As discussed in previous blog posts, homeopathic medicines go through a process known as proving. The proving will show us what symptoms the remedy can produce in a healthy person, and thus what symptom complex they will be able to cure.
One of the interesting features noted in the provings was that physical symptoms were not the only ones produced. Often emotional symptoms or mental fixations were produced. These entered into the list of symptoms attributed to each of the remedies (the materia medica), and so became part of the total pictures used when selecting a remedy for a particular patient.
Over time many practitioners using homeopathy used the proving symptoms to treat many emotional disorders successfully, including serious mental illnesses, as demonstrated by the number of homeopathic asylums in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see http://history.tomrue.net/mpc/middletown_homeopathic_hospital.htm for an example).
For much of this period it was simply on the basis of these collections of symptoms that remedies were prescribed. However in the mid 20th century the insights of psychodynamics began impacting homeopathics. The idea of the subconscious suggested that there were symptoms which patients could not consciously and the increased psychotherapeutic emphasis on mental illness originating from that realm suggested that such symptoms were the key to treating mental illness.
The track record of homeopathic medicine in treating mental illness suggested that homeopathic medicine had an impact there, but what that impact was remained mysterious. However it wasn’t until the early 21st century that the Homeopathic Doctors of the Mumbai school in India ( particularily Dr. Divya Chhabra, my teacher) began actually exploring this realm. Through her casetaking methods, which disengage the conscious mind and allow the patient to explore what he is subconsciously perceiving, she began to notice that an underlying sensation, or feeling linked all aspects of a patients case together. Their physical symptoms, their emotional symptoms, their delusions, everything about that persons experience matched that core sensation ( see http://wholehealthnow.com/dchhabra-1.mp3 for a podcast of Divya explaining her method).
What was also discovered was that that sensation was identical to the sensations described in the deepest level of provings. This sensation matched up with the characteristics of the thing being proved at a deepest level. The experience of that animal (or plant, or mineral, or other thing) was the experience of people proving that remedy, and it was the experience of people who were cured by that remedy.
So, using this new method, the patients subconscious mind can be accessed, and their state, the deepest inner sensation, can be determined and removed, to the benefit of their mental and physical health.
Now for a moment, lets look inward. Let us look at our own minds. Most of us can in fact identify a feeling, a deep inner feeling that troubles us, that is unacceptable to us, and bothers us. Sometimes hugely, sometimes not hugely.
Imagine this feeling gone.
This is what is possible with homeopathy.
I hope to see you all for a homeopathic visit soon!
Take Care of Yourselves!
Dr. Paul.