Belladonna can be used to treat a high fever, when the symptoms of the fever are similar to the symptoms that Belladonna in its raw form would produce. That is a very high fever, sometimes to the extent of delirium and very dilated pupils, often with a throbbing headache, and the patient feels hot to the touch; often the heat is radiating from the face, which is very red.
This principle is sometimes used in conventional medicine. For example, the stimulant Ritalin is used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Homeopathy uses specially prepared medicines in doses so small that toxic side affects are avoided.
Hahnemann’s research lead him to discover and develop an important set of principles upon which homeopathy is based. When these principles are followed, homeopaths can determine an appropriate remedy to treat the patient holistically and stimulate their healing energy.
Please refer to the FAQs to learn more about homeopathy.
For the last few years, I have been practicing Health Coaching and homeopathy as separate modalities. However, time and again, I find myself coaching my clients through their treatment.
This is largely because despite treatment, we cannot fully heal if we continue making choices that harm us. Pioneer of homeopathy, Samual Hahnemman, described these choices as “obstacles to cure”.
As a health coach, I help my clients uncover these obstacles and we work together to remove them. Homeopathic medicines support the process and promote healing. I now practice integrative Homeopathy.
Conventional medicine practice is much less individualized and patients often receive a generic medicine for a named condition, and are left to work through their issues alone.
In my practice I encourage patients to take the reins and be in charge of their healing while I guide them through a journey of self-discovery, offering support, assisting at checkpoints, and providing remedies when appropriate.
If you are not quite ready to invest in Integrative Homeopathy, you may be interested in one of my other programs to get you started on your healing journey.
Summary: Potency refers to the energetic power of the homeopathic remedy. There are four main scales used, and within each scale, a number determines the potency. The higher the number, the more energetic the remedy. The scales, which you may have noticed when shopping for homeopathic remedies are represented as X and C. Other potencies used by homeopaths include LM and M.
Sometimes people confuse potency with dose. Potency refers to the energetic power of the homeopathic remedy, and the homeopath selects a potency that resonates well with the energy of your Vital Force. The best match is when the energy of the remedy is very slightly higher than that of the Vital Force. This will provide the most gentle healing, and comes with the least risk of a healing crisis.
The potency of the remedy is created in an unconventional way that is often misunderstood by scientists. This is a topic for a future article. Here, I will determine how to understand the difference between various potencies.
Summary: Homeopaths view symptoms as an expression of an imbalance in the vital energy of the body. The Vital Force produces symptoms as a means of providing clues to inner disturbances. Examples include mental or emotional disturbances such as irritability, fears, jealousy, weepiness and so on. Physical symptoms that appear unrelated to the chief complaint are also of interest to the homeopath. These include all bodily features that are unique to the individual, such as skin issues, pain, mucous, and so on.
Conventional medicine, often suppresses these symptoms using drugs to alleviate them. Consequently, we continue to do the very thing that is causing the symptom, and often a strong Vital Force produces more symptoms to overcome these suppressions. This ought to alert the individual to practices that are harming them, and is a signal that a cause must be treated.
An example would be: a man leading a stressful life, burning the candle at both ends. He starts to develop mild headaches, and takes medications to alleviate the pain. After a few months, he begins to suffer from migraines and sleeplessness. The self-medication becomes more frequent, and now includes sleeping pills. All the while, his body is becoming more stressed, and isn’t fully recovering after each day’s events. After a few years, he is diagnosed with hypertension and his doctor prescribes blood pressure medication. I hope you are understanding where this is going? If the man had dealt with the headaches appropriately a decade ago, by addressing the underlying cause, his health would likely been in better shape today.
The above example is an illustration of why rooting beneath the signs and symptoms, to find causation may improve outcome. Symptoms include obvious physical, mental or emotional symptoms, such as headaches, depression, sadness and so on, but also includes more subtle changes in your physical and emotional wellness that you might not normally pay much attention to.
Mental or emotional changes, including jealousy, fears, irritability, anger, feeling rejected, weepy or clingy, are all of interest to your homeopath. Even dreams can be an expression of a disturbance in the Vital Force.
Physical symptoms that may not be bothering you at all can be early manifestations of a deeper disturbance, and are also of interest to the homeopath.
Examples are not limited to, but include:
Summary: Most of the time, symptoms alone are of little use to the homeopath, and being descriptive is essential. If you can provide individualizing information about the symptom, it will lead to a more precise prescription. The homeopath will ask questions, to gather more details about your symptoms.
Some examples of information that makes symptoms more unique include:
Summary: The remedy gently nudges the Vital Force along a journey that brings about healing. The energy of the remedy must be slightly stronger than the energy of the vital force, in order for healing to happen.
To help you understand how the remedy acts on your vital force, think of a diagram of a steep hill, pointed at the top, with an equally steep descent. You are pushing a ball up the hill, with sufficient force to provide enough momentum to get it rolling upwards. You follow along, and when the force of your push expires, the ball slowly comes to a halt before rolling backwards towards you. A second push provides more energy to move it further along, yet the ball eventually starts to roll back towards you again.
This analogy explains how the remedy acts energetically upon the healing journey. You are the remedy, acting upon the vital force (the ball) which is acting upon the hill (the disease state). The goal is to summit the hill without losing control of the ball. You don’t want to push the ball so hard that you lose control of it and it rolls down the other side of the hill, and you don’t want to miss your opportunity to catch the ball when the initial force of your push expires and it rolls back towards you. In fact, the most perfect situation would be that you continue to slowly nudge the ball up the hill with gentle pushes, and you stay steadily in control, so that when the momentum ceases you are there in time to give it another nudge before it rolls too far backwards. You certainly don’t want to push the ball so hard that you lose control of it down the other side of the hill. This would be analogous to taking the remedy too often, or in too high a potency, and can severely disrupt the course of healing.
