Paul K. Branch, M.D. - Holistic Medicine and Classical Homeopathy


(866) 477-1169
Email

Nature is the best cure.

Sign Up For Dr. Branch’s Newsletter!

Name
Email
 

Contact

for more information

Contact Dr. Branch via email or phone for a consultation.

(866) 477-1169
The Alternative Healer

Archive for the ‘Levels of Healing’ Category

« Older Entries

Reflections on Traditional Chinese Medicine

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

In response to my previous post, our reader wrote the following:

I find your blog one of very few on alternative medicine that dares to speak some of the truths rarely spoken – for example, the one on myths about weight loss – you are clear, concise and to the point – i find that refreshing.  Your answers make a lot of sense, but also provoked a few more questions –here they are:

1) From your answer and articles on your blog, as well as my own observations and experience with TCM, it is not a modality primarily used to address emotional and spiritual healing – is that true?

2) The other question is, can TCM suppress a disease, and/or cause the body to develop a deeper illness?

i am asking questions of this kind because I am troubled by how alt. med. is still being practiced the majority of the time – i.e. focus on or treat only one level, usually the physical, with little or no regard to the other levels, nor the possibility of suppression – yet i know there is a purpose that all modalities are serving… i am trying to understand, to complete the picture for myself

Thank you once again.

Thanks for your questions.  It makes blogging fun.  So please keep them coming.

As for the first question, I agree with you that TCM is not a modality primarily used to address emotional and spiritual healing.  The key word here is “primarily.”  TCM certainly encompasses the emotional and spiritual, it simply rarely creates therapeutic intentions at that level.  As I discussed early on in my blogging, the “therapeutic intention” of a healer is critical, because you are unlikely to accomplish things you do not intend.  This is the greatest weakness of TCM, which is a brilliant modality.  Observe one great Chinese practitioner and you understand what an astonishing accomplishment TCM is.

TCM springs out of a distinct perspective, which has to do with Chinese culture itself.  I find it to be ‘impersonal,” particularly when compared with other ancient cultures, such as the Greeks and ancient India.  The essence of Chinese spirituality is the Tao.  The Tao describes cosmic forces that are orderly, harmonious, mysterious, yet impersonal.  Compare it to the myths of Hinduism and the Greeks, where there is an encounter between the human and personal, even intimate, cosmic forces.  Feel the ecstasy of union of  a Hindu worshiping Krishna.  I am no expert, but such an experience seems rare in China.

Chinese medicine reflects this, and it has a powerful objectivity.  The ancient Chinese were exact observers of nature.  Yet our understanding of the  “spiritual” and “emotional,” which necessarily include the subjective, gets lost.  I have found this out recently in working with top-notch Chinese practitioners.  They conceive the mental and emotional in terms of the energy terminology of TCM.  They listen as you talk about treating a different dimension, but they have no framework to fully understand it.

TCM never developed deeper methods to help the psychologically or socially challenged patient.  It probably is because the nature of Chinese society does not produce such conditions often.  If a society does not recognize psychiatric illness, people are less likely to develop it.  Calling this a “weakness” of TCM is subjective.  Nevertheless,  TCM does not translate perfectly to western culture, where experiences such as “alienation” and “cultural mal-adjustment” are rampant.  “Depression” is an interesting concept here.  For the Chinese, depression is primarily a disease of heart or liver energy.  They are right, yet they miss the possibility of a energetic, spiritual perspective lying hidden beneath it.

As for question #2, I think bad Chinese medicine can promote deeper illness, but you would have to work at it.  A person can usually feel the imbalance produced by wrong treatment and stops it.  For example, if I am very yang and hot, and you give me herbals that rev up my yang energy, I am not going to like you much.  “Suppression” is not a good word for this.  Working with elemental forces of the universe, TCM is not given to harsh suppression.  Acupuncture I think is even more benign.  You can throw a person off with bad acupuncture, but, unless you have quite a sick or depleted person, you would have to work hard to cause any major problems.  There may be those out there whose experience contradicts this.  I would love to know about it if so.

Share

Tags:
Posted in Chinese Medicine/Vital Energy Dimension, Levels of Healing, Medicine and Society | No Comments »

How Does Physical Healing Affect the Emotional Level?

