Layers
Body, Emotions and Mind
The crux of Homeopathic philosophy.
Buddhism has told us that there is a body, the mind and the spirit. Not all systems adhere to this nomenclature. Homeopathy talks of the body, the emotions and the mind. Other religious doctrines talk of the body, the emotions, the mind and the spirit. Homeopathy does not profess to treat the spirit. That is left to theologians, gurus, saints and mystics. However, it should be obvious that when the body is healed of its ailments, the emotional self (the proverbial heart) is healed of its angst, or when the mind is returned to its ability to think and remember properly, the spirit in turn must be ameliorated, made better. The soul, or spirit benefits from the proper functioning of the body, emotions and mind.
Body conditions are easy to define. We have numerous systems, respiratory, reproductive, digestive, endocrine, the skin, the senses, eliminatory etc. They break down in a myriad of ways. The emotions deal with feelings. There is no thought in pure emotion. Thought is separate but continues no matter what we are feeling or what the body might be experiencing. Sometimes emotions can be so overwhelming that thought is impossible. Emotions can be so overwhelming that body pains disappear during the emotions. During the process called dissociation one can feel emotions without thought. But this is the exception. Thought itself can be so pervading that feelings cannot enter the consciousness. And sometimes body discomforts can be so pervasive as to not allow feelings or thought. Yet, sometimes all three are present, we have pain, we feel depressed and we think about what we can do to alleviate the discomfort.
Thought differs from feeling in that, in Homeopathy, we call the mind that portion of us that thinks, remembers, memorizes, does basic tasks as forming sentences, speaking coherently, having the ability to do arithmetic and contemplate mathematics, philosophy, to help create poetry, to read and write. The mind can cognate and wonder and ponder. Mind also has concepts. These are fascinating. Concepts are more like doctrines, tenets and mindsets that the person holds on to as truths. For example, a conservative patient might say that we shouldn't have welfare, that unless a person has the wherewithal to earn a living, then they should not benefit from the donations of others. This concept is likely to be frozen in place. The Homeopath should not confront this view or press the issue. We have remedies that have become famous for treating people locked into their views. The remedies made from Potassium are often like this. These people tend to not j-walk, they tend to return to a store to return any change over paid, and they follow the rules. Conversely, people of the love generation, can have locked-in concepts as well. For example: 'we must feed all the poor, make the world a better place', they also say 'people need to not get so uptight'. The Homeopath can have no personal opinion on these issues. The role of the Homeopath is to find the remedy that brings relief to the patient. The Homeopath is not a reformer. However, that is not to say that remedies, properly prescribed for these personality types won't soften up their views. The patients in each of the two examples above may return saying, either, 'Yeah, we need to help out those who are unable to help themselves but we should attempt to teach them to make a living on their own.' Or the love child might say, 'I feel differently about welfare now. I think we should teach people to fish, like Jesus said.' Both types will tend to approach the middle of issues. This seems to be a natural consequence of Homeopathy. Some people will say, 'don't you dare try to change my concepts!' The remedies allow a person to maintain their opinions; but a softening occurs, naturally.
Feelings, on the other hand, seem to be less under our control than our thoughts, they over take us. We become bored, moody, sad, depressed, suicidal, or, we feel restless, anxious, antsy and nervous. On the positive side we can experience joy, jubilation, excitement, happiness and contentment. How often have you laughed uncontrollably? If we over-control our own emotions we can cause repression of them.
The term 'suppression' is reserved for what happens to symptoms of the body, emotions or mind that are caused by pharmaceuticals or recreational drugs.
The term 'repression' is reserved for what happens when the patient them self does not allow feelings to linger and pushes them to the back burning.
The term 'oppression' means that people we know, society or severe environments like a war zone were involved in driving the feelings deeper into the person. Post traumatic stress syndrome is an example of this. There are also many types of abuse: physical, emotional, mental, sexual, religious, ritual, verbal, traumatic etc. All of the above are oppressive in nature.
