In what ailments can homeopathy bring relief?
Over my 19 years’ experience I have dealt with many ailments in many individual cases. Below some examples of health problems that I have successfully dealt with:
addiction to gambling | ear infections |
ailments from traumas | headaches |
alleviate symptoms related to diabetes | infections of the respiratory tract |
allergies | infections of the urinary tract |
anxiety | insomnia |
backaches | irritable bowel |
behavioural problems in children and adults | lack of energy |
complaints from giving birth | phobias |
depression | problems during pregnancy |
digestive problems | stress |
distress | complaints of the muscles and tendons |
Homeopathy brings relief in all ailments but one must take in consideration that not only the main complaint is treated such as a lingering pneumonia, a persistent sinusitis, arthritis, or a recurring migraine but at the same time any other discomfort/complaint that is not covered with the pathological term and therefore not directly addressed by your GP or specialist.
Also the success of the recovery entirely depends on your dedication and determination to go through the process of homeopathic treatment. Generally speaking in three consultations we would expect a definite improvement, certainly with regards to your main complaint, the way you cope with life and your energy levels. At that stage we would have a definite idea of the progress of the treatment and careful expectations can be established as to the remainder of the treatment. As a general rule of thumb one can take it that the longer you are troubled with a certain complaint and the more less urgent problems play a role as well, the longer the homeopathic treatment may take. So acute ailments generally take less time to alleviate while chronic complaints take more time.
Often there is confusion as to what needs to be treated in unwell-being. The homeopath only treats disease as it is experienced from the point of view of the suffering person, whereas your GP or specialist would treat it from the point of view of formally established pathology. The two points of view have each their own validity but the question remains, who knows better? That is why at times the clients’ findings are contradictory to that of the GP or a specialist. One could suffer from a tremendous pain which could literarily be fully dis-acknowledged or even ignored by your neurologist, because from his perspective this could definitely not exist. So who is right?
If you are treated by a medical specialist or a general practitioner and wish to reduce your medication, please do so in line with his/her expertise and responsibilities.
Can homeopathic remedies be taken in conjunction with other medication and treatments?
Homeopathic remedies can be taken in conjunction with medication prescribe by your GP, psychiatrist or any other practitioner as long as they fundamentally work on a different level. While conventional medical treatments act directly on the chemistry and other physical aspects of one’s organism other therapies such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Pranic Healing, that have an effect on the Qi or life-force are alike homeopathy working on a deeper energetic level. This has the consequence that alternative therapies that have an effect on this deeper energetic level too will confuse me as your homeopathic practitioner when I am not made aware of it and may hamper your homeopathic treatment. Even if I am made aware of you undergoing another similar treatment on the same energetic level, it would still be difficult for me to make your homeopathic treatment a success.
How does the consultation work?
A consultation is like a friendly chat in which you, the client, are central stage. Open questions will be asked which invite you to open up and to explain what is bothering you to the extent and detail you feel comfortable with. Every homeopathic consultation has the aim to come to a highly individualised remedy which will help you as an individual.
The consultation is a cooperation between two equal parties, you as a client with your expertise of your own life and me the practitioner with my listening skills and vast knowledge of homeopathic and compassionate healing. The two will meet in the here and now of the consultation and together we will come to reasonable considerations and will derive at a remedy that will have a lasting positive effect on your complaint and general well-being. Usually it takes a number of consultations before we reach a satisfactory result with regards to the healing process. It all depends on the nature of the complaint. Also in acute situations homeopathy works quickly and effectively and so it is important to stay in contact with me during the treatment of your main complaint. In case of acute problems like the flu, a sudden migraine, a fall or disturbing news which keeps you occupied day and night do not wait till your next appointment but call me as soon as possible. Many times a telephone consultation of let’s say 15 to 20 minutes is sufficient to prescribe a remedy which will help you over the worse of your acute problem. The remedy costs are included in the consultation fee.
What are the homeopathic remedies made of?
