I received several calls over the summer from people asking me what remedies I recommend them to take along when they are traveling overseas. When my daughter went to India a number of years ago I prepared a kit for her. These are the remedies that I included in her kit. This list is not comprehensive, because one cannot account for every eventuality, but hopefully the remedy you need will be in it.

Apis 30C  for allergic reactions with swelling and redness, and burning and stinging pains, for insect bites. Thirstlessness and warm-bloodedness are characteristic. Awkwardness, tendency to drop things.

Arnica 6C and 30C: trauma, muscle strain, exhaustion, sore, bruised feeling, fear of touch and being approached, bed feels uncomfortable. Excellent for sprained ankles and head injuries.

Arsenicum album 30C and 200C: food poisoning or acute illnesses with vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea. Worse midnight to 2 a.m., restlessness, anxiety, thirst for small sips, cold and chilly, burning pains, strong desire for company.

Belladonna 30C and 200C: very high fevers 103 and higher. Heat, redness and burning of affected parts; frightening hallucinations; desire to bite, strike, kick; dilated pupils. Sudden onset of symptoms, which are acute and violent. Dryness of mucous membranes. Sensitive to talking, jarring, touch, and noise. Desire for lemons, and lemonade. Throbbing right-sided headaches with red face. Fear of animals. 3 p.m. aggravation time.

Calendula 30C: When the ointment is not sufficient; serious wounds with pus or risk of infection; abscesses. In cases of suppuration when the discharge continues too long. Apply ointment externally to cuts, and wounds. Change the bandages infrequently for best healing. No germs can live in its presence. Excellent post surgically to hasten healing and prevent infection.

Cantharis 30C: A supurb first aid remedy for scald burns. Use Urtica urens ointment for slight burns, but Cantharis for second the third degree burns. It takes away the pain rapidly and promotes healing.

China 200C: Ailments from loss of body fluids (excessive bleeding or diarrhea, lactation, suppuration, perspiration), which can cause exhaustion, weakness, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and anemia. Excessive bloating of abdomen with gas. Malaria. Extreme sensitivity to touch, but hard pressure relieves.

Hypericum 30C: injuries to fingers, toes, spinal chord, back and head. Pain radiates or shoots up along the course of nerves. Animal bites. Prevents tetanus or lock jaw. Pain in the gums after extraction of teeth.

Ledum 30C: puncture wounds, insect bites. The characteristic is that the patient wants ice on the injured part. Wounds are cold to the touch, but the patient wants cold applications. Black eye from a blow (Symphytum). Prevents tetanus (Hypericum). Swelling from bee stings (Apis).

Podophyllum 30C: Diarrhea with sputtering, fetid and explosive stools. Complaints worse in the summer. Early morning diarrhea 4 to 5 a.m. Diarrhea preceded by soreness, cramping, rumbling and gurgling. Patient must bend double. Alternating complaints (i.e. headache with diarrhea).

Ruta 30C: repetitive strain injury; broken bones, injuries to the linings of the bones or periosteum; injuries to ligaments and tendons (excellent for shoulder and knee injuries where the ligaments and tendons have been damaged). Sensitive nodules on tendons or periosteum after injury; eyestrain.

Symphytum 30C: excellent for healing broken bones (after Arnica and Ruta). Trauma to the eyeball. Injuries from blows from blunt instruments. For slow repair of broken bones.

Veratrum album 30C: I am including this remedy here, because a friend of mine and fellow homeopath, Dr. Gobinder Samroa, saved his wife’s life with this remedy. They were flying to California from India and his wife all of a sudden said to him that she was dying. There was no warning that something was amiss. She turned as white as a sheet, broke out into a cold sweat, and her husband could not find a pulse. He remembered that he had some homeopathic remedies in his travel bag, and is eternally thankful, that this beautiful little remedy was there. He gave her a few globules and his wife rapidly revived.

Quoting from Boericke’s Materia Medica, he says, “A perfect picture of COLLAPSE, WITH EXTREME COLDNESS, BLUENESS, AND WEAKNESS, is offered by this drug. Post-operative shock with cold sweat on forehead, pale face, rapid, feeble pulse. COLD PERSPIRATION ON THE FOREHEAD, with nearly all complaints. VOMITING, PURGING, AND CRAMPS IN EXTREMITIES. The PROFUSE, violent retching and vomiting is most characteristic. Surgical shock. Excessive dryness of all mucous surfaces. “COPROPHAGIA” violent mania alternates with silence and refusal to talk.”

A Guide to Using These Remedies

1) In addition to taking these remedies with you if you are traveling, it may be advisable to take a dose of your constitutional remedy along with you. Often this is what you need to bring your system back to balance after an acute illness or trauma. Also if these acute or first aid remedies do not help sufficiently, the constitutional remedy may be required to complete the healing process.

2) All of the above remedies are available in the full range of potencies. For very minor injuries consider taking the lower potencies, such as a 6C. Often Arnica in a 6C strength can help when you are exhausted and sore from overextertion. Save the higher potencies such as the 30C or 200C for more serious conditions, such as a sprain, or head injury. For very grave injuries the higher and highest potencies are best, such as a 1M or 10M.

3) The homeopathic remedies come in various sizes. If you have the large size pellets, 1 to 2 pellets are sufficient for a dose. With the very small pellets 5 to 7 pellets would be a good dose.

4) The rule I follow for repetition is to give one dose of the remedy and not repeat unless there is evidence of a relapse. For chronic health problems a 30C dose should hold about three months on average, and a 200C from six months to a year and longer. In acute situations, the remedy may be repeated very frequently, because the remedy can be used up quite rapidly. In this situation I usually give one dose and wait 24 hours to 36 hours before I evaluate what the remedy has done. If the patient is better I continue to wait, and only repeat if the amelioration does not seem to be holding and there is evidence that the patient is going backward again. Then I repeat the remedy in water by dissolving a few pellets in water, stirring and giving one to tablespoons of the liquid to the patient. The remedy can be repeated this way as often as necessary.

5) When considering whether it is a good idea to treat or not, remember that first aid situations take precedence over all else. Don’t worry about antidoting your constitutional remedy when you are dealing with a head injury, or a broken bone. Treat the injury. You can always repeat the constitutional remedy later if need be.

6) When you are dealing with an acute illness, such as a flu, or a case of food poisoning, I recommend giving the body a chance to fight the illness on its own without interference. Only if it looks like help is needed, take the case and decide carefully. If the symptoms are clear for an acute remedy, such as Belladonna, Aconite, Gelsemium, or Bryonia administer this. If the symptoms are not clear for an acute, the constitutional remedy may be called for at this time. When administering the constitutional remedy during an acute flareup, it is best to give it toward the end of the illness rather than at the beginning.

?I hope that these guidelines help you when you are traveling far from home. Please remember, you can always call me for advice and guidance. Bon voyage.

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In your free time how do you select where to put your energies, going on the premise that in a day there is so much time available, and so much energy to do the work you would like to do. Is there a principle you could follow to help you make wise choices in prioritizing where to put your attention? What are the consequences of the little decisions you make everyday? Do they add up to a happy, harmonious and healthy life, or to a discontented, stressed and frustrating existence?

I have distinguished three primary areas which need attention in our free time in decreasing order of importance. These are the self, the family, and the home, and I will discuss what the consequences will be of placing priority on each of these things.

Priority-The Self

Tend to your physical needs for nourishment, rest, exercise and hygiene before anything else. If you are hungry – eat. If you are tired – rest. These two needs must take precedence over all else. Exercise and physical hygiene should be tended to next, because these are activities that enhance health.

Priority-The Family

Take care of the family’s needs for food, love, companionship, physical and emotional closeness, and help when it is needed. Notice that I have placed taking care of your personal needs before taking care of the needs of the family, because you must nurture yourself and come from a place of personal prosperity before you can give to others without being depleted. After you have taken care of yourself and your loved ones the next place you can give your attention to is the home.

Priority-The Home

Spend your free time cleaning, and straightening up your house. How well you care for your home depends on your situation. If you have no children your task will be easier than if you do. If you are not working it is easier than if you are. If you have outside help it is easier than if you don’t. The size of the home plays a role, as well as if you are single or have a partner. Your physical health and stamina is another influence.

All these factors must be taken into consideration when you set standards for your housework. If you have no children, do not work, and have a maid your standards can be high. If you have children, are working and have no maid your standards will have to be lower, because it will be physically impossible to nourish yourself and your family, which has to take precedence, and care for your home to a high standard all at the same time. If you have a limited amount of time the quality of one of these three things must be sacrificed, and it is up to you to make a choice as to which one it will be.

When you are pressed for time, if you choose to maintain a perfect home where everything is kept neat and orderly the price of that perfection will be yourself. The following scenario will likely unfold:

• Your vitality and energies will be expended in doing your housework.
• You will start to feel tired and run down.
• You will feel overwhelmed by the burden you are carrying.
• You will feel resentful of the work, because the price you paid in order to do it is taking care of yourself.
• You will start to feel angry at the people around you who aren’t helping.
• You will possibly be susceptible to catching colds from being depleted.
• Your level of happiness will possibly drop, because rather than taking care of yourself and having fun in your free time, you are expending your energies on trying to maintain order on the home front.

If you select the self and the family as your priorities, the following will be the most likely scenario. Whenever you have a free moment you will take it to enjoy good food and get adequate rest. You will take time to nourish your talents and interests. If you like reading, you will read, if you are an artist you will play your instrument or draw. If you have to make a choice between soaking in a hot tub or doing the dishes you will choose to soak in the tub. If the choice is to do yoga or T’ai Chi Ch’uan exercises or straighten out the living room. You will choose to do the exercises.

The net result of deciding to focus on yourself rather than on housework is that your housework will be neglected, and you will not have a picture perfect home. You will have to learn to tolerate disorder and turn a blind eye to the messes. This will be possible to do if you realize that if your house is in perfect order than you will be neglected. The Taoist sage Lao-tzu says you can either shine on the inside or shine on the outside, no one in the world can have excellence in both.

Benefits of choosing yourself over your home are:

• You will be relaxed.
• You won’t feel exhausted.
• You won’t feel overwhelmed and frustrated.
• You will have energy for creative endeavors.
• Your spirits will be higher.
• You will look better.
• You will feel better.
• You won’t be susceptible to acute illnesses.
• Your attitude to life will be more easy going.
• You will last longer.
• You will be more tolerant of yourself and others.

It is up to you to decide where you want to shine.

Rules for Living

Never do anything when it seems difficult to do or like it’s a burden. The feeling that it is difficult is a sign that you should stop and rest or do something else. Come back to the task later on or the next day when it seems like it will be easy to do. This is listening to the messages of your body and being in tune with them rather than fighting and opposing your own needs.

If you just can’t face that pile of dishes in the sink after dinner, put it off, or get someone else to do them. It’s not a crime to leave the dishes over night. You can do them with ease the next morning when you are refreshed. And if you would rather watch the morning news or water the plants, its’s still okay that the dishes are in the sink.

What is important is that you are focused internally rather than externally and that you are sensitive to what feels right, comfortable and keeps you happy.

How do you know that you are doing something you should not be doing?

• You feel bored by it.
• You tire easily when you do it.
• Your mood drops.
• You feel that you are wasting your time and your life.
• It makes you feel angry to do it.
• You can’t wait to get it over with.

If your usual occupation makes you feel this way, you have probably chosen the wrong line of work. Or if certain tasks make you feel this way, then these are not conducive to you and move you away from your life’s purpose. It is not that there is anything inherently wrong with this work. It is just that it is not right for you at this time.

If you feel like this when you are doing housework, then you just might not be cut out for the role of the perfect housekeeper. Maybe you should think about hiring outside help if you can afford it, getting as much help as you can from family members, or lowering your standards for your house, and increasing your tolerance for disorder.