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I had a recent question from a reader:

A question about healing came up for me recently that I wonder if you could shed light on.
When someone is healed physically, i.e. their physical symptoms are gone, do they necessarily heal emotionally or spiritually as well? I know homeopathy aims to do this, but do other modalities such as TCM, reiki, or hands-on-healing? I am thinking particularly of chronic conditions like cancer or diabetes or MS, etc.

I think you raise a fascinating question.  A lot of things can happen that cause physical symptoms to subside. Not all of them come hand-in-hand with emotional and spiritual healing.  Nevertheless, such healing has an effect on emotional and spiritual well-being.

The Chinese medicine perspective helps us understand this. The Chinese focus on energy balance in all the body’s organs (meridians).  Blocked energy in an energy meridian eventually expresses itself at the physical level. Yet, It can also go the other way. For example, if my liver energy gets clogged and stagnant (maybe I decide to eat solely at  McDonalds) I could become depressed and irritable as a result.

I can put in an acupuncture needle, release the blocked liver energy, and cause related physical symptoms to go away. Restoring this energy flow likely helps me become less irritable.

In my experience, if there are strong emotional conflicts, springing from the individual’s state of consciousness and aggravated by life stress,  acupuncture and other vital energy therapies do not help that much.  Vital energy therapies may temporarily relieve the problem, but have difficulty resolving it.   Because the underlying spiritual and emotional conflicts have powerful vital energetic effects, this can continually create physical symptoms that will not go away, or go away only briefly before coming back.  Vital energy therapies treat vital energy problems.  That said, realize that depression is a vital energy problem to a greater or lesser degree.  Just how much so you can find out after the work of a good acupuncturist.  If acupuncture works–and holds–we can say it is predominantly a vital energy problem.

To sum up, healing at the physical level means one of two things:

1)  The person’s energy state is better, allowing the physical symptoms to subside.  This could be because of an energetic intervention such as reiki or acupuncture.  There are countless other reasons a person can get better that have to do with the energies that surround us:   people are affected by seasons, personal energy cycles,  cosmic energy cycles, and so on.  Some of this the Chinese can track, e.g. 2010 for the Chinese is a metal heavy year and problematic for people with liver and gallbladder weakness.

2)  The physical symptoms are suppressed and the body seeks balance by beginning to develop a deeper illness.

In the case of #1, the person has been helped at the emotional level as well, even though it may be too insignificant for them to notice.  In the case of #2, the person is negatively affected at all the deeper emotional, spiritual, and energetic levels.

You ask about deep diseases such as cancer or MS. My current approach is that a healing plan should address all levels–physical, vital energy, emotional, and deeper levels, which include the state of consciousness and spiritual dimensions–to some degree at once. You may know from people who work with cancer patients that it can be unpredictable who survives. Some people who should do well do terribly. This is evidence of getting stuck at the deeper emotional and spiritual levels.

Share

Posted in Disease Conditions, Energy Healing, Levels of Healing, Spirituality | 6 Comments »

On the One Year Anniversary of My Blog

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

I started this blog a year ago to outline the different levels of our being that different forms of medicines address. This anniversary week I plan to return to the this fundamental question. Last August I began by listing the levels of therapeutic intention that various healers can have. In other words, what is your healer trying to do. I saw this as an important question that all who seek health care, whether conventional or alternative, should understand. I outlined the levels as follows:

1) Intention at the level of diagnosis, i.e. fix the abnormal number or test

2) Intention at the level of feeling, i.e. fix the pain or discomfort.

3) Intention at the level of vital systems, i.e. fix the energetic imbalance.

4) Intention at the level of consciousness, i.e. shift the pattern of perception underlying the expression of physical and mental disease.

These I called the four basic levels of healing, seen from the point of view of any given healer’s therapeutic intention.