Summary: There is often a change in symptoms after taking a remedy. This could manifest as a disappearance of symptoms, an amelioration, a change in order of symptoms, a return of old symptoms, an aggravation of symptoms, or something else. If you notice a severe aggravation of your symptoms after taking the remedy, you should stop taking it and discuss this with your homeopath as soon as possible.
The number one goal after a homeopathic prescription is that you feel better. The symptoms may appear worse, but if you feel energetically better that is an indication of a great prescription. It doesn’t always mean that if you feel worse, it is a wrong prescription, as this can also happen. However, if you had presented with, let’s say, a skin rash, and after taking the remedy, the rash appears worse than it did before the remedy, but you generally feel better in yourself, then the remedy is acting positively on the disease state.
A return of old symptoms suggests that superficial symptoms that were suppressing old symptoms, have been removed, allowing these old symptoms to express. These newly presenting, “old symptoms” often go away on their own, as the Vital Force continues to do its work, or they disappear with continued treatment.
The most common responses to taking a remedy are that there is an improvement in the patient, or an aggravation. There are two kinds of aggravation.
Summary: Homeopathy empowers patients to take action and make decisions in the healing journey, and patients are encouraged to be vigilant, observing the way they feel and to keep notes so that they can report them back to their homeopath. It is a good idea to keep a journal* so that you can record the things you notice, as they happen. Trying to remember everything after a month or so risks forgetting valuable homeopathic information.
Healing occurs on all levels (mental, emotional, physical and spiritual) and the healing energy of the remedy will follow the necessary healing pathway. It does not always target the symptoms you presented with, straight away. In fact, often the physical symptoms are the last to heal, because these are often caused by factors on the mental, emotional or spiritual planes. Because these such mental and emotional symptoms are the root of your dis-ease it is these that need to be healed first.
Therefore it is important to be vigilant about how you are feeling. Do you notice any subtle changes in your wellbeing, and especially in your energy levels? Are you experiencing a change in dreams, moods, emotions or any other symptoms. Is something happening on some level that seems different? The more information you can gather, the more you can help your homeopath make a full assessment of the action of the remedy and continue with appropriate treatment.
*For a journal template please go to FAQ: What information should I keep in my journal?
Summary: Anything that upsets the individual on a mental, emotional, physical or spiritual level can disturb the Vital Force. It could be something that happened a long time ago, that has never been fully resolved or treated, or it could be a recent event.
Some examples follow:
To help you thrive, the Vital Force compensates for these disturbances, and this compensation can continue for years. Therefore if you are, for example, eating a food that you have a mild intolerance to, it may never come to your attention, but all the while beneath the surface, you are assaulting your vitality each time you consume that food. Over time, when combined with other attacks on vitality, the disturbance deepens until a point is reached at which the Vital Force can no longer compensate, and symptoms become more noticeable.
In essence migraines, heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, and all other health conditions, result from an accumulation of assaults on the Vital Force. When these assaults reach a breaking point, the weakest vulnerabilities of the individual become susceptible to disease.
Summary: Homeopathy empowers the patient to partake in the healing process, and familiarizing yourself with an understanding of how remedies can act upon the vital force, will help you to make decisions about when to repeat the remedy. This information can be used alongside the prescription guidelines provided by your homeopath.
It can be tempting to take the remedy more often than needed. This can overstimulate the Vital Force and disturb the course of healing. The following points will help you to make a decision.
A. You will notice an improvement as soon as it kicks in (up to 6 doses as mentioned above)
B. When the remedy expires, you will take the next dose and you will again notice an improvement
Please note that sometimes you may not need to keep repeating the remedy. One dose is often enough to stimulate the healing process. Only take the remedy if you have symptoms or if your symptoms improve after taking the remedy, and there is later a relapse.
It is a good idea to keep a journal so that you can record the things you notice, as they happen. Trying to remember everything after a month or so risks forgetting valuable homeopathic information. This template can be used as a guide for keeping your journal.
Name
Date of Consultation
Remedy ________________ potency______________
Before taking the remedy please answer:
Date________________________. Time___________________
On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your energy level like today?
(1 = lowest) ______________
What is your chief complaint?
On a scale of 1 to 10 how would rate your chief complaint today?
(1 is worst) _____________
Change in mood, dreams, emotions, sleep patterns;
Change in appetite, thirst, food cravings, digestion, bowel movements, urination
Change in physical symptoms
Return of old symptoms - something that used to happen, but had gone away. This is especially important to the assessment.
Any other subtle or vivid changes.
Did somebody else make a comment about your behaviour or appearance since taking the remedy? (Sometimes we don’t notice our changes, but others can help us become aware of them)
Record the dates and times you repeat the remedy
Date______________________________ Time_____________________
Rate your energy levels on a scale of 1 to 10. Do this at least once, but as often as you like - always include the date
Date___________________ Energy level___________________
Date___________________ Energy level___________________
Date___________________ Energy level___________________
Date___________________ Energy level___________________
Rate your chief complaint on a scale of 1 to 10. Do this at least once, but as often as you like - always include the date
Date___________________ Chief Complaint___________________
Date___________________ Chief Complaint___________________
Date___________________ Chief Complaint___________________
Date___________________ Chief Complaint___________________
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