Homeopathic remedies are derived from natural substances such as plants, animals and minerals and these crude substances are diluted to the extent that only the curative properties remain. Homeopathic remedies have no side-effects and can be taken along your medication from the specialist or GP. In actual fact, homeopathic remedies may reduce the side-effects of medical drugs significantly while not interfering with the conventional medical approach.
In some cases homeopathic remedies do lead to what is called a temporary initial aggravation. As homeopathy stimulates the mind-body organism to clear the ailments of its own accord by applying the innate vital force, the recovery process and its characteristics may intensify. Therefore one can reason that life occurs with ups and downs mentally, emotionally and physically in the form of health complaints and times of full-blown health. The good and bad times in life make us strong and really teach us how to live it better. Therefore it is important to first of all accept life to its full extent every moment we are living and so also ailments and health complaints may, if you choose to, function as an opportunity to take the bull by the horns for living a more fruitful life. This is what homeopathy may facilitate if you wish to work diligently with me.
How does the homeopathic therapeutic agent/remedy work?
Most of the time I prescribe homeopathic remedies in the form of little pills. Homeopathic remedies are derived from natural sources such as plants, animals or minerals and are diluted to the extent that only their curative properties remain. Homeopathic remedies are safe and have no side-effects as the toxicity of the original substance is diminished in an effort to release its latent curative powers. Based on an in-depth consultation in line with your highest needs such as a need to be in charge of your own life or perhaps to care to your satisfaction for an elderly person we’ll derive at an individualised prescription which is literarily made possible thanks to the thousands of remedies at the homeopath’s disposal. One way of explaining the action of the therapeutic agent is that our organs do have a particular electromagnetic field with a specific frequency which is related to the individual needs and all organs combined generated one combined field with one specific frequency which depends on your overall state of well-being. Also homeopathic remedies do have a electromagnetic field specific to the highly individualised curative properties. A remedy specifically chosen to bring about cure in an individual demonstrates a similar frequency of its electromagnetic field. This electromagnetic field can be made visible and is quantifiable. As a result the electromagnetic field of the individual client will interact with that of the homeopathic remedy and reinforce one another. This has the effect that our organism is able to overcome the state of unwell-being associated with blatant pathology or ill health of its own accord without needing any intervention. The homeopathic remedy works in coop with our organism’s own ability to recover by means of what is called the vital force in animism, the qi in Taoism or the prana in Hinduism.
Why does homeopathy work?
Homeopathy works in line with the needs of humanity. Therefore the homeopath requires a detailed consultation in order to prescribe a remedy that suits the individual client. The most important needs supported and enforced by the homeopathic treatment are of a highly individual nature such as your reasons for hope in a future, your reasons for caring for a vulnerable child or older person in line with your personal believes and of course your individual need for improvement of a physical condition that you experience as hampering all your short term intentions. These individual needs and desires do have in common that they cannot be measured nor can they be made visible like most medical experts need to do in order to make a diagnosis and a corresponding treatment plan. The type of knowledge about yourself that keeps you an enthusiastic individual for living your life is of no – or little concern for a medical treatment to those who need to avail of tests and physical check-ups. They are not or a little inclined to support you in your most vital individual needs that will lead to your personal happiness with its many benefits to others who are part of your life. Those individualising symptoms are deemed insignificant by the medical establishment but nevertheless are all-determining for your personal joy in this life. A sheer example of an immeasurable gesture that one does enable to face the day is a friendly smile from someone else whom you happen to meet on your way to work. Hope is immeasurable but take it away and you will find out how important the things are that we cannot see or touch for our general well-being and in effect for our physical health as well.
In a homeopathic consultation you as a client are central stage: you are taken 100 per cent seriously –no matter what needs to be revealed. Everything will – and can be taken seriously for it’s really your point of view that we are aiming to establish and most of all to confirm in the best possible way. In a highly sophisticated way I, as a homeopath, make you as a client number one through the act of sincere listening with compassion and an open mind. Therefore we can state that homeopathy is a highly person centred therapy on the spectrum of healthcare and medical approaches to well-being.
