Inner Experience

The homeopathic principle

2012-01-11T21:43:00.001-08:00

The homeopathic principle states that an organism is trying to express, or excel it's dysfunction. The best way to help this effort is to aid the process of expressing or excelling. If the body is trying to get rid of some poison (in food poisoning), the best remedy that one can offer to the person is something that will aide the excelling process, i.e. something that will take over the body's effort to expell the disturbing substance and as a result will give the opportunity to relax and recover for the body.
The other day I was thinking that psychodynamic therapy is very much in line with this thinking. There are psychotherapies that are more aligned wit the allopathic thinking, which is based on the theory that the problem needs to be fixed, stopped, cleared up. While the intention is good, and is often effective, the medications stop the body's (and mind's) natural process of elimination. They go against, they fight the body (and the mind and the person). They prove the body (mind, person) wrong and they teach the body (.., ...) how to do it better, how to be more effective. While it is a fine idea to do this, this often meets resistance in the person. In the body. In the mind.
The idea in homeopathy is well documented and I do not intend to recite that theory. For me this is a new idea when it is translated into the world of psychotherapy:
the approach in psychotherapy I am prone to is an expression of the individual, a ways of finding the root cause of the problem in the very experience of the person. While the therapist is encouraging the patient to talk about their view of their problem, their relationships and their experiences, these form some themes for the person. Their unconscious experience is coming to the surface in some form of conscious manifestation. It is not always a solution per se to the problems the person is facing. it is often a revisiting process of one's experience, a retelling of one's stories and in this process of expression one finds the healing, the reorganization of the unconscious self experience into a more balanced self image. Healing happens, as in homeopathic theories, through this expression of one's imbalance. The sheer telling of the story in a therapeutic environment and in the presence of the expert guidance of a therapist the story, the expression transforms into the vehicle of healing.
This is in parallel with homeopathic theory and the same forces are seen in action. In this lies the body's and mind's own self-healing power. The encouragement for expression is the key to healing. The faith in the process is the art of the therapist.

Grounding the relationship

2012-01-05T12:13:00.000-08:00

Bodily sensations and the work focusing around these can keep the “talk therapy” wonderfully grounded. Most often patients seeking psychotherapeutic help don’t expect to do anything but think hard and build theories that will explain their turmoil and sorrow. A big part of a therapist’s job is to calm down this expectation and allow some space for some relaxed mindful work to take place. The unconscious part of the work is really important, it is like the soil feeding the conscious mind. If the soil is rich and has the capacity to provide nurturance it creates the potential for growth and healthy being. But more often than not when we try really hard to help ourselves to feel better, we create more constriction and obstacle to a healthy flow of consciousness. I have found that even if the patient is not yet ready to focus on their bodily sensations and their whole-body state (instead of purely thinking mode), my focus on my bodiy awareness of the situation is often calming and centering. The soil is created by my awareness of the situation and the plant is allowed to grow. It is first an observation where patient and therapist discuss the looks and qualities of the plant. Then, while I am holding the space for the soil to be recognized, the patient will gradually become more aware of its existence and then will join me in admiring it, feeling it, sensing it, and eventually exploring it on an experiential level. This is a process that I wish to embrace and nurture this year in my work. I invite you to join in. I am looking forward to an abundance of interaction with people who find this work fascinating, on any level – email exchanges, forums and personal interactions. Please do stay or get in touch!
Ildiko
Ildiko@innerexperience.com

Working with families

2011-11-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

One of the shifts that is implicit in my shift as a clinician moving from individual holistic health to the psychological wellbeing of individuals, is that in the latter it is necessary to consider the person’s environment as an organizing principle. In my work as a homeopath I took into consideration the effects of the environment and the person’s own view of reality and their understanding of their environment and I looked for the underlying organizing principle why they found themselves in that environment. This is a fascinating study and one that can point to many inner organizing themes in the person’s psyche.
Yet in psychotherapy, while working with the individual, it is necessary to pay attention to the family structure – or the lack of that – when striving to bring about health and balance in one’s inner world. In homeopathy I did not consider it to be my role to help my clients understand their family structure and their place in it, nor using that matrix of family bonds in relieving them from their underlying anxieties and discomforts, I merely needed that understanding to bring us to a general understanding of the person’s constitutional makeup.
In therapy the inner experience of the person is dependent on the maintaining factors, the environment. (It is called “maintaining”, when the circumstances cause suffering and as long as the person is in that environment, healing is extremely difficult). Bringing light on an experiential level to the inner workings of these relationships I believe I can be of utmost help as a therapist. It is most often true about people that they are in certain environments and relationships for a reason but in many cases the person is tied in that particular situation and has no option to move out of it. So while keeping it in mind that this person has a larger organizing principle in their life that keeps them in that particular unconscious set up, a way to dissolving that discomfort can be through solving the puzzle in their family environment.
A large group of people for whom this is true are children. This is complicated enough for young children who are stuck in abusive or unhealthy circumstances but I find even more excruciating some of the situations of inner and outer conflict and paradox of adolescent life. Adolescents are on the edge – they are still children but they are budding adults. Several clinicians and authors spent their careers working with adolescents and tried to untie the knots of the complex hardships of transition from childhood to adulthood, in this most active phase of individuation. I find it a rewarding thought as a clinician that I might be able to intervene at this juncture of one’s life.
Adolescents have the mental capacity to see the intricacies of mental emotional and relational (interpersonal) life yet they are operating on the platform of the well-tried and familiar childhood. It is often the very parents who admire their children and want the best for them in becoming healthy adults, who keep them back from making those steps and allowing them to detach from them. It is hard to see a loved one leave. Working with families of adolescents is rewarding as I feel I am allowed into the life of people at this intricate time when one (the parent) needs a little whisper of help to let go and the other (adolescent) needs the whisper of encouragement that it is ok to go.

