetual victim state and more prone to codependency.

Now that I no longer carry this burden of Shame, I cannot believe how my life has shifted. In the week that my body was going through the healing crisis, I lost 10 pounds. (I feel that much of this was actually emotional and spiritual baggage.) Additional weight started to melt off my body because I no longer feel the need to “fill” my bottomless stomach and maintain physical boundaries with a thick layer of body fat. I’ve quit smoking and drinking caffeine as I have no desire to create ill health. I am eating to nourish my body instead of stuffing it with food. For the first time in my life, I feel happy, healthy, and WHOLE!

Interestingly, a wart fell off my left hand a week after the healing crisis ended. And those little ulcers in my nose disappeared.

As for the Herpes, well, the sores healed within three days after they first presented themselves and I have not had another outbreak since. I feel as though I have a platoon of little armed foot soldiers guarding the entrance to my sacred cave. Their presence is assisting in helping me maintain healthy sexual boundaries. I ended the sexual part of my relationship with my partner of two years (who, by the way, tested negative for Herpes) and am going to remain celibate for a while—until I find the man who wants to father my future children and grow old with me. If anything, disclosing that I have Herpes will separate the men from the boys. I am not bitter about this because I feel as though I am blessed and deeply healed. Anyhow, this virus is not who I am. Herpes showed me what I desperately needed to see in myself. I have a feeling that it will go dormant and I will never have to deal with it again. If the Herpes does resurface, it is obviously going to tell me something important.

My experience with the Kauri remedy has been absolutely amazing. I continue to interact with my world in a much more positive and healthy way. I notice little things—like looking in the mirror and seeing a fully-grown woman. To the average person this may not seem important, but I had literally felt like a child much of the time. I have become more grown-up but I have also become younger at heart (people have also told me that I look younger!). I am less rigid and more flexible with my world and myself. I am more capable of forgiveness. My dreams are more vivid and powerful. I am more able to remain true to myself and stay on my life’s path. And I never thought I could honestly say this, but I feel beautiful…and I even love myself!

Unexpected circumstances and disappointments may still catch me off guard, but I bounce back and regain my centeredness much more quickly. Recently, I found myself reacting to a situation where I felt betrayed by a spiritual teacher I had studied with for two years. The feelings and emotions were so intense that I found myself back in my old depressive pattern of negative rumination and irrational thinking. At one point, fear gripped me when I thought I might get stuck feeling that way. Those little nose sores even returned. I called Dr. Branch to let him know I relapsed and he instructed me to repeat a dose. Within two days, I was laughing at myself and pondering, “What in the world got me so upset?” I was able to ground myself so that I could see the truth in the situation and realize that it had nothing to do with me. How powerful and liberating that was!

I am still baffled at how quickly things shift for me every time I take one 30C dose of Kauri. I have been through years of therapy and I am certain that many more years of therapy would still have not gotten me to the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual place where I am today. When I first met Dr. Branch, I knew that Homeopathy stimulated the body’s natural healing response—but I did not fully understand that an immune response could actually heal a wound (shame) caused by abandonment and betrayal. I am so grateful that Dr. Branch found my matching remedy before I developed any physical manifestation of disease. Now that I know what it actually feels like to be happy, whole, and healthy, I can only imagine what diseases I would have suffered had I continued to trudge through years of dark and putrid toxic shame.

The Case of the Unhealing Wound

I have one case particularly useful in educating people on classical homeopathy, and specifically, what I mean by “4th level” prescribing. I have included a diagram of the levels below to help bring understanding. There is an added opportunity, because the patient in this case is writing about her experience and will make an appearance on this blog. My explanation, the diagram, and the patient's input taken together should provide a deeper look.

She presented with depression, low self-confidence, inability to concentrate, and complained of being “whacked” emotionally, by which she meant being “super-emotional” and “frequently on the verge of tears.” Easily “knocked off her base,” she found it increasingly easier to stay alone, mainly because of her tendency to change herself to fit her idea of what other people wanted of her. Even though she had plenty of friends, she felt alone anyway. She described her aloneness as “the empty set…emptiness.” She also told me

I have gone thru periods where you eat because you feel better, where you just keep eating until you can’t eat anymore…knowing you have something you need to fill.