The opposite is true too. For those who have been treated in the psychiatric services know all too well that really it is not about their person during consultations with their psychiatrist but more so about the psychiatrist’s attempt to control or eradicate a disease with the help of generic drugs or, in the republic of Ireland, with electric convulsion therapy. With the best intentions he/she maintains a somewhat objective evidence based attitude and in doing so does not engage with your personal opinions about yourself and their validity for yourself but more so with what is perceived as evidence for pathological conditions. In that way he maintains an attitude of not listening and is able to totally ignore the patient as a person in order to maintain the validity of his/her system centred approach alone.
Homeopathy works for it establishes a sense of dignity and provides ways to self-knowledge and self-esteem that enforces our physical health by engaging on all levels, also the impalpable, with the person in charge of his/her own life. Homeopathy enforces the client’s position in the driver’s seat.
What is threefold homeopathic care about?
The client is central stage in homeopathy, unconditionally. Therefore all your predicaments, dilemmas, likes, dislikes, hurt, physical pain, enjoyments, happiness and moments of true ecstasy, everything you are coming out with, in particular the strange, rare and peculiar aspects of your life are referring to an inner core, a frame of reference so to speak: the soul.
Generally speaking there are three elementary aspects to the soul more or less relating to the sensory world out there, namely the sensory soul, the intellectual soul and the aware soul. Others prefer to relate to the soul as psyche or mind, nevertheless I feel that for a continuation of Christian spiritual values we have to endorse spiritual scientific terminology to the extent we are able to relate to it in this day and age. During a consultation I take your chief complaint along with individualising characteristics of your general well-being in consideration and decide what elementary aspect of the soul is at play. Based on these considerations I prescribe a remedy in line with the similarity principle that supports that specific aspect of the soul. As a consequence you experience relieve to a degree depending on your circumstances of your symptoms, because the soul and our organs intimately relate to one another. Mind and body are one as also scientific evidence has shown again and again. Certain homeopathic remedies specifically relate to one of the three fundamental aspects of the soul.
What is the deeper therapeutic significance of the threefold approach to well-being?
Our organism is mainly a sensory organism. There are the five senses, namely touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Beside that there are many other receptors/senses that makes our body work as well as possible, such as the sensory system that makes the resorption of the nutrients from the intestines into the bloodstream possible or what about the many receptors of our nervous system? In particular the five main senses, are making you aware of the world out there through the activity of the sensory soul.
All impressions and stimuli from the sensory soul need to become aware in relation to our past experiences and in relation to our future expectations such as hope provides. Through applying the intellect, the thinking faculty, we create a conceptual world which enhances our well-being as long it provides us with certainty with regards to the future and disagreeable occurrences of the past. We treasure our inner conceptual world and make sure that it works conform the reality of our daily lives in order to be able to say that we are happy. Miss-conceptions trigger disharmony, agony, frustration, etcetera, while at the other hand we wish to change behaviours of others or other aspects of our reality that are not conform our ideals that support our drives in relation to this conceptual world of ours. All activities in line with creating, maintaining and sustaining a future of our conceptualised inner world are called activities of our intellectual soul. To be precise: our intellectual soul creates freedom here and now from the enslaving qualities of the sensory souls’ impulses through its ability to reflect and dissolve the big and the very small issues that one feels confronted with on a day by day progress through life. It’s like dissolving particles in a glass of water. The more you are able to solve the problems you’re dealing with, the more you dissolve the muddy water, the more we create opportunities for light to shine through.
