Homeopathy Tips Newsletter

Rest is a very important matter that comes up often in practice. Rest can mean many things to many people but I hope to share some ideas that will help you and your client when you see that rest is a part of their healing.

I see the need for rest in most people. In today’s complex and busy world, we seem to always be in response to the dictates of the day. Rarely do we ever just stop to say, "I need rest and I am going to have it today."

Most people work a 40 hour week and have two days off in America. I say most people not counting the business owners, executives, or dedicated workers that will work many more hours. And when our day is done, there are more tasks that need to be performed and attended to before we can retire and call it a day. When I speak with my clients, they usually refer to this as stress in their life. I would agree, but stress means different things to different people. It always demands I ask them the question, "What makes this stressful?" to learn...

Homeopathy is not a new medicinal art. It has been around for more than 200 years. The information that we have available to us today is a compilation of two centuries of dedicated homeopaths sharing their knowledge. This is why homeopathy exists today. Had there not been many successes for the many early pioneers of homeopathy, it surely would have passed away as another fad in medicine. But we have many successes and by sharing them openly have expanded homeopathy thereby ensuring its existence.

Along the way, many doctors of medicine have discovered homeopathy and shared their successes with us. I commend them for this. Others have written books with wonderful systems to prescribe by. It is with great reservation that I accept their recommendations.

Homeopathy is as much art as it is science. We have wonderful information and repertories to organize it. If we are good repertizers, we are able to use the repertory to analyze cases including the most important symptoms. This...

Posology is the science of the dosage of medicines. It is very important in homeopathy. We are always very concerned about finding the correct homeopathic remedy, the simillimum. This is usually the greatest challenge for the homeopath. But after the remedy has been found, it is important to see that the case moves forward and healing is maintained.

Potency selection is the next step in the prescription and it is intimately tied to the repetition of the dose. Hahnemann stressed the minimum dose necessary to inspire the vital force. The potency needs to be slightly stronger than the expression of the vital force. This way it will inspire as the vital force will have a direction to move towards.

With most children and healthier adults that have not been suppressed by years of drug treatment, a single dose is always preferable. It requires more case management because we need to understand how the vital force responded to the dose and the duration of its response. Remember, homeopathy...

In the profession of being a homeopath, we usually engage our services with an exchange of money. Often, we call this business a "practice." It holds by definition but also there are other definitions that I prefer. I do not want to refer to my profession as a practice. I have trained and done my "practice" and now am a professional that is engaged with my clients. They pay me for rendering a professional service of homeopathy. They do not want me practicing on them. This would not be fair if I were still learning yet calling myself a professional. Not that I will ever stop learning homeopathy but I prefer to call my professional work just that; a professional work or business.

When I engage in my business, I refer to everyone who engages me for my professional services as a client. This is what they are. It brings with it a certain responsibility on their part as well as my own. I try to never refer to the client as a patient. By definition to be patient is "to bear pain or...

When treating chronic illness, there comes a time when the return of old symptoms can challenge the homeopath as to what to do next. If it is not clearly understood where a person is in their healing cycle, it can be most frustrating for the homeopath. He/She may even be tempted to change the remedy because it seems the remedy has stopped working. Understanding the bigger picture is vital to successful case management.

Often, when a person has been doing well and is responding to the most beneficial remedy, a time will come when it seems that all of the old symptoms return. Sometimes this is referred to as an aggravation. If this occurs after years of successful treatment, it can be very confusing. Why after all of this time is the person suffering like when they first started to take the remedy? Shouldn't the person be getting better still?

I have seen this scenario play out many times in the course of healing chronic illness. If it is not understood where the person is at in their...

When we give a remedy, we expect that a person will get better and the path to wellness is easy and straight forward. But nothing could be further from the truth. During healing, we often have the expected aggravation but there are other moments that will come up that do not fall into the aggravation description but need to be understood.

There is no cure without an aggravation. Most homeopaths have come to accept and expect to see this. There are a lot of ways to recognize the healing by aggravation and amelioration. Sometimes these are very clearly presented by the person. There are other less noticeable forces that also work to bring about change and they do not fall into the class of aggravation but need to be understood also.

When a remedy is given and is recognized by the vital force a wave of energy is initiated. This energy usually is accompanied by amelioration of the presenting symptoms and an upsurge in energy. The person will usually report they are feeling better...

The most common pitfall in homeopathy is prejudice. This is prejudice on the part of the homeopath whose pitfall is not seeing the case clearly because of ideas in his/her mind that are not of the essence of the case. Let’s examine the roots of this prejudice and what it means.

First, the definition of prejudice; according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, prejudice is "an opinion made without adequate basis. To damage by a judgement or action. To judge before full hearing or examination."

Hahnemann spoke of the unprejudiced observer in Aphorism 6 of the Organon of Medicine: "The unprejudiced observer well aware of the futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no confirmation from experience be his powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every individual disease, except the changes in the health of the body and of the mind (morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived externally by...

Last week, in Part 1 of diving into the process of illness, we learned that the illness is the perfect solution to the conflict. If the conflict cannot easily be expressed and resolved, it gets imprinted. Healing is about coming to solutions and doing something about it. When the situation has changed, the biological invariant programming can turn off and normalcy can begin to be reestablished. True healing does not come from outside of the individual. It always comes from the individual. Any individual who expects healing to come from someone else usually remains ill. The best solution to any conflict is to transcend it. Love, acceptance, and inspired change are the hallmarks of true healing. The homeopathic remedy does nothing other than inspire the vital force. Once the vital force is in response to the remedy deeper healing and inspired solutions flow.

There are two phases of disease; the conflict phase and the healing phase. The conflict phase begins with deep stress or...

Homeopathy is one of the most powerful healing modalities. But the truth is, homeopathy does not heal us. We heal ourselves. In order to understand the healing process, we need to better understand the process of illness. Why do we get sick the way we do? Jung stated, "We are not here to heal our illnesses. Our illnesses are here to heal us." We must understand the biology of illness and disease to better understand the process of healing. After all, if we do not understand what is asking to be healed, we will never find a remedy to inspire healing. So let's dive into the process of illness.

Our biology has evolved over many thousands of years. In this evolution, we are programmed for survival. Survival is imprinted into our brains. When we feel a threat on any level, mental, emotional, or physical, we use our mind to try to solve the problem of our survival. If the threat is not very intense or of short duration, we will find a solution and this does not get recorded in the brain....

Homeopaths often refer to the remedy as "working" when we have a positive response. But what is actually happening when we take a remedy and it works? This is something I find my students often have a hard time explaining and understanding clearly. So let's walk through the process of responding to a remedy and why it even works.

We must first set the groundwork for a remedy’s action by understanding the nature of the vital force. We are spiritual beings with a physical body. This spiritual aspect is immaterial and animates the physical. Without the spiritual vital force, there is no life energy and death is the result. This immaterial vital force is responsible for all consciousness, and sensations experienced by the physical body including mind and emotions.

All dis-ease is a result of a disturbance in the vital force. This is a spiritual dis-ease that eventually is made known in the physical body. The spiritual dis-ease is first known through our mind and how we see our...