Discerning What Needs to Be Healed

The Chat began at 21:02 EDT

 

Moderator: Welcome, Melanie Grimes, RSHom, (NA), CCH.

She began studying the Organon more than 35 years ago. She was the editor of The American Homeopath for 12 years and now edits Simillimum, the Journal of the Homeopathic Association of Naturopathic Physicians. She is the author of the naturopathic textbook, Dr. John Bastyr: Philosophy and Practice and edited Dynamic Provings, Vol 1 (Sherr).

Her published provings include: Tiger Shark (Galeo c), Allende Meteorite (Fax c.), Tule Bluet Dragonfly (Ennall c), Blue Green Algae (Micro a.), False Fern Cycad, (Stang), and Wollemi Pine (Wolle).

She teaches at Bastyr University, The Seattle School of Homeopathy and created the first online interactive course in homeopathy, "Homeotalk" (www.homeotalk.com). She is on the research board of the American Medical College of Homeopathy and lectures internationally. She has written hundreds of articles in homeopathic journals worldwide.

Her biography appears on the WholeHealthNow timeline, Who's Who in America, and the New Age Encyclopedia.

Melanie lives in Seattle, Washington where she also writes screenplays, novels and librettos. She can be reached at usahomeopath@aol.com .

 

Kristy: With all the talk about Swine Flu and other viruses, how do we look at "Discerning What Needs to be Healed" in pandemic acutes?

 

Melanie: Acutes can be looked at in a few ways. Many times homeopaths find that a person's constitutional remedy carries them through any acute disease. Another way of treating is to look for a "genus epidemicus".

The "genus" is the remedy most likely to treat everyone - it's based on the common symptoms of the acute, or in this case, the flu.

When you ask, what needs to be healed...you need to understand if the vital force has become susceptible to infection because of the virility of the virus or because the person is weakened and needs to repeat their constitutional remedy.

 

What needs to be healed? The virus infection or the person who has the virus infection? Most of the time, it's the person. When you look for what needs to be healed, you are frequently looking backward into chronology and when the disease started.

 

Melanie:  Welcome and thanks for being patient during technical difficulties. I was saying that when you are treating the flu and ask what needs to be healed... you have to evaluate if the patient needs a constitutional remedy or a remedy for the acute, possibly the genus.

The genus epidemicus is the remedy that most people need to treat a specific flu. Dr. Bastyr used to treat with an acute remedy when he first saw a patient, then use constitutional treatment at the follow up visits.

Sometimes a virus is strong and overpowers everyone and we all need to treat the viral infections, but... sometimes the weakness in the vital force is from  another cause, making a person so weak that the virus can enter, and then you must treat that original weakness, frequently with a constitutional remedy. The weakness can even be an inherited problem, what we call miasmatic. This is a weakness that originated with the ancestors, but is stuck in a person's vital force.

Even in acute disease, you see this occurring. For instance if someone is in the tubercular miasm, they have a tendency for lung weakness. Even during a stomach flu outbreak, that person will show signs of lung congestion and need a remedy that addresses their unique expression of the flu. Is this clear?

vaish: Yes.

debbie: Yes.

krishnaonkar: How do you handle chronic degenerative diseases which seem to be incurable?

 

Melanie: Good question. Chronic disease is only disease that has not yet been cured.

Degenerating means that the disease mechanism is now eating away at the body itself. When it can no longer sustain, it begins to decay parts of the body, like getting rid of dead wood. We recognize this as a disease process.

We need to ask what the process is really for. For instance, when we overuse our joints, the body says, hey, this is too much. I'm going to put some calcium here so this movement stops. We call this arthritis. But this is the intelligence of the body at work. When you ask what needs to be healed here, it's the information that the vital force has. The vital force has to be reeducated.

 

educateme: Once it gets to the degenerative stage, can it be reversed or is it too late?

 

Melanie: Yes, it's true that sometimes there is too much damage done to tissue to regenerate. Homeopathy is very powerful and once it gives the information to the vital force amazing healing can take place quickly, but there are limits to how much tissue can be regenerated.

 

For instance, after surgery, homeopathy cannot regrow organs. Not yet! ;-)

There are always obstacles to cure. Sometimes the obstacles are the lifestyle of the person and sometimes they are the length of time someone has been sick. But even Andrew Weil says that homeopathy is useful in what he calls "not well since".

 

For instance...not well since I had mono, not well since I had pneumonia, not well since my accident, not well since my kids were born, not well since I retired from work.

Homeopathy is great at reversing the trauma to the system that is stored there and hard to access by other healing modalities, once we know what it is that needs to be cured, that is.

 

Educateme: Are there things that I can do to prepare my body for surgery so as to heal faster, and not have problems with infections and blood clots?

 

Melanie:  Yes. Generally, you can rest and eat healthy foods, stay hydrated, etc.

You can also take Arnica montana.  There is a great deal of research about Arnica used post surgery. Some have used it beforehand to prepare for the vascular blood disturbance.