While addiction is definitely a characteristic of a harmful working sensory soul, controlling our own behaviour or that of other people to the extent that it leads to suffering such as narrow-mindedness as towards someone else’s capabilities is truly a complaint of someone stuck in activity of the intellectual soul. The latter loves predictability through laws of nature, systems put in place to run the world even better or just the conventions that everyone else seems to support. These type of beliefs convince us that the world we live in is made up of solid elements such as atoms and molecules whose characteristics are mere conceptualisations on the one hand. On the other hand however they provide us with the belief that everything real, everything noteworthy and to be reckoned with is tangible, quantifiable and measurable. This is what we call the materialist belief, namely that everything that is not in line with these principle makes us feel at unease with ourselves, the world we live in and of course the people we are dealing with in our daily lives. For the intellectual soul is inclined to hold on to scenarios that where effective in the past. Not being able to deal with the encounters with the at times harsh reality such as the immanent death of a beloved one and all other instances that break through the integrity of our conceptions of the this world we live in leads to pain, despair and unhappiness. Not being able to dissolve the muddy water, not being able to put time aside and to work towards a future is not being able to break out of your stubborn conceptual world and let the light shine through.
I choose homeopathic remedies in order to support you in your believe that there is a future and opportunities for enhancement of your life and indirectly for that of others that care about you. Besides that, homeopathy relieves you from the symptoms - whether they are physical, mental or emotional – , which go hand in hand with the short- or long-term stresses associated with these unfavourable life situations. Within the world of medicine it is widely acknowledged that excessive stress is the number one source of many ailments and so loneliness and isolation, a rampant phenomenon of our current economic culture, can be regarded as their maintaining factor. This provides a social context for health and disease.
Many times people feel lonely and isolated with their pain and hurt that stops them from living a fulfilling life. Loneliness and isolation are many times a consequence of a prolonged effort to reflect and the withdrawn introspective attitude that comes along with it. This in opposite to the outgoing attitude that works very well when absorbing yourself in activities of the sensory soul, such as admiring art, enjoying a nice meal or making love with a person you adore. An emphasis on life as we know it and therefore its continuation at all costs definitely leads to more of the same and at least continues pain and hardship.
Reaching out a helping hand to someone who is worse off at cost of maintaining our own lives as we know it and by doing so doing it unconditionally has two possible benefits. The first is that the other genuinely feels helped as a result of your unconditional love and care. The second is that you, as a consequence of letting your heart speak and not engaging with your temptations to live in line with what is expected of you by yourself or others, are willing to break through your self-limiting conceptualisations of the intellectual soul. This will lead to a certain degree of liberation of your own pain and hurt in loneliness and isolation depending on the measure of “self-sacrifice”. Many people are willing to take care to the extent that they go out of their way in order to make things happen for those who they feel are worse off. That is what makes us realise that we are not alone and that only together we can live sustainable happy lives. This sense of togetherness comes about when we dare to live according to our hearts content and in line with what our conscience has to say about it. Our conscience is an aspect of our aware being or aware soul as it is fighting for truth in which the other is completely accepted for who he/she is.
And so in our efforts to create peace and harmony in our little world of self-absorption, so from the instant we are confronted with sensory aspects of life up till the moment we are willing to break through our self-limiting conceptions through empathy and true self-love, we will gradually reach a state of lasting happiness. This may happen unnoticed in our daily lives or sometimes in huge leaps of faith. However we may feel obstructed for several reasons to help and love unconditionally which to me as a homeopath, facilitating you on this path of self-realisation, may be recognized as symptoms that guide me to an individual remedy that will help you to overcome your predicaments and burdening dilemmas. This brings about relief of your conscientiously felt burdens and of the suffering that goes with it and as a consequence light starts shining through. This means that as a consequence of the correct chosen homeopathic remedy you feel a little more enlightened and more able to cope with life as it is given. This, with the result that you are better able to care unconditionally, increase in self-esteem and other aspects of your mind-body organism gradually fall in line with the new higher purpose in life. Meaning that also physical symptoms such as menopausal complaints, a backache, a migraine, etcetera, will gradually improve. The significance here is that you and I, me as a homeopathic practitioner, have indirectly but specifically helped the one you are caring for through a thorough homeopathic consultation and administered remedy. This is because the remedy is chosen in line with your specific care predicament involving that particular person that you wish to care for better.