Around that same time, while reading in ancient Egyptian medicine, I had a realization. The medicine of ancient Egypt divided the human being into seven different dimensions:

1) the physical body (The Khat)

2) The vital or energetic body, also called “bio-plasmic body”,   (The Ba, the soul of breath)

3) The emotional body  (The Khaba or astral body)

4) The intellectual body which consists of the lower and middle states of consciousness  (The Khaibit)

5) The spiritual Self, or Higher Mind (The Ka)

6) The Super-consciousness. The plane where Universal knowledge is available to those attuned to it.  (The Sekhen)

7) Pure spirit, or divine mind (The Ren).

What I noted in looking at these seven levels was the strong similarity they had with my levels of therapeutic intention. The only difference was the ancient Egyptians viewed the emotional dimension as deeper (i.e. further from the physical realm) than the energetic dimension. Levels two and three were switched around. I agreed with the ancient Egyptians. My levels of therapeutic intentions, in contrast, addressed the way healers in our society actually work. It might be worthwhile to put another level of intention between my 3rd and 4th levels. I have found healers with specific therapeutic intentions at the emotional body to be relatively uncommon. They do exist however. For example a shamanic journey has as its intention to retrieve lost or traumatized parts of our emotional selves–an intention specific to the Egyptian emotional body (3rd dimension).

I have since decided to use the word ”levels“ when I am referring to healers and their intention and ”dimensions“ when I speak of the actual layers (dimensions) of human energy. They are not exactly the same. As it turns out, you can numb the 3rd dimension by addressing the physical body (i.e. a 1st level intention), for example the use of prozac, tranquilizers, or pain killers. Therefore, 2nd level intentions are close in character to 1st level intentions in the physical dimension. i.e the 2nd level usually addresses the physical, although in a different way. The 1st level intention addresses an objective finding or diagnosis; the 2nd level intention addresses the unpleasant feelings the person is having, both working through the physical plane. People for millennia have learned to numb the emotional body (3rd dimension) through substance use (acts through the 1st dimension), whether it be alcohol and drugs or simply overeating. It’s the realm of self-medicating the emotional body through the material or physical dimension. Today’s medicine simply does this in more sophisticated ways.

Some people wonder whether the physical and emotional might not be two aspects of the same dimension, like their doctor tells them. But they are not. Energetically they are different. The emotional body appears to be a field of energy that exists in and around the cells of the body.

Because we as humans necessarily process experience through the physical body–e.g. the stress (emotional dimension) of the office today has landed in your tight, aching shoulders (physical dimension)–all experience from deeper dimensions will impact our physical dimension. It does this in ways that are predictable with knowledge with what is happening at deeper dimensions. For example, grief will energetically affect our lungs. In the same way, experience that impacts the physical realm (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex, accidents, exercise) will affect the deeper layers of who we are. These are more difficult to predict. For example, a person sensitive to fright (an issue that goes into the 4th level and dimension; note how 4th dimension is the same as the 4th level) has an accident on their bicycle and goes home and dreams of being chased for the rest of the night. Any aggravation at the physical dimension can aggravate specific, idiosyncratic 4th dimensional issues.

Welcome to a new year of my blog. I will continue to define these levels and dimensions in coming weeks.

Share

Posted in Alternative Medicine Basics, Energy Healing, Levels of Healing, Spirituality | 29 Comments »

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

There has been a bit more controversy lately over a disease that does not fit neatly into the measurements of the physical plane (i.e, 1st level, see my Levels of Healing on the right). Chronic fatigue syndrome is perhaps best understood as “profound exhaustion” that interferes with living. Strangely, sometimes it can interfere with sleeping as well, yet often people with this disease sleep their life away.

Of course, any deep chronic disease can cause fatigue. Cancer for example, could cause fatigue, as could any auto-immune disease such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Chronic fatigue syndrome, on the other hand, does not have the markers of other physical ailments. For the most part, it is simply fatigue. Often there is a history of mononucleosis in these people; thus the association of chronic fatigue with the Epstein Barr virus of mono.

In June the CDC did a randomized telephone survey using a “less restrictive methodology” (see the New York Times article NYT July 17th article on Chronic Fatigue) and found that about 1 in 40 adults ages 18 to 59 met the diagnostic criteria — an estimate 6 to 10 times higher than previously reported rates.