When your work is conducive to you, the following things should happen:

• Your work should not tire you.
• You should find it interesting and challenging.
• You should prefer doing it above anything else.
• You should feel that the work is natural and inevitable to you.
• You should enjoy using the tools of your trade, and feel pleasure in your proficiency with them.
• You should never feel bored.

If housework arouses these positive feelings in you, then it is an activity you may engage in and it will be health promoting for you. If, however, you do not feel this way when you do it, forcing yourself into the role will be illness promoting for you.

It is good to know who you are and what you are good at, and to respect your strengths and forgive yourself your weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses are guides. They help mold your destiny and guide you into occupations that suit your nature. Happiness lies in being true to yourself.

Forcing yourself to keep a clean house if you hate housework just because you think society expects it of you is being false to yourself and can cause health problems.

We have been conditioned as women in America to be good housekeepers. Let’s question these standards and weigh the sacrifices we have to make to maintain them. Our health is too high a price.

-April 26, 1997

About the author: Deborah is a certified classical homeopath in private practice in Menlo Park. She believes that to be healthy all aspects of one’s life must come into harmony starting with having healthy thoughts and emotions to cultivating healthy relationships and a healthy life-style. She assists people with remedies and some guidance to bring joy, happiness and health back into their lives.

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Many of my clients have not seen me for a number of years, so I would like to let you know how I work these days.

First of all, I try to practice what I preach. I meditate every morning when I wake up to get myself centered, that means out of my head and into my heart and intuitive self. I also exercise for 20 to 30 minutes every morning by doing Yoga Exercises and Tai’ Chi Ch’uan on alternate days. I feed my family a healthy breakfast, then walk my dog for 20 minutes. I do all of this, because I have learned that the only way I can take care of other people is if I take care of myself first.

There is a story about Mahatma Gandhi. One day a woman came to see him because she was very worried about her son who was addicted to sugar. She wanted to know what she could do to break him of this addiction.

Mahatma Gandhi told her to go away and come back in two weeks. She said, I live far away, and I have walked many miles to see you. Can you not help me now? He said, “No,” and sent her off.  In two weeks she returned, and the woman asked him, so what have you found out in this two weeks. He said, “In order for me to give advice to you about your son and his sugar addiction, I had to cure myself first of my own sugar addiction.”

This is also my point of view. People come to me, because they want to become healthier. How can I tell others how to be healthy, if I don’t practice healthy life style habits myself?”

When clients comes to see me, I want to come from the Big Mind State when I work with them and not the Little Mind State. The Little Mind State is the ego. That is the part of me that thinks it knows something, that is full of information, ideas, concepts, and opinions, likes and dislikes. The Big Mind State is the clear mind state devoid of everything that fills the little mind.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, said that it was important for the homeopath to be an unprejudiced observer. When one comes from the Big Mind State one is an unprejudiced observer.

What I found is that the biggest obstacle to a homeopath finding a good remedy for a person is his/her preconceived notion of remedy pictures. As I was learning homeopathy I tried to build up these remedy pictures in my mind. Now what I am trying to do is tear them down, because these remedy pictures are conceptual ideas, which if you believe in them, prevent you from recognizing a person who may need that remedy, if the person does not fit in with your concept of what that remedy looks like.

For about 12 years I was very involved in learning and practicing the Sankaran Sensation Method. Then I realized that this method keeps you in the Little Mind State, because you have to analyze the case in terms of the concepts of that method. This makes you a prejudiced observer. Now if I start to think in terms of animal, mineral, plant and the various miasms, I pull back and take a deep breath, because I realize that I am no longer in the Big Mind State.

I coined the way I practice now as the Method of No Method. In this non-method I try to remain in the Big Mind State as I take the case. Afterward, I begin the repertorization process, where I look up the symptoms of the client and see which remedies cover those symptoms. I rely heavily on repertorization to help me figure out a good remedy for my client. I try to see what is the big issue for my client; in what remedies is that issue also big. Then I study the materia medica of the remedies that I am considering for the client.

Once I have done all the analytical and scientific work, I check in with my intuitive self, as well as the client’s intuitive self, and ask for Divine Guidance. The Little Mind is always too small for this great task of healing, and if things do not line up logically, which they rarely do, a higher power must be tapped into to make the final decision. Cultivating the Big Mind State helps me access the wisdom of that higher power and hopefully do something that will assist the person who has entrusted me to help him attain better health.

I try to work in the spirit of Karma Yoga. What this means is be present with my client, do my best work, and once a decision has been made, let it go. I try not to be attached to outcomes, as the outcomes are not in my hands.

Please let me know if you would like me to be your partner in healing, or if you have any questions about homeopathy. I can be reached at Olenev@att.net or 650-569-6219.

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For some reason Bellis perennis never gained the popularity of Arnica, Calendula and many of our other first aid remedies. Most people only prescribe it for soft tissue injuries, but I discovered so many other wonderful uses for it when I researched this remedy. It appears to have properties similar to quite a number of the other first aid remedies, and I have yet to discover why it is not more widely used. If it does all the things that it is listed for it is truly a great remedy of many uses. Here is a list of some of the situations where this cream and remedy can come in handy

1)         Injuries to soft tissue: Think of Bellis perennis for injuries to soft tissue, such as the breast and abdomen. For blows and injuries to muscle tissue, bone or blood vessels think of Arnica. Please read the Arnica chapter to compare the two remedies. If a hard ball hit me in the breast, I would not hesitate to rub this cream on my breast. I gave this remedy internally to a woman who had liposuction to help heal the soft abdominal tissue, and it helped her a great deal.

2)         Sprains and bruises: This remedy duplicates many of the properties of Arnica, and is also good for sprains and bruises. It is good for the near and remote effects of blows, falls and accidents (like Arnica).

3)         Injuries to deeper tissues from surgery.

4)         Injuries to the coccyx like Hypericum.

5)         Injuries to the ligaments like Ruta.

6)      For deep trauma and septic wounds like Calendula.

7)      It is good for boils.

8)         Consider Bellis perennis if Arnica does not help sufficiently with swelling after surgery.

9)      For internal bruising during pregnancy from the movements of the fetus, and for soreness of the abdominal walls, like Arnica.

10)    Varicose veins with bruised sore feeling.

11)    Bellis perennis is known to help women who develop breast cancer after an injury to the breast.  This is the number one remedy for that.

12)    It relieves many troubles of pregnancy, such as the inability to walk and varicose veins.

13)    It helps with breast engorgement.

14)    In my research on this remedy, I also discovered that it is good for the giddiness of elderly people, and for the effects of cold or iced drinks when overheated.

Even though Bellis perrenis has such a wide range of action, for some reason it has not really come into the popularity of the other first aid remedies with which it shares many properties. I hope that once the excellent therapeutic range of this remedy is more widely known that it will be utilized more frequently.
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Dear Friends,

I hope you and your loved ones are well. There are a few things I would like to let you know about:

1) I have opened up a Friday Homeopathy Sports Injury Clinic at my home office in Mountain View. At the clinic I offer one hour consultations for people suffering from sports injuries, work related injuries, and accidents. At the conclusion of the session the client will recive a homeopathic remedy to help speed the healing along from their injuries. Homeopathic first aid treatment is an excellent complement to people using chiropractic care, physical therapy, and western medicine to recover from their injuries. I am not a hospital, nor do I offer the services of a hospital at the clinic. My service is to prescribe a homeopathic remedy to address the injury and promote healing. It is not necessary to have an initial constitutional intake to participate in this. Please tell your friends and people at work about this.

Here is information on the Friday Homeopathy Sports Injury Clinic:

Where: Home office studio at 59 Paul Avenue in Mountain View, CA 94041

When: Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. by appointment only. Skype appointments are also available.

Cost: $90 for a one hour session. If more time is needed, the charge for additional time is $70 per hour.

To make an appointment, please send an e-mail to Olenev@att.net or call 650-569-6219.

2) The second thing I want to let you know about is that I am lowering my fees for the initial consultation, and I have eliminated the additional charge for people who have not seen me in over a year in the hopes that this will make homeopathy more affordable for people. Here are links to the new fee schedules with lowered rates:

http://www.homeopathyforhealth.net/2010/02/15/consultation-fees-children/

http://www.homeopathyforhealth.net/2010/02/15/consultation-fees-adults/

3) I offer one hour acute consultations for my clients who are suffering from colds and flus. The charge for this is $90 for an hour consultation. If more than an hour is needed the charge will be my regular follow up rate.

4) I have eliminated the service of mailing remedies to people without an appointment. Since I began offering this service, many people stopped making appointments. I came to the realization that this was compromising the quality of care that they were receiving, and was also not in my best interest.

Please send me your progress report, if you have not sent me one recently, and remember to make an appointment to give yourself a health tune up.

Please remember to turn to homeopathy for your health care needs. And if you have turned to homeopathy in the past, and didn’t get the results you wanted, turn again. It is by persistence, having a strong will to health and faith that results are obtained.  Hoping you are enjoying your life.

With warm wishes,

Deborah Olenev CCH RSHom (NA)

 
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A man wrote me yesterday with some questions about alternating remedies, and I thought it would be fun to post his questions and my answers here, as others may have the same questions, so here goes:

Question:  I had a question regarding alternating remedies. If you can’t find one remedy that covers all your symptoms, can you take different remedies to treat different conditions, on the same day? For example, around 6 am, graphites for a skin condition, 12 pm, arnica for a muscle injury, 6 pm, silicea for hair growth, etc.

Answer: Thank you for writing with your excellent question. I have been trained as a classical homeopath, and alternating remedies the way you describe is something we would never do. There are a few excellent reasons for that:

A remedy takes time to set up its action, especially in a case with chronic symptoms. The remedy has to go through a reaction period, a time when it looks for the symptoms it needs to work on, brings the symptoms up for treatment, and it also may intensify the symptoms as it works on them. The reaction time for a 30C and 200C dose is approximately three weeks. This is the reason why I do not evaluate the response to the remedy till between four and seven weeks.

If you are on a good remedy and it works well, it can do profound healing work for many months and even years without needing to be repeated. An active dose should never be interfered with.

Homeopathic remedies carry tremendous power and you really have to be familiar with homeopathic philosophy and go through a course of training before you attempt to self prescribe, as you can end up causing yourself unnecessary suffering, and confuse the symptom picture, if you do it without understanding how it works. Good luck.

Question: Thank you for the reply and advice. I won’t be alternating remedies on the same day then. How about alternating between two remedies on separate days? For example, Lycopodium Monday, Calc. Fluor. Tuesday, Lycopodium Wednesday, etc.?

I have several symptoms I want to treat, and while Lycopodium is shown to be my constitutional remedy, I fear it won’t cover all of them.

Also, if the potency is 30c, how frequently should it be taken? I’m thinking just 1 pill a day, every 2 days. Is that fine?

Thanks again, I really appreciate it.

Answer: Please read some beginning books on homeopathic philosophy and methodology, if you want to self prescribe. I have seen a single 30C dose hold 1.5 years.

If you are going to take a 30C dose of a remedy. Take it once. Do not repeat it. Evaluate your response to it in 4 to 7 weeks. If symptoms are better, do not repeat it until those symptoms have moved backward for at least seven days. Do not change from a remedy that is helping, until you have gone up in potency, and worked with the higher potency for a while. Only change the remedy, if new symptoms appear calling for a change of remedies. This is the way I work, and classically trained homeopaths will prescribe.

Alternating remedies quickly the way you are suggesting is a misunderstanding of homeopathy and the power of the remedies and I do not feel that it is a safe way to prescribe. Good luck.

