1. Homeopathy is all about balance. For me the most important aspect of this is the patient practitioner balance. I find the hardest thing for new patients to grasp is that they are in charge of their own healing. For me it is also the most exciting part about being a homeopath: That moment when you realise you have complete control over how quickly you return to health and start making big changes throughout your life. This is the start of mental and emotional wellbeing.
2. You are not your symptoms. Patients are often surprised at how little attention I give the names of the symptoms that have led them to my door. People are so used to a condition they have worked it into their whole personality and expect me or their GP to make it go away for them, when it is a part of them and how they view themselves. How many people do you know with allergies, eczema, IBS etc? You usually do know if they have one of these because food and activity choices will be defined by them. The beauty of holistic treatment is it is not just treatment for allergies or whatever your specific condition. I want to see past the symptoms and how you became someone with this condition. I want to know when your 'dis-ease' started, what makes it better or worse, how it affects you emotionally and how it affects the rest of your body. Traumatic experiences, changes in hormones, vaccination and stress are four causes which come up again and again in my practice and it is only through addressing the cause that the body can relax and stop producing the symptoms.
3. You might lose weight and start exercising. Often people come to see me overweight, unhappy and lacking the energy to change. Together we talk about what could be causing the symptoms they have presented with and what is preventing them from changing. Then I find a homeopathic medicine which matches their symptoms and nearly always as these lift, the energy to change returns and people make healthier choices. These in turn lead to a natural adjustment in weight and energy levels so people exercise more and weigh less without even trying.
4. You might get worse before you get better. One of the greatest difficulties being a homeopath is getting the frequency and size of dose right. We are used to taking a lot of conventional medicine in doses set by manufacturers and repeated as often as the liver and kidneys can handle the processing of the drug. Homeopathy was invented by Dr Samuel Hahnemann in the first place because sometimes in his GP practice he noticed people were made worse by their medication and wanted to find a way to dilute it so the cure could happen without the side-effects. There are people out there who still react to a remedy even though it is diluted thousands of times. This is why in my practice, particularly with sensitive patients I use the LM potency which is administered in water. This way patients can take fewer drops in more water to lessen the stimulus to their immune system. You know if you've taken too much if your symptoms flare up. This, whilst uncomfortable is a sign you and the remedy resonate. Within 24 hours symptoms die down and usually at this point start to improve. Then we adjust your dose so you can continue to improve without the discomfort.
5. Everyone is entirely unique. This is the essence of being a holistic medical practitioner. No two people or two illnesses are exactly the same. There are patterns of course, but each of us arrives at where we are today by a different path. We respond differently physically and emotionally to challenges and this is why my approach to treating each patient is entirely unique. One of the things I will always set up is a way of measuring progress after taking a remedy. I never imagined there were so many ways of doing this; Counting lamp posts on a walk to measure mobility; the number of times you hear the clock strike to measure sleep; the number of tissues used in a day with an allergy; coughs in a minute during a coughing fit and good old fashioned rulers to measure patches of skin.