Importance of mother's state during pregnancy

2011-10-03T03:59:00.000-07:00

I have been often wondering why the mother’s state of mind during pregnancy is important when prescribing a homeopathic remedy to a child. I have thought and noticed that if the mother had specific traumatic events during pregnancy it must have affected the child and not only in a straightforward manner but also in a more chronic way. This, I have explained, was due to the fact that the mother had a certain predisposition, which corresponded to the trauma or her state of mind during pregnancy and she ought to display it throughout her mothering, not only during pregnancy, thus affecting the child in his or her very essence. This usually brought under my scrutiny clues to whether or not the child reacted to the mother’s state in any observable manner. I often found it did, so I explored the mother’s disposition during pregnancy, tried to see if it had any elements that were unusual for the mother outside of her pregnancy, and included that in the remedy picture for the child.
While this is still relevant and stands true in my homeopathic thinking, I have noted a connection between the underlying logic of including the mother’s state during pregnancy and the child’s constitutional make up. This came through psychoanalytic explorations of the infant’s psychic development.
According to some psychoanalytic theories, the infant is born into the world without a self-concept. The infant does not know about her limitations, physical boundaries and does not have the concept of predicting or expecting future events, like feeding times, hunger, thirst, pain, digestion, urination. All these events and sensations happen to the infant and together with the environment’s response to these events and sensations, the infant slowly but surely starts to develop its own being and understanding of the world.
The mother (or primary care taker) is a crucial being in the infant’s developing self-concept. This is the person, who responds to the infant’s needs, urges, cries, smiles, and tries to read the infant’s bodily signals, most often in an attending fashion. This care taking, thus plays an essential role in the infant’s development, not only in psychosocial and physical development, but also in the very creation of the infant’s self –image. Taking it one step beyond this actual physical care taking during the initial stages of the infant’s life, the mother, as a container and care taker was there for the infant during the pregnancy as well. The mother was the containing environment the infant (the fetus) was surrounded by, received vital signals of life and well being from, and essentially everything that got absorbed into the infant’s being.
This conceptualization of the origins of the developing self, gave me the missing piece I needed to understand the fundamental reason for inquiring about the mother’s state during the pregnancy. With this frame of reference, I can navigate my way easier in the maze of critical and non-critical information a mother can provide the homeopath during the interview for her child. The mother, as the environment, or container plays a crucial role in the creation of the very matrix of the developing self of the fetus and infant, thus providing clues to the personality and remedy picture of the child through her own inner experience and world of vital sensations.

Empathy

2011-08-26T00:06:00.000-07:00

As I was working on rebuilding my website (which now includes a track for homeopathy and a separate one for psychotherapy - check it out:), I came across a comment on my book where I describe homeopathic case taking as bypassing the emotional level exploration. The author of the critique seemed not to share my sentiment about this issue. I have found rejection of this idea in some professionals in the past and i am wondering what is the source of this rejection. Why do other clinicians reject the fact that it is possible - and possibly preferable - to avoid the whirlwind of emotional layers that can bring us to faulty conclusions and misconceptions of our clients.
I believe that true empathy lies in an ability to see beyond our client's emotions. If we strive to understand what is underneath the emotion, we will arrive at very personal and individual layers of the person's view of reality and inner world. I believe that using the emotional layer as a diving board to more person-specific areas of one's inner life is a useful tool in therapy and homeopathy.These are the layers of the unconscious which have roots beyond emotions. We might have emotional reactions or manifestations of these deeper roots but the roots themselves are not (necessarily) emotion-based.
The text from Sensations goes like this:
"Before we examine the cases of the animal kingdom, I want to revisit a key component of the Sensation Method of homeopathy so we can see how it applies to the following examples. The power of homeopathic case-taking lies in the fact that it does not involve the emotional layer. As I have mentioned before, our goal as homeopaths is not to explore the emotional layer, nor even the layer that feeds the emotions. Our goal is to arrive at the sensation level and hear the words that describe that level. As we are humans, and homeopathy utilizes our ability to verbalize our feelings, sensations and experiences, we use words to transfer these ideas. But beyond the actual words the coherency of speech has only secondary importance. Describing sensations is often far from what the person is used to. It is far from the realm the ego feels attached to or protective of. Our ego is what works the “pain body,” as Eckhart Tolle calls it. With the Sensation Method we go beyond this body and thus trick the ego.
Once the ego has no access to what we are talking about, we can truly describe our core problem with no pain and suffering. There is no guard invested in keeping the pain body as intact as possible. This pain body is the very obstacle to health. Our ego does not want us to be free of it. It wants us to stay ill-healthed because that is its only chance for survival. This process has a dual benefit. First, we can reach the core problem without touching painful, tender spots in the whole being  we don’t have to stir up traumatic experiences. Second, upon reaching the core level, we touch something truly essential, and once that essential core is addressed and healed, healing will emanate into the whole being, transforming the whole into a healthy state".

2011-08-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

More on the intersubjective nature of the therapeutic encounter
Homeopaths conceptualize their cases in their own mind and they do not share this with their clients. There is no forum for it, as the system of thinking in the sensation method is far removed from the human interaction, which can be "explained" or commented on during a session. The most useful comments I am aware of in homeopathic consulting work are the connections we can make between mental, emotional, and physical symptoms. These are often eye-opened for our clients.
I find the lack of communication on the level of conceptualization a setback in homeopathic work. I believe that the homeopath and client relationship could be enhanced if this type of communication was activated. Many psychotherapists rely on and use the here-and-now events of the session and use the transference and their relationship with the client a sort of practice space for both understanding the client's issues and their healing process as well. If a similar way of interaction were to be utilized by homeopaths, the remedies' effects could be prepared and enhanced, thus treatment could be easier incorporated into the client's experience. It is not simple to point out what this process would be as the majority of these processes - both in psychotherapeutic healing and in homeopathic healing, are unconscious.

2011-08-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

Modern psychoanalytic thinkers, like Mitchell in "Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis" published in 1993, talk about the interpersonal aspects of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. While there are many differing concepts in modern psychoanalysis, they all seem to agree on the crucial role the therapist's subjectivity plays in the treatment of their patients. Mitchell talks about the way the analyst conceptualizes, organizes the patient's experience. He considers modern analytic thinking to be different from the traditional, Freudian view in that today we focus on the patient's inner experience as opposed to the Freudian view, where the analyst created a conceptual frame which through his interpretations he conveyed to the patient, who in turn internalized it, used it for their own self-healing. Today psychoanalytic therapists seek to bring forth the patient's own experience, through which - according to Mitchell - the person's meaningful self-experience will develop and manifest.
I found this quite interesting, as the way I work is a process where the emphasis is on the inner experience of the person. Mitchell continues with his thought process and not only maintains that the person's inner experience is the cornerstone of modern psychotherapy but he also explains that the therapist's own conceptualization has a powerful impact on the emerging conceptualization which will be co-created by patient and therapist. This is a process, which I found fascinating. I started wondering what affect my understanding of the homeopathic remedy picture has on the process of the healing of my clients. How does it affect the whole of the process that my thinking is in the framework of homeopathy and that my conceptualization of the client is on the level of their vital sensation? If I am experiencing my client on the level of the vital sensation and my comments and guiding inquiry stays on that level, it greatly affects the type of healing and self-conceptualization of my client. This is definitely a direction to pay attention to and explore.