In Homeopathy we use the feelings of the patient, their thoughts and concepts, their body symptoms, and the family history to create a whole picture.
Over the last 200 years of Homeopathy's history, it has been repeatedly observed that when problems of the body are suppressed with Allopathic or recreational drugs, verbal suppression or physical abuse of any kind, those problems disappear and go deeper into the body itself. For example, if acne is treated with tetracycline the acne will clear and then later a deeper more serious condition appears. It may reappear as liver congestion resulting in faulty metabolism or it may become a skin lesion elsewhere in the body. Now here is a very important point: if the body is repeatedly suppressed the physical problem will not go deeper into the body but, because it has reached the depth to which it can be suppressed (the deepest manifestations usually being neurological, having to do with the brain, spinal cord and nervous system), the dis-ease will, not being able to manifest deeper in the physical, jump to the emotional body. Jumping out of the physical to the emotional indicates that the physical is full. It can no longer handle any more suppression. When a patient presents with emotional issues and we treat those emotional issues with Homeopathy, the emotional ailment will often heal and a physical one will come up. We then treat the physical ailment correctly, with Homeopathy.
Many people are layered in terms of the number of constitutional remedies comprising their make up. A person might be born as a pulsatilla type; the baby and toddler will exhibit pulsatilla symptoms. This is why Homeopaths believe you are born into your type. Later in life trauma may occur physically or emotionally. There may be terrible frights. The child will react to these stressors in a repressive way, usually. Repression is when the person consciously or subconsciously suppresses their own response to a traumatic stressor. The consequence of this is the formation of a constitutional layer on top of a constitutional type in place from birth. This can happen a second time and maybe a third time for someone born under horrific circumstances such as religious or ritual abuse, intense molestation or repeated beatings or the witnessing of beatings. People can be layered like onions. We must treat the outer layers first. When a layer is healed the layer underneath will show itself as dominant months down the road. Then this newly exposed layer will present itself in the story of the symptoms that concern the patient. We call this the symptom picture or the remedy picture. A new picture will emerge when it is ready to be treated. And each layer, being a different remedy will have a different picture, a different group of symptoms that relate directly to the new remedy. How convenient! Some Homeopaths have surmised that symptom pictures, groups of symptoms, are the being's way of saying, 'give me such and such a remedy', for how else would we know.
This unpeeling of the onion can occur in acute cases as well. Dr. Vithoulkas, in
Greece was once treating an acute kidney failure case that had been given up for dead. The family snuck him into the hospital when the Allopaths weren't looking. He noticed the patient was not making any groaning noises from the pain that he most certainly must have been feeling, nor was he moving as if in pain. Homeopathic opium is a remedy for a person who should be showing pain but is not, amongst many other indications for this remedy. (Note that all homeopathic remedies are dilutions and there is no molecular opium in the actual remedy). The patient responded well to the remedy by exhibiting pain the next day, as he should have been from the outset. Vithoulkas then gave Homeopathic sulphur. There were very few symptoms on which to base a follow-up remedy. Sulphur is famous for aligning a case, encouraging the patient to begin to show new symptoms that will lead to the next remedy. Sure enough the patient became loquacious the following day. The remedy Lachesis, made from the snake venom of the Bushmaster snake of Brazil, is known for loquacity. The remedy was given. Vilthoulkas was not called for any follow-up visits and wondered how the patient had fared. He did not see the patient again until seven years later when he knocked on his door at home in order to thank him for the miraculous cure. This is a good example of layering within an acute case, giving remedy after remedy, moving deeper into the ailment and curing it on deeper and successively deeper levels. Flues often require unpeeling. I've often given up to six remedies for some flues as they progress from feeling achy all over to fevers and coughs and nose and eye symptoms (Rhinitis and Coryza). The flu will pass in less than half the time using this method of unlayering.