Here’s the rub, though, quoting from the same New York Times article,

Many patients and researchers fear that the expanded prevalence rate could complicate the search for consistent findings across patient cohorts. These critics say the new figures are greatly inflated and include many people who are likely to be suffering not from chronic fatigue syndrome but from psychiatric illnesses.

Within this paragraph we can find two glaring assumptions:

1) That the physical fatigue these people feel is distinct from what they feel on the mental level, i.e. that it is possible to make sharp distinctions between physical disease and mental disease.

2) That medicine can best serve people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome by trying to hunt down an objective marker on the physical plane.

I see no evidence for #1, and consider #2 to serve the medical system itself rather than the patients it serves.

A medical illustrator with chronic fatigue syndrome quoted in the Times article says this:

There are many, many conditions that are psychological in nature that share symptoms with this illness but do not share much of the underlying biology.

This man is determined to believe that he has a physical illness, and that what is going on in his psyche is a separate matter altogether. We do not have to believe him.

My latest chronic fatigue case in my practice took me five hours to take. As always, it was a hunt for the deep confluence point where the physical symptoms intersect the underlying consciousness of the patient, knocking through that door to the 4th level prescription.

Here are my general observations about what is termed “chronic fatigue syndrome”:

1) First and foremost, I find it is almost invariably what the ancients would call “a disease of Mars.” (Note that “venereal disease,” comes from the ancients as well, specifically meaning a “disease of Venus.”) Mars for the ancients ruled over aggression, anger, and battle. Mars, coming from the Greek Aries, was a warrior. Without restraints, Mars is a belligerent tyrant that wants what he wants and walks over anybody to get it. On the other hand, if this part of ourselves does not function, we cannot assert ourselves well, and other people tend to walk over us.

The classic situation for problems is if the Mars instinct in us is strong but repressed. Anger is present—often it is outright rage—but not usually expressed. In some real sense, this aggression, this desire to engage life, which requires, at least to some degree, conflict and battle, turns inward in self-destruction. “Chronic fatigue” becomes a code phrase for deeper conflicts of the will.

2) Closely allied with this are the patient’s level 2 words to describe the feelings surrounding the physical symptoms. There often will initially be two separate lines of feelings words: those coming from the physical and those the patient uses in conjunction with his psyche. Examples of the latter might be “indifference,” “numb” “hopeless,” “helpless” and such. This simply means that a practitioner needs to press in deeper in the casetaking to find where the two begin come together. Not always is the case, though. Sometimes patients will immediately tell you “I cannot separate out my feelings of fatigue from my feelings of depression.”

3) As always, at the 4th level the 1st level diagnosis “chronic fatigue” sorts itself out into one of hundreds of different core conflicts at the level of consciousness.

4) It might be thought that having the patient work on expression of underlying repressed rage would help the fatigue. It might, but this would in effect be seeking a 2nd-3rd level solution of the problem, and will likely only partially help if it helps at all. What we have to understand is that 4th level issues are “in our cells.” Healing the 4th level requires an energetic approach that addresses the 4th level.

5) It is interesting to note that Mars is also associated with the sex drive. Usually in chronic fatigue syndrome there are sexual issues, generally the loss of the sex drive–just another expression of a loss of the Mars life force.

Share

Tags:
Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions, Levels of Healing | No Comments »

Some Thoughts on Gynecological Disease

Monday, July 16th, 2007

My friends at Laughing Sage Wellness Group said this in a recent newsletter covering fibroid tumors of the uterus:

Dr. Christiane Northrup (author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom) calls fibroids an “illness of competition.” At LSW, we believe that fibroids represent stored emotion – most typically anger or resentment. As modern women, we often don’t have an outlet for the stressors in our lives, leaving them to be stored in our bodies as unprocessed emotions.

In this regard, listen to the words of one patient describing her fibroids:

The fibroids, they are that unseen thing. I always feel like I’m stuffed, like I have something stuffed inside of me. It’s a heavy stuffed feeling…like bound, just tight.