My shift to psychotherapy continues

2011-04-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

The following is from my Master's thesis for my clinical psychology program, entitled Hand Gestures and Somatic Manifestations: The Bridge to the Unconscious. You can see how I am entering ideas from my understanding of the Sensation method of homeopathy, combining them with the vast knowledge that has been gained in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This is an introduction to this work, more to come later.

“A man’s states of mind are manifested, almost without exception, in the tensions and relaxations of his facial muscles, in the adaptations of his eyes, in the amount of blood in the vessels of his skin, in the modifications in his vocal apparatus and in the movements of his limbs and in particular of his hands”. (Freud cited in Sletvold, 2010)

In psychodynamic therapy the unconscious realm of the human psyche is the primary target of our investigations. Since the birth of psychoanalysis many approaches have been established to reach the unconscious, and make it available for conscious understanding and transformation. The tools psychotherapists use to achieve this goal vary greatly according to the therapist’s conceptual framework. In recent decades the importance of the body-mind connection has been increasingly emphasized, and with it a focus on understanding bodily expressions of psychic phenomenon. While various approaches have been established under the umbrella term “somatic psychology”, the “embodied analyst” is an emerging topic in the field of psychoanalysis as well. Just as the interpersonal aspects of psychoanalysis have come to the forefront in the last several decades, so too have experiential and person-centered approaches been geared towards addressing issues that arise in the here and now of interpersonal experience. In particular, experiential and person centered approaches provide a way to understand and access individuals’ inner experience through their bodily felt sensations.
My previous specialty, the Sensation Method of homeopathy heals by readjusting the core of the ailment, the deep seated imbalance, through identifying core bodily sensations in the person. Having experience in working with individuals in this modality, I know that the body expresses itself in rich ways that go beyond the narrow expression of the spoken word (Ran & Menyhert, 2007). Beside the main body of information that comes through a verbal narrative, homeopaths pay attention to clients’ bodily symptoms, their body language, the tone of their voice, their hand gestures, and even bodily reactions to their own instinctual art work, or doodling, and free associations.
This paper is an initial exploration of several authors’ and clinicians’ contributions to the field of psychotherapy where the goal is to find the layer of the unconscious that has meaningful clues to one’s emotional, mental, and physical pain. Through exploring body language, more specifically hand gestures, we can find ways to approach, locate, and understand unconscious material which is not readily available for verbal expression. Through studying the significance of hand gestures we can learn about the deeper layers of the psyche and we can explore connections that without this tool would be unavailable. The hypothesis that clients’ hand gestures are meaningful tools that help us reach the unconscious is not a new idea but the specific use of hand gestures in the context that is explored in this paper is a combined and enhanced understanding from previous authors.

Article in Homeopathy Today, Fall 2010

2010-09-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

Peace from Panic Attacks & Performance Anxiety
Anxiety affects the body & mind: Homeopathy heals both

by Ildiko Ran, CCH

People often ask me, “What do you specialize in?” Like most homeopaths, I treat anybody regardless of their age, ailment, or even conventional medical label like “curable” or “incurable.” Recently, however, I noticed a common trait among most of my clients: anxiety. Sometimes it is their chief complaint or an obvious aspect of their personality, and other times it is a seemingly insignificant detail in the corner of their consciousness. Like it or not, it seems I specialize in anxiety!

Through the years, I have learned to explore my clients’ anxiety purposefully and with the utmost care. As my clients and I examine the intricate details of their anxiety, their inner world opens to us. More often than not, this process leads to the homeopathic remedy that will help their overall health and well-being—as well as resolve their anxiety. Even those who come for help with other kinds of problems often notice that the first symptoms to go are the ones related to anxiety. The reason for this might be the very nature of homeopathy: it encompasses both the body and mind.

Symptoms of anxiety can show up in any part of us. Physically, we may manifest palpitations, stomach cramps, and insomnia. Emotionally, we may be fearful, apprehensive, and full of worry. Mentally, we may fixate on certain ideas, such as a lurking sense that something terrible is going to happen or that we have done something wrong.
Stress reduction techniques, lifestyle changes, counseling, and behavior modification can help alleviate such symptoms (psychiatrists also ¬typically recommend anti-anxiety medications). But in my experience, a well-prescribed homeopathic remedy can have such a deep and long-lasting effect on a person’s overall health that the anxiety melts away into calmness and peace—whether or not these other therapies are used. As an added benefit, people often find that psychotherapy, chiropractic, and other complementary therapies act more effectively after homeopathic treatment; improvements in diet, exercise, and lifestyle become much easier to attain as well.

Here are two examples of life-long anxiety sufferers who found great freedom from their suffering, thanks to homeopathic treatment.

Noelle: Performance anxiety & stubborn sinusitis

A woman I’ll call Noelle came to see me for help with sinus infections that recurred monthly all winter. Each time she got an infection, she ended up having to take antibiotics. She was in her early 30s, neatly dressed, and soft spoken—so soft-spoken, in fact, that during the interview I had to stop writing so the scribbling of my pen would not drown out her voice. Noelle had been prone to colds and a mildew allergy for as long as she could remember, and she also got sinus headaches. As we continued exploring her symptoms, she mentioned having extreme performance anxiety since elementary school.

“I have a tendency to be depressed,” Noelle told me. “I was a good girl, went to school every day, helped my mom, did my homework...but as a background feeling I always had this lurking depression. My grandmother used to say that they needed to buy me new shoes every week to cheer me up. I was shy and quiet. I remember in fourth grade I was standing at the blackboard and I heard my friend whispering, ‘What are you doing?’ Apparently I was rolling my uniform up to my underwear without being aware of it. When I had my graduate school interview, my mother went in for me. I just couldn’t do it.”

To understand Noelle’s particular expression of anxiety, I asked her to describe what exactly she experienced. “I feel numb, faint, almost unconscious, and my hands shake. When I speak in front of people my voice gets weaker, my breathing is shallow, and I‘m shaky. My job is such that I have to give a presentation every week in front of my colleagues. They all know about my anxiety but I still have this shakiness.”

Weakness doesn’t stop her

In order to choose a homeopathic remedy, it helps to know what makes each symptom better or worse. So I asked Noelle to tell me about any times in her life when she was able to overcome this feeling of anxiety. “When it was important for me, I stood up for myself. In college, I once went to the head of the laboratory and asked him to move me to another department. I was shaking, my heart was pounding, but I went for it. I remember sitting in his office, my head swaying side to side involuntarily. You see, I do the work, I speak in front of people, I go for it. But it causes this uncontrollable anxiety.”

