Sunday, September 13, 2009

Acute care with the Sensation Method

This summer I treated a person with acute back ache. I think this case is a beautiful illustration of using the Sensation Method in acute cases without the goal of treating the whole history nevertheless addressing the underlying bodily felt sensation as the meeting point for body and mind. Here is the case:
Client (50 year-old woman) was gardening when she strained her back. When I saw her two days later she was in pain and greatly limited in her functioning.
Earlier remedy, Bryonia, recommended over the phone for the pain that was worse for the slightest motion, failed to act.
When she comes in she tells me: The only position that is helpful is lying on my back: I feel stretched and open in all directions. My body is afraid to hurt. I am tensed (here she shows a hand gesture tightening her fists) and hold myself. The pain gets much worse when I turn (again the same hand gesture): suddenly I feel sharp pain and feel like I am collapsing. Even breathing is scary. (This is the reason I recommended Bryonia in the first place, but now that I see her in person I notice that “scary” is accompanied by the same tight fist-like hand gesture as “tensed” and “turn”). I am tired all over. I cannot hold my body, it feels like I am gonna fall onto the floor. It is really scary, I am afraid of the pain. It shoots everywhere, it radiates from this one center. It is worse for deep breathing and it shuts down my control over my muscles. I ask her to describe, as if in slow motion, every detail of the pain as it suddenly comes up and radiates to other areas. She says: as I move out of balance, the muscles involuntarily try to come back to their original position. So I stretch, then the muscles can contract in order to pull me back. This contraction hurts. I catch myself on the way as I am collapsing and try to support myself in a different position. But I cannot contract the muscles, so I keep falling. When I find a good position I move to check if I am alive.. Or maybe it does not hurt anymore?… Even laughing and sneezing hurts. I also had diarrhea today, I think it is related. I am so tensed! My upper body is really tired because I am holding it constantly. When I was walking, my posture felt better than usual – straight, relaxed, elegant. I encourage her to describe it: It is an effortless sensation, like floating, weightless, lightness, like jumping, kicking. The pain is better for relaxing. While I feel this way, something suddenly relaxes in my neck that was tense before. My body can move without me being conscious of it and directing each and every movement. What is the opposite of this sensation? I am holding it. I am responsible for my body. I have to move it. I am in charge, but need to be careful because it hurts.
Describe the need of having to hold it?
I abandon my body as I am lying down on the floor. When I decide to move it I am afraid it is gonna hurt. With the momentum, in the middle of movement, it suddenly hurts. But the inertia still moves it so I cannot stop it. Once there is any goal or direction (like placing my body in a certain position) there is fear, tension and pain. If there is any purpose, I need to move my body in a direction. It scares me that if I move it will hurt. For example, the simple motion of turning my head brings on this fear that contracting my muscles will cause pain and when I want to relax it, i.e. stop contracting, my head will fall and I collapse. But as long as I do not relax it hurts. So even though it hurts I have to hold it.

That is what I learnt from her during her visit. Notice the detail of the interview and the return to the same sensations again and again. I edited the interview for brevity but you can still see the thoroughness of describing the sensations in the movements, pains and associated images. While we stay with the chief complaint she has the space to describe it in detail. The pattern that emerges from her recount is that it is not easy to hold up herself. She needs to tense in order to avoid collapse. When she can find a position to support herself (mostly the floor) she can let go, relax without holding and there is no tension. Supporting herself causes pain. Bringing back to balance from stretched position. Inertia moves, she needs to purposefully hold. Holding avoids collapse and falling. It is her responsibility to hold. Even though it hurts she needs to hold onto it.

This is the story behind the story. She keeps repeating these words but they are so well disguised in her story of the body reacting to an injury that it is easy to miss! If you write down the words of a person and then look at the emerging picture, you will be able to identify the story of a remedy (which you know from your Materia Medica or other homeopathic literature). The story of this client fits the story of Aurum. Aurum is in the sixth row of the periodic table, the row of development of responsibility. Aurum is in the 11th column, just one over the midline, which stand for success. By the next column, the 11th, the person is concerned with maintaining her position of successful responsibility. Being on the right hand side of the row, the issues are of maintaining one’s position (as opposed to reaching it, on the left hand side). The higher position you are in, the bigger chance of falling there is, thus the holding on and the fear of falling, collapsing is great. In classical cases we see Aurum befitting people of high power in financial loss and sudden falling from their responsible positions. If you translate that into the language of the body you get the story of the injured muscle that needs to hold on to avoid collapse and the fear of pain is the fear of collapse.
Aurum 200c resulted in a shift of relaxation in my client’s back ten minutes after taking it. Her pain returned later in a milder form and throughout the next 24 hours she needed another four doses of the remedy, which was followed by full recovery without any further assistance.