 

alan: The vital force does not have to be "reeducated", per Aphorism 11. "The morbid mistunement of the life principle makes itself discernable by disease symptoms"

 

Melanie: Yes, Alan but...the morbid mistunement is in the vital force. It's that mistunement that is addressed when we prescribe. The vital force is retuned, or educated, is another way of looking at it. I think that the homeopathic remedies act by giving information to the body, somehow.

 

Debbie: Melanie, when someone presents with severe pathology on all levels, like disabling neurologic pain + severe anxiety, fear, panic that is also disabling, how do you discern what should 1st be healed?

 

Melanie: Debbie, take the case chronologically. See what came first and how trauma- physical mental or emotional- got trapped. You want to follow the "red thread" and see the path.

 

debbie: So, in the order in which the pathology appeared?

 

Melanie: Yes, but also how it's related, what pieces are unresolved. For instance, a person may have unresolved issues from a childhood disease, or vaccination that has now become a deeper issue. You have to look at their whole medical history and sometimes the history of their ancestors. Piece it out into piles and see which pieces from the past are still active.

Does that make sense?

 

debbie: Yes, thanks, that's very helpful.

 

Melanie: Also you want to look at what is strange rare and peculiar to that particular disease, what is unique in that person's expression of the disease.

 

alan: How about just identifying the active miasm?

 

Melanie: I have a simple way of evaluating miasms. Psora is the itch. It's the beginning of the problem. The person is busy trying to get rid of a simple problem, but it's a huge problem to them. Pathology is not very deep. Sycosis is when the body can't itch anymore because it's worn out. In Sycosis, the body starts depositing things, like on an assembly line, if you can't catch up, you stop the flow and jam the works. When that doesn't work, the body goes into syphilis. That's when the body starts to decay and chop off stuff it can't sustain anymore. Itch, deposit, or decay. Those are the three miasms.

 

alan: A great book on miasms is Henny Heuden Mast's book THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHRONIC MIASMS  Highly recommend and easy reading.

 

Melanie: Yes, that's a great book. I also like Miasmatic Prescribing by Banerjea.

 

Vibell: I took a case today, woman 41yrs old, has had severe asthma her whole life. At age 2, her mom backed over her, broke her hip, and she had double pneumonia at age 2. I view that as never been well since, right?

 

Melanie: Vibell, yes, I'd say that's a good example. I'd look at her issues with her mother, as well as the lungs. You can see that the lungs didn't develop properly.

I have a case like that from Bosnia. He has allergies now, but had pneumonia at 2. He did well on Pneumococcinum. His lungs were traumatized by the war and I felt he was never well since the pneumonia he had at age 2. His allergies got a lot better after taking pneumoninum - or whatever that remedy name is- 200c. The boy was 12 when I first treated him. He’s 14 now.

 

alan: Asthma is almost always sycotic miasm.

 

Melanie: It doesn't matter to me what miasm someone is in. I rarely make that definition in my case taking analysis. I look to see what is going on in the person and there are many different types of miasms, many of them individual. When you ask what needs to be healed, it is unique for every person. It can be within a miasm or not. But, the homeopath needs to understand what caused the current expression. What came first.

I saw a homeopath at a seminar once treat a live case...The child was dancing and singing and eating stool. The remedy given was Veratrum album, for the silly behavior. The child stopped singing and dancing and still ate stool. So, what needed to be healed?

the stool eating! But it's easy as a homeopath to say, well, I know that rubric. I know how to treat a silly child.

Why was that child eating stool? Just because we have a rubric that covers a silly child who eats stool doesn't mean that is the correct remedy. Being silly wasn't connected in this case. It wasn't part of the pathology.

The stool eating was the pathology and that wasn't connected to the silliness. If the homeopath had looked deeper into the case and if it wasn't taken in front of an audience, I'm sure they would have found the real reason for the stool-eating.

 

Looking for what needs to be cured means just that -  look for what needs to be cured, and not what we have the rubrics for, or what we want to suppress, as modern medicine frequently does. We don't want the fevers to diminish- not when they're just 100ºF. We want the vital foce to fight back!!! Our remedies encourage vitality, they don’t suppress it.

 

Melanie: My advice is this...When you see the patient in front of you, you unwrap their thoughts, emotions, pains. Make piles and tease out the clumps. See what's in the depth and what is unresolved. You will begin to see the connections, the patterns, the repeats, the places where the person is stuck and going around in circles, the places where the pathology is stuck in one emotion, one body part. And where the cries are getting louder.

 

krishnaonkar: Does the diagnostic label help in finding a remedy?

 

Melanie: You can use diagnostic labels or emotions, or sometimes physical generals. It depends on the case. You have to receive the case the way the person presents it to you. The way they present it will give you clues as to how to solve it. Good luck to you all.

 

Moderator: Thank you so much, Melanie, for all your insights. We really appreciate this evening. And thank you, participants!

 

Melanie: You are welcome.

 

The Chat ended at 22:03 EDT