When I was in my mid twenties I made close friends with an anthroposophical doctor and his wife and this totally changed the way I thought about health and also disease. Anthroposophs use homeopathy as one of their main sources of medicine and view illness not as an unfortunate accident or mechanical breakdown but see it connected to the whole person.
Instead of reaching to the medicine cabinet and to ‘grab the right pill to fix your ill’, I increased the scope of my view and chose the holistic route, first for myself and then for my children. I learned slowly and experientially to view symptoms as a message from the core. I learned that symptoms carry an important message which is above all not to be suppressed.
The more I read and the more I changed my life accordingly, the more reasonable the whole thing became and it often made me wonder why not more people were questioning the conventional views on health and disease.
Homeopathic medicines address the totality of the patient and aim to restore health and equilibrium in the most gentle, permanent and rapid way possible.
This is not a quick fix, it does not work like a headache pill, although in acute disease it can do that too.
My children never used inhalers or antibiotics. We never used anti febrile or symptom suppressive medication. Maybe we were lucky? When things were a bit iffy we sometimes had an antibiotic in the drawer but in the end we never used it. This is the case with most of my child patients too and the adults that commit themselves seriously to this way of engaging with their health.
Sometimes there are of course situations where the conventional approach is urgently needed, particularly when it comes to the mechanical repair of damaged organs and tissues.
However, this is my experience as a homeopath and as you may well know, there are many opponents to our science of phenomena.
On a very frequent basis I switch on the radio or read articles and homeopathy is discredited with words like ‘you cannot prove it’, ‘it does not work’, ‘placebo effect’, ‘it’s unscientific’ etc.
I used to get very angry and worked up but not anymore. I have learned to see how the pharmaceutical industry has taken over the healing arts in an ever more sophisticated, pervasive and sinister way throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.
Just right now some people seem to be waking up to some truth that homeopaths have advertised since many years, that for example antibiotics randomly destroy our most precious ally to good health and survival – the bacteria in our gut, or bowel flora. And those bacteria are not an enemy but out of misunderstanding we have tried to kill them all off for the last century.
Before I get too heated on the subject I’d like to invite you to listen to a teacher of mine, the most eminent Indian medical doctor and homeopath to date, Rajan Sankaran. He offers an answer to the critics oh homeopathy which is very entertaining. Enjoy!