Question: Wow, thank you so much for that info, it saved me from administering the wrong way. I just have one final question, if I’ve been taking 30c remedies daily for a while, how do I antidote them? I drank 2 large cups of coffee…is there anything else I should do?

I’ll be sure to post this info on my site, where it’ll help many others who are trying to use homeopathy to treat a skin pigment disorder. Thanks again for your knowledge.

Answer: One of the things you have to assess is did the remedies you took change your base-line symptoms? That means do you have different symptoms now than what you started with, or is everything exactly the same? Were new symptoms added on? Did symptoms you had before disappear?

One thing you can do is wait and let things settle out for a month or so to see where you stand after all of this. When you take too many remedies you can complicate the symptom picture. That’s why homeopathic provings have to be conducted with extreme care, as there is a risk of imprinting symptoms from the remedies you are taking onto yourself, which can be difficult to remove.

I really suggest that you work with a competent homeopath who can sift through your symptoms and sort it out for you. As far as antidoting with coffee, some people say that this works. I have not seen that from my own experience. I think the best antidote is a well selected remedy.

I also want to stress that the science and art of repeating the remedy in homeopathy really takes years to master. Homeopathic remedies are nothing at all like western medicine. The FDA requires that pharmacies print “take three times a day” or something like that on the bottles. This is appropriate for Western medicine, but not for homeopathy, where a single dose of a remedy can hold several years. You are talking about enormous power both for good and for harm, (if not used carefully), in the homeopathic remedies. If you want to self prescribe, you really do need to go through a training course before you can do this semi-safely.

I wish you the best of look with your healing.

Best regards,

Deborah

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Over the last few years I feel like I have come to a greater maturity in my practice. I have been studying and practicing homeopathy for 30 years, so I ought to have. I have learned the traditional homeopathic methods and have studied from the old masters. I have also studied and learned from the young innovators and system builders. I have emerged from all of this realizing that no one has a monopoly on the truth. If you accept the old and reject the new you lose out on a tremendous amount of wonderful information and innovation that can be of great benefit to people. If you accept the new and reject the old, likewise there is much missed. I have distilled a new understanding from my experiences, and I call it “The Method of No Method.”

Now my head is full of information, full of ideas, and I realize that the truth doesn’t lie in any of that. Homeopathy is an enormous mystery like life itself, encompassing everything and greater than our human understanding can fathom. One thing people realize at the very beginning of their homeopathic training is that logic and reason just don’t cut it. We cannot learn remedies and systems by using these tools alone, because the substances from which the remedies are made are of divine origin and not man made origin, and they do not fit in with man’s rules.

We have to develop other parts of ourselves, other ways of perceiving and faculties in order to understand remedy pictures, homeopathic philosophy and people in states of health and illness. Right now the method I follow is a method of no method. If I find myself going to a method, such as the Sankaran method, and thinking in those terms, I know that I am not in the big mind state I need to be in to sense what I need to do for the person sitting across from me. The information and knowledge is there, but I do not limit my thinking and my perceiving by it.

Finally I want to say that I really enjoy my work. I love talking to people in a deep way. I love getting to know them. I cannot imagine doing anything that is more fun or has more meaning for me. Actually there are a few things that I do enjoy equally, but it sure is at the top of the list.

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When I went home I looked for any information I could find on mudras on the web and also in our home library. Surprisingly we did have a book that had mudras in it called “Ashtanga Yoga Primer,” by Baba Hari Dass. Baba Hari Dass is the silent guru up at Mount Madonna Center in the mountains outside of Gilroy in California. If you have never been there, it is a wonderful retreat center.

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I set myself the task of memorizing these mudras and using them in my meditation practice. One may ask why such a thing would be valuable. The reason I find it valuable is that it gives the mind something to focus on during meditation. Having a focus point helps keep the mind from wandering to its customary thoughts.

I usually combine the mudras with other meditation tools when I use them. These tools are watching the breath and chanting mantras silently to myself. With three focus points even the most restless mind can be quieted and centered.

One of the side benefits I have found from using the mudras is that it taught me that by focusing on my hands at any time of the day I can recenter myself and quiet my mind. I can do this when I am riding a bicycle, washing the dishes, cooking dinner or holding my child or my husband’s hand.

Mudras are a tool for building awareness and bringing one into the moment. I hope that you enjoy the video demonstration of the mudras.

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Please notice that I have addressed you as wonderful person rather than as friend or client. The reason I did this is that I have been reading about the life of Fools Crow, who was a great native American healer. He never used the words patient or client to address the people he worked with, because he considered that to be disrespectful. He always called the people either by their names or used the word Person as a sign of respect. Learning from Fools Crow Native American Shaman, I am addressing you as person and to show my admiration and love, I put the word wonderful in front of it.

The way that Fools Crow worked was very different from the way I work in many respects, and similar in a few respects. First of all Fools Crow never worked with anyone if he did not feel that they had faith in Wakan Tanka, the Lakota word for the Great Spirit, and faith in him as one of Wakan Tanka’s Hollow Bones or healers. He would place his hand on the person’s shoulder when they requested a healing. If his hand warmed up then he knew that this person would be receptive to the healing work and had the necessary faith. If his hand remained cold, he knew that he could not help that person. With grief in his heart he would let them go. Unlike Fools Crow, I never refuse to heal someone who comes to my office, even though many times I feel their skepticism and lack of faith in me or in homeopathy. When this happens, the healing will often not be successful, though sometimes skeptics end up becoming the greatest believers.

Once Fools Crow took on the healing of the person, that person would live with him for four days and receive four treatments, four times a day during that time.  They would eat with him, sleep with him, pray with him, and do all his spiritual rituals with him. There were many reasons for this, but primarily it was to help the person deepen their own connection with Wakan Tanka, and their own spiritual center, so that Wakan Tanka would shine his healing grace upon them, and so that they would be receptive to that grace.

Fools Crow was a deeply spiritual man and he performed unbelievable feats of healing during the course of his 99 years. People would ask him how he did it, and he would say that anybody who lived as he lived could do the same. How did he live? He lived immersed in worship of Wakan Tanka, Tunkashila (the Great Grandfather), Grandmother Earth, and the Helpers. He meditated daily, performed purification practices, lived a very spiritual life, so that Wakan Tanka would see fit to use him as one of his Hollow Bones. By being a Hollow Bone for Wakan Tanka he would empty himself of ego and impurities so that he could channel Wakan Tanka’s wisdom and healing energy and direct it to the person he was healing. He always maintained that he himself could do nothing and knew nothing. Wakan Tanka did all the work and knew everything. Wakan Tanka showed him what to do, what healing herbs to use, what prayers to utter and dances to dance.

How different this scenario is from the healing that happens when a person visits a homeopath, such as myself. First of all, I only spend a few hours with that person. There is no four day intense immersion with purification rituals, or any spiritual rituals at all.

Our world has become so secularized that even to mention the word G-d has to be done with care and caution. People who come to you often do not have faith in your ability to help them, or even in a higher power. They put the burden of proof on you. As a healer, I can tell you there is a big difference in the experience and the joy the healer has when working with someone when they feel the faith and when they don’t.

Then, of course, we are all in a hurry. To take two hours out of one’s busy day is a big sacrifice. We must get down to business. We must gather the information efficiently, so that we can be in and out of the office as soon as possible. After all we have e-mails to answer, phone calls to return and there is no time for a relationship with the healer, or for any rituals of connection with the healer or with the higher power. This is the reality of modern urban life for most people.

One things that Fools Crow and I do share is love for the person who comes to us for healing. Like Fools Crow I believe that the healer has to be a Hollow Bone. Fools Crow’s rituals of purification were different from mine, but I have my own. Central to that is a daily meditation practice and prayer practice. Like Fools Crow I also know that the healing comes from a higher power than my ego and faulty intelligence. When I am selecting a remedy for a person, I always look inside and ask the higher power for guidance. I ask is this remedy correct? Is this potency correct? Is there another remedy that will be better? Will this help the person?

One thing that Fools Crow did that I do not do enough of is to thank Wakan Tanka for the healing. He displayed constant gratitude. When someone felt better, he said, “Thank you Wakan Tanka for helping that person.” All healing came from Wakan Tanka and he spent his entire day immersed in gratitude. This I do not do, but now that I am aware that I should do it, I am starting to do it, but often I forget to be thankful. Fools Crow never forgot to be thankful. This was probably the key to his success as a healer. The fact that his life was a constant practice of gratitude.

How many times as a person who has visited a healer, a homeopath, a doctor, have you remembered to say thank you? When you are enjoying vibrant good health do you remember to say thank you? When for a moment your pain let’s up, do you remember to say thank you? When you are in pain and suffering do you remember to say thank you? After all, Allah in his infinite mercy, has given you that pain for your own good, even if you do not know the reason for it. Can you trust that and say thank you?

My world is very different from Fools Crow’s, but I want to learn from him how to be a better healer, and human being, so that I can be one of Wakan Tanka’s Hollow Bones.

For those people who have seen me in the past, please remember I am still here, and for others who may benefit from my brand of healing, homeopathy, please spread the word. God bless you this holiday season and always.

In the spirit of healing,

Deborah

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In Sankaran’s system of miasms it falls into the typhoid miasm. People needing remedies from this miasm have a feeling that they are in a crisis situation, and need to make a great effort to pull out of it. I would like to present a few snapshot pictures of clients I have had who responded beautifully to the remedy, so that you can develop a picture of your own of the usefulness of this remedy and its therapeutic range.

Client 1. This is a woman in her forties who recently had surgery to remove a ganglion cyst. The surgeon also removed a tiny pain nerve in her wrist and now she fears that she may have complex regional pain syndrome. Her symptoms are pain in the right arm that she describes as an icy hot/burning sensation in the elbow that starts there and moves down into the fingers. “I warm my hand up and then it reaches a point where it can go the other extreme and gets very hot. I have had sharp pains.  I can’t move my hand back and forth.”

She experiences tight, sharp, caught, pulling, and bruising sensations in the arm. “There is a tightness to the hand, like I want to stretch it, but I am not able to. When I slightly start to move it there is a feeling of pressure and pulling at the incision point like it is caught there.  If I to try to extend it further I can feel the pulling going on. The wrist is swollen. I also have joint pains in the knees and the ankles.  Everything is better when I work out.

“I am worried, anxious and scared. I am regretting having the surgery. I am worried about the future. It is creating, fear, stress and anger. My adrenals have gone into overdrive due to the stress and anxiety.

“I am afraid that I will be incapacitated in some way and not be able to take care of my son. I fear that I will lose my job and not be able to support us.”

Analysis: This case demonstrates so many Rhus tox features: the fear of losing her job, the anxiety about her future, the feeling that she is in crisis and the fear that she will not be able to pull out of it (all typhoid miasm features and Rhus tox is a typhoid miasm remedy). The sensations she has are all Rhus tox sensations, particularly the pulling, the tightness, the tension, the caught feeling and the aggravation on first motion. The amelioration from exercise is also a big Rhus tox symptom.

Client 2. This is a 51-year-old tall, powerful, athletic looking woman. This is how she describes herself: “I am very energetic, high driven, intentional. I have done too much activity. I would work out three to four hours a day, power lifting. The intensity with which I ran my life, I was told, is what probably did me in.

“I have had tremendous stress over the last three years. My mom died three years ago. She was accompanying my dad in the ambulance to the hospital and she died of a heart attack on the way. My father died ten weeks later at the age of 90. My ex-husband whom I had been married to for 27 years died six months before that and I managed his whole estate. He died of alcoholism.

“I remarried and moved into a new home at that period of time. I stayed strong mentally through all of that. I managed three deaths in six months time single handedly. Tons of stress was put into my body.

