This is part three of a three part article discussing my own and other people's experiences with homeopathy and why it is a viable alternative (and often complementary modality) for traditional health care. In this part I discuss the history of homepathy, how it is recovering from obscurity after once being a prominent and well-liked form of medicine and the rigorous training that Classical Homeopaths receive.
Homeopathy is a serious system of medicine and requires a solid education in order to really help people. For example, The School of Homeopathy in the UK (which I attended) is a four year program that issues an Advanced Diploma in Homeopathy (DP Hom Adv.) Once you become a Homeopath in North America you can seek acceptance into the North American Society of Homeopathy, a self governing body with strict regulations and acceptance criteria for Homeopaths. Here is my listing in that organization. The program at the School of Homeopathy also requires an 18 month internship in which you take a minimum of 30 cases with real people under the supervision of a more experienced homeopath. You have to follow at least some of those cases for the 18 month period to prove that you can prescribe over the long term, though not everyone needs homeopathy for 18 months. The school has an international reputation and teaches students from all over the world. Because of this they are able to attract the best homeopathy teachers in the world. Along with homeopathy you are required to study pathology of disease and anatomy so that you have a well-rounded perspective on disease and its causes as well as the fundamentals of how the human body works.
Homeopathy has been in use since the 1800s and has gained traction in many countries. It is the primary system of medicine in India and is widely used in the UK, France, Germany, Holland, South Africa and many other countries. It is currently undergoing a resurgence in this country. America was once a haven for homeopathy and homeopathic education and it was an American Physician from New York, Dr. James Tyler Kent, who developed the famous “Kent’s Repertory,” a comprehensive reference system that maps symptoms to homeopathic remedies. Kent’s Repertory is still widely used today for prescribing remedies and has been transposed into a software version in most, if not all, homeopathic software reference works. While more modern versions of the Repertory continue to emerge, Kent’s Repertory as always been an essential tool for both aspiring and practicing homeopaths and forms the infrastructure of more modern Repertories such as the Complete Repertory.
Dr. Kent, a trained medical physician, wasn’t impressed with homeopathy at first, until, like many famous homeopaths, illness hit his own family and modern medicine let him down. Homeopathy cured his wife’s insomnia which had failed to respond to traditional medicines.
During the 19th century, homeopathy fell into the dark pit of things the “authorities” didn’t want us to know about because it competed with their agenda of developing big pharma. There were many other healing modalities that were emerging in the late 1800s and early 1900s such as the Natural Hygienic Movement pioneered by Dr. Herbert Shelton and others. These health movements were aimed at helping us improve our lifestyles by clean eating and learning to live stress free lives. For example the Hygienists believed that by opening your windows and letting in fresh air, getting outside, taking exercise, bathing, keeping your house clean, and eating healthy food would all contribute to a higher state of health. Today we accept these things as normal but in the early 1900s these were new ideas. However, homeopathy and the hygienic movement, along with other alternatives to traditional medicine, largely fell into obscurity as germ theory and big pharma began to dominate the health scene. Today we have developed a culture where people are accustomed to simply “taking something” when they fall ill rather than allowing their bodies time and space to recover. Prior to the pandemic, which forced us to stay home when we were sick, when was the last time you took time off work and stayed in bed to get over a cold, pampering yourself with herbal tinctures, tea and honey and lots of TLC? Or do you just run out to the drugstore, pick up a few boxes of OTC medicines, and struggle on. Many of us can't afford to take time off work because we have bills to pay, children to feed and no paid vacation. I wonder how we got to such a sorry state of affairs.
Today, the disillusionment that so many people are experiencing with modern medicine, is driving a return to safe and gentle forms of medicine, such as homeopathy, and we have learned in the last few years that in fact allowing ourselves time out to de-stress is beneficial and even rather nice!
Once you have experienced a full recovery using homeopathy, you will be as hooked as I am. I will add in the spirit of full disclosure that sometimes it is not easy to find the right remedy immediately and sometimes patience is required both on the part of the client and on the part of the prescribing Homeopath. It is especially difficult if someone is taking one or more prescription medications and suffering from multiple chronic conditions, because these complicate the health picture, however it is still possible to use homeopathy alongside traditional treatment.
Successful homeopathic treatment is dependent on several things, including the skill of the Homeopath, the willingness of the patient to persist with treatment, and the willingness of the patient to follow additional advice from their Homeopath, such as sticking to a healthy diet, changing a lifestyle pattern or giving up their self-prescribed supplements. It takes a lifetime to get sick and getting well takes time too. Using homeopathy can reveal layers of suppressed illness that can go back to the earliest diseases or traumas in childhood. Our childhood sets the stage for the present physical condition. For example, if it was abusive we often have low self esteem issues which have led to chronic physical conditions such as digestive issues. True healing (using any modality) can require patience and sometimes courage. Some of us are more comfortable with our disease than we are with the idea of being completely rid our our disease. Others are afraid of trying new things, wasting their money, or being faced with disappointment yet again.
Many of my clients tell me, I have tried everything else. I have nothing to lose. In an ideal world, people will try homeopathy first, and leave allopathy (modern medicine) as the last resort. We will get there one day. During the 1800s, when Homeopathy was emerging as a serious system of medicine, Chiropractic was also emerging. Throughout the 1900s it suffered heavy criticism and was scorned by the American Medical Association who created a committee on Quackery to disparage and anihilate it. None the less, today, most people have a chiropractor or have been to one. Today chiropractic is accepted as a genuine form of treatment. Similar underhanded tactics are still in use today against Homeopathy, calling it pseudo-science, mocking Homeopathy and disparaging its results as non-scientific (which is not true by the way). Out of one side of their mouth they accuse us of giving people poison and out of the other side of their mouth they say there is no detectable molecule in the remedy so it couldn’t possibly work.
Homeopathy is currently the fastest growing system of medicine in the world. And that is for good reason. It is yielding results that modern medicine can only wonder at.
As a Homeopath my single biggest challenge is finding people who are willing to give it a try and see for themselves that it works. Getting people to believe in something that has been suppressed for two centuries is hard work! And yes, Homeopathy is not covered by insurance. However, it is money well spent. An investment in your health saves you money in the long term. Think about how much money you spend on your health insurance, co-pays, prescriptions, over the counter meds, supplements and so on. Homeopathic remedies cost very little, often around $10-15 and because you don’t need to take much of them, there is not a big commitment to purchasing them month after month. Compared to the cost of eating out a couple of times a week, or getting your nails done, or purchasing supplements, homeopathy is very reasonably priced.
Another benefit of homeopathy is that the sessions can be very cathartic. You might confide things to your Homeopath that you have not told anyone else and saying those things out loud in itself is healing. Your Homeopath will get to know you in a way no-one else knows you. We ask endless questions about your background, your likes and dislikes... We truly want to know what makes you tick, what makes you different from everybody else. We ask you what makes you mad and what makes you happy. We give you a voice and we listen - because only by listening can we find the essence of you and match that to a remedy. We help you understand yourself on a level you have never reached before and that in itself can be a healing journey.
If you or someone you know has been recently diagnosed and does not want to go the traditional route, or has tried everything else but nothing has worked, or if your doctor has said I can’t really find anything wrong but let’s put you on this medication or that medication and it doesn’t work, then I encourage you to consider homeopathy as a course of treatment. Because it is safe and gentle you have very little to lose and so much to gain.
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