Imagine a carpenter with five tools in his kit: A hammer, a screwdriver, a hacksaw, pliers, and sketch pad.  Does he venture out on a job snarling, ”Damn it! Today I’m going to use only my screwdriver?” Or conversely heading to work does he declare, “I hate my hammer. Today I’m just not going to use it?”

Not too often!

The carpenter worth his salt respects his tools and before placing it back in his kit uses each one in accordance with its need.

Engineered to possess a pathogen resisting immune system we are also from birth, equipped with a toolkit of five core emotions. Each tool is indispensible to repairing a broken situation or renovating a shabby state of affairs. Over or under use of any one emotional tool is bad workmanship causing the framework of our psyche to wobble. Proper utilization of an emotional tool is cathartic, meaning a satisfactory outcome always results.

My analogy likening emotions to tools derives from Traditional Chinese Medicine’ Five Phase theory. More about this can be learned here.

I am reminded of the actor Spencer Tracy’s description of his girlfriend Katharine Hepburn: “Not much meat on her but what there is is cherce.” Though bare bones and practical, the psychology Chinese medicine offers is also cherce.

The Tools

 1.  The hammer of Anger

A situation arises demanding immediate and forceful action. The best thing is to fashion your force into creative action. Expressing your anger then is like smashing down on a nail. Take out your hammer if you are insulted or frustrated! People fearing that natural expression of anger prompts loss of control or violence suppress their indignation. Here, they are misusing the other side of the hammer, the claw used to extract nails. The claw can be likened to contrition, an emotional need to apologize or retract angry words or actions. The claw is overused or used to self-claw when we despise ourselves for being angry or overdoing the apology. We then rage and shake in useless frustration. Dysfunctional self-clawing anger known as vexation is not cathartic since it makes us feel worse not better. The homeopathic remedy normalizing use of both sides of the hammer and thereby ridding us of the tendency to vexation is Staphysagria. Individuals can also fall in love with and over rely on their hammer: Someone with a hair trigger temper for example, who is easily provoked into rage will need a remedy such as Anacardium or Stramonium.

 2.  The screwdriver of Anxiety

Imagine you are starving while lost in a wilderness and espy a mushroom. Eating it will either poison or nourish you. The screwdriver of anxiety tightens, heightening situational focus. Your hands sweat and your mouth goes dry as you lift the mushroom toward your moth. But suddenly anxiety constrains the impulse. Improved “performance” due to anxiety, in this case avoidance of a poisonous foodstuff or the partaking of a miniscule nibble may have saved your life.  Reluctance to use the screwdriver of anxiety stokes recklessness. A reckless individual thus requires a homeopathic remedy such as Medorrhinum. Excessive use of the screwdriver on the other hand use is incapacitating. A homeopathic remedy to diminish excessive anxiety is Arsenicum Album.

3.  The hacksaw of Sadness

The bond was strong between you and your beloved grandmother. And now she is gone. Or, once solid your five-year relationship is broken. Have you wept cathartically? Grieved the loss to completion so that you can move on?  If not, the hacksaw of sadness has yet to cut: Despite an appropriate interval’s passage the bond is not severed. Grief remains locked in place. You are sad but unable to cry. The homeopathic remedy Natrum Muriaticum is then called for. Overuse of the hacksaw of sadness on the other hand suggests the remedy Pulsatilla. Here, you cry at the drop of a hat. No matter how hard you saw away at a loss, longstanding memory of having been previously abandoned makes the effort futile.

4.  The Pliers of Fear

When fear grips us like pliers we freeze before hasty action is taken. The pliers of fear allow grasping of the situation. So expeditiously we can choose between fighting or fleeing. When the pliers of fear do not relax a routine non-threatening situation can escalate to life of death proportions. The homeopathic remedy Veratrum Album may then be called for. On the other hand, someone in whom fear has inculcated an escapism reaction may become audacious and insensitive to pain. Incapable of finding his pliers this individual needs homeopathic Opium.