Another important part of her case was a strong need for connection. She had been adopted and felt that she had “never bonded with her mother.” She romanticized about finding a soulmate and being “at one with the universe.” Describing herself as “mystic”, she had an intense searching in a spiritual direction, for union with God. On the other hand, she had reached a point where she felt “cut off” from other people and God. This experience of being cut off she also described as “disconnected” and “fractured”:

Just the fluidity of who I am is not there... all separate pieces but nothing really melds together.

On the basis of these feelings I gave her a homeopathic remedy from the conifer (pine tree) family of remedies. It didn’t work. It took me a while to figure out that I gave the wrong tree in this family.

Over the time I treated her an important part of her story was a romantic relationship that had developed with a minister she had originally sought out for spiritual counseling. She came out from this relationship feeling “betrayed” and “wounded.” Every time she came back there was no change in this. Early in each follow-up she returned to this same story and the wound it had opened in her.

I became more determined to hunt down the specific conifer she needed. In reviewing everything in detail, I found it notable that a main remedy for “longing for a soulmate” was the huge tree Sequoia. I considered giving her this remedy, but parts did not fit. I went over her physical symptoms again, looking for clues that would mark a confluence point. I then looked closely at these words of hers:

I have always had these little ulcers in my nose, worse in winter, but they never heal, little ulcers, like little cuts, and they hurt. They sting. They are painful
It’s just like a wound. Open and raw skin, when the air is dry, my nose bleeds. It always reminds me that they are…
Open wounds, every time you blow your nose you are reminded of them, all I have to do is move my mouth, and they are torn open again. A week by the sea completely healed them

This idea of a bleeding, ulcerating wound that never healed began to suggest a 4th level confluence point between her physical symptoms in her nose and the emotional wound she had from betrayal.

Searching in the family of conifers, I found the following excerpt written about a tree in New Zealand, the kauri tree, latin name Agathis australis.

The resinous gum…oozes (in the case of old wounds, for hundreds, even thousands of years) from damaged branches forming stalactites aloft and corresponding stalagmites upon the tree's mighty roots and the forest floor below. Indeed this gum, which in the Victorian era had commercial value as a furniture polish, was 'bled' from the trees in the manner of maple syrup, while solidified deposits were dug up from logged forest sites. Lumps of aged resin used to be a common find, washed up on Northland beaches.

The kauri tree has an unhealing wound. I gave her this remedy, and the result was dramatic. I will leave it to her to give the details of her response and post them as soon as available. The chart below outlines how I thought about this case:

click for larger diagram

Getting Off Anti-Depressants

How to get off anti-depressant drugs—and psychotropic, mind-altering drugs in general—is an issue I deal with it all the time in my practice. It was interesting to read the story of one man’s journey on and off anti-depressants, as detailed in an article in the New York Times Magazine. Find it at Self Non-Medication In this article much important information is discussed, and I recommend it for anyone taking anti-depressants.

My general policy in my practice is that when the patient is getting better, and I see improvements in their well-being and their state, then I have a discussion on tapering off anti-depressants. Overall, most of my patients have not encountered much difficulty. Occasionally it will be bumpy, mainly because the homeopathic case needs more attention.

Even when feeling good, there are good reasons for people to get off anti-depressants. One is the “numbing effect” that anti-depressants tend to have. One often does not experience a full-range of emotion while on them. This is discussed in the New York Times article. Perhaps the best known side-effect is the loss of sexual desire, which I commonly see in people taking them. There are also issues of weight gain in certain people--a common issue in psychotropic medications. One thing not talked about much is the effect anti-depressants can have on dental health. Because they tend to reduce saliva in the mouth, and saliva is a major factor in the health of the gums, anti-depressants can predispose to bacteria overgrowth and the resulting bad effects of gum disease. Anti-depressants likely have other harmful long-term effects on certain individuals that are difficult to pick up.

