Dr. Irene Schlingensiepen Brysch
Published in Homeopathic Links, Sept. 2001

Changing Tides - A New Era In Homoeopathy

Impressions From The Millenium Seminar in Bombay

The following article in its first part I recollects personal and general impressions taken home from the millenium seminar in Mumbai and in the second part II reports about new developments in homoeopathy as focused in the workshop. In part three III the drawn conclusions are reflected in the context of the current debate on different homoeopathic schools and the further direction of homoeopathic medicine:

I. Impressions from India - a homoeopathic journey

January 9th. 2001: half past three in the morning in a Mumbai taxi, - after a stormy flight from Frankfurt to India, - we passed the grey and dusty dwellings of bare poverty, have driven along "Queen`s Necklace", and now crisscross through the colonial old city of Bombay - the driver having obviously not the slightest idea, how to find the hotel or at least Madam Kama road, heavy smog is in the air, nobody to ask on the road... - what on earth am I doing here some thousand miles away from my children and home? -

5 hours later: the early morning sun is shining, birds are singing through the sounds of traffic and amongst an international group of homoeopaths - between their early twenties and 70 years old, we arrive after a cheerful brisk walk at Bombay Hospital, where the number of just 1200 participants from 22 countries is registered and seated, - a procedure which works amazingly smooth.

The seminar starts with the ignition of an oil lamp - a symbolic act of lightning the homoeopathic flame and a piece of traditional religious indian music and then we all have the chance to partake in a fascinating homeopathic journey:

Looking back today - what was the substance, which the spirit of this homoeopathic journey?

The lectures showed complete video cases, chosen to highlight exemplary different aspects of homoeopathic work:

the art of casetaking

• a profound use of the repertory
• the latest computer facilities
• a systematic differentiation of kingdoms, classical miasms and submiasms
• a systematic approach of perscription applicable to the plant kingdom as a whole

As the seminar was freely dedicated to failures, - we mostly saw cases where the first perscription(s) had not worked satisfactory. Meaning that the videos started with a complete retake of a case, where the patient could be seen in an highly acute or severe chronic state, comprising his physical and mental symptoms. Several of these patients had been seen by different homoeopaths before. The most import tool that led to the solving of the case was its open perception as a whole, long before the repertory or the idea of a specific remedy came into play. - i.e. understanding the inner state of a patient expressing itself again and again in the mental, general and physical sphere.

This understanding of the state led to perscriptions which were followed by a process of deep healing as could be clearly seen in the follow up video, even before listening to any word spoken by the patient. The follow ups and the process of healing were usually shown over a period of several years .

The whole Bombay circle of teaching homeopaths evolved in the 90ies, when excellent young homoeopathic doctors like Nandita Shah, Sunil Anand, Sujit Chatterjee, Sudhir Baldota and Divya Chabra joined the existing homoeopathic study - line of their former university teachers Dr. Rajan Sankaran and Dr. Jayesh Shah [1].

The work of Jayesh Shah stands for developing the tools of classical homoeopathy such as the repertorisation and the materia medica to a most profound level of case-solving. This was highlightened in a case of a young American in a deteriorating mental state, who had been treated by many Homoeopaths before without any improvement for years. The patient was completely cured over a period of several month with Kalium cyanatum. This case exemplified the great therapeutic potential that lies in the absolute mastership of repertorisation as applied by Jayesh Shah.

II. New deveolpments in homoeopathy as focused in the Seminar

Sankaran has introduced two important new steps into homoeopathic work:

-a) the understanding of the patient as a subject

-b) the systematic understanding of remedies

ad II a) The perception of the patient as a subject:

Although Hahnemann had already emphasized the importance of an unprejudiced open space given to the whole patient, different homoeopahtic schools to this day either stress the reception of physical and general symptoms mainly, and thus often miss important mentals, or other schools emphasize mentals, but usually interpret the history given by the patient in their own words. Last century physicists came to realize that the observer of an experiment will change the conditions and thereby the results of any experiment by merely observing it. Non-awareness of these phenomena can create stronger deviation of the results. Analogously in homoeopathy this may be one reason, why for the same patient sometimes at least 5 different remedies are suggested by 5 different homoeopaths. Having seen some hundred cases of Sankaran and his colleagues in the Bombay group, either on video and / or life in their clinics over a time span of several years, I found the prescriptions of this group to be highly consistent, as well as their success in healing by using one single remedy convincing. Once clearly identified, the remedy runs through the case, and cures or clearly ameliorates whatever disease is developed over the years, for around 80 % of the cases. Since working with this method the experience in my own clinic is more and more alike.

How is this methodical consistency achieved?

Sankaran refined the method of casetaking over the years:

whatever any of us experiences and thus expresses and reacts to in a given situation is due to and thus reflects our inner state:

In the anamnesis we therefore express characteristics of this inner state, when we speak about:

• the chief complaint and how it affects our lives
• any crucial situation in our life
• or less obvious : about an every day situation [2].
• about other people: - Whatever we say about others, says about ourselves [3].