Here is her description of her physical symptoms:

“My hips becomes stiff when I sit for more than 30 minutes. I have left hip pain that radiates down the outside of my leg toward the knee. My quads become numb when lying flat or standing. My sacroiliac joint aches.”

This is how she describes the pain: “It feels like a burning sensation that runs down the outside of my thigh. I can’t walk more than three blocks without stopping. I develop a very significant limp after the third block. The pain is basically a burning sensation. I think it is the tendons that are irritated.

“When I get up out of this chair you will see it. I will be very stiff getting out of the chair. I have to think about how to walk. Going into motion after having been stationary is difficult. I am not good for the first five or six steps. Once I get going I am okay for 150 steps consecutively. I can’t stand. That’s when I start getting a lot of pain in my hips. If I go far enough and long enough my right SI joint will get numb too. The stiffness after sitting and the stiffness in the joints feels like it is an internal thing.”

I asked her to describe stiffness: “Long before I complained about these issues, going back to when I was in dance class, I complained about being a frozen turkey. The joints just didn’t want to give. There was no ease. They were tough and resistant, not loose. They needed to be thawed out.

“When I stand up and try to walk I have to force it. It doesn’t flow. I have to make it happen. If it is really bad, I have to tap my foot for a moment to say you are going to have to start working now.

“With any extending position, such as laying down or standing up, my right side will go numb. In yoga twists I feel very constricted. It feels like I shouldn’t do a yoga twist to the left with the right leg. I don’t want to do damage, dancing on injuries and ignoring pain.

“Gripping is another important word. I feel that I am gripping in my hip joints. I am not sure how to let go. My joints can’t relax. My body’s neutral state is tense. I have to make a very conscious effort to relax.

My client has been on this remedy for six months as of the writing of this chapter. Rhus tox has helped her significantly on many levels. She has now resumed her walks in the forest, though is still not quite able to walk as far as she used to, but she is gradually getting there.

Analysis: This case contains a gold-mine of information about guiding symptoms to the remedy.

Here is a list of the Rhus tox modalities in this client’s case that helped guide me to the remedy:

1)         Aggravation from overexertion like Ruta and Arnica.

2)         Stiffness in the joints.

3)         Aggravation on initial movement, such as getting up from a chair after having been seated for a while.

4)         Aggravation from sitting.

5)         Gripping or clutching pains.

6)         Twisting pains like Ruta

7)         History of being married to an alcoholic.

8)         She has a feeling that she is in a state of crisis, and is putting every effort into getting out of it.

Rhus tox modalities: In addition to the above modalities listed for my client, Rhus tox has many other modalities that help guide to this remedy. In Rhus tox, (perhaps more than in most remedies), it is the modalities that really guide one to use this remedy. Modalities are what make the person feel better or worse. I am including other characteristic symptoms of the remedy in this list.

9)         Internal restlessness, or restlessness of the affected part is a strong indication for Rhus tox.  The patient must frequently change positions.

10)       The patient may have a feeling of apprehension or fear at night. They can feel threatened and on guard.

11)        The Rhus tox patient is typically a chilly patient and is aggravated by cold and damp weather and from getting wet.

12)       The aggravation times for Rhus tox are typically nighttime and morning.

13)       Rhus tox patients tend to be stiff and are ameliorated by exercise and stretching.

14)       A desire for milk and a red triangular tip on the tongue are other guiding symptoms to this remedy.

Here are some conditions where Rhus tox is often indicated:

1)         Sprains. Think of Rhus tox for sprains where the Rhus tox modalities are present. Please see the section on sprains in the Arnica chapter.

2)        Back, shoulder, neck, and hip injuries with the Rhus tox modalities, and where the injured area seizes up. Think of Rhus tox for back injuries from over lifting. I had a call to take Rhus tox a year ago when I sustained a serious back injury when my son jumped on my legs when I was doing the yoga pose where you have your legs straight up in the air. The force of his weight knocked me back and I injured my upper back. The muscles immediately seized up and I felt stuck, tight, and tense in the upper back. I had lost all range of motion. I took a 200C dose of the remedy and received several massages. All of this helped and I recovered within two days.

3)      Any chronic health condition with the Rhus tox modalities.

4)      Acute conditions, and respiratory ailments with the Rhus tox modalities.

5)      Poison oak or poison ivy. Rhus tox is derived from poison ivy.

Taking Rhus tox in potency antidotes the effects of poison oak or poison ivy, because the potentized remedy will antidote the effects of the crude remedy from which it is derived. This is why Apis mellifica, a remedy that comes from bees, can antidote the effects of bee stings. There are many other remedies listed for this condition, so please consult your homeopath to find out which remedy is best for you.

6)       Skin conditions, such as eczema, psoriasis, herpetic eruptions

and rashes where the Rhus tox modalities are present in the case. I recently had a call to treat a man with psoriatic arthritis with Rhus tox. His arthritic joint condition, which presented with Rhus tox modalities is what brought me to this remedy for him.

7)       Arthritic and rheumatic conditions with the Rhus tox modalities.

8)       Sciatica with the Rhus tox modalities.

9)        Plantar fasciitis or heel pain with the Rhus tox modalities.

10)      Think of Rhus tox for a person who is suffering from chronic

effects of car accidents, back injuries or other trauma, where the Rhus tox sensations and modalities are present.

Rhus tox is such a vast remedy, and what I am presenting here does not do justice to it. I could devote a volume to this one remedy alone. One of the most insightful writers about this remedy is Rajan Sankaran. In his book, “The Soul of Remedies,” he talks about the situation that often pushes people into a Rhus tox state. The situation is a child or a spouse of a person who is an alcoholic or abusive in some way. The child or spouse feels unsafe in their own home. They feel threatened by the person they live with and feel that they can harm them even while they are lying in their own bed. I have seen this to be true of many of the people to whom I have prescribed this remedy. This remedy should be thought of for people married to alcoholics.

The remedy falls into the typhoid miasm. The basic feeling here is that they are at risk of losing their position of comfort, be it their home, job security or their health. With the current economic situation where people are indeed losing their jobs and homes, I am observing that this and the other typhoid miasm remedies are called for quite often.

I have decided not to make a cream from Rhus tox, because of what it is derived from, poison ivy, and my concern that it can potentially cause skin rashes. Nonetheless I decided to include it in the book, because it is called for so frequently in first aid situations. If you are an experienced homeopath, you can use this remedy in the higher potencies, but if you are just beginning to learn about homeopathy, please use it in the lower potencies, like 6C, 12C or 30C.

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• Download the Microsoft Word document of the Children’s Homeopathy Questionaire

Homeopathy Questionnaire for Children

What is your child’s name?

What is your child’s date of birth?

What is your mailing address?

What are your phone numbers?

Please answer as many of the following questions as you can in preparation for your initial consultation.  If you find this difficult to do, don’t worry about it, we will explore further during your child’s session, and I will help you tell me the story of your child’s illness.  If there is anything you feel uncomfortable discussing in front of your child, you may  write it here or e-mail it to me.

Please tell me about the genetic background of the family:  diseases of parents, grandparents and siblings.

Physical Sphere

1)     What are your child’s physical health complaints?  When did they begin?  What makes them better or worse?

2)     Please tell me about the illnesses your child has had?  How often does the child get sick?  How does she or he behave during an illness?  How does she  appear (pale, flushed, etc.)  What medication or treatments have you used for your child during illnesses?  Are your child’s  illnesses accompanied by fevers?  If so, how high do they go?

3)     Does the child have any problems with digestion or elimination?

4)     Does the child have any skin problems?

5)     Has your child been vaccinated?  Did he or she have any reactions to the vaccines?

6)     Please tell me about your child’s eating habits?  What are his or her food cravings, sensitivities, or aversions? Does the child like eggs?

7)     What does the child eat on an average day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and  snacks?

8 )     How thirsty is the child?  What beverages does the child drink and how often?

9)     Does the child run on the warm or cold side?  Are any body parts colder or hotter than others?  Does the child keep covered during sleep?

10)    Does the child have a tendency to perspire during the day or night?  Where?

11)    What are the child’s physical and emotional responses to the different weather conditions  (sunny weather, thunder and lightning storms)?

12)    Does the child have any sleep problems?  Is there a sleep position that the child favors?  What time does the child go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning?

13)    At what time of the day is the child’s energy level at its highest?  When is it at its lowest?  Is the child hyperactive at any time of the day?

14)    For girls who have started menstruating:  are there any problems with cramps?   Does she have any PMS symptoms?

15)    What are the medications that the child is currently taking?

16)       Has your child had homeopathic treatment in the past? Please let me know the remedies he or she has taken, the potencies, the dates you took them and about their response to the different remedies. Also, please me know about other treatments your child has had for their health conditions.

Personal History

1)     Please tell me the child’s personal history, starting with the mother’s pregnancy.

2)     Describe the first years, whether the child was colicky; how was her sleep, developmental milestones; when the child walked and talked.

3)     Family situation, relationship to parents and siblings.

4)     School – any learning or behavioral problems

5)     Playing with friends; how the child interacts with her peers.

Emotional Sphere

1)     What are the activities the child enjoys doing?  Does she enjoy travel?

2)     How moody is the child?  Does he or she tend to get angry or sad?  How does the child express these emotions?  Does the child have a tendency to cry?

3)     What are the child’s fears and anxieties?  Does she tend to worry?

4)     Is the child sympathetic?

5)      Is the child perfectionistic?  Is she neat or messy?  Does she like to be on time?

6)     Does the child throw tantrums?

7)     Is the child shy?

8 ) Does the child have any nervous habits?

9)     Does the child tend to have nightmares or recurrent dreams?

10)    How does the child respond to reprimands?

11)    Does the child tend to get envious or jealous?

12)    Is the child defiant, disobedient or stubborn?

13)    How is your child’s  self -confidence?

14)    What are the traits your child shares in common with his/her mother?  What are the traits your child shares in common with his/her father?

Mental Sphere

1)    Does the child have any problems with memory?

2)     How is the child’s ability to concentrate?

3)     Is the child religious?

4)     I occasionally  mentor other homeopaths.  Would you be willing to have another homeopath or student homeopath sit in on the case taking process  with your child?

Thank you for completing this questionnaire.

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Adult Homeopathy Questionnaire

What is your name?

What is your date of birth?

What is your address?

What are your phone numbers?

Please answer as many of the following questions as you can in preparation for your initial consultation.  If you find this difficult to do, don’t worry about it, we will explore further during your session, and I will help you tell me the story of your illness.

Please tell me about the genetic background of the family:  diseases of parents, grandparents and siblings.

Physical Sphere

1)     What are your physical complaints?  When did each of them begin, and what   makes them feel better or worse?

2)     What foods do you have a craving for?  Are there any foods that you have an aversion to?  Are there any foods that aggravate you in any way?

3)     Please tell me what you eat on an average day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks?

4)     How thirsty are you?  What do you like to drink?  Do you use ice in your drinks?

5)     Please tell me what your physical and emotional responses are to the following weather conditions: sunny weather, rainy weather, thunder and lighting storms?

6)     Would you say that you are more sensitive to the heat or cold?  Are any parts of your body colder or hotter than other parts?

7)     Is there a natural environment that you prefer or feel better at?  For example, ocean, mountains, desert.

8 )    Do you have any problems with sleep, such as frequent waking, or difficulty falling asleep?  Do you like to sleep well covered, or do you uncover your arms or feet?  What is your favorite sleep position?

9)     What is the time of the day when you feel most energetic?  What time of the day do you feel most tired?  Please be specific as to times, and let me know from when to when?  What time are your symptoms most troublesome?

10)    How often do you catch colds?  What symptoms do you typically have during a cold?

11)    For women: How are your periods?  Are you experiencing any PMS symptoms?  If you are in menopause or perimenopause, are you experiencing any problems?