In getting off an anti-depressant, one important consideration is the half-life of the particular drug. The half-life refers to the time any given drug stays in the blood stream before it is broken down and excreted. Those with short-half lives—such as Zoloft and Effexor--often are much more difficult to discontinue. If there is a problem, the doctor can switch the patient to Prozac, which stays in the blood stream a long time and gradually tapers off by itself. Nevertheless, in my practice, I have rarely found it to be necessary to switch people from Effexor to Prozac. The key point, based on my experience, is give the patient a deep-acting prescription, and psychiatric medications lose their importance for the patient's feeling of well-being.

Occasionally I will get a new patient who tells me, “You can treat me with homeopathy, but no way are you touching my psychiatric meds.” Usually they have attempted to get off them before and spiralled relentlessly downward. I am fine with this; in fact, it makes a good marker. Always it is the patient's choice. I give a remedy, and if the patient makes a jump forward, usually he reaches a point where his attitude shifts. When he tells me, “OK, you can taper my meds,” then I know for sure my prescription was dead on. Patients can feel when they are better at a deep level.

On Being Conscious

A patient I treat who I know well has been in relationship crisis. She told me, “I went into a place where I was closed off and couldn’t ask for help.”  This is important in follow-up to homeopathic treatment.  People who have a high level of consciousness are immediately able to discern when they need a repeat of the remedy.  At the other end of the scale, people slip back, needing a repeat dose, and are not able to pick up the phone to call you.  As a doctor, it is important for me to know the difference.  Thus, in treating people, I tend to make a judgment on the level of consciousness the patient has.   

As I have mentioned, treating both mental and physical disease with homeopathy has to do with consciousness.  I had a case years ago of a woman who panicked whenever she was riding in a car.   In fact, just getting in a car could make her panic.   She had no clarity with this.  She simply got in a car and found herself in a “fog of panic,” so to speak.  Her heart started beating rapidly.  She started sweating.  She felt out of control, and so on. 

If someone pulls a knife on me when I’m walking on the street, and I panic, this would be appropriate.  However, to get in a car and panic as if someone is pulling a knife on you is not appropriate.  This is a “lack of being conscious,” specifically she cannot differentiate between what is truly dangerous and what is low risk.  To give the correct homeopathic remedy, the woman comes back and says, “Oh, I can ride in a car now and I feel fine.”  That is to say, “No more fog.  I can see clearly now.”   From a place too deep for her to see, this directly links to physical symptoms; that is, her heart no longer beats crazily; she no longer sweats, etc.

I first began to think deeply about this when I had a case of the homeopathic remedy from rabies.  I gave the patient the remedy; she did not know what it was.  All her physical and emotional symptoms improved dramatically after the remedy.  Two months later, when she was in my office, while talking about something completely unrelated, she blurted out, “Oh, you mean like a cat with rabies?” 

This took me off guard.  I stared at her for a moment and simply said, “Yes.”  Here, out of the blue, without any direct knowledge from me, was the image of rabies, coming from her unconscious mind into her conscious.  This was a marvelous sign.   It signified her coming into a fuller state of consciousness.  Through taking the rabies remedy, she was able to become more conscious of its deep relation to her emotional and physical symptoms.  She was, in a manner of speaking, “coming out of the fog.”  Becoming conscious coincided with her becoming fully well. 

We observe this every day with people.  We will be interacting with someone and we start to see that they have a peculiar point of view that gets in their way.  We all have a peculiar point of view.  Problems occur when we get lost in the fog and assume that everyone else has—or should have—this point of view as well.  Problems also occur when we get so sunk into a point of view that we lose perspective entirely.

If you see someone like this, consider calling a good classical homeopath. 