The opposite of what is spoken is usually also true: if moral values for example are emphasized, there is an underlying feeling of immorality, where love and affection are crucial, the feeling of being unloved is found deep inside. If trust is a major issue, there usually is a theme of betrayal and disappointment.

It is Dr. Divya Chabra´s contribution of having developed the method of free association into an elegant tool of homoeopathic casetaking, where the innermost feelings of the patient are clearly expressed in his own characteristic words.

 How crucial it can be to give almost endless space to the patient during casetaking , became obvious in the anamnesis of a young schizophrenic patient by Dr. Baldota. Only listening without a single interruption for two hours to the patient and to the dialogue with his "enervating" father, who interfered continuously into the statements of his son, brought out the clear picture of a deep Chamomilla - state in the young man. The patient, -who had been treated without success with various remedies by different doctors before , - did very well on this prescription.

ad II b) The systematic understanding of remedies:

at the end of Hahnemann´s life about 200 remedies were known and had been proven. Today there are several thousand listed in the repertories. For each of the well known remedies more than a thousand symptoms are listed just under the generals or in the mind rubric of a single homoeopathic substance. On the other hand many homoeopaths have studied around 60 remedies, when they finish their education. A systematic overview is needed to prescribe within a wider range.

 It was Sankaran who started systematising homoeopathy at the beginning of the last decade:

His work is based on a most profound knowledge of the Repertory, the Materia Medica, and a detailed survey of the writings of the so-called old masters [4], further on the conduction of solid provings, as well as the facilities opened by new computer search modalities.

During the anamnesis the following points can be clarified:

• to which miasm does the patient´s state correspond
• which kingdom is represented (mineral, animal, plant, nosode)
• which subgroup is expressed, i.e. which line of the periodic table, or which animal species or which plant family

His most recent work was to systematize the inner themes of different plant families, corresponding to a specific state expressed by a patient:

For example the full, heavy, forced out feeling in uterus, ovaries and the heart in the physical symptoms of lilium tigrinum matches with the inner feelings of beeing an outsider and excluded , that runs through the whole liliflorae family f.e. Veratrum album , Crocus, Aloe, Colchicum, Paris quadrifolia etc. -Each of these plants represents another miasm and as such another intensity of perception of the same inner theme of one plant family. Lilium tigrinum for example has the sycotic aspect of a hidden conflict of sexuality and religion. The patient´s underlying fear is, that by expressing his sexual desires he will be excluded by the strict religous community to which he belongs (for example a homosexual American mormon).

A patient doing well on Aloe (belonging to the same family) usually has a lot of characteristic stool symptoms combined with the sensation that his stools are being forced out. In the mental sphere he describes the feeling of being excluded or forced out of the group to which he belongs, for being like a lepper (leprousy miasm). For example any trivial skin problem will thus cause her or him tremendous inner suffering.

Thus understanding the miasm, the kingdom and the family leads to perscription of less known remedies. So far around 25 plant families have been brought into a system, linking their general themes and the miasms [5].

The introduction to this new systematic work was a leading keynote, running through the workshop.

Having spoken to quite a few foreign participants during and after the seminar, we all seemed to share a widened perspective of what might be healed within a patient, - and within ourselves.

What else is healing but setting free the wonderful creational thought in any of us, that was stuck, into a process of evolving inner freedom, where ever it was meant to grow?

III. New homoeopathic approaches viewed in the context of the current debate

 Taking into account the worldwide debates and discussions about different schools and the further direction of homoeopathy, as reflected for example in the Journal of Homoeopathic Links over the last 14 month, I find it an interesting question to ask, which point is reached by the homoeopathic medicine in its historical process nowadays?

In history there are primetimes in the continuous historical evolvement of a mental process, a science or an art. In Europe for example there is the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in philosophy. Contemporaries often strongly deny, or take far less notice of this process, then generations to come.

Possibly the development of homoeopathy might share common features with physics. Newton was the founder of classical theoretical physics, based on the fundamental works of Aristotle and Galileo Galilei [6]. Newton applied the laws of mechanics to celestrial objects, thus developing celestrial mechanics. Newton's theorem was thought to explain the laws of the universe satisfactory, until in the 20th century the far more complex theory of relativity and quantum mechanics were put forward by Einstein, Max Planck and Heisenberg .

As to homoeopathy Hahnemann [7] had found and formulated the fundamental laws of the simile principal and the potencies. What happens today with the described works of Sankaran and the groundbreaking theoretical work of Jan Scholten on the periodic system will have deep implications on medicine as a whole.

The awareness of each of us being in a specific state, comprising our whole being from our physical complaints to our dreams or hobbies, - goes beyond homoeopathic prescriptions. It builds a bridge across the gap of modern medicine focused merely on physical symptoms in detail, and the pure psychoanalytic and -psychotherapeutic approaches towards disease. If the homeopathic experience of the rules of healing are correlated to scientific phenomena, this would mean that any living being of all its healthy potentials is in a specific state, comprising its mental and physical deviations from health. The experience of healing suggests that a correspondent phenomena to this state is again expressed in the information of another universal materialised structure. The themes of these materialised structures are well ordered in a methodical way in the periodic system, in the plant families and in the animal-species and the nosodes. The next step is, to correlate these precise empirical observations with scientific experiments in modern biophysics:

Possibly a new door was opened by the described systematic approaches, that allows the next glimpse into the cosmic context into which we are born.