For men:   Do you have any sexual problems, please explain.

12)    What kind of exercise do you do?  Do you feel better or worse from exercising?

13)    Do you have any problems with your skin?  Please describe.

14)    Do you have a tendency to perspire, day or night, and on which part of your body?

15)    Have you experienced any accidents, which have caused health problems?

16)    Are your fingernails and toenails healthy?  Please indicate if there is any thickening, ridging or discoloration of the nails.

17)    What medications are you taking, and what are they for?

18)       Have you had homeopathic treatment in the past? Please let me know the remedies you have taken, the potencies, the dates you took them and about your response to the different remedies. Also, please me know about other treatments you have had for your health conditions.

Personal History

            Please tell me where you were born, the number of kids in your family, about your relationship with your parents and siblings, your education, work history, marriage, etc.   Please bring me up to today.  I would appreciate you sharing any information that think would help me formulate an understanding of you and your personal circumstances.  Everything you say to me will be kept confidential. This section is very important to my understanding of your case, so please do not forget to complete it.

Emotional Sphere

1)     What are the activities you enjoy doing?

2)     Are you a moody person?  What are the moods you tend to go into?  Do you get depressed or cry easily?

3)     Do you tend to get angry or impatient?  Do you show your anger openly or try to hide it?  How do you express your anger?

4)     What are your fears?  Are there any situations where you feel anxious?  Do you fear any animals?

5)     Are you a worrier?  What do you worry about?

6)     Do you have a tendency to dwell on the past?

7)     When you are feeling upset do you want consolation, or to be left alone?

8 )     Are you a sympathetic person?

9)     Are you perfectionistic in any area of your life?  Which areas?

10)    Do you tend to be neat or messy at home and at work?

11)    Are there any types of people that you do not get along with?

12)    Do you like to read, and if so, which types of reading matter?

13)    Do you experience nightmares, or recurring dream themes?  If you would like to, you can tell me a dream that you feel is significant.

14)    When you have an appointment, do you tend to arrive on time, or do you come late?  How late do you run?

15)    Would you say you are a hurried person, or slow?

16)    Have you had any addictions in your life?  Do you have any bad habits, such as nail biting?

17)    How do you feel about animals?  Are you a big animal lover, or are you neutral or indifferent to them?

18)    Do you have a jealous streak?

Mental Sphere

1)    Do you have any problems with your memory?  What kinds of things do you have a problem remembering?

2)    How is your concentration?  Do you get distracted easily, or have difficulty focusing your attention on tasks?

3)    Are you religious?  Do you have a prayer or meditation practice?

4)    I mentor homeopathic students and visiting homeopaths from time to time.  Would you be willing to allow another homeopath to sit in on the case taking process?

Thank you for completing this questionnaire.

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To watch a slide show about Urtica urens, please click here

Urtica Urens a homeopathic first aid remedy for burns is one of nature’s gifts that it would behoove us all to know about. I spend a great deal of my day in the kitchen cooking for my family, and once in a while I get distracted and get one of those everyday kitchen burns. This is when I reach for the jar of Urtica urens sitting on the shelf above my cereals, so that I have easy access to it when I need it. This cream relieves the pain and repercussions from the common first degree household burn very easily. For more serious burns, I will usually combine it with Hypericum and Calendula creams, and for very serious burns I will take a dose of Cantharis 30C or Arsenicum album 30C internally to help with the pain and prevent infection.

I had call to use this protocol when my son, who was 20 at the time, burnt himself on a camping trip. He had a third degree burn that covered the entire area of his right forearm. He had burnt himself two days earlier, and unfortunately, did not have his mom’s homeopathic first aid kit with him, so he suffered with severe pain for about four hours when someone found some Arnica cream, which he applied to his arm. This helped take the edge off the pain.

When he came home I applied a combination of the three creams I mentioned above, Urtica urens cream, Hypericum cream to help with the injury to the nerves, and Calendula cream for general wound healing, and then wrapped the arm with a bandage.

By the time my son got home he was already out of most of his pain, but all the pain disappeared promptly after the application of the creams. I also decided to give him a dose of Cantharis 30C. This remedy is excellent for scald burns and third degree burns.

I had a similar burn to my son’s ten years earlier when I poured a cup of boiling hot water on my arm. At that time I applied the creams right away, as I was lucky enough to have them on hand, but I was still in considerable pain, so I decided to take Cantharis 30C. It took away the pain within minutes of the remedy dissolving under my tongue, and I was able to carry on my nightly activities as though no mishap had occurred. Only in the morning when I examined my arm and saw the large blisters, did I realize I had a third degree burn. Would that all hospital emergency rooms and home medicine chests had these wonderful homeopathic remedies and creams on hand to help burn victims effectively and quickly.

The focus of this book is on homeopathic first aid remedies and the application of homeopathic first aid creams, but Urtica urens has a lot of other uses for general health, which I will mention below:

1)         Urtica urens is the first remedy to be thought of for first degree burns.  For second and third degree burns and scald burns, consider taking remedies, such as Cantharis, Arsenicum, Causticum and others. There are 181 remedies listed in my materia medica software for burns, so it would behoove you to contact a knowledgeable homeopath to get help with the treatment of serious burns and their after effects. Urtica urens can also help with old burns that have never healed well.

2)         Utrica urens has a lot to do with lactation. It has a reputation for helping women build up their milk supply when it is scanty, and it also helps nursing mothers who have no milk at all, a condition called agalactorrhea. Urtica urens can also help dry up the milk supply in women who are weaning. The remedy also helps with inappropriate lactation, such as the presence of milk in women who have never had children, or are not currently nursing children. Swelling of the breasts is another symptom of this remedy. I have never actually done this, but it would be interesting to experiment with rubbing the cream on the breasts to assist mothers who want to increase their milk production, or decrease it if they are weaning their baby.

3)         Urtica urens has a big reputation for helping with the uric acid diathesis, or lithiasis, which is the presence of stones and calculi in the internal organs. This means it can help with the pain and inflammation of gout, and with the evacuation of kidney stones, calculi in the urine, and gallstones.

4)         Urtica urens, like Apis mellifica, is one of our remedies for allergic hives.  The word urticaria or nettle rash actually comes from Urtica urens. The rash is an allergic reaction characterized by raised red skin welts, with a white central spot that itches intolerably. Swelling and burning of the skin can also be a feature of the urticaria. The allergic reaction can be triggered by contact with an allergen, such as this plant itself, poison oak or Rhus exposure, or a food allergen, such as fish, shell-fish and meat. This remedy is known to help with all of these types of allergens. The rash can also be triggered by emotional stress and cold weather. The hives of Urtica urens are relieved by rubbing, lying down, and aggravated by warm bathing, vigorous exercise and the snow.

5)         Urtica urens can also help with itching or pruritis (another word for itch) in various parts of the body. It is mentioned in the texts for itching of the scrotum, that keeps the patient up all night. It is also listed for intense vaginal itch.

6)         Urtica urens helps reduce the pain and swelling of bee and wasp bites.  Compare with Apis mellifica and Ledum palustre for insect and bee bites. Urtica urens is one of 93 remedies listed in my computer materia medica software for snake bites. Obviously seek professional help, including the help of a professional homeopath if you have been bitten by a snake.

7)    Here is a list of unusual symptoms mentioned in various materia medicas for Urtica urens:

Chicken pox

Sunburn with intense burning and itching

Urticaria alternating with rheumatism

Urticaria with pinworms

Right deltoid rheumatism

Dr. Compton Burnett used it for the treatment of ague, which is an archaic term for a fever, with paroxysms of sweating and chills, such as a malarial or typhoid fever.  He used this remedy successfully in a lot of such cases.

The most common types of pains that Urtica urens has are burning pains, stinging pains, and stitching pains.

The primary condition that I would use this cream for is first degree burns.  For non first aid uses of the remedy, I would consider taking it in potency and consulting a professional homeopath to make sure you have selected the best remedy for the patient.

To buy Urtica urens cream, from the First Aid Creams Company, please click here.

To watch a slide show about Urtica urens, please click here

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Here is a list of conditions that Symphytum can help with.

1)         Injuries to bones, cartilage, tendons and periosteum. Symphytum helps with the non-union of fractures, with mending bones that are slow to heal, and where the wound has penetrated into the bones. It helps with pain remaining in the periosteum or lining of the bones after the wound has healed.

2)         Injuries to the eyes. Symphytum helps with mechanical injuries to the eyes, such as blows from blunt objects. Examine Arnica and Ruta for this kind of injury as well. Think of Symphytum for injuries to the orbits of the eye.

3)        Like Arnica, Symphytum helps with blows, falls and bruises, and even helps with the tendency to have such mishaps. The remedy can help with bruises to the tendons and bones.

4)        Like Ruta, Symphytum helps with sprains, and injuries from overlifting or straining of muscles, bones and tendons.

5)         Symphytum should be thought of for fractures due to osteoporosis.

6)         Symphytum can help with diseases of the bones, such as inflammation of the bones, inflammation of the inferior maxillary bone and cancer of the bones or sarcomas. It can also help with necrosis of the bone.

7)      Here is a list of other conditions that Symphytum can help with:

a)     Corns

b)     Gunshot wounds

c)     Head injuries, concussions, fractures of the skull, splintered bones.

d)     Perineum wounds

e)     Phantom limb pain after amputation of limbs and fingers.

f)     Psoas abscess and abscesses of the lower limbs.

g)     Tennis elbow

h)     Twisted or sprained ankles.

i)      A symptom that seems out of place is weakness, and prostration from sexual excess.

Here is a list of some of the sensations common to Symphytum: pain as if the bone is broken; gnawing, jerking, pricking, sticking, digging, burning, stitching, and bruised pains.

The best way to remember this remedy is to keep in mind the great affinity that it has with bones and the diseases of bones. When bones are injured the patient will most often be wearing a cast, so I would give a  potentized dose of Symphytum in this instance.

When someone has fractured a bone, I would consider giving the following three remedies in succession:

First I would give Arnica in potency for the trauma, shock and bruising, and to prevent excessive blood loss from the injury. After several days (or even sooner, if the patient is in a lot of discomfort), I would follow with Ruta graveolens in the 30C or 200C strength.

I would give Symphytum last so that it will have the longest time to work on the injury and mend the fracture. I would administer this in the 30C or 200C strength. I have seen this protocol work well to heal the fractured bones of many clients over the years.

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What makes a sick person different from a healthy person, and how can people move from one side of the health equation to the other? This is truly a spiritual and temporal transformation encompassing every aspect of life. I have noticed that healthy people have a low tolerance for unhealthy things, while people who are ill can endure great suffering to maintain themselves in their ill state. Becoming healthy requires a commitment and an unwavering desire to achieve health, happiness, and harmony. It requires one to be a rebel, and to be willing to go beyond convention in one’s thinking and behavior. Healthy people see themselves as number one, and behave very lovingly toward themselves. This is a very unconventional attitude in today’s world. Here is a list of steps to follow to undertake this transformation.

1) Thoughts – purify the mind. Feel good will toward all beings, especially the people you live with. Practice forgiveness of self and others.

2) Exert your will to eliminate and overcome resentful thoughts, jealous thoughts, worry thoughts, guilty thoughts, etc. These I call evils of the soul.

3) Keep emotions in balance. Do not indulge in emotional excess, such as excessive grief, excessive hurt feelings, excessive anger, and excessive love or hate. Any emotion carried too far is a shock to the system and can cause illness.

4) Be wary of extraordinary efforts, such as the work involved in putting on a large wedding or Bar Mitzvah. Excessive effort is pushing activity too far, leaving the realm of harmony and balance, and can undermine health. Keep social obligations to a minimum.