On Responding to a Homeopathic Remedy

A patient recently mailed me the following question: 

Do I read you correctly here per your Sepia blog of 12/6/06 'LoveDeath': "To take a remedy that mirrors this inner conflict is to be CONFRONTED and thereby SPURRED TOWARDS RESOLUTION"?  Is a remedy supposed to work this way? To bring things into direct consciousness? To put things directly in front of you for you to deal with them in a conscious manner?

If we think about the psychological dynamics of “like cures like,” to take a remedy that mirrors our own internal state is a type of confrontation, although a gentle one.  Most of the time this confrontation is not noticeable.  For example, a recent follow-up of a person who needed homeopathic Cannabis indica presented with asthma.  At the psychological level she told me she tended to be “disconnected” from people.  Beginning the day after the remedy, she said her asthma disappeared and that she felt much more “connected” to people when she met and talked with them.  She experienced no obvious confrontation with the remedy.  She simply felt better.  This is the usual response.  There was a confrontation, but the resolution was immediate. 

If you listen to my talk (click on link to left), both patients that spoke presented more complicated reactions to a remedy.  Take an example of a person who craves harmony in his relationships and always “pleases” people to keep the peace.  He takes a remedy and suddenly finds himself rebelling and getting angry with his partner.  In a sense, the remedy confronted him with his own duplicity, and it becomes necessary to right the balance.  For this reason, the homeopath has to be very clear exactly what he is treating, or he may misinterpret the response to the remedy.   It is one of those subtleties that makes homeopathic practice difficult to learn. 

I made reference to the importance of “consciousness” at various points in this blog.  For a homeopath with the intention to treat at the level of consciousness, healing physical disease is not separable from shifting the consciousness of the individual.  As an example, imagine someone who has panic attacks.  Let’s say every time she gets into the car she starts to panic. 

Most adults living in American society on hearing this would stop and exclaim, “Wow, how curious!  What’s wrong with her?  It’s true that driving has potential dangers, but this reaction is out of proportion.”  The woman would probably agree.  Nevertheless, she gets into the car and her heart beats crazily and she starts sweating.  At some level she lacks consciousness.  All she experiences is a blur of fear she gets lost in.  To give her an exact homeopathic remedy is to create consciousness and clarity where before there was only a fog of emotions.  A confrontation must occur at some deep level for this clarity to occur.  This truly is healing.  We might say that all physical disease, at some level, expresses a lack of consciousness. 

Another example that should shed light on this is what I call “the confused case.”  This I will write about next time.

The Deep-Acting Prescription

A couple people who saw my talk on Friday mentioned to me that those who take a deep-acting homeopathic remedy change on ALL levels.  If we leave some allowance for time—some shift quickly; some take a lot more time—this is true.  The two cases that spoke shifted in a profound way.  One case talked about how her remedy had changed her life, lifting 35+ years of depression and enabling her to set boundaries around how much she was willing to give to people.  It was only after telling about all this that she, almost as an afterthought, mentioned that her chronic shoulder pain from a skiing accident 12 years ago disappeared, her blood pressure was lower, and that she had lost 30 pounds. 

One patient who remarked this to me is quite a bit better after taking a remedy.  Nevertheless, he mentioned that in comparison to the people who spoke, his improvement is not so remarkable.  I agree.  I am not impressed that his deep conflict is resolving.  We might think of this as a good 3rd level prescription, yet it misses the 4th level conflict. His remedy is not deep enough. 

It is important for patients using alternative therapies to realize they can respond to treatments at different levels.  In talking about this, I do not want to create false expectations.  Nevertheless, if both the patient and the homeopath have their sights set on a deep change, the teamwork created can help bring it about.  For me, it is important to always do the best I can.  Some cases take an extra effort, and the right attitude of patience and openness coming from the patient makes it easier for me.  Difficult cases can be psychologically tough on a homeopath.   Impatience coming from the patient makes this all the more trying. 

