What is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy does not give a medicine for headache and another for stomachache to the same person. Instead it gives one medicine for the whole individual. A single remedy, that best fits you, must affect all of you.
Mind and body
are Inseparable
We are born as one body, we function as one, and when we are ill we react as one whole body. When affected by chronic or acute disease our symptoms represent this very reaction and are found throughout the body including our thoughts, moods and mental state. An example is if you have even a common cold it will be experienced in more than just your nose and throat, but you might also experience changes in your moods, thoughts and energy levels. Additionally you may feel chilled, experience changes in your dreams, appetite and perspire more than usual. The homeopath understands isolated or local symptoms as part of the larger pattern of your health as a totality.
Personalized medicine
It’s all about you. Homeopathy is precision medicine based upon what is characteristic and unique about you and your individual illness and response pattern. A homeopath must find a remedy that fits you exactly in terms of your health totality. In addition to understanding your presenting complaints the homeopath asks about such specifics as your food cravings and aversions your weather preferences, dreams, perspiration, and digestive function, etc.. Your homeopath must also gain an understanding of your essential nature and lived experience.
Homeopathy literally means “similar suffering”. It is based on the core principle that ‘like cures like’ i.e. a substance which can cause symptoms if taken in large doses, can be used in minute doses to treat similar symptoms. This therapeutic observation can be traced back to the Greek physician, Hippocrates (460-377 BC), often referred to as The Father of Medicine. The German physician Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), developed this principle into a complete system of medicine. Dr. Hahnemann made the science of homeopathy his life’s work, experimenting on himself and a group of volunteers testing a wide range of natural substances derived from plants, animals, and minerals.
Healing from the inside out
The homeopath observes you as having different levels, so to speak. At your core lies your mind which includes your emotions, intellectual faculties, personality, sense of self, and purpose in life. Your overall feeling of well-being and vitality are also part of your core. From there we observe the vital organs, the non-vital organs, and so on, out to the skin. Homeopathy views these “levels” as going from the innermost to the outermost of you: the innermost being the mind, the outermost being the skin. In truly achieving health the homeopath must be sure that improvement comes from the innermost of you, arising out of your core, the center of who you are. But if physical symptoms are treated without considering the state of the mind or emotions or your general condition, then the disease state will not truly be affected. The totality of symptoms must be addressed, otherwise only some symptoms will be treated while leaving susceptibility unchanged.
