Inspired

Homeopathy explained

History
Homeopathy was developed by a German MD by the name of Samuel Hahnemann. Dr. Hahnemann's work was mainly as a medical translator and chemist. Inspired by the idea "like cures like," he began experimentation with toxic substances to see how he could make medicine out of them without killing people. In Hahnemann's day it was popular to treat syphilis, for example, with mercury. What he discovered is that by diluting and shaking repeatedly (potentizing) various substances (some toxic), healing was possible with previously unseen results of his time.

Safety
Currently about 120,000 people die every year from physician error or negligence, including misuse or incorrect pharmaceutical prescriptions. In the last 200+ years since homeopathy was developed, there have been zero deaths as a result of having taken a homeopathic medicine. In fact, circa the 1918 Influenza pandemic (symptoms were similar to Ebola) approximately 80% of people treated with conventional medicine died, while > 60% of people treated with homeopathy survived. Probably not placebo affect.

Worldwide Practice Today
Today, more than 250,000 physicians are practicing homeopathy in India alone, and 10 million people there are being treated with it. Millions in South American and Italy, Spain, England, and Germany also regularly use homeopathy. In fact, in the U.S., one out of 6 physicians (MDs) at the turn of the century practiced homeopathy. Infants and animals, along with skeptical adults, have been successfully treated for everything from boo-boos to flus to endocrine disorders to autoimmune disease. Even cancer, though it wouldn't be legal in the western world. Again, doubtful that 10 million people alone in India are getting well on placebo alone. Unless Indian people have some kind of special susceptibility to placebo. In the U.S. both MDs and alternative healthcare providers such as NDs as well as Psychotherapists practice Homeopathy.

How It Works
That is the $ 60k question that nobody can answer to this day. It is theorized that in the making of homeopathic medicines, or "remedies," the energy or wavelength of that substance is imprinted upon the water used in making the medicine. Sounds rather bizarre and far-fetched, except that research has shown that water contains memory. The bottom line is that we don't know how it works. Then again, neither do we know how antidepressants work. Don't believe me? Check out this link to Wellbutrin. When a homeopathic medicine is incorrect, nothing happens because it isn't "resonating" with what needs to be cured in you. That's when the homeopath needs to give a different medicine that more closely resonates with your dis-ease.

What Homeopathy Treats
Homeopathy can treat things like bruising, allergies, asthma, acne, hormonal imbalances such as those in menopause or menarche, PMS, uterine fibroids, cysts, hemorrhoids, sexual dysfunction, neurological diseases, assist healing from surgery, and depression and anxiety. But what's different about homeopathy is that it isn't just stopping the symptoms of your illness. It takes into consideration everything that makes you tick: your past history, upbringing, emotional patterns, and your beliefs. The prescription encompasses how your life experiences and your genetics have shaped you up to this point in time. And it actually does, and has, cured illnesses, both simple and complex.

The Job of a Homeopath
What a homeopath needs to do is understand YOU, as a person, and to differentiate your ILLNESS from WHAT'S WELL WITH YOU. A homeopath's job is to perceive how the totality of your symptoms, some of which may be emotional, i.e. mood swings, or mental, i.e. nightmares, fit with everything else that is causing pain in your body. The homeopath needs to recognize patterns or themes; to see, in techie terms, the core of your operating system. That requires a lengthy consultation with you that can last up to 2 hours, and then researching to find the exact medicine that addresses the core of who your are. Then you follow up to report changes over a period of months and years, with less frequency as your issues resolve.

What Treatment is Like
It's not that subtle. When clients get the right remedy, they know it. Their PMS, headaches, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, depression, (fill in the blank) starts to resolve. After receiving the right remedy, every month the symptoms lessen. The catch is that it's not an instantaneous fix. What's happening is that your body's own vital force, called chi, prana, Life Force, or energy, depending on what culture you identify with, is reorganizing itself. Your vital force goes to whatever is the most important system, such as your brain, lungs, heart, or liver, and starts to support that system's functioning at a higher level. What that looks like to you is less headache, less intense herpes outbreaks, less depression, more happiness, less painful joints, better digestion, higher energy, deeper sleep, etc. Symptoms that are less life-threatening, such as skin eruptions or dandruff, take longer to resolve.

The Potential of Homeopathy
Treatment can resolve many different types of physical, mental, and emotional problems. However, it does require some committment from the patient/ client as well as the prescriber. The skill and experience of the prescriber is important, though the relationship of trust that is established as with any practitioner is probably moreso. I have seen clients resolve not just physical illnesses, but also be able to reduce or eliminate medications, make huge strides in psychotherapy, improve relationships with family and partners, let go of past traumas, increase freedom of movement and vitality, further their personal expression, even clarify their life's purpose. Homeopathy is not psychotherapy nor reiki; it is not acupuncture, herbal medicine, or psychic healing, and it is not placebo. It is the medicine of the future, and it is here to stay.

Click here for a wonderful FAQ about homeopathy from Hahnemann Labs.

Quan Yin: art and healing

This gorgeous carving of Quan Yin from the Portland Art Museum has every element of beauty and healing I strive for in my work, from medicine to art.

~proportion & balance~

+ pure presence +

>^ compassion ^<

*elegance*

)sensuality(

/ calm /

! JOY !

7 is an auspicious number in all spiritual practices, including yogic and martial arts. Did you know 7 is the number of stages of healing as well?