Noelle returned to the topic of her depression: “I used to get so depressed that I had to stay home from school for a week at a time. I just could not get out of bed; I was exhausted and could sleep fourteen hours in one stretch.” These periods of exhaustion still plagued her. “Normally my house is really tidy and neat, but sometimes I am so weak I cannot clean up. I see the mess, but I cannot pick it up. It comes in waves. Sometimes I fall asleep at the dinner table. My headaches are also accompanied by weakness.”

When I asked about her general physical symptoms, Noelle reported some striking ones. She was very chilly. “Especially my feet get cold—a cold sweat that makes me have to change my socks and shoes. I sleep under two blankets and wear socks to bed.”

Noelle noted that even with her periodic illnesses, depression, and fatigue, she usually carried on with her life. “Although I have periods of severe weakness and sinus infections, I maintain my job, I am working towards my second PhD, and I make a point to be a caring mother and wife. When needed, I stay up all night studying; other times my body cannot handle it.”

Perfect fit for the whole

The combination of Noelle’s particular emotional and physical complaints led me to the homeopathic remedy Silica. Silica is often helpful in sinusitis, but more importantly, it fit Noelle as a whole. Her neat appearance, her stage fright and performance anxiety all the way back to childhood, her perfectionism, and her shyness, including her low tone of voice, all pointed to Silica. Physical symptoms of cold, sweaty feet and overall chilliness are also characteristic of people who need this remedy. Noelle’s extreme exhaustion with all her physical complaints called to mind Silica’s well-known ability to address lack of stamina. Homeopath Roger Morrison describes Silica in his Desktop Guide to Keynotes and Confirmatory Symptoms: “The patient is often refined, delicate, sensitive and yielding. …The self-confidence …is often very poor. …The patient may complain of some mental dullness and a feeling of inefficiency. …Physically Silica patients suffer from low stamina quite commonly. The defensive resistance is low which allows for frequent infections, especially of the upper respiratory tract, the sinuses, or the ears.”

The shakiness was gone and she was much more able to concentrate ...
A curious quality in Noelle’s personality was her ability to stand up for herself when it was important to her. Even though she was shy and anxious, she chose to work in a profession where regular group presentations were a requirement. On the other hand, her life was sprinkled with periods of lack of resilience when her body gave in to sinusitis, headaches, and exhaustion. Silica addresses this core dichotomy of maintaining integrity (sometimes even manifesting as “stubbornness”!) while also having an innate fragility. The presence of this dichotomy was the decisive factor when I chose her remedy.

Energy up, infections down

When Noelle took Silica 200c, she was already experiencing her usual monthly cold-like symptoms—stuffy nose, congestion, and weakness—which typically turned into a sinus infection for which
she took antibiotics. Nevertheless, the morning after taking Silica, she woke with no congestion.

When I saw her three weeks later, she told me her husband had noticed that she was more energetic—even though she was still juggling two jobs, graduate school, and her family. The quality of her sleep had improved, and she did not need to sleep extra long hours as before. She was exercising more and had stopped her habitual meal skipping. All in all, she reported feeling really well, especially relative to the high level of stress in her life. At work, she was transferred to a new group, and despite her expectation of having more anxiety talking in front of strangers, she noted that her weekly presentations were going better than before.

“What about the sinuses?” I asked at the end of the interview. We hadn’t even talked about the main reason she had come in the first place! “Oh, they’re fine,” she said with an air of absentmindedness. “That congestion I had just disappeared.” This is one of the miracles of homeopathy: people can be so free from their previous complaints that they almost don’t remember ever having them. Although it was still very early to tell how she would do in the long run, I took this as a good sign that Silica was already helping Noelle to move naturally and gracefully out of the vicious cycle of recurrent colds, sinus infections, sinus headaches, and antibiotics.

Strength, resilience, confidence

Over the next six months or so, Noelle’s energy level continued to improve, and she grew stronger and more resistant to colds. On occasion when a cold threatened, a few repetitions of Silica 30c or 200c would help her get over it quickly and keep her from succumbing to a sinus infection as in the past. She no longer suffered from bouts of extreme fatigue. As for her performance anxiety, while she still had to make a conscious effort to relax, the shakiness was gone and she was much more able to concentrate on her work and forget about the audience.

It has been seven years since I first saw Noelle, and she has continued to feel very well. Noelle sought out homeopathy primarily for her sinus problems. Once she understood the holistic nature of the treatment, however, she welcomed the healing on both emotional and physical levels.

Kevin: Panic attacks, inner struggles

“Kevin,” a 50-year-old interior designer, was seeking a more natural approach to anxiety than his prescription anti-anxiety medication. He decided to try homeopathy after witnessing his daughter’s positive treatment results.

Kevin started our meeting by saying he could not imagine how others handled life, which he experienced as constantly stressful: “How do other people keep the lid on? I’ve been anxious ever since childhood.” His anxiety had various expressions: stomach cramps, constipation, eczema, insomnia, nervous nosebleeds, and nightmares. “Sometimes I get so anxious I even throw up. In stressful situations, the skin on my hands breaks open and the cracks ooze with blood.” Kevin had an inherited blood disorder that made the bleeding worse. “I got the eczema under control with steroids, but then I developed panic attacks.” They occurred when he was on the highway, driving home from work. “I had to stop in the breakdown lane and gather myself. I felt like all the vehicles were drawing closer to me, and the inside of my car was tightening. I became dizzy and nauseous, my mouth got dry, and I had difficulty swallowing.” When Kevin came home anxious, he wanted his wife to be there because her presence was comforting.

Choking fear, violent thoughts

As often happens, the sensation Kevin had with his panic attacks was similar in quality to others in his life; it was a pattern of constricting sensations. “I have a strong fear of choking in general. When swallowing certain things, I feel my throat is constricted and it scares me.” This fear of choking and feeling of throat constriction came on sometimes in restaurants, where the presence of many people around him could become so overwhelming that he would have to leave for a few minutes to calm down. Kevin enjoyed meeting people and could be charismatic and engaging, but at a certain point “it’s too much stimulation, my senses get overloaded,” he said, and his anxiety would set off the familiar cascade of physical symptoms.

Kevin’s further description of his panic attacks took us to an even deeper level. “The anxiety grabs me. I have been taking various anxiety medications, but I cannot control my thoughts, cannot shut my brain off. This really scares me! Some particularly dark thoughts creep in and I cannot stop them—thoughts of harming myself or my loved ones. [Note: Kevin was already under the care of a psychiatrist.] These thoughts become stronger than my will and take control of me. I am a loving guy, a family man, I do not see why I have these violent images. In other situations when it is called for strategically, I can be mean—I know how to manipulate people when it’s called for. Otherwise I am a nurturing, caring person.”