When we address a situation in your life in which you are hampered giving love/care unconditionally, like for instance to a child, an elderly person with dementia or the lonely and isolated neighbour, we are addressing the highest needs in a person, namely to love and to be loved unconditionally. Unfortunately sometimes people are not able or willing to love to the same extent unconditionally. For several reasons they feel that first other conditions have to be met before they are able to do so.
We understand that at times things have to be ironed out or settled before we are able to care for anyone else. Take for example the situation of attending to a court case where a lot can be at stake and so it requires a sense of control in order to make no mistakes and most of all to prevent falling into the traps of the lawyer of the opposite party. The needs of this person in relation to this situation are best served by providing a remedy such as Carcinosum that enables him to adapt to the procedures of the court through increased ability to self-control and so through a better functioning of the intellectual soul at cost perhaps of his caring disposition.
Everything comes at a costs one says and so also our need to meet the one we love generally involves taking certain risks. When falling in love we forget who we are as an effect of our overwhelming addiction to be loved and more particularly understood for who we are. The sexual inclinations we may have do hamper our ability to listen even though that is only the secondary aspect of mutual love. Going too fast into a relationship with someone else you adore for obvious reasons may lead to confusion as to what is his and what is yours. You may develop briefly a desire to change one’s personal characteristics if things do not work out the way you hoped for. After all you are looking for the right conditions to give yourself whole and so it happens many times that making love on conditions, making a love-relationship possible, leads to pain and hurting through misunderstanding and precarious intimate situations while another love-relationship may or may not be involved. Realising clarity is one of those basic requirements that one needs to fulfil in order to make life working again. In those cases where the senses are celebrated at cost of adequate living/working/making things happen for yourself we feel many remedies could be indicated that address our needs on a most basic- and therefore decisive level, namely the level of our sensory soul and more particularly those very limited aspects of soul-life which partake in our intimate sexual relationships. One of those outstanding remedies that would address a client’s moral confusion as a result wrong-doings at this basic level of soul-life and the mental-, emotional- and physical complaints that comes along with it is Ignatia.
What is the social context to medicine and therefore homeopathy?
Through my efforts of starting a new life and looking for a new purpose straight after my last admission into a psychiatric institution some 7 years ago, I have been able to develop the idea that there is a social context to health and disease. I reasoned that therefore the triggers, the maintaining factors, but also of course, the ways of preventing and/or remedying disease and psychological unwell-being must be sought, beside in medicine, in community life and our culture as well.
As a consequence I have entered the field of social care with the work I was already doing anyway, namely the care for those in distress, while masterminding intricate aspects of homeopathic medicine that where not thought of and practised before. I initiated a system whereby homeopathy is able to enter the field of social sciences with the focal point on the client’s perspective.
First of all I came to understand that besides the vital force or the dynamis there is another higher power at play in the human organism, namely the spirit force. This is not just an intellectual concoction but something that can be readily availed of in the practise of every homeopathic practitioner who wishes to apply the insights derived from the threefold approach to homeopathy.
For example: a mother would do everything for her child in order to safeguard its future. She would be able to make many sacrifices even – in some cases – to the point of giving her own life. Well, the force that drives the mother to do this is the unconditional love for her child and is expressed in a determination beyond belief in all the aspects of the care of her child which also can benefit other people. We may call this the spirit force.
The spirit force becomes immanent in the consultation with clients when we address their highest need, namely to care for someone and to do this better. While discussing their dilemmas and predicaments in relation to a particular care situation one naturally mentions the difficulties one encounters. This leads to an exchange of experiences, moral stances and opinions in an ambiance of mutual respect and genuine sympathy between the homeopathic practitioner and the client while at the same time the homeopath records the individualising characteristics. The remedy prescribed in relation to this particular care situation will enhance the spirit force and the ability to be more caring.