5.  The Sketchpad of Joy

Finally, the project is completely worked out. We see it in its entirety. Such joy to view the big picture, everything hanging together, the blueprint of our envisioned project. The time has arrived to actualize what exists on paper. The glory of its vision must give way to the drudgery of execution. Dwelling forever in joy is not possible. An individual lost in visions or prone to excess of ego has not learned to put away his sketchpad. A homeopathic remedy known to upend this applecart is Sulphur. But let us consider someone whose sketchpad is crumpled and jumbled within the toolbox. Disappointment and resentment has smudged the big picture, the overriding blessings of her life. Overwrought, depressed and unclear as to where she is in life the remedy Sepia is called for.

Additional notes….

* Our tools can do a lot, but only within reason

A normal toolkit can be used to build a shed in our backyard. But don’t expect to build a skyscraper with them. Similarly, a big trauma or abuse occurring in childhood when our emotional tools inadequately measure up to the task of repudiating trauma will be a problem. Some tools will be worn out and others put to disuse.

* Tranquility does not mean the absence of toolkit emotions

What tranquility should instead signify is calm awareness of our emotional toolkit’s being close at hand.

*A related version of the toolkit, Pixar’s animated film, Inside Out

An entertaining film with a point of view akin to that expressed above is Pixar’s animation, Inside Out. The film’s depiction of five inhabiting core emotions differs from the version presented here in the substitution of Disgust for my (and Traditional Chinese Medicine’s) choice, the emotion Anxiety.

 

 

 

Is there ever a bad time to set the record straight? In mythology Mercury is the god of communication. Now is as good a time as any to get our facts straight.  Medical truths concerning the element named in Mercury’s honor should be properly communicated.

A factoid is an untruth repeated so often that it gets taken as true.  A factoid example is equating homeopathic medicine with medical quackery.  Not only false, the exact opposite is true.

The term quack was first and justifiably applied to medical doctors guilty of prescribing high levels of the toxic metal mercury for syphilis but also for a wide range of other ailments. In ancient times mercury was called quicksilver and so doctors routinely giving Mercury to their patients became known as quickers. In common usage the term was shortened to quick. Then, as patients underwent neurological decline and soon expired this word morphed into quack.  

Medical history shows that more often than not it was homeopathic physicians who were burdened with cleaning up the mess left by their allopathic (non-homeopathic) medical colleagues. In order to help the quickened and failing patients they had inherited homeopaths applied the Law of Similars (using like to cure like). Their work involved developing a non-toxic version of mercury, but also other highly dilute medications known as remedies still in use today. To learn more about the homeopathic Mercury read Jonathan Hardy’s excellent profile of the remedy.

Possibly to deflect from the unpleasant history of quackery mainstream apologists speculate that the word quaksalver containing the Dutch, kwakken (to impulsively fling an object) as in heedlessly flinging a worthless remedy at a sick individual is at the root of quack. http://mentalfloss.com/article/33558/why-fake-doctor-called-quack.  But a clinical hallmark of mercury poisoning is in fact, mercuriality, meaning changeability and impulsivity! It is far likelier that the term quaksalver is itself derived from quicksilver.

It’s time the pot stopped calling the kettle quack.

 

 

When a client asks me, “What have you got for sinus congestion?” or “what can you do for headaches?” a stock rejoinder is “you are not a car!” I can replace a car’s exhaust system without having any effect on its starter system (and vice versa). You, on the other hand, are an organic entity within which all functions are connected. Your sinuses or your head won’t be dealt with separately by a homeopath such as myself.  A better outcome can be expected from taking your case in comprehensive mind/body fashion.

But fess up. You, me, every one of us at times considers the feelings of a beloved car.

Let’s start with those pangs of guilt experienced upon surrendering my old and worn out car. It’s an extension of myself after all, one that for years has faithfully conveyed me to work, to weddings, on vacation sojourns, through dead of the night emergency visits to the doctor, to reconnections with distant friends, on visits to my daughter at colleges. TRADING IT IN? Are you kidding me? For some shiny, show-offy, metal sleekster that can’t hold a spark plug to my old 2004 Impreza? Give me a break!