In a homeopathic interview, clients may describe their inner view of reality, often a rather irrational pattern, which has its own innate logic but does not have much to do with the person’s conscious ideas or thought processes. This irrational pattern can shape their whole being unconsciously and manifest in symptoms on all levels. Kevin was aware that most of his physical complaints were rooted in stress and anxiety. But he didn’t know why the frightening images and disturbing thoughts were torturing him, and he was helpless to get rid of them. This is where the appropriate homeopathic remedy can be so valuable, in healing the deeper level that can’t be accessed rationally.

A split within the self

According to homeopath Rajan Sankaran, an antagonistic split within the self causing profound inner struggle is characteristic of people who need snake remedies (i.e., homeopathic remedies prepared from highly diluted snake venom); clearly, Kevin’s sweet, good-natured side was at odds with his “poisonous,” violent side. Kevin’s throat issues (fear of choking and feelings of throat tightening), along with the sensations of compression and constriction that he reported in several areas of his life (e.g., feeling that the inside of his car was tightening during panic attacks) were also classic indications for a snake remedy. Kevin’s blood disorder and bleeding symptoms, along with his ability to be mean and manipulative when needed, also pointed to a snake remedy.

From there, I narrowed it down to the Crotalidae family of snake remedies because of Kevin’s desire for company, his family man nature, and his general anxiety (vs. anxiety provoked by certain triggers, which would have pointed more to the Viperidae family of snake remedies). Finally, Kevin’s intense skin problems (weeping, itchy eruptions) and extreme mental anguish led me to choose the remedy Crotalus cascavella (Brazilian rattlesnake). As Morrison says in his Desktop Guide to Keynotes and Confirmatory Symptoms: “We can distinguish Crotalus cascavella from the other venoms by some of the mental symptoms and by the skin disorders.”

On the road to freedom

I gave Kevin one dose of Crotalus cascavella 200c. At his first follow-up appointment one month later, he told me that a few days after taking the remedy he became weepy in situations where earlier he would have suppressed his emotions. I interpreted this as a positive sign of the beginnings of emotional freedom. His hands were dry, but he had no eczema. This was a significant improvement as he had done some painting, which usually triggered his oozing eczema.

When I next saw Kevin two months later, he told me his psychiatrist was pleased with his improvements and had agreed to wean him off conventional anti-anxiety medication. To support Kevin through this major transition, I suggested he take Crotalus cascavella 200c daily in water, which he did for the next month or so, until he was completely off the anti-anxiety medications.

Whenever Kevin had tried to discontinue his conventional medication in the past, he had lost equilibrium, but this time he continued to be stable emotionally. “There are still events in my life that cause anxiety, but while I used to feel like a victim or blame other people, now I tend to work things out.” Although the psychiatrist was skeptical of homeopathy, he affirmed that Kevin indeed was doing well without the medication and did not have the usual withdrawal effects. Kevin stopped taking Crotalus cascavella shortly after stopping the conventional drugs since he didn’t seem to need it anymore.

Six months after his first dose of Crotalus cascavella and three months after stopping his conventional medication completely, Kevin reported, “Incredibly, I have not had a panic attack since starting homeopathic treatment. I have had some violent thoughts but they do not stick as they used to. Before, I would obsess about something and it would not let me go. Recently, a colleague became quite offensive with me. I blew up at him, but when I went home I forgot about it. In the past, it would’ve kept me up all night.”

I saw Kevin occasionally at his daughter’s visits for the next year, and he continued to do well. His severe anxiety symptoms did not return, and he was much better able to manage the mild symptoms that remained. His GI tract (stomach cramps, vomiting) was still sensitive but not to the degree it was. He’d had no eczema flare-ups since the remedy. And most important for Kevin, he was greatly relieved from the panic attacks, insomnia, nightmares, and disturbing thoughts that had plagued him for so long.

From anxiety to harmony

These two cases show the broad spectrum of homeopathic inquiry and the profound harmonizing effects the well-chosen remedy can achieve. Both Noelle and Kevin found relief from their physical symptoms as well as from their anxiety. In Kevin’s case, the physical symptoms were clearly related to his anxiety, while for Noelle the correlation was more like a parallel—her sinus infections were not caused by her anxiety as such, but they were both relieved by the homeopathic remedy that fit her best as a whole. As a result of homeopathic treatment both Noelle and Kevin could explore their potential more freely and live more fulfilling lives.

Man's Search for Meaning

2010-09-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

In the Afterword of Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning: "Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on a paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs."
"That was it, exactly," Frankl said. "Those are the very words I had written."

Frankl wrote his most broadly-read work, the Man's Search for Meaning in nine days. It is beautifully and clearly written. He considers our drive for a meaningful life a basic tennet of our human existence. Two of my favorite quotes from his book (there are many!) are the following. It comes embedded in his discussion of mental health NOT as homeostasis, a state of equilibrium but rather a tension that propels the individual forward. This is an interesting food for thought. We often consider our movements aimed towards equilibrium, but if we understand the deep reaching truth in the idea that the meaning of life is to strive towards meaning, the state of homeostasis comes to a different light.
Here are the quotes:
"Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.”
"So if therapists wish to foster their patients’ mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one’s life.”

Interestingly enough, my main area of interest in psychotherapy, the Focusing-oriented model pays a great amount of attention to "forward movement". When we focus inward and find the bodily felt sensation that expresses an implicit aspect of our feelings or reactions, we end up with a bodily felt release, a life forwarding movement. While in Focusing we pay attention to the underlying implicitly felt experience, our very own inner experience, we end up with something that Frankl devoted his life to: attributing primacy to the essential role of meaning, the ultimate role meaning plays in human life.

Maya Angelou quote

2010-02-15T21:52:00.001-08:00

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".

This Maya Angelou quote is the beginning of the description of the essential nature of our inner felt sense. Not only we should consider how we made others feel but how we make ourselves feel. Feeling here incorporates feeling emotions and feeling bodily sensations. They always come hand in hand, they are inseparable. Becoming aware of them is a question we need to ponder about: are we aware of the connection between our emotions and out bodily sensations? The more we pay attention, the more subtleties we are going to be able to notice. The more we notice, more aware we become. If there is inner turmoil and conflict, these sensations will guide us to an answer, to a place where they quiet down.
Consider how a certain smell, a certain event, a certain activity, a certain person, a certain place made you feel. Find the bodily felt sense in this and enjoy the richness of everyday experiences.