Sometimes the deep-acting prescription is but a step away from a remedy I have given that helps a patient a lot.   Not infrequently, though, the deeper-acting prescription comes from an entirely different remedy.  For example, the person may be helped by certain remedies from animal source, but when the deep conflict comes clear, it isn’t animal at all.  It’s mineral or plant.  This can be confusing, even for the homeopath.  Practicing homeopathy takes a degree of flexibility and open-mindedness like few other disciplines.   

What is "Classical Homeopathy"?

Homeopathy is based on the law of similars, Like cures like.  The German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, coined the word homeopathy (homeo or “same as” + pathia or “suffering”) from Greek.  This came in response to his experiments confirming that if a substance is capable of producing symptoms in a healthy person, it is capable of curing those same symptoms in someone who is sick. Classical homeopathy refers to the practice of homeopathy as it was originally laid down by Hahnemann in his book The Organon of Medicine, first published in 1810.

More specifically, Hahnemann’s understanding of medical treatment with homeopathy was that one homeopathic substance matched the patient.  This is to say each patient has a range of symptoms, and Hahnemann maintained that only one homeopathic remedy (i.e. one substance) matched those symptoms.  To use the terminology of modern homeopaths, all the patient’s symptoms, along with his emotions and dreams, describe one state, and one homeopathic remedy mirrors that state. 

Practitioners of homeopathy who are not classical treat patients using more than one remedy at a time.  Sometimes I hear of many homeopathic remedies taken the same day.  Other times it may be alternating different remedies, taking one remedy one day and a different one the next.  I have never heard of or witnessed good, deep cures happening with this style of treatment.  A main reason is that there is no intention on the part of the practitioner to go deep (see my blog Intention of the Healer from Aug 13, '06). Generally the intention of multi-remedy prescribers is purely at the level of physical symptoms.  This is not enough to tap into the power of homeopathy, which needs to include the patient's feelings along with the physical symptoms. 

Another major problem with those who practice non-classical homeopathy is that they cannot explain what they are doing. Each practitioner has his own “rules” for mixing and matching remedies.  Thus, they have a discipline of one, which they are unable to communicate to anyone else. A classical homeopath, on the other hand, can quite clearly tell you, “I gave this patient Remedy A because of x, y, and z reasons.”   Once you start using more than one remedy at once it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to give clear reasons for your choice of remedies. 

When I first started studying classical homeopathy, I was attracted to it because Hahnemann laid down principles of healing that are every bit as applicable today as they were 200 years ago. This is quite different from conventional medicine.  What you learn in medical school can, and often does, change with the release of the latest clinical studies.  Much of what you know becomes quickly outdated. 

What Happens When You Take a Homeopathic Remedy?

Few people have a deep understanding of the homeopathic process.  A patient may sit in front of me and say, “Doctor, please help my knee.  It is ruining my life.”   This is all he knows:  his knee is ruining his life.  It sounds extreme.  I wonder how is this knee ruining this person’s life?  There is a story behind this knee.  The knee is the tip of the iceberg.  What it expresses we won’t know until we ask. 

My patients are often my teachers.  An example came in a follow-up recently.  She readily agreed to let me use her exact words.  Allow this patient to help us in our understanding of homeopathy.  One of the striking things about her case was her tendency to lose her temper in irrational ways.  Listen to her talk one month after taking her remedy:

I can still lose my temper, but it definitely doesn’t feel as out of control as it used to,  I would say that even when I get mad, it feels like I quickly have a choice to back down or make my point …  Internally I feel much more in true control where I have that choice.  It’s also with my husband.  We get into our push-button type of situations, buttons get pushed, things happens, and I think about what was it that I really wanted to say.  I seem to go back and I’m able to communicate,  "Look this happened but this is really what I wanted to say"…   definitely more apparent to me right after I took the pill.   

Note these words I have a choice.  Listen to her further as she elaborates:

I still lose my temper, but I don’t know if I ever want that to completely go away…  But it is definitely not like I described to you when I was getting the cancer, which was this incredible “I- can’t-help-myself” feeling.  It definitely does not feel that way at all…    With my husband, I will always take the blame, I will always assume, yes that’s right.   This time it’s like, “Wait a minute.  He’s a little bit off the wall.”  Without being judgmental… I can...get a handle on it.  I don’t actually take it personally. 