5) Avoid excesses in studying. Evenings should be spent in rest, relaxation, family time, and spiritual endeavors, such as meditation. The mind needs time to unwind and relax before going to sleep. Doing homework too late at night and for too many hours in the evening can cause the student to lose his or her spiritual center and health. The feeling that there is nothing one has to do is one of the most healing and joyful emotions human beings can experience. This should be cherished, nurtured and safeguarded.

6) Avoid under working, which can be as damaging as overworking. Work must be in balance. Work gives meaning, satisfaction, feelings of self-worth, and security. When you work at what you love doing you feel happy, fulfilled, like you are contributing to the world. Working at what you do not love doing causes illness. If this is your situation work toward changing it and finding work that is more conducive to you.

7) Consciously place priority on the self in all things. When time is limited and you must make a choice of where to put your energies, always choose the self first. It is okay to neglect your housework. It is not okay to neglect yourself and your family.

8) Have a strong desire for health. Focus internally and see what works and what doesn’t. Actively eliminate faults and unhealthy habits. Watch out for unhappiness, and make adjustments in your life to bring it into happiness and harmony.

9) Exercise in balance. Neither overdo nor underdo it. Exercise should be a joyful experience. It’s purpose should not be to test your limits of endurance, but a celebration of your body, and an act of personal love. Do not push yourself to the point of exhaustion. When you have reached this point you have gone too far, and it is hard to recover. Exercise prevents osteoporosis, keeps the body flexible, young and graceful.

10) Keep entertainment in balance. This includes watching television, going to the movies and reading. Mental work must be done to process the information and emotions from these sources. This can tire the spirit, the mind, and the emotions, which need plenty of quiet time to balance the excessive intellectual stimulation of modern life.

11) Practice meditation. Meditation is transcending triple time – thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future and thoughts of the present. Make your life your laboratory, and practice non-thought formation when you are sitting, walking, driving, lying, working, washing and cooking, in all activities of your life. Set aside twenty minutes two to three times a day for introspection. This is an ideal. The closer you can come to doing this, the nearer you will be to the goal of perfect health.

12) Reduce sources of conflict in your life. Sometimes meditation can help with this. At other times active choices must be made to reduce tension and bring about peace.

13) Increase trust in survival. Neither be ecstatic about your successes nor devastated by your failures. Not everything is under your control. Sometimes it is necessary to let go of trying to make things happen, and go with the flow. Working hard does not guarantee your survival, and that you will have a reasonable standard of living. Therefore do not judge yourself harshly if you are not a great success, and have compassion for others who are less well off than you. Don’t be afraid to lose what you have. Usually when one door closes a better one opens up down the road.

14) Increase gratitude. Be wary of discontent. One promotes health, the other illness.

15) Eliminate doubting thoughts. These undermine your confidence, reduce your effectiveness, and waste emotional energy. Practice karma yoga when you work. Do your very best while you are executing the task. Afterward have no attachment to the results of your labors. Trust that you have done your best, and let go. Don’t think about it again. Forbid yourself to doubt your performance.

16) As the Buddha says, minimize desires. Possessing too much is as harmful as possessing too little. Seek the middle ground between these two extremes. Guard against greed and asceticism equally.

17) Perfectionism – excessive orderliness, organization, cleanliness, and attention to detail should be avoided. To maintain things in a perfect state requires an extraordinary expenditure of physical, and mental energy. We should be relaxed, balanced and harmonious in the way we work, and the way we maintain our homes and our physical bodies.

18) Responsibility – assuming too much responsibility is harmful, because we expend a disproportionate amount of energy, our life force, in comparison to other people we are involved with. The wise and healthy thing to do is not to take on responsibility for what we are not responsible for. As in all things the middle ground should be adhered to, where we are responsible for just the right amount.

19) Sympathy – being excessively sympathetic is a leading cause of illness and should be guarded against. When our emotions go out to others, they literally go out and we are in danger of losing our center. Once we lose our center it is very difficult to regain it. Watch out for situations where you feel too much sympathy. If you can avoid such situations, do so, if you can’t avoid them do your best to minimize their impact. Offer help when the opportunity arises, but let go quickly, and do not internalize other people’s pain. It can easily drag you down and disempower you, if you allow it to.

20) Weeping over the misery of the world – Lao-tzu, the Taoist sage, says that to spend a finite lifetime bemoaning the miseries of the world is like weeping into a river in fear of its drying up. This is not the most productive way to spend your time. There will always be suffering. It will be around long after you are gone. Be grateful for what you have and enjoy your life. Don’t waste your time crying over what you have no power to change. This way you won’t dissipate your emotional energy, and your power to effect changes within your reach will increase.

21) Alone time – make sure that you have time during the week to be by yourself, time that belongs to you, free of family and work obligations. If you are in a relationship, schedule alone time away from your partner and children each week. This is crucial to having good health. Too much togetherness in relationships is as harmful as too much aloofness. Find a healthy balance between these two extremes.

22) Eating – what you eat makes a difference in your health. Eat as healthy as possible and try to reduce habit foods to balanced levels. Eat a varied diet. Try to eat organic fruits and vegetables, and low on the food chain. Animal protein should be eaten in moderation. If you can eat everything without experiencing digestive problems, that’s wonderful. If not, respect what your body tells you in this regard and eat what you know you can handle. As with all things follow the middle way, eating neither too much, nor too little, but just the right amount.

23) Time bound awareness – living by the clock is a modern phenomenon, unnatural and unhealthy for human beings. Do what you can to minimize the impact of time awareness on yourself. The need to be on time adds an element of tension. It takes our attention from focusing internally on our personal needs and what makes us happy, to focusing externally on an object that regulates our behavior. Waking up by the alarm clock even though we feel a need to continue sleeping is an example of how time bound awareness causes us to stop listening to our inner needs and takes us out of harmony with ourselves.

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I have heard many people say, “I have tried to meditate, but I just could not do it. I could not quiet my mind at all, so I gave up. It was just too difficult.” Yes, it’s true it is very difficult. It’s very difficult to break a lifetime of poor mental habits and conditioning, but persistence leads to success, which means a healthier mind and spirit.

I recommend just starting with five minutes a day of sitting quietly, and gradually building up to half an hour, forty-five minutes or an hour per day. If you cannot set aside time for formal sitting meditation, then meditate as you are commuting to work. Don’t turn the radio on. Instead watch your mind as you are driving, notice the emotions that come up, the thoughts, feelings, worries, fears, anxieties and the joys that pop into your head like bubbles on the surface of the ocean. Let those bubbles pop up, but don’t hold onto them. As soon as you notice a thought bubble, set it free, don’t pursue it, come back to quietness and your center. This is what meditation is, this noticing of thoughts, and feeling no attachment, attraction, or repulsion for them, but just noticing those thoughts rising and falling.

As you are doing this, to help quiet your mind you may try some simple breathing techniques, such as counting your breaths. Inhale to the count of five, hold to the count of five and exhale to the count of five, trying to make your breath peaceful and quiet. You may even go into samadhi, which is a state of deep inner calm. You may notice that your thoughts and your breath are inextricably linked. If you can quiet your breathing, your thoughts will quiet of themselves.

Now if you want to start practicing meditation in a disciplined fashion, you will derive the maximum benefit from it. Choose a time during the day, which you can designate to yourself and others as sacred personal time. You can choose to wake up an hour earlier in the morning, which is what I have done, and dedicate this hour to your spiritual life. If it is easier for you to meditate at night or in the afternoon, that will do as well.

Sit comfortably on a firm cushion that gives you good back support, or a straight back chair. If you are sitting on the floor, sit cross-legged, in lotus position if you are an advanced yogi, or with your legs tucked under you. The most important thing, however, is that your back is straight, and that you are not leaning forward or backward. In the beginning this may be very difficult for you to do, but with time your back muscles will become strong and you will be able to maintain this position with no difficulty. Now the chin should be ever so slightly lowered.

Rest your hands on your lap, with the right hand over the left, palm facing the ceiling, or if you are sitting cross-legged on the floor, you may lay your hands on the thighs, palms, up, with the thumb and pointer finger touching. Sit with your eyes closed, or half-way open. Practice the breathing which I mentioned above, and start to watch your mind. I sit for an hour every morning and sometimes it takes me fifty minutes before I start to feel that inner calm. Sometimes I don’t feel it, and sometimes I feel it right away. It is important to be loving and forgiving to yourself and accept whatever happens. There is a beautiful Taoist phrase which says, the mind is a difficult thing to clarify and an easy thing to muddy. What we are doing in meditating is clarifying the mind, and creating some inner quiet and inner space to hear the voice of our inner guidance, or the God that dwells within all of us.

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Thoughts can locate in the body as physical and emotional reactions. Watch your thoughts and observe if they trigger any responses in you. If you notice that certain thoughts cause unpleasant sensations in your body take note of that. Tell yourself thinking that type of thought is not healthy and try not to allow yourself to think those thoughts in the future. It is up to you to make your thought processes as healthy as you can.

Examples of thoughts that can cause illness and unhappiness are:

• Thoughts self-pity.
• Thoughts of I am not good enough.
• Jealous thoughts.
• Envious thoughts.
• Thoughts about money and survival issues.
• Anxieties about your own health and the health of family members.
• Sympathetic thoughts. (You allow yourself to feel another person’s or animal’s pain, your emotions going out to them, causing you to lose your own center.)
• Thoughts and feelings of grief and sorrow.
• Dwelling on bad things that happened in the past.
• Blaming thoughts.
• Feelings of resentment and anger.
• Thoughts about relationships. Do I or do I not love someone? Do they or do they not love me?
• Craving thoughts. Agitating oneself to buy things.
• Feelings of dissatisfaction or lack of contentment with one’s life, place where one lives.
• Doubting thoughts (I did not do a good job. People will not like my performance). These types of thoughts disempower you and reduce your effectiveness in the world. They also waste emotional energy.
• Thoughts about the news, articles that you’ve read, books, movies, T.V. shows, etc. that have made an impression on you.
• Thoughts about what other people think about you.
• Thoughts about all the things you have to do.
• Obsessive thoughts.
• Fearful thoughts.
• Thoughts about food (that it is not good for you, that it will make you fat).
• Obsession about weight.
• Judgmental thoughts (looking for faults in what people do).

If you are self-observant, or train yourself to be, you will notice that in response to a thought you might flex your big toe, clench your teeth, tighten your neck or abdominal muscles, feel tension in your chest, contort your facial muscles, raise your eyebrows, alter your breathing rate, experience changes in your bowel movements, increase the frequency of urination, experience sleep disturbances, or sensations of fear and anxiety. This is solid proof that thoughts locate in the body and have health consequences.

All of the above thought categories can trigger feelings of anxiety. If they have become habitual thought patterns, they can lay down the groundwork for illness. Take note of the ones that cause the greatest distress, and work on them first.

When these thoughts rear their heads take an imaginary ax and cut them down at the root, bringing your mind back to stillness. With time you should be able to eliminate or at least minimize these troublesome thought categories, and the moments of mental stillness and calm should increase. These thoughts have had years to plant roots in the mind and it is a long-term process to weed them out. They are the source of our fears, anxieties, vices and illnesses.

There are various meditation techniques that have been developed to still the mind, such as quieting the breath and abdominal breathing, as well as visualization exercises, and sitting meditation. In addition to practicing formal sitting meditation, it is also valuable to regard your life as your laboratory, and practice non-thought formation as you are lying, sitting, driving and walking, and in all activities of your life.

Cultivate and guard the stillness you manage to attain from meditation as if it were a precious jewel. In time it will grow, and you will find that happiness, peace, contentment and wisdom reside within it.