Anyhow, glad to find out it’s not just me: http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/08/its-just-not-that-easy-to-get-rid-of-your-car/379082/

Am casting back to a wonderful old 1988 tank of a Volvo I once drove. With minimal coaxing from me could squeeze itself into the tiniest of parking spaces, intimidate other vehicles with its bulk to make me feel comfortable on the road. Behind the wheel was like being in the cocoon-like cockpit of a Boeing 707. Just to prove its loyalty the big lug decided to hate my then girlfriend. Short-circuited its lights and radio, refused to start, deflated one of its tires the moment she put herself behind the wheel.  Not have feelings, indeed!

And then there was the business with the psychic I hired. She asked for a personal possession of mine to hold when requesting spiritual assistance in locating a missing address book. Emerging from her trance, she dreamily looked at me and confessed “I have no idea where your address book is. But your car loves you!” That was right on. The item she was clutching was the ignition key for my 1971 Volkswagen Bug with 180,000 miles that I maintained in impeccable fashion, mostly out of gratitude for its having delivered me from a hellish existence in New York City to a new life in the city I now call home.

What accounts for any of this? Firstly, in extending our capabilities our technology generates and inhabits a highly personal force field pulsating with our will and emotions.  When encountering the field of a stranger’s force field, that of my girlfriend’s for example, it  understandably takes umbrage.

Less surprising then, eh? When the loss of my long-term car companion needs be grieved? It’s a piece of myself being given up after all. Will take a while before my new car and I once again achieve that kind of rapport. Guess I’ll give it a chance though….

As a homeopath I have yet to treat anyone for grief after the loss of his or her car. But a related issue is found among other individuals such as those prone to hoarding. Troubled backgrounds and pathological bereavement then lends itself to homeopathic remedy prescriptions such as Nat Mur, Ignatia, or Phosphoric Acid.

Interestingly, two of the most important remedies for inconsolability relating to lost possession (albeit usually under humiliating conditions), Kali Brom and Aurum address spiritually disconsolate version of grief. Being deprived of objects in which we find ourselves invested thus can stoke feelings that we have displeased (Aurum) or been abandoned by God (Kali Brom) .

Grieving the surrender of a car is nothing to be ashamed of since within every grief it is ourselves for whom we mourn. All loss contains a spiritual challenge. Talk to your homeopath about it!

Biochemical Basis

Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who won the Nobel Prize for discovering a link between HIV and AIDS has demonstrated that water has a memory that continues even after many dilutions. The idea is one of the foundations of homeopathy, which maintains that the potency of a substance is increased with its dilution. Montagnier has discovered that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria “could emit low frequency radio waves”. These waves influence molecules around them, and turn them into organised structures. (Sources: Sunday Times, July 4, 2010; British Medical Association).

This echoes the claims of French immunologist Jacques Benveniste who in 1988 claimed in a Nature paper that a solution that had once contained antibodies still activated human white blood cells. Benveniste claimed the solution still worked because it contained ghostly “imprints” in the water structure where the antibodies had been.

These discoveries also the support the findings of a 2001 a research team in South Korea (German chemist Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal) concerning what happens when a substance diluted in water is then further diluted. Conventional wisdom says that the dissolved molecules simply spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted. But two chemists have found that some do the opposite: they clump together, first as clusters of molecules, then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Far from drifting apart from their neighbors, they got closer together.

Dilution typically made the molecules cluster into aggregates five to 10 times as big as those in the original solutions. The growth was not linear, and it depended on the concentration of the original. “The history of the solution is important. The more dilute it starts, the larger the aggregates,” says Geckeler. Also, it only worked in polar solvents like water, in which one end of the molecule has a pronounced positive charge while the other end is negative. In accordance with homeopathic theory, diluting a remedy may increase the size of the particles to the point when they become biologically active.