Review of a comrehensive First Aid kit (by Ildiko in Homeopathy Today)

2009-12-13T13:06:00.001-08:00

Genus epidemicus

2009-11-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

In the throws of the world-wide awareness of epidemics I do not want to let the homeopathic view go unmentioned here.
The kind of homeopathy I mostly cherish and trust is the so called constitutional approach, where a person receives one homeopathic remedy that addresses the underlying pattern in their mental, emotional, and physical symptomatology. This remedy has the capacity to bring the organism back to balance, consequently bringing health to the person, letting the vital force take care of removing the disease along with the symptoms.
Nevertheless homeopathy can be used in a variety of other ways. It can be used without covering all the symptoms one has. The remedy does have to cover some major symptoms in order to be effective but not necessarily all. An example for this is an acute illness, where the acute ill has overpowered the person's regular tendencies and thus a remedy that matches the symptoms of the acute illness (but not the rest of the chronic ailments of the person) can be curative. The bigger the impact of the "assault" or "trauma", the less person-specific the reaction will be. To give a first aid example, if five people get hit on the head by a stick, most probably all five of them will have the same reaction: a bump will grow at the spot, it will be tender and painful. This looser need for person specificity (which is a trademark of homeopathy) is a characteristic of homeopathic first aid and acute prescribing. The fact that it is not essential to match the remedy to all of one's underlying patterns is the reason that people can use homeopathic remedies on their own in these acute and first aid situations. No need to study the case in its all complexities.
What happens in an epidemic?
An epidemic is a very virulent acute ailment that attacks a great majority of people. In a powerful flu epidemic more people get sick than in a regular seasonal flu and the symptoms they get sick with are less varied. Usually a distinctive set of potent symptoms develops in all people afflicted. If you are familiar with homeopathy, you know that we use remedies to address a specific set of symptoms. In an epidemic this set of symptoms will be that well-identified small group of dominant symptoms that people get sick with. Because of these well-identifiable features one will not need to study carefully the specific subset of symptom each person gets sick with and give a different, person-specific remedy but rather, with great certainty can recommend the one remedy that fits the characteristic symptoms. This one remedy is called the "genus epidemicus".
In the current flu epidemic many homeopaths have been working on identifying the genus epidemicus and tracing the success rate of this remedy. One of the useful tools is http://www.hersculaboratoryflu.org/research/swineFlu_1.html
On this site you can read more about the flu and the specific remedy, Nux vomica, that was identified as the genus epidemicus.

Acute care with the Sensation Method

2009-09-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Quote from Gendlin

2009-06-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

"In many fields there are constructive organizations that aim to create beneficial change in people. Such change usually happens only at a deeper level of inward attention. Most organizations don't know how to contact that level in people. Their main aim is often defeated because of this lack. Focusing reaches "there" in people, where what each field aims at can actually happen. That is why Focusing is a crucial addition in so many fields". (Gendlin, The Folio: Tribute Issue, 2008)
Gendlin encourages practitioners of various disciplines to incorporate Focusing into their specific field. He says Focusing in itself is not a fruitful approach; it needs to be used in combination with other disciplines.
I find Focusing especially helpful for many clients who otherwise would struggle reaching the level of sensation that we, homeopaths need in order to come to a curative remedy.
If you are a practitioner of the Sensation method, I would love to hear your memorable stories with clients who find it hard to access their bodily felt sensations. What are the ways you have found useful to reach a shift with them, to make the leap from the level they are comfortable with?
For those who do not necessarily understand what I mean, please read on. These are two short excerpts from my book Sensations that explain the level of sensations:
Levels of Experience
The key to the Sensation Method lies in the structure of the initial interview. When we conduct a homeopathic interview we take the client by the hand and walk them through their inner reality step by step, guiding them deeper into the levels of experience. The first level people usually start telling their story at is by naming their ailment. The next step is when they describe the symptoms in detail: conditions, how their ailment appears or improves, the location, the severity of those and other descriptions. One level deeper, people talk about feelings - the emotions these symptoms evoke or are born into. At this level people tend to take a broader route and relate their experience in more general terms from the emotional perspective. Most people have strong emotional reactions and are quite aware of them, so this is a level of experience people can talk freely about. One step beyond this is the level of images - the situations the person relates to. This is the first level that we do not tend to go to easily in casual conversation. It can be a stretch for many people to realize that underneath our emotional reactions there are fixed images that we unconsciously believe in. This is the layer people draw from when describing their situation in metaphors.
Once this level is well described, we go further into the realm of sensations. At this level people relate to the physical sensation a certain image, dream or situation brings forth. This level correlates to the local sensations and brings out the global sensation that manifests everywhere in the person. Without reaching this level we cannot be sure of the core sensation that feeds the images, the emotions, the symptoms and the ailment the person is suffering from.

Flow of Interview
There is no fixed pattern of case-taking, no set questions we need to ask our clients. Nevertheless, we want to touch upon all the Levels of Experience as discussed earlier. There is a natural flow that takes people through their story. In the beginning of the interview we ask about the nature of the complaint. Once that is described, we further question specific aspects of it. Nowadays, health care consumers are very well informed. With the widespread use of the Internet, information is just a click away. Consequently, people tend to know a great deal about their condition. However, this does not replace the actual symptoms one experiences. These symptoms are more personal than the average, general description of an illness. People can go into minute details about their pains and discomforts. This is important terrain for the homeopath, who can then dive deeper into even more personal experience of these symptoms. This is the starting points from which people then usually describe their emotional circumstances of their complaints. Once they are talking about the emotions it is just one step further to understand their beliefs that those emotions are based on.
This is a depth which typical conversation seldom reaches. It’s the level at which we need to encourage our patients to go ahead and describe their inner reality, however absurd or unreasonable it might sound. For some, it is as senseless as dreams. It has vague relation to reality but they are not sure what the connection is. They do not act as predictably as they usually do in their waking life. Indeed, at this level people talk about their dreams, pictures, images of their daydreams, the goals they want to achieve, hobbies they enjoy, favorite movies, books, stories and heroes. Once a person is talking about these things they experience certain sensations. There is a reason we feel good at the sight of an awe-inspiring piece of art or scenery. There is a reason we engage in a particular sport or activity. Once we can tackle that sensation the activity brings up, we are in a very different realm than describing symptoms of a disease. In this realm we can navigate through with ease; there are no norms we have to comply with. At this level it is also easy to name the sensation and the opposite of it, which brings on unpleasant associations. Often two polarities can be elicited here, and that can secure our understanding of the vital sensation. We arrive at the root of the problem, the key to healing.