An hour later in the case, listen to her describe her childhood:

My father raised us like children are to be seen and not heard. If you raised anything contrary you were being disrespectful. You had to keep it inside. It couldn’t be verbally expressed. Total oppression. Like being oppressed feeling that you had to be secretive about what you thought or felt about things. You had to make sure and be watchful to express any idea that might be contrary to a household belief.
When I asked her to describe “oppression” a bit more, she said:

Stuffed, like stuffed away, hidden, secretive, and it just doesn’t feel like anything could be revealed, it’s the opposite of feeling free to be able to express. Keep it all in. Keep it hidden. There is so much that wants to come out, so much that wants to be expressed, feeling of expression; there’s a lid on it. It can’t be expressed. It wants to come out. It just feels like bursting.

Is she talking about the emotions she felt in her household or is she talking about her fibroids? Notice that there is really no difference. This is the nature of what I call the 3rd dimension or level, where emotions and body come together. There is a hint of the 4th level here as well, which is the pattern in consciousness (strictly speaking, the middle and deep layers of consciousness) underlying this mind-body unity.

We might wonder about the “hidden” nature of the female reproductive system and exactly how this factors in with “stored emotion” and disease. I was fascinated to read this in Marnia Robinson’s Peace Between the Sheets:

I visited a community in Germany though whose founders viewed monogamy as an outdated, artificial economic arrangement between men and women. They condone simultaneous liaisons with partners as a welcome historical correction. Feelings of jealousy or resentment are highly censored.

For years they also held workshops to help people explore their sexuality fully and even set up an erotic academy. One told me that they halted that line of development when too many people became ill after the workshops. Incidentally, the women of the community have an unusually high incidence of pelvic inflammatory disease.

Pelivic inflammatory disease is a bacterial infection of the female reproductive tract. Note the line “Feelings of jealousy or resentment are highly censored,” and how this relates to the “keeping inside” of the fibroid case. In this community, with its emphasis on sexuality, it would make sense why these stored emotions would manifest in the sexual organs (2nd Chakra). This is not as clear in my fibroid case.

More of a mystery, though, is why workshops to help people explore their sexuality fully would coincide with “too many people becoming ill after the workshops.” A homeopath like myself could explore that deeply by taking the cases of individuals who became ill after such workshops. The specific conflicts (i.e. 4th level) out of which the disease would spring would be quite individual; nevertheless there is a broader theme here. Always we humans seem to have paid a price from expanding our sexual expression. It might be easy for some to speculate here, but I stop short of even making suggestions as to why, because I feel the issues are complex, and it is easy to see it in terms of our own personal issues.

Share

Posted in Disease Conditions, Levels of Healing | 5 Comments »

Bedwetting

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Occasionally I get follow-up “through the grapevine.”

About a month ago I treated a patient in his late teens for intractable bedwetting. Scheduling of follow-up had been delayed, and I had made a note to call the mother. Then I got a message from a woman regarding treatment for her grandson who had bedwetting. The second part of the message was that this particular teen had a dramatic response to his remedy and that his bedwetting was gone, therefore the call.

So that’s how I got follow-up on this bedwetting case. It brings to mind a couple important points:

1) People generally cling to a 1st level understanding of how healing occurs. That is, when they seek to understand if treatment in my clinic can restore health, they check to see if someone else with the same diagnosis has had results. From my perspective, the critical factor is whether I can take a crystal-clear case down to the 4th level. Any number of different prescriptions could cure a case of bedwetting. The diagnosis becomes more important when the disease on the physical level becomes severely debilitating or life-threatening, e.g. cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus, other severe auto-immune disease, and such. At that point, diagnosis becomes more important in prognosis. In general, if a person’s health is not yet severely debilitated, assume that it is curable with good homeopathic treatment. Moreover, many cases of severely debilitating illness can still go to cure.

2) Many assume that when their physical diagnosis is better, i.e. when they are better on the 1st level, it makes sense to cease treatment. This creates some tension, because from my perspective, treatment should stop when the 4th level has clearly shifted. Often this occurs long after the physical symptoms are improved. Using this case of bedwetting as an example, there are some obvious emotional issues that go along with a young adult who wets the bed. In taking the case, there will likely be issues of dependency and fear. You can usually get a clue to the deeper aspects of the case by asking what the bedwetting prevents him from doing; this often opens a door down to the 4th level.