1. acknowledging the need for healing
2. finding a practioner as guide
3. making a committment to the process; establishing personal healing goals
4. following the prescribed protocols and practices
5. periodic self-reflection and re-committment to self-trust
6. opening emotionally, psychically, and physically to being well
7. peeling away layers of illness towards transformation

Finding an image that represents your ultimate wellness, whatever form that takes for you, and gazing upon it while reflecting on it's power to transform you, is a wonderful jumpstart to being on your path.

(Just don't get caught with your camera out in the museum.)

Loving Your Body, Women!

Check out the fabulous interview with Christiane Northrup, MD, in the May/June issue of Alternative Therapies. In it she discusses how the ideas within "alternative" healthcare can empower women to make friends with their bodies rather than hate them; to know themselves and read their own body's language, to trust their intuition, to learn awareness of the relationship between thoughts and how pain gets expressed through the body. Essentially Christiane speaks from the knowledge of an M.D. and a Naturopathic Doctor; someone trained not only in surgery and pharmaceuticals, but also in physical medicine, therapeutic foods, herbal medicine, homeopathy, and nutritional supplements. She just happens to be an M.D. who was a visionary woman not afraid to teach her patients what she knew was the truth. Don't you love that?

Return to Venus

3 days at Breitenbush Hot Springs: spirit renewed. body rested. soul peaceful. clarity of mind. creativity inspired. just look:

Intuitive Body Expression

I've been searching for an appropriate name for the process I've developed which combines Craniosacral Therapy, intuitive bodywork, visualization, art-making and writing. In this therapy the client lies on the treatment table and drifts into a state of relaxed awareness as the intellectual thought process slows down. Attention is brought to those areas of the body that are asking for a release of physical or emotional pain. As these areas begin to release the client engages with visual images and messages they receive from the subconscious mind. At some piont the client will come to a table with paper and colored pencils, crayons, and pens...and create an image. The final stage involves a writing exercise.

What comes out of these sessions are insights that are deeply personal and unique to the individual. A kind of clarity evolves through the writing exercise, as connections from the visual image and the intellectual thought process create new neural pathways.

In one session, a client became aware that he wasn't allowing himself to express his "manliness." In another session, a woman discovered she wasn't allowing herself to take up all the space in her body because being "seen" meant she couldn't be invisible (a defense mechanism.) In a third session, a woman realized her head felt like it was exploding because she was boxing herself into a prescribed "role" in her company that didn't fit. All of these realizations came when these clients were able to stop the intellectual process long enough, and BE PRESENT with their bodies and the imagery that came from those bodies. Since most people don't normally illustrate their feelings with crayons (unlike children), they were able to bipass the internal edit that goes on when we talk about what we feel. Then the writing process brought the "left" side of the brain together with the "right" side, completing the message.

So how about "I Be" .... "I.be" ..... or "I.BE" ?

If you want to hear more about this process please email or call : 206-650-9197.

On the Creative Act

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being . . . Out of the creative

act is born symbols and myths. It brings to our awareness what was previously

hidden and points to new life.

Rollo May (1975)

Beauty Opens the Heart

Today I'm republishing an entry that warrants rereading from a year ago: Last January around this time I sat around a table with three wise elders (and one wise young'n) in Hawaii. We each took turns describing our beliefs about illness and healing (all of us are in the health professions.) I shared with them the realization I had during my "initiation" with breast cancer: if I didn't start honoring the Artist in me more significantly, I wouldn't live a very long life. I knew I had a treasure trove of universal images bubbling up inside that needed to be out in the world. Somehow I knew that was part of my "healing path."

The comment that struck me most profoundly was "beauty opens the heart."

Thank you Dominique.

Though I've spent many hours contemplating "beauty" and "healing," and have long appreciated Tibetan tangka imagery of wisdom and compassion, I hadn't been able to describe how making something beautiful, that deep healing happens.

Of course, to be healthy and happy, the heart needs to be open. If the heart closes down it becomes very difficult to appreciate beauty, nevermind recognize it. To be open to life is to have the heart open, to say yes to life. When we are happy, we radiate beauty.

Find something beautiful in your life...a work of art, something you have made, a loved one, your own image in the mirror...look at it. Notice how you feel. Notice your heart. Even if it hurts, which it will at times, tell yourself you can open it a little more. Find something that inspires you, and dedicate yourself to spending time cultivating the beauty that you are.

Awakening to Intuition

Do our bodies know things before we do?

Think of an experience in your life when you knew something before your mind accepted it. A time when your gut feeling led you to meeting your best friend, finding something beautiful you'd been dreaming about, or even discovering your true calling.

I believe our bodies are vibrating to a particular frequency, and we attract or repel according to the color, shape, size and intensity of various signals. The source of those signals, creating the vibration---hormones naturally occuring in our bodies. The secret controller behind the hormone curtain? Spirit, God, our Higher Self, whatever you want to call that power.

The body doesn't lie. It tells the truth all the time. It's our survival guide, telling us when to eat, who to trust, when to move and when to be still. Confusion usually arises when we feel conflict: we FEEL one thing and we THINK it ought to be something else. We go to war inside, denying that which we feel is shameful, or indulgent, or wrong in some way.

So now that I've got you thinking we are this physical and energetic expression of the divine, I'd like to suggest that the way you use your mind--how you hold your thoughts--has the power to change your life. It's not a new idea, but it's recently gained popularity through movies like What the Bleep Do
We Know, and The Secret. But some of you out there still think there's our body stuff and then there's our minds doing their own things independently. Nope--they are actually two modes of expression coming from the same resonant space.

Chew on that for a while.....and please excuse me while I go paint about it.