There are many roads to health, but in the end they converge at the principle of purity and health of the mind. The Buddha was a spiritual teacher, but also a healer, he wanted to find the way to eliminate suffering and what he came up with was the Eightfold Path or the Middle Way: “Right view, right aim, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.”

As a homeopath, I have come to the same list. The homeopathic remedies cure only if the will to health is there, and though they will stimulate the healing process, they will stop if too many errors of living or evils of the soul are not addressed by the individual. Greater than the power of the remedy is personal responsibility and the desire to grow and develop into the healthiest and happiest human being possible.

Remedies will carry you a long way toward health, but the refining process is a spiritual one involving making the mind, thought processes and emotions as healthy as possible. Meditation is the method for undertaking this refining process, and the will to health and happiness is the driver of the vehicle, good food and right living is the gasoline, and the remedy is the trustworthy mechanic.

When I first started studying homeopathy I thought that the remedies could do everything and that personal effort or responsibility was not that important. After years of observation I noticed that if the remedy encountered an obstacle such as an error in living like over studying, or an error in thinking such as obsessive thoughts or over attachment that one persisted in, the individual would relapse.

When a point was arrived at when the individual should take action to improve the situation, but did not do so, the remedy withheld its blessing, and this withholding until the person sees the light, is itself healing work. When the person puts forth an effort to correct these errors, the remedy resumes its work.

The meaning of this is that the individual has to take personal responsibility to become a healthier individual by making the necessary changes and adjustments in their lives. Going from illness to health is a transformation involving all facets of an individual’s life. It involves letting go of ways of being that stress the system, going beyond convention and questioning concepts that are taken for granted. It entails placing a greater value on the self than society and our conditioning tells us we should.

The following is a chart showing the difference between healthy and unhealthy ways of being and mental processes.

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Rajan Sankaran has taken Hahnemann’s work and expanded the three original miasms to ten miasms by redefining the parameters of what the miasms are.  In Sankaran’s system miasms represent a fundamental attitude toward life and pace of disease. This attitude is elicited from the client by asking him to tell you what his attitude is toward the chief complaint. If the homeopathic practitioner can identify that attitude and the pace of the disease, Sankaran believes that the practitioner can make more accurate prescriptions.

These days I no longer think in terms of miasms the way I did when I wrote this article a few years ago. Now my approach is to stay in the big mind state and not reduce my thinking to concepts, such as kingdom, family and miasm on which Sankaran built his Sensation Method. I will however, share these concepts with you because they are very prevalent right now in the homeopathic community (for better or for worse). The best prescribing is clear, direct perception, gained through having a large information base, years of experience and familiarity with the remedy, and a mind purified with meditation.

Not long ago I had the opportunity to give a demonstration of how the miasms worked at the fall retreat of Integrated Healing Arts, a health center in Palo Alto, California that I am affiliated with. There was a woman there who had experienced hearing loss, and I wanted to demonstrate to the group how homeopathy worked by using her case as an example. I explained that in order to hone in on the remedy, it would be very helpful to understand her attitude and the pace of her disease. That information would bring us to the miasm that she fell into. Once we knew the miasm the remedy selection process would become much easier, as this would help to narrow down the range of possible remedies. I will list the miasms below and tell you what her attitude would be if she fell into that miasm:

The Acute Miasm: “This hearing loss has come on suddenly and it is a sudden and immediate threat to my survival. I am alarmed by it and in a state of panic. I am terrified that I will not regain my hearing.” The acute miasm is like a sudden storm. You react to it with instinctive terror. Either you survive the storm or it takes you down. Some of our well-known remedies from the acute miasm are Belladonna and Aconite. In this example the woman is in a panic state about her hearing loss.  This is an alarming situation.

The Typhoid Miasm: If the woman in our example needed a remedy from the typhoid miasm, she would view her illness as an emergency, and may even go to the hospital. This is a sub-acute, rather than an acute situation. It is a crisis that needs to be overcome, a critical situation that demands immediate attention. Once it is overcome she will be fine. The typhoid miasm is characterized by a sense of urgency and impatience. There is hope that with the proper effort and care, she will recover. Nux vomica, Bryonia, and Rhus toxicodendron are well known remedies from the typhoid miasm.

The Psoric Miasm: There is a basic optimism in the attitude of people who fall into the psoric miasm. This is the healthiest miasmatic type, as the attitude to life is the healthiest. In the example of the woman with hearing loss, she would feel optimistic about her prognosis. “I will recover.” I have to make an effort, but the situation is solvable.  Healthy children often need remedies from the psoric miasm, such as Calcarea carbonica, Sulphur and Lycopodium.

The Ringworm Miasm: The woman in our example needing a remedy from the ringworm miasm would alternate in her attitude from acceptance that she has this condition to a desire to struggle against it. Basically she feels like she can live with it if she has to, though she would rather not. It is not a life threatening condition. At one moment she is hopeful that she will regain her hearing, in the next moment she gives up and resigns herself to it. Dulcamara, Calcarea sulfurica and Calcarea silicata are a few remedies from this miasm.

The Malaria Miasm: If the woman in our example needed a remedy from the malaria miasm, she would feel very unfortunate to have this problem, and harassed by the hearing loss. She would feel that it was impeding her ability to function. This incident of hearing loss may not be the first time she has experienced this complaint, as periodicity and intermittent attacks characterize this miasm. She may brood about the problem, or go into attacks of rage that she has this condition. Our two biggest remedies of the malaria miasm are Natrum muriaticum and China Officinalis.

The Sycotic Miasm: Our lady with the hearing loss would definitely not want anybody to know about this problem, if she needed a sycotic remedy. As long as she can keep her condition a secret from others, she is okay. If they find out they might think she is too old or unqualified to do her job. This is her hidden weakness, and it is a fixed problem that she has to accept, because it is not going away anytime soon. She has to avoid situations where her secret may be discovered, and she feels under qualified to do her job. Thuja, Silica and Medorrhinum are well-known remedies from the sycotic miasm.

The Cancer Miasm: The woman in our example would be very perfectionistic.  Keeping in control of her life and all things in it would be her modus operandi.  The hearing loss would mean loss of control to her, and she would feel a need to regain control over this situation as fast as possible, otherwise her life would fall apart and we would have utter chaos. She has set high standards for herself, which she feels are beyond her capacity to achieve. She may feel desperate to regain her hearing and therefore control over her life. The task may seem huge to her, but it is not a completely desperate situation. Some well-known remedies from the cancer miasm are Arsenicum album, Argentum nitricum, Carcinosin, Conium, and Ignatia amara.

The Tubercular Miasm: Taking our example of the woman with the hearing loss, if she needed a remedy from this miasm she would have a great love of travel. She could feel bored easily from staying in one place too long, and have a longing for freedom and change. She could feel trapped by the hearing loss, if she perceives it as curtailing her freedom. She may lead a very intense and hectic life as she prepares for her next adventure. Well-known remedies of this miasm are Tuberculinum, Tarentula, Phosphorus and Iodine.

The Leprosy Miasm: The woman in our example would feel like a leper, because of the hearing loss. She would feel like she has been outcasted by society and isolated, because of this problem. No one will want to be friends with her, because she can’t hear what they say properly. She will even possibly loath herself. She may feel less than others, dirty and disgusted with herself for having this problem. She may feel intensely hopeless that she will be able to find a solution to the hearing loss. The most well-known remedy of the Leprous miasm is Sepia. Some other remedies from this miasm are Aloe, and Secale.

The Syphilitic Miasm: As we move from the top of the list to the bottom of the list of miasms, we move from more healthy states to less healthy states, more optimistic attitudes to complete pessimism. The syphilitic miasm is the darkest of the miasms in terms of attitude. Here the feeling is of utter desperation, but she still must make an effort to try to recover. The woman in our example would feel that there is absolutely no hope, but still she has to try to be normal again. She may contemplate desperate solutions, and throw all caution to the wind. The syphilitic miasm is self destructive and destructive of others. Suicide and homicide can be contemplated and successfully executed in this miasm. Paranoid and psychotic states are also often present. The pathology itself may be very deep: ulceration and destruction of tissue may be taking place. Our heavy metals, such as Aurum metallicum, Mercurius and its salts, Plumbum metallicum and Platina fall into this miasm. Our poisonous snake remedies like Lachesis muta are also syphilitic remedies.

Conclusion

The understanding of miasms is extremely beneficial in selecting the homeopathic remedy for the patient (so I thought).  Matching the symptoms of the patient to the symptoms of the remedy is our first job as homeopaths. Being able to match miasms as well, gives us a way to confirm the prescription and understand the patient in a deeper way. For more information on miasms, please read Louis Klein’s new book: Miasms and Nosodes, published in 2009 by Narayana Publishers.

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One of Hahnemann’s great teachings  was the importance of matching the strength of the remedy to the needs of the patient. He stated that the smallest possible stimulus should be used to initiate a healing response. The brilliant homeopath of the 20th/21st century, Rajan Sankaran, one of the great light-bearers of homeopathy in our times has designated seven levels to help homeopaths determine the strength of the remedy that is needed in each individual case.

Level One corresponds to remedies that are below 30C in strength in the centesimal scale, and the LM1 and LM2 potencies in the LM scale. People who need this strength often suffer from diseases where there is already much pathology, and the memory is often severely impaired. Here the only thing the patient can tell you of his disease is the diagnosis. He is not in touch with deeper levels of himself, such as his emotions and dreams. He may even have trouble describing the symptoms and sensations that he feels. Sankaran gives the analogy of asking a person to describe the Golden Gate Bridge. A person who is at Level One would only be able to tell you its name.

Level Two corresponds to the 30C strength and LM3. Here the patient can describe the symptoms well, but is not in touch with his feelings. If you asked him to describe the Golden Gate Bridge, he would be able to tell you many facts about it, such as its height, breadth, where it spans, when and by whom it was built, but can go no further.

Level Three corresponds to the 200C strength of the remedy. Here the patient can describe the symptoms well, and is very in tune with what he or she is feeling, but has little dream awareness, and is unaware of deeper attitudes and beliefs. Going back to the analogy of the Golden Gate Bridge, the patient would say that he is moved to tears whenever he sees the bridge. When the clouds pass overhead and touch the wires at the top of the bridge it fills him with a feeling of melancholy.

Level Four corresponds to the 1M strength of the remedy. Here the patient is able to describe the symptoms and his emotional life well, and going beyond that he can tell you about his dreams, and his perception of life. Sankaran calls this the delusion level. Here the patient is able to express his false view of reality, which he takes to be real. This false view of reality can be a core belief or attitude caused by past traumas, inherited tendencies, or even past lives, which affects the way the individual responds to his current experience. In the earlier levels, even though the patient is under the influence of this false view of reality, he is unable to express it. As we go deeper in the levels, the vital force becomes progressively stronger. Children and healthy adults often respond very well to the 1M strength of the remedy. On the bridge analogy, the person would say the bridge is immense and I feel powerless when I measure myself against it. The delusion here is of powerlessness.

Level Five corresponds to the 10M strength, or what Sankaran calls the Sensation Level. At this level the person is in touch with the source substance of the remedy that he needs. If he needs a remedy from the animal kingdom, he will express the victim-aggressor theme that is common to animal remedies.  If he needs a remedy from the mineral kingdom, he will express issues with structure, or a lack within himself. If he needs a plant remedy issues around sensitivity will be expressed, which will help the homeopath determine the remedy that is needed.

At the sensation level the patient’s speech, becomes more abstract as she expresses concepts that are non-human specific. Hand gestures come into play as the patient reflects qualities of the source substance, which comes from the non-human world, and can apply equally to the plant, mineral or animal kingdom.  The 10M strength of the remedy is needed by very healthy children and adults, or in people where much of what you see is the source substance, with some of the common human characteristics, such as the ability to speak, are sublimated, as in some autistic children.