There are a few important points here.  Occasionally I will find a patient who is worried that homeopathic treatment is going to change them into a different person. This woman’s words should help people understand what happens with a good prescription:  a choice emerges where there was previously not a choice. “No choice” is that overreaction I wrote about a couple days ago.  As this woman tells us, she is not looking to change into someone who has no temper at all.  What she wants is the choice of whether to display that temper or not. 

She tells us what happened when she went into that “no choice” space.  Her temper was uncontrollable, even with her small children.   She tells us this was the time her cancer developed.  I will talk more about what I see in my cancer cases during a future post, but her words contain big clues.

As a last point, consider what she says about her husband.  To paraphrase, she was in the habit of blaming herself, but now she is beginning to realize when he is “off the wall” and is calling him on it.  She is telling us that she is gaining objectivity.  Whereas before she got lost in a fog of anger; now she is able to be clear and separate.   This is to say, she is becoming more conscious.  This is my understanding of homeopathy:  homeopathy treats a patient at the level of his consciousness, i.e.  the 4th level. 

What does this have to do with physical disease, you ask?  Almost everything.  . 

Acute vs Chronic Treatment

Werner Absenger yesterday posted a blog on acute vs chronic prescribing in homeopathy.   See his website www.amacf.org.  Further pressing the issue, today in my office a patient returned having given herself an acute prescription to help with side-effects of her chemotherapy.  So this topic is on my mind, and I wanted to add my own clinical perspective to Werner’s.  An acute prescription in homeopathy addresses illnesses such as colds, flus, those things that come and go.  Chronic prescriptions obviously address chronic problems.   

As a rule, I do not make a distinction between an acute and chronic prescription in my practice.  It comes down to how deeply you want to look at a person.  Consider acupuncture for a moment.  Acupuncture is a holistic therapy (what I call 3rd level).  Yet this does not mean that an acupuncturist uses acupuncture holistically.  For example, I could go to an acupuncturist for my shoulder pain.  He could flip open his cookbook to the title “Shoulder Pain” and insert the needles exactly as the book prescribes.  This is using acupuncture, a holistic therapy, with a 2nd level intention, i.e. a non-holistic way.   In acute prescribing in homeopathy, this is what generally happens. 

Although it occurs, rarely do I see cases in my practice with strong indications for an acute prescription.  I’ll use the example of yesterday, the man who felt dirty and tainted.  If this man got an acute illness, say the flu, and came into my office, I would re-take the case down to the 4th level.  If his feeling state is still dirty and tainted, then I would not give an acute prescription.

If on the other hand, I find that at the time his flu came on he got very anxious and had dreams of robbers taking his money, his inner state has shifted.  No longer is he feeling "dirty and tainted."  He needs an acute remedy for this new illness state that came with the flu.  In cases of acute illness, I rarely find that there is a shift at the deeper levels.   Acute illnesses almost always express the deep, chronic state.  Usually you need to repeat the deep-acting or “constitutional” remedy.  Giving acute remedies potentially can interfere with the patient's progress

My patient today raised another issue.   She had some mouth sores from her chemo, and she gave herself Borax 30c to help with these.  She feels it helped.   She is using homeopathy at the 2nd level to give her relief from physical symptoms.   As I told her, this is something I do not do and do not recommend.  The reason is that I do not want to interfere with the 4th level treatment by giving other homeopathic prescriptions.   As I told her, though, if she uses lower potencies, (e.g. 6c or 30x) it probably will not interfere, because these potencies are unlikely to be strong enough to affect the 4th level.  Yet, because we have not studied this, I am not entirely sure.  Therefore I play it safe and recommend that my patients not take any internal homeopathic remedies unless I tell them to do so.  Topical application of homeopathic preparations is fine.