The important thing to realize is that treatment should conclude when the person is free from the deep fears. Of course, the fears will likely have had a significant shift when the bedwetting resolves, but it is usually not all the way gone. This is to look at health from the perspective of “inner freedom,” rather than simply a freedom from physical illness alone. Physical disease always has certain “inner hooks” within the psyche of the patient. These inhibit at the emotional level as well as the physical. In the case of this teen, there were confidence issues that I wanted to see resolve. Usually it takes a number of months longer for this inner freedom to occur after the physical ailment has resolved.

Share

Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions, Levels of Healing, Patient info | No Comments »

The Case of the Unhealing Wound

Monday, May 21st, 2007

I have one case particularly useful in educating people on classical homeopathy, and specifically, what I mean by “4th level” prescribing. I have included a diagram of the levels below to help bring understanding. There is an added opportunity, because the patient in this case is writing about her experience and will make an appearance on this blog. My explanation, the diagram, and the patient’s input taken together should provide a deeper look.

She presented with depression, low self-confidence, inability to concentrate, and complained of being “whacked” emotionally, by which she meant being “super-emotional” and “frequently on the verge of tears.” Easily “knocked off her base,” she found it increasingly easier to stay alone, mainly because of her tendency to change herself to fit her idea of what other people wanted of her. Even though she had plenty of friends, she felt alone anyway. She described her aloneness as “the empty set…emptiness.” She also told me

I have gone thru periods where you eat because you feel better, where you just keep eating until you can’t eat anymore…knowing you have something you need to fill.

Another important part of her case was a strong need for connection. She had been adopted and felt that she had “never bonded with her mother.” She romanticized about finding a soulmate and being “at one with the universe.” Describing herself as “mystic”, she had an intense searching in a spiritual direction, for union with God. On the other hand, she had reached a point where she felt “cut off” from other people and God. This experience of being cut off she also described as “disconnected” and “fractured”:

Just the fluidity of who I am is not there… all separate pieces but nothing really melds together.

On the basis of these feelings I gave her a homeopathic remedy from the conifer (pine tree) family of remedies. It didn’t work. It took me a while to figure out that I gave the wrong tree in this family.

Over the time I treated her an important part of her story was a romantic relationship that had developed with a minister she had originally sought out for spiritual counseling. She came out from this relationship feeling “betrayed” and “wounded.” Every time she came back there was no change in this. Early in each follow-up she returned to this same story and the wound it had opened in her.

I became more determined to hunt down the specific conifer she needed. In reviewing everything in detail, I found it notable that a main remedy for “longing for a soulmate” was the huge tree Sequoia. I considered giving her this remedy, but parts did not fit. I went over her physical symptoms again, looking for clues that would mark a confluence point. I then looked closely at these words of hers:

I have always had these little ulcers in my nose, worse in winter, but they never heal, little ulcers, like little cuts, and they hurt. They sting. They are painful
It’s just like a wound. Open and raw skin, when the air is dry, my nose bleeds. It always reminds me that they are…
Open wounds, every time you blow your nose you are reminded of them, all I have to do is move my mouth, and they are torn open again. A week by the sea completely healed them

This idea of a bleeding, ulcerating wound that never healed began to suggest a 4th level confluence point between her physical symptoms in her nose and the emotional wound she had from betrayal.

Searching in the family of conifers, I found the following excerpt written about a tree in New Zealand, the kauri tree, latin name Agathis australis.

The resinous gum…oozes (in the case of old wounds, for hundreds, even thousands of years) from damaged branches forming stalactites aloft and corresponding stalagmites upon the tree’s mighty roots and the forest floor below. Indeed this gum, which in the Victorian era had commercial value as a furniture polish, was ‘bled’ from the trees in the manner of maple syrup, while solidified deposits were dug up from logged forest sites. Lumps of aged resin used to be a common find, washed up on Northland beaches.