Going back to the bridge analogy, the person would express the energy of the bridge itself through gesture, movement and in their behavior. A few years ago I treated an autistic child with Mercuriu vivus 10M. In addition to having many symptoms pointing toMercurius vivus in his case, he also had a peculiar habit of walking around with two objects in his hand, trying to merge them together, just as rolling balls of Mercury try to merge together. He made great strides on this remedy. His autism occurred upon receiving a flu shot.  Flu shots contain Thimerosol, a preservative containing mercury.  The U.S. government outlawed Thimerosol in children’s vaccines in 1999, but it is still present in the flu shot. Interestingly there was a significant reduction in autism rates in the United States following the outlawing of Thimerosol in children’s vaccines. From this child’s adverse reaction to the flu shot, it is clear that this ban should also be extended to the flu shot.

The sixth level corresponds to the 50M strength. Remedies from the 10M strength on up should only be prescribed by very experienced homeopaths. Severe and long lasting aggravations can be experienced by those who take these remedies inappropriately. In Sankaran’s system of the seven levels and bridge analogy, the person who needs a remedy of this strength would see no difference between himself and the bridge. He and the bridge are one.

The seventh level corresponds to the CM strength in Sankaran’s system and this would correspond to the mystic’s samadhi. All is one.

Furthering our knowledge:

3)      We have learned about the various potencies of the homeopathic remedies and their application, and have had a brief introduction into Sankaran’s Sensation Method and Seven Levels.

 One Remedy at a Time

Hahnemann stressed the importance of giving only one remedy at a time to the patient.  The reason for this is that the remedies are proven one at a time, and our knowledge of the remedies is based on the provings. Since the remedies are not proven in combination, we would not be able to predict what a combination remedy would do. Many homeopaths believe that the job of the homeopath is to find the single substance in nature that is expressing itself in the symptoms of the patient. Sankaran says that disease is the non-human element, or the non-human song, which is playing itself in the instrument of the patient, but is out of place there. The patient’s symptoms, sensations, attitudes, and delusions point the way to that single substance in nature. When the perfect fit has been found, there will be a resonance, which will silence that non-human element, which is out of place and free the patient to be the healthy person he or she is meant to be. What distinguishes a classical homeopath from a non-classical homeopath is adherence to the rule of one remedy at a time.

Where Remedies Come From

Now I want to talk about where remedies come from. Hahnemann and his colleagues proved over one hundred remedies on themselves. Since then thousands of remedies have been added to the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia. The Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States is the official compendium for homeopathic remedies in the U.S. Provings of new remedies are being conducted all over the world, making homeopathy a very dynamic and endlessly evolving science. As I have said before, the remedies come from the animal, mineral, and plant kingdoms. Some people recognize five or six kingdoms rather than the traditional three, and count algae, bacteria, and fungi as kingdoms in their own right, rather than including them with the plant or animal kingdoms. The nosodes would be classed with the bacterial kingdom. Nosodes are remedies that are made from disease substances, such as Tuberculinum, Carcinosin and Medorrhinum.

Homeopaths since Hahnemann’s time have attempted to make the study of remedies easier by grouping the remedies according to their botanical classification and comparing them to see if they have similar properties. This has been a very popular trend in the last twenty years, and Sankaran and others have gone a long way toward mapping plant sensations to help make the selection of remedies derived from plants more scientific.

Other homeopathic researchers have been doing the same thing with the mineral kingdom. Jan Scholten, Rajan Sankaran, Roger Morrison, Louis Klein and others have pioneered this work with the mineral kingdom, showing us that minerals on the same row on the periodic table of the elements share fundamental qualities, as do those on the same column. Homeopaths are exploring the idea that the periodic table of the elements is a map of human development from conception through the highest states of human development.

Much research has been done by homeopaths, such as Jonathan Shore, who wrote a book called, “Birds Homeopathic Remedies from the Avian Realm,” and Nancy Herrick, who wrote “Animal Minds, Human Voices,” to increase our knowledge of the remedies from the animal kingdom. All of this research on the various kingdoms has extremely practical application in clinical practice, as it helps homeopaths determine what kingdom the patient falls into–animal, plant, mineral, and then to make appropriate selections within the kingdom, so that they can make accurate prescriptions for their patients.

Thanks to the efforts of the homeopathic light-bearers, the work of all homeopaths is becoming more scientifically based, and the practice of prescribing more accurate. The other marvelous thing about this is that the remedy names that we see in our repertories and materia medicas are now coming to life for us, as we begin to connect them in our minds to the substances from which they come. To be a great homeopath, one must understand botany, chemistry, physics, psychology, the nature of consciousness, human disease, the therapeutic action of homeopathic remedies and so much more. It is truly a very rewarding lifetime study.

Miasms in homeopathy

I would be remiss to end this introduction to homeopathy without talking about the concept of miasms. Samuel Hahnemann introduced this term to homeopathy in his little book called, “Chronic Diseases.” It took him twelve years of study to write this book. He wanted to understand how come many patients were not responding to what he considered to be well chosen remedies. He decided that the reason was the presence of a miasmatic or genetic taint, which was getting in the way of their healing. He identified three primary miasms or genetic taints at that time: psora, or the suppressed itch, which he called the mother of all disease, and syphilis and sycosis. The last two come from sexually transmitted diseases.  Other miasms could be created from combinations of these three miasms. The Tuberculosis miasm was a combination of psora and syphilis. Cancer was a trimiasmatic disease, as all three miasms had to be present to create this condition. Hahnemann recommended prescribing intercurrent doses of nosodes in cases that were not progressing to help remove the genetic taint.

Rajan Sankaran has taken Hahnemann’s work and expanded the three original miasms to ten miasms. I would not be mentioning this concept except for the fact that knowledge of the miasms has made prescribing remedies far more accurate for me. In Sankaran’s system miasms represent a fundamental attitude toward life and pace of disease. This attitude is elicited from the client by asking him to tell you what his attitude is toward the chief complaint. If the homeopathic practitioner can identify that attitude and the pace of the disease he is far more likely to prescribe accurately,

Not long ago I had the opportunity to give a demonstration of how the miasms worked at the fall retreat of Integrated Healing Arts, a health center in Palo Alto, California that I am affiliated with. There was a woman there who had experienced hearing loss, and I wanted to demonstrate to the group how homeopathy worked by using her case as an example. I explained that in order to hone in on the remedy, it would be very helpful to understand her attitude and the pace of her disease. That information would bring us to the miasm that she fell into. Once we knew the miasm the remedy selection process would become much easier, as this would help to narrow down the range of possible remedies. I will list the miasms below and tell you what her attitude would be if she fell into that miasm:

The Acute Miasm: “This hearing loss has come on suddenly and it is a sudden and immediate threat to my survival. I am alarmed by it and in a state of panic. I am terrified that I will not regain my hearing.” The acute miasm is like a sudden storm. You react to it with instinctive terror. Either you survive the storm or it takes you down. Some of our well-known remedies from the acute miasm areBelladonna and Aconite. In this example the woman is in a panic state about her hearing loss.  This is an alarming situation.

The Typhoid Miasm: If the woman in our example needed a remedy from the typhoid miasm, she would view her illness as an emergency, and may even go to the hospital. This is a sub-acute, rather than an acute situation. It is a crisis that needs to be overcome, a critical situation that demands immediate attention. Once it is overcome she will be fine. The typhoid miasm is characterized by a sense of urgency and impatience. There is hope that with the proper effort and care, she will recover. Nux vomica, Bryonia, and Rhus toxicodendron are well known remedies from the typhoid miasm.

The Psoric Miasm: There is a basic optimism in the attitude of people who fall into the psoric miasm. This is the healthiest miasmatic type, as the attitude to life is the healthiest. In the example of the woman with hearing loss, she would feel optimistic about her prognosis. “I will recover.” I have to make an effort, but the situation is solvable.  Healthy children often need remedies from the psoric miasm, such as Calcarea carbonica, Sulphur and Lycopodium.

The Ringworm Miasm: The woman in our example needing a remedy from the ringworm miasm would alternate in her attitude from acceptance that she has this condition to a desire to struggle against it. Basically she feels like she can live with it if she has to, though she would rather not. It is not a life threatening condition. At one moment she is hopeful that she will regain her hearing, in the next moment she gives up and resigns herself to it. Dulcamara, Calcarea sulfurica and Calcarea silicata are a few remedies from this miasm.

The Malaria Miasm: If the woman in our example needed a remedy from the malaria miasm, she would feel very unfortunate to have this problem, and harassed by the hearing loss. She would feel that it was impeding her ability to function. This incident of hearing loss may not be the first time she has experienced this complaint, as periodicity and intermittent attacks characterize this miasm. She may brood about the problem, or go into attacks of rage that she has this condition. Our two biggest remedies of the malaria miasm areNatrum muriaticum and China Officinalis.

The Sycotic Miasm: Our lady with the hearing loss would definitely not want anybody to know about this problem, if she needed a sycotic remedy. As long as she can keep her condition a secret from others, she is okay. If they find out they might think she is too old or unqualified to do her job. This is her hidden weakness, and it is a fixed problem that she has to accept, because it is not going away anytime soon. She has to avoid situations where her secret may be discovered, and she feels under qualified to do her job. Thuja, Silica andMedorrhinum are well-known remedies from the sycotic miasm.

The Cancer Miasm: The woman in our example would be very perfectionistic.  Keeping in control of her life and all things in it would be her modus operandi.  The hearing loss would mean loss of control to her, and she would feel a need to regain control over this situation as fast as possible, otherwise her life would fall apart and we would have utter chaos. She has set high standards for herself, which she feels are beyond her capacity to achieve. She may feel desperate to regain her hearing and therefore control over her life. The task may seem huge to her, but it is not a completely desperate situation. Some well-known remedies from the cancer miasm are Arsenicum album, Argentum nitricum, Carcinosin, Conium, and Ignatia amara.

The Tubercular Miasm: Taking our example of the woman with the hearing loss, if she needed a remedy from this miasm she would have a great love of travel. She could feel bored easily from staying in one place too long, and have a longing for freedom and change. She could feel trapped by the hearing loss, if she perceives it as curtailing her freedom. She may lead a very intense and hectic life as she prepares for her next adventure. Well-known remedies of this miasm are Tuberculinum, Tarentula, Phosphorus and Iodine.

The Leprosy Miasm: The woman in our example would feel like a leper, because of the hearing loss. She would feel like she has been outcasted by society and isolated, because of this problem. No one will want to be friends with her, because she can’t hear what they say properly. She will even possibly loath herself. She may feel less than others, dirty and disgusted with herself for having this problem. She may feel intensely hopeless that she will be able to find a solution to the hearing loss. The most well-known remedy of the Leprous miasm is Sepia.  Some other remedies from this miasm are Aloe, and Secale.

The Syphilitic Miasm: As we move from the top of the list to the bottom of the list of miasms, we move from more healthy states to less healthy states, more optimistic attitudes to complete pessimism. The syphilitic miasm is the darkest of the miasms in terms of attitude. Here the feeling is of utter desperation, but she still must make an effort to try to recover. The woman in our example would feel that there is absolutely no hope, but still she has to try to be normal again. She may contemplate desperate solutions, and throw all caution to the wind. The syphilitic miasm is self destructive and destructive of others. Suicide and homicide can be contemplated and successfully executed in this miasm. Paranoid and psychotic states are also often present. The pathology itself may be very deep: ulceration and destruction of tissue may be taking place. Our heavy metals, such as Aurum metallicum, Mercurius and its salts, Plumbum metallicumand Platina fall into this miasm. Our poisonous snake remedies like Lachesis muta are also syphilitic remedies.

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