The remedy addressing the spirit force works in two ways, indirectly it has a beneficial effect on the quality of care of a friend, a child an elderly person, etcetera, while at the other hand it directly enhances the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of the client. At the same time a remedy could be prescribed to primarily stimulate the vital force or the dynamis, as our founder Samuel Hahnemann called it. In my experience over the years it only takes 4 known remedies, one per prescription and in low potencies such as C6 or C30, to primarily stimulate the dynamis. As a result the client may experience an increase in appetite, bodily comfort – as in temperature, an increase in energy, a more fulfilling sex-life, etc. At the same time the remedy that is chosen to stimulate the higher functioning, such as the ability to unconditionally love and care, usually given in a higher potency, will direct the dynamis in such a way that it can reign in our organism more effectively, increasing the harmonious coherent activity of the organs.
The threefold approach to homeopathy works in line with the human needs and not as much with the given facts from the materia medica, the volumes of remedy descriptions as they are derived from testings and clinical findings. The highest need in each individual is to love- and to be loved unconditionally. Therefore this need to unconditionally care/love is something that can be seen when people in one of my self-help groups work in a united fashion for the well-being of those who are worse off, such as in Listen-to-your-Hearth, a self-help group for those in distress.
In my self-help groups we work as a consequence of sound listening according to the principles of Faith, Hope and Charity. We meet in the faith that after all we have been through, life is worthwhile to live, but that indeed drastic change is needed. Hope for a better future comes about when we start listening to one another with the intention to find out where he/she is coming from, what challenges have to be overcome and what his/her future expectations may be. In our efforts to listen we light a candle and whoever holds the candle can speak to their hearts content while the other participants are thoroughly listening. As this candle goes around, round after round the group ties will strengthen and the urge to do something for people outside the group who are worse off will increase. As we have made such a tremendous effort to listen and understand what the other had to say for her/himself, it becomes rather easy to work unitedly for the well-being of others unconditionally. In other words, we have enabled ourselves through the loving care that listening brings about, to put our personal dilemmas aside for the benefit of someone else’s future and to break out of our individual isolation that is maintained by the activity of the intellectual soul. Through charity and unconditional love we are able to stand up for the rights of someone else or to care better for a person who is worse off. In doing so we may be hampered by struggles of the sort that may seem impossible to overcome successfully. Anyhow, as we all face the same struggles and we are all confronted by the same challenges in a united fashion, we all individually may benefit from one single remedy that is prescribed for the whole group. The homeopathic practitioner will take all the group characteristics in consideration as if it where one person. Hence this particular way of group prescription is effective when it comes to the benefit of those people who are targeted by their charitable work. Also the individual effects individually felt by each participant are surprisingly beneficial with regards to the ability of each to open up and so to reveal more of their talents, beauty and precious gems that lay deep in their hearts.
Through the group-work in, for example, Listen-to-your-Heart we enter with homeopathy the field of social sciences and at the same we make sure that those lonely and isolated people are listened to with the effect that at the same time their self-esteem will increase and their willingness to do something about the injustice perpetrated on them. The participants that break out of their isolated existence will deal much easier with their personal stresses and together they have created a new future perspective all because of attentive listening guided by the principles Faith, Hope and Charity.
Loneliness and isolation are some of the chief maintaining and causative factors of stress and distress leading to all sorts off physical, emotional and mental suffering. One can be the best practitioner of medicine in the world, however if one doesn’t look after the well-being of the client in relation to his/her social context or worse even, if one is inclined to prescribe medication and applies methods that hamper the client in his/her social participation, all efforts may seem a lost cause.
I have explored this innovation in small sessions with couples and I must say that a closer look is needed with regards to working with bigger numbers. However the principles that I apply for couples and 1:1 consultations remain the same. At request I am willing to demonstrate my findings through the aid of life cases only to registered colleagues in homeopathy in seminar settings of an appropriate size.