The kauri tree has an unhealing wound. I gave her this remedy, and the result was dramatic. I will leave it to her to give the details of her response and post them as soon as available. The chart below outlines how I thought about this case:

target="_blank"> src="http://www.homeopathicdoc.com/images/diagram_kauri_225x138.gif"
width="225" height="138" border="0">
click for
larger diagram

Share

Posted in Disease Conditions, Homeopathy info, Levels of Healing, Patient info | No Comments »

Eating Disorders and Classical Homeopathy

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Eating disorders present medical doctors and therapists with some of their most difficult challenges. My understanding of the limited effectiveness of traditional medical and psychiatric approaches will not surprise people who follow my blog: eating disorders spring directly from “4th Level” conflicts in the middle and deep layers of consciousness. This level is beyond the direct reach of psychotropic medications and even deep psychotherapy.

For those new to my blog, I have divided medical and alternative therapies into levels or depths of healing–a necessary move towards understanding what is going on in healing today. Check out the category “Levels of Healing” to the right for more information.

For the past couple years I have often thought about partnering with a woman psychotherapist or MD and devoting maybe 40% of my time to treating eating disorders. One reason is that I have had a lot of success in treating them. It can be a long and arduous, but often it is not. I often see a dramatic shift right after a good remedy. The cases I have had of anorexia or bulimia by and large are much better or entirely cured. Classical homeopathy is uniquely suited to “going deep” and shifting the core issue out of which the eating disorder originates.

The word “control” almost invariably gets bound up with the 4th level state in cases of eating disorders. One of my first big successes with anorexia/bulimia was a woman in her 20s to whom I gave the remedy Mantis religiosa (the praying mantis). The issue of control in this remedy is huge. This young woman came to me, deeply angry and depressed, failing in school. A month into her treatment out came her ultra-controlled secret regarding her anorexia. Once I gave Mantis, the case shifted profoundly.

I have had certain cases of overeating that have responded to remedies from the big conifers (pine trees). Because only the outer part of the bark is alive and the inner trunk of the tree is dead, people who need conifer remedies can feel “dead” or “empty” inside and eat like crazy to try to fill the emptiness. This is not to say that everyone who feels this way needs a remedy from conifer source. People who need these remedies are not all that common, but they are out there.

Another remedy that I have recently found to be associated with overeating is the Stingray. The words I have heard in relation to this remedy is that food is “like a magnet.” They feel “controlled” by food. Stingray is a fascinating remedy. Similar to the shark and other sea animals, there is a lot of issues around sexuality, and food is often tied in with this.

So, it’s possible I may spend more time with eating disorders. I just met another psychotherapist today in New York. In general I have been on the look-out for psychotherapists to partner with; certain cases are so complex that I need their help. In addition, Dr LuWanda Katzman-Staenberg’s thoughts on this (see my blog Homeopathy, Psychotherapy, and Beverly Hills) have also influenced me.

If you know of people suffering eating disorders, do not rule homeopathy out. It takes expertise to heal the deep issues of eating disorders with homeopathy, but in my experience it can bring results like no other therapy.

Share

Posted in Case Studies, Disease Conditions, Homeopathy info, Levels of Healing | 1 Comment »

Treating in the 4th Dimension

Saturday, January 20th, 2007

An interesting aspect of practicing homeopathy is that its very existence raises questions of who we are and the nature of the universe we live in.  The process of repeatedly taking cases down to the 4th level subtly alters one’s view of life.  One must become more attuned to subtle dimensions because that is where the homeopath directs his treatment.

Psychotherapists who are familiar with the way I take cases often say, “We are after a similar thing.”  I cannot agree with them.  The reason they see a similarity is that I am traveling through the emotional realm where psychotherapy sets its intention.  Psychotherapists, as a rule, do not have an intention of “curing physical symptoms.”  A classical homeopath does.  Adding in the physical symptoms to the psychotherapeutic emotional terrain brings a profound shift into the 4th dimension.  It is an entirely different layer of immateriality. 

To put it differently, let me go back to my discussion of the 4th dimension.  I have called the 4th dimension the energy of consciousness itself.  It is the camera lens through which we see and experience life.  Trying to see it would be like trying to see our own eye without a mirror.  It is the “stuff of life,” in that we apparently are swimming in it.  It is everywhere and nowhere.  It embodies everything we are, can see or experience.  Moreover, a particular pattern of consciousness streams through every molecule that makes up our individual being, giving coherence to who we are as individuals.   