The Power of Silent Listening

2009-06-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

Since publishing the book Sensations I have been introduced to Dr Eugene Gendlin's approach called Focusing (see an earlier post about some aspects of Focusing). In Focusing we are looking for a bodily felt sense that is in the background of emotions and behaviors. If you are listening quietly to your body or maybe even have the good fortune someone guiding you into it, you will explore this whole world of bodily felt inner experiencing. Dr Gendlin's work operates on this level. I believe there are many connections between the Sensation Method's vital sensation and Focusing's felt sense.
An interesting point I want to bring up now is regarding hand gestures. If you read my book, you know that working with the Sensation Method we pay special attention to one's hand gestures. As Dr Sankaran noted, often, during the interview, when we encourage someone to enter the sensation level, they pause. They are silent for a while. Then.... as they want to tell us what they found there... they motion with their hands. No sound is leaving their lips - unpronounced words hover there without being born into a voiced utterance. This is the moment that is the birth of the implicit into explicit. The inner sensation, the bodily felt sense is being formed into an uttarable unit. In his book Focusing (on page 97) Gendlin gives an example of a golfer to describe what the felt sense is like. He says that when golfers sense that they are ready to swing is not something they ask consciously; they feel it in their body. It is a whole body experience that translates into the swing. Right before the swing it is a felt sense. A something that is an implicit unit within the person's inner experience, waiting to be expressed. In homeopathic inquiry we are always looking for the inner experience. We are waiting to hear from our clients reference to something important in their experience that can be explored to a deeper degree. We are at the "edge" of the known, the expressed, the discussed and the lived experience where it meets the unknown, the unexpressed, the un-discussed, the not-yet-lived aspects of the same. The "edge" is also an expression used by Gendlin. It describes very well the place of inquiry that is so familiar to us in Sensation Method inquiry. We do not have much use for the explored, the understood aspects of one's inner experience, we can only find meaningful and helpful hints for our growth and better understanding of ourselves in the unexplored territories. And the pivot point in finding that edge is in those few seconds and moments when the implicit is forming into an utterance. This is the quiet zone, the time for silent listening inward. If we further stretch these moments, we find those precious moments of bringing up the implicit is followed by the bodily expressions, in most instances of the therapeutic setting when clients are sittin down, these form hand gestures. They show us the energy of the implicit meaning. In the Sensation Method we view this level of "energy" as the level that is feeding the sensations, their expression is not yet formed but only having shape, color, direction... The body is capable of expressing it with gestures, while the mind, the words still cannot formulate. Once the body has expressed the energy of the implicit, the language, the mind catches up ... and after that hand gesture the words come.
The process does not stop here, we have a lot to do with those words... but that is another story.

Ask Questions

2009-06-06T23:27:00.001-07:00

While this is a good place to give your comments and ask questions and I enjoy the blogging atmosphere, I would like to encourage you to visit the Forum on the website of Minimum Price Homeopathic Bookstore. I am among the authors there that have their Q&A sections. On one hand I would like to populate my forum there but also it might be interesting for you to visit other homeopathic authors' Q&A sections.
The link is: http://www.minimum.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=70
Enjoy your exploration!
Ildiko

Processing the Vital Sensation

2009-06-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of some thoughts from my previous "client-centered" post
Vital Process is when we process the Vital Sensation
The Vital Sensation is the core bodily felt sense that is at the root of our innermost processes. My recent observations show me that clients need to be part of the exploration of these processes instead of being the source of information for the homeopath. Instead of offering a remedy based on the underlying story I discover as the main source of disease in the client, I want to offer this process of exploration as a source of inspiration and self-discovery for my clients.
This is why I place emphasis on the process as opposed to the remedy.
Following my previous post inspired by Carl Rogers, I am adding now this idea of the process called exploring the vital sensation. This process is born out of the vital sensation and followed through as a map to one's inner world.
Moreover among other benefits of client-centered therapy Rogers describes an "incorporation of previously denied experience into the self-structure" (On Becoming a Person, p. 75). I believe that when we explore the Vital Sensation and its manifestations, clients are able to bring it to their awareness, and as a positive effect of this exploration they will be able to include this experience into their "self structure", creating a richer experience of life, a more vital and individual immersion in it. This way we can use the Sensation method not only to find the disturbance in one's health but to enhance our experience in ways that we are prone to. We can turn our weakness into strength. Through the remedy we can achieve healing from the exaggeration of what Sankaran calls the "Other Song" but through conscious use of our familiarity with this Song to use it to enhancing our inner experience.

Client-centered therapy

2009-06-01T12:35:00.001-07:00

As I start looking into combining psychotherapy and homeopathy I have been reading texts of various authors, watching interviews with key figures of psychology and thinking about the relevance of the vast work, research and ideas that have gone into the practice of psychology to the work I am doing. I find deeply rooted connection between my work as a homeopathic practitioner and some of the thinkers of psychology. I would like to quote here from Carl Rogers’ book On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy. Rogers' so called client-centered approach is definitely very close to what I experience as the authentic relationship between therapist and client. As Rogers points it out it can be any relationship between two humans, where at least one of them has the goal of growing towards self-actualization, in simple terms becoming a person he/she seeks to be. I am taking this quote from him because his words remind me of the multi-layered work we do with our clients. Establishing a healing relationship is the heart of what we do. Therefore we can look for the results of our work at the same place: in this relationship. This is the fertile soil homeopathic inquiry will sow its seeds.
Here is Rogers:
"If I can create a relationship characterized on my part:
by a genuineness and transparency, in which I am my real feelings;
by a warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate individual;
by a sensitive ability to see his world and himself as he sees them;
Then the other individual in the relationship:
will experience and understand aspects of himself which previously he has repressed;
will find himself become better integrated, more able to function effectively;
will become more similar to the person he would like to be;
will be more self-directing and self-confident;
will become more of a person, more unique and more self-expressive;
will be more understanding, more acceptant of others;
will be able to cope with the problems of life more adequately and more comfortably". (Rogers, 1961, p. 37)
I find it intriguing that Rogers’ statements regarding what “will” happen are very close to what I expect to happen as a result of homeopathic treatment. I understand that the style of inquiry and the spread of issues we address are very different, but nevertheless it is interesting to consider the similarities and learn from the other.
By giving a special kind of attention, Rogers becomes the source of healing. The relationship is what is the central point to healing, the pivot point where clients finds the energy for and direction to healing. In the Sensation Method I (the homeopath) identify the issue, the “aspects the person repressed” without the conscious participation of the client. Recently I have been leaning towards moving the process of self-discovery and subsequent self-actualization to become the conscious endeavor of client as well as the practitioner. I think it is more humanistic, more approachable and therapeutic, and helps to fill the gap where the limitations of homeopathy would stop us. If we share the responsibility of the process and outcome with the client, we will not lose the case because of outside circumstances. We will have the ability to keep the healing going even without a remedy, while still progressing in the direction the homeopathic inquiry brings us.