Literature

Allen, T.F., Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica, New Delhi, 1982
Boericke, Homoeopathic Materia Medica, Philadelphia, 1927
Boger,, C.M., Boenninghausen`s Characteristics and Repertory, 1938, Bombay, Roy and Co
Clarke, J.H. Dictionary of practical Materia Medica, Dl 1-3, New Delhi, 1985
Hahnemann Samuel, Organon der Heilkunst, Haug Verlag, 1987
Hahnemann Samuel, Materia Medica Pura, New Delhi1988
Hahnemann Samuel, The Chronic Diseases, New Delhi, 1985
Hering, C,, The Guiding Symptoms of our Materia Medica, New Delhi 1988
Kent, James- T, Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, New Delhi 1983
Kent, James-T, Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, New Delhi 1983
Phatak, S.R., Materia Medica of Homoeopthic Remedies, Bombay 1977
Popp,Fritz-Albert; Emission of Visible and Ultraviolet Radiation by Active Biological systems, collective Phenomena, 1981, Vol. 3, pp.187-214 . Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, Inc, USA
Popp,Fritz-Albert; Hypothesis of modes of action of homoeopathy. A critical Appraisal. E. Ernst and E.G. Hahn, eds., Butterworth- Heinemann, Oxford1998, pp.145-152
Popp,Fritz-Albert, and Zhang Jinzhu; Mechanisms of interraction between electromagnetic fields and living organisms, Science in China, Series C, volume 43, No 5, oct. 2000
Popp,Fritz-Albert, Recent advances in Biophoton Research and its applications, Singapore-London: World Scientific, 1992, 1-47
Sankaran, Rajan; The Spirit of Homoeopathy, Bombay 1991
Sankaran, Rajan ; The Substance of Homoeopathy, Bombay 1994
Sankaran, Rajan; The Soul of Homoeopathy, Bombay1997
Sankaran, Rajan; The System of Homoeopathy, Bombay 2000
Sankaran, Rajan; Provings, Bombay, 1998
Scholten, Jan, Homoeopathy and the Elements, Utrecht Scholten, Jan, Homoeopathy and the Minerals, Utrecht
Zandvoort, R. Complete Repertory, Leidschendam,1992
 

1. In Mumbai other than for example in Europe becoming a Homoeopath involves at least 5 years of university studies at the well known Bombay Homoeopathic Medical School, - ( it was here that Vithoulkas has studied and gained his groundlaying homoeopathic knowledge).- The study includes amongst other subjects an excellent knowledge of Materia medica, a detailed teaching of the different Repertories, and the art of repertorisation, as well as the books and knowledge of the so-called old masters, such as f.e. Allen, Boericke, Boenninghausen, Clarke, Hering, Kent, Phatak and of course a detailed knowledge of the writings of Hahnemann. The curriculum also includes the study of clinical subjects, such as internal medicine, surgery, neurology etc. and is usually followed by several years of homoeopathic internship.

2. A trivial incident made me aware of how deeply we perceive any mundane situation in daily life according to our own inner reality: together with a childless middle-aged couple I was waiting in front of a railway station. A taxi arrived and a young mother and the taxi driver went to the boot of the car to put the luggage in. Her three year old boy followed them and stood watching at the left angle of the car. Watching the boy it came to my mind that he was standing just next to the exhaust pipe and was breathing the exhaust fumes of the running car, and whether one should take him a little away from this spot. Then I heard the other lady, waiting with me, say: "everybody stands in other peoples way the best he can", pointing at the boy. - Obviously we perceived two completely different stories observing the same little fellow... Probably neither of them reflected much of the boy's reality. - There was not much reason to take a healthy little chap away from the fumes he breathed for some 30 seconds following his mother, nor was he standing in anybody's way at all.

3. Be it the close family, or the in-laws, be it the heroes or the troublemakers of our life or the neighbour from next door.

4. The so-called old masters were often enough most sceptically viewed pioneers in their active days.

5. As with any new horizon discovered, the number of new questions raised, becomes more numerous:
- If the compositae have the theme of violence or being hurt and 10 characteristic plants have been discovered, representing the ten miasms, what about the differentiation of the other 25000 compositae?
- Will we one day be able to measure scientifically the corresponding resonance phenomena between the state of a patient and the potentiated curing substance, as suggested by the interpretation of electromagnetic resonance experiments in modern biophysics? (Popp et al)

6. Socrates was sentenced to death , Aristotle exiled in his old days, Galileo had to retract.

7. Already Socrates - according to Plato- said to a young man asking him how to deal with his pains:..."that alike one could not treat the eyes without the head, nor the head without the body, nor the body without the soul, this being the cause, why the doctors of the Hellenians could not cope with most diseases, because they were unaware of the whole; - on which all care should be directed, and by who's ill-being no other part could be possibly well. Because all is derived from the soul, the evil and the good...".

Zurück zur Literaturliste

Seitenanfang