The psychotherapist treats the picture that our consciousness forms in front of us, working to bring awareness to and alter the perceptions that frame our emotions.  A homeopathic remedy, on the other hand, treats and shifts the “camera lens” itself.  It is a subtle but profound difference.  It is amazing to watch as it becomes revealed.  High level homeopathy is the process of learning how to uncover the peculiar, fixed lens through which an individual perceives the world.   

It is a bit confusing for an outsider, because we interact with other people and we perceive it as merely human.  It is hard to imagine that within each of hides a non-human source through which we perceive.  Yet, if you watch people closely you can pick up on their deep patterns, even though you may not know what substance in the world matches it.  Watch Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the way he softly threatens.  Make my day.  It is a veiled threat.  It says, “Cross this line and I will blow you away.  Stay within bounds and I’ll let you live.”  He is like a rattler rattling his warning.  There is something very “snaky” about this.  Find someone who embodies energy like this in a deep, unalterable way, and he probably needs a homeopathic remedy of a snake.  In some way, he expresses the energy of a snake, yet this springs from a deeper source.  That source is a pattern of consciousness.

   

Share

Posted in Levels of Healing, Spirituality | No Comments »

Psychiatric Disorders in Children

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

Last month in the New York Times there was an article “What’s Wrong with a Child?  Psychiatrists Often Disagree.”   The article made clear how inadequate terms such as “oppositional defiant disorder” or “bipolar” or “obsessive compulsive disorder” can be:

…And parents of disruptive children in particular—those who might have been called delinquents, or simply “problem children”—say they hear an alphabet soup of labels that seem to change as often as the child’s shoe size.  [New York Times, Nov 11, 2006,  front page]

The article notes, “there are no blood tests or brain scans to diagnose mental disorders.”   That is to say, the issue cannot be found at the physical level (1st level, see my Levels of Healing on right).  Stepping down to the 2nd level, the therapeutic intention can be to numb the child’s emotional pain through psychiatric medications, or helping the child deal with emotions through talk therapy.   

Although taking a numbing approach through medications can be effective, it often disappoints.  Moreover, children, like the elderly, are more sensitive to medications and can react unpredictably.  We have all seen the articles suggesting that anti-depressants in some children can cause agitation, making suicide more likely.   Even when effective, medications only numb.  They produce no fundamental change. 

Although I advocate talk therapy with children, they frequently do not have enough of a cognitive structure to make it strongly effective.  More than adults, children simply feel, and no amount of talking is likely to change that. 

Descending down to level 3, where therapeutic intentions address the energetic matrix of the body, I have seen many parents use cranial sacral therapy and to some degree acupuncture in children.  Acupuncture I have not seen have a noticeable effect.  Particularly in situations where a child suffers from intense emotions, cranial sacral therapy can be beneficial, yet usually only mildly.  I recommend it, but not enthusiastically.   

To truly be satisfied, parents will have to look to level 4.  Classical homeopathy has the ability to produce fundamental and lasting change.  It takes a homeopath with the ability to clearly mark the 4th level, and it frequently requires diligent work.

An example from my practice was a teen whose diagnosis was “oppositional defiant disorder.”  Defiance in this boy was everywhere.  He slammed doors in my office, stonewalled me for entire sessions, glaring at me with hatred.  The situation at home was just as bad.  In his early teens, he was beginning to encounter problems with the law.  It all climaxed with an admission to a psychiatric hospital, which was a horrific story of how psychiatric admissions can go terribly wrong.  Just conjure up images of men in white coats circling you to pin you down and inject you with tranquilizers, and you get the picture. 

It was right after that psych admission that I broke his case.  I gave him a remedy from the insect family, and it utterly changed him. I saw him not too long ago in my office, and his life had turned around.  He was enjoying school, getting good grades; no longer having run-ins with the law; his relationship with his mother was peaceful.  His future was looking brighter and brighter. 

As a patient, he was a headache, but the change was more than gratifying.  Teens can present special problems, but it is an age group I love.  Homeopathy can release a person’s full potential, and what better time than in your teens?  I think of how much easier my life would have been if a homeopath had done it for me. 

Share

Posted in Disease Conditions, Homeopathy info, Levels of Healing | 3 Comments »

« Older Entries