Mirroring

2009-05-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

In a preface to a book on the homeopathic treatment of Lyme disease I was faced with an expression that resonated with me and the work I have been doing recently:
"May each one of us in this brief lifetime encounter our mirror-like simillimum". (Douglas Smith)
When I am working with a client with the Sensation Method, I ask them to describe certain elements in their story. These are exact repetitions of the utterances of the person. It is similar to techniques that some psychotherapists use, where they repeat the exact phrase of their clients. In Focusing oriented psychotherapy the client talks about their inner experience, usually a physically felt sense. They locate a sensation in their body and with the help of the therapist they explore it. The cornerstone of the technique is repeating the words of the client, where the trained practitioner hears the relation to the felt sense. The felt sense is a term, coined by Gene Gendlin, PhD, founder of Focusing oriented psychotherapy. It describes a vague inner, bodily-felt sense that the person recognizes as a pivot point in their general sense of the issue they are talking about. This is the so called felt sense that one explores by simply following the very words of the client and as the therapist repeats those words to the client, it encourages further description of the vague sensations, thus crystallizing them further and further until a definite felt sense is established and named. When people are faced with this felt sense, a unique opportunity arises: they are mirrored to their own inner image, their inner self. It is but a small aspect of their simillimum, the vital sensation we are looking for during our homeopathic case taking. The search for the vital sensation and the felt sense is an intriguing journey: the thread you can follow it by is your very own words. These words are mirrored and reflected onto you at each step of the journey. The reflection and mirroring makes sure you do not get lost, you don't wander off from the path: you are following your own tracks towards your deepest, most true inner self. This is a process that brings about healing from the very core. Your cleanest mirror-like image appears in front of your eyes and you wonder why you had not seen this image before. It is so familiar, so crystal-clear.

A clinical thought

2007-11-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

The other day I was working on a case. It was one of those people that really do not understand the direction I am going with my questions. I needed to call her back three times, because she kept giving me lots of details, which had very little to do with the remedy that she was eventually to be getting. Very often people expect me to be interested in the details of their life a naturopathic doctor or a nutritionist would be interested in, like their dietary habits. Most of the time that information is not very useful for me. To build a good homeopathic case, I need people to quiet their mind and contemplate on decisions they have made in their lives and really see to the core of it: they have the answer somewhere deep inside them to questions, like: What made me decide that way? What was I achieving by making a decision, choosing one way over another? Was there something I was afraid of in the other path? What was the attracting force in the path I chose? Even if first you get some superficial answers to these inner questions, you can ask again: And what made it more appealing over the other choice that I decided to abandon? Once we ask these questions really sincerely, we find the answers within ourselves.
My hope that reading the cases in the book people will grasp the kind of depth, the direction I am looking for in their answers.

Feeding the Hungry Minds of Teens

2007-11-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

When I was talking at the Library at the book signing event, my 11-year-old son came in (on his way on a roller skating outing). He sat down in the audience and listened attentively. When we went home, he told me he was impressed. He always thought that homeopathy must have be something good, because I was doing it, but now he actually wants to read the book.
So he did. He read a few of the cases and he told me it made him feel so good that those people got better. And it made him feel even better, that he knew that his mom did that.
When he first asked me to give him a copy to read, I was suddenly not sure how he would take it. Then I suggested that he read some of the kids' cases, which he did. It did resonate with him and I think he found a small peek into a different way of looking at the world. When kids are surrounded by a very homogeneous culture (the preteen and teen -scene is extremely homogeneous, to the contrary of what teens think), it is an important task to keep those young minds working. Reading is one of the best ways to achieve that. At this age the avid readers read fiction - which is great for their developing minds: a wonderful bridge between childhood imagination and establishing their future identity. But I always feel truly successful as a mother (my children are 19, 15, 13, 11 and 2), when I manage to encourage them to get excited about ideas that trigger thinking or social awareness. I did not expect that among my book's audience would be many teens, but who knows; maybe they will find some eye openers in it. When teens come to see me as my clients, I often feel they do not expect that I am really interested in them. They do not expect that their ideas can be truly insightful. It takes some time before they ease into the interview and open up their world for me. Sooner or later they realize that I am not just some kind of a freak for being interested in them, but I can actually show them a part of their inner world that is unique. (Often it is in a different area where they had thought they were unique!) I always appreciate when teens decide to talk to me. And now I am looking forward to hearing their comments on my book, as well.

Amazon

2007-11-15T07:29:00.000-08:00

I would like to ask you to help me spread the word by writing a Customer Review on the Amazon page of the book Sensations.
Thanks!
http://www.amazon.com/Sensations-Homeopathy-Ildiko-Ran-CCH/dp/0979930308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195140507&sr=8-1

What is the book about?

2007-11-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

I thought some of you have no idea what the book is about.... Here is a quick peek:

According to Sensations a homeopath can find the best remedy for your ills by listening to a description of the bodily sensations you experience when having a headache, a skin rash or just a bad day.

The author masterfully describes the intricate behind-the-scenes details of a homeopath’s mind drawing upon her own clinical experiences working with the Sensation Method. She outlines and illustrates this approach in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable format. The book consists of ten descriptive cases, where the reader gets acquainted with the lifestyles and problems of ten distinctly different people seeking help with migraines, menstrual cramps, carpal tunnel syndrome, hypertension, acute kidney colic, and children with autism, head lice, and eczema. Interspersed in the dialogue between homeopath and client you read about the homeopath’s thought process and follow the events like a Sherlock Holmes detective story. The book is suitable and informative for the novice as well as readers more seasoned in homeopathic philosophy. Homeopathy is a popular holistic healing modality that helps the body heal itself gently yet effectively.

“Ildiko Ran has written an excellent introduction to the innovative principles and methodology of Rajan Sankaran’s “Sensation Method”. The book is well organized, the style is succinct and clear, and the cases are very instructional. I highly recommend it to any student of this method.” Julian Jonas, CCH, Lic. Ac., Homeopath

You can read more at my publisher's website at Inner Experience Press

First Book signing event

2007-11-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Book signing in the Arlington library on November 10, 2007:
Thanks to all who carved out some time from their busy weekend to come to celebrate with me the birth of Sensations. Thank you for making me feel like it was worth writing the book! The feedback I am receiving is just right. It fits the reasons why I wrote the book in the first place: the Sensation Method of Homeopathy is a fascinating way to look at health, and life in general. Homeopathy is often misinterpreted and many people are surprised and interested to learn more when they hear me talk about it. Thanks again, and please use this forum here to continue the discussion.
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