Significant life traumas leave lasting impacts on the individual whom they impact. Substances from which homeopathic remedies are made have been demonstrated to prompt psychological and physical effects equivalent to the effects of human trauma. When the diluted version of the substance and the trauma are matched, meaning the Law of Similars is applied the effect is curative. There are three compelling reasons why this benefit cannot be accounted for in terms of a placebo effect:

a)   Constitutional treatment of this sort provokes a temporary worsening of the condition known as the aggravation. Aggravations are not known to be associated with the placebo effect.

b)   Homeopathic remedies act effectively both with animals and toddlers, neither of which type of patient can be readily made aware of being treated, which is a necessary component of being treated with a placebo.

c)   Constitutional remedies provoke profound and multi-dimensional shifts in individuals that have distinct time frames, another phenomena not associated with the action of a placebo.

Posing and Then Answering the Right Question in the Health Care Debate

The business model of our health care system is a jackal. If you grind down its teeth you neither shrink the jackal’s ravenous appetite nor curb his predatory bent. So why persist in seeking to reform this beast? Rather than profit health care should be designed to reward prevention, efficiency and safety. It is time to euthanize the jackal.

* The wrong question to ask:

How can we curb spending and control health care costs?

* The right question to ask:

How can we eliminate perverse incentives?

Simply put: Since each and every one of us is at risk to becoming sick or growing old and infirm, health care and long term care ought to be viewed as utilities rather market frontiers. Indeed, this is as it sensibly is much the world over. We do not scream “Socialism!” when government bodies construct roads, schools or sewage systems that benefit everyone. An outcry against socialism might be appropriate where the government attempts an incursion into beliefs and activities that are genuinely private and personal such as religious expression, the creation of art, or sexual activity.

The following is but a partial iteration of all too common examples of perverse incentives within our health care system:

• Acupuncture, a modality is known to be a safe, inexpensive, preventive, and powerful means of care for numerous conditions. It succeeds by alleviating pain and suffering while also addressing a condition’s root causes and connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated ailments. Rather than rewarding acupuncture’s broad based, holistic effects, conventional medical research not only ignores acupuncture’s broad benefits but actually punishes this blessed modality for the broad range of its clinical effects. This is because drug research erroneously validates only reductionist hypotheses and explanations.
• Our Drug Culture demanding new pharmaceuticals annually is at the root of numerous evils. New marketplace drugs are no improvements on the old, but merely serve to renew patent ownerships, thus building in escalating costs. Additional evils include a bias against holistically oriented medical research, a perverse incentive to addict multitudes of individuals to potentially harmful vaccines, and hormonally based drugs, drugs for dubious conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder and meaningless conditions such as shyness. The drug culture promotes an idiocy that our immune system is at odds with our well being as in the inculcated fear of fever, which means only that the body has mobilized against a pathogen. It promotes a view that drugs rather than an active lifestyle, sound nutrition and stress reducing activities are indispensable to health. Most perversely of all, the general public ultimately is obligated to subsidize the advertising costs attendant to its own brainwashing as these are passed along to the health care consumer.
• Insurance cannot be reformed given our health care system’s dependence on profit. Don’t get me started! There are no profits attached to reimbursing for the future benefits attached to preventive medicine, or securing the needs of individuals with “preexisting” conditions. Insurance incentives are to accept premiums from healthy individuals and avoid the currently or potentially sick except at extortionist rates. Because insurance executives and physicians sit on the boards of insurance companies insurers persist in economically irresponsible behaviors such as not reimbursing for safer and less expensive modalities s such as acupuncture and homeopathy while pushing people into more dangerous interventions such as surgery and its necessary aftercare.
• The Demise of Public Health. Growing up in New York City I still recall the existence of public health infirmaries in various neighborhoods. One by one these vanished for much the same reason that the auto industry succeeded in destroying New York’s efficient and energy-clean public transportation trolley car system. At various times in our history the American Medical Association has gone to court in order cripple public health medicine, meaning the appropriation of public monies for one-on-one health care. As a result, American public health care has remained dwarfed: it covers only vaccinations and quarantines. In other countries such as Great Britain, public health care has grown until it has finally formed the foundation of a national health care system. This allows doctors to treat in hospitals and public settings where because they are on government salary they need not be pharmaceutical industry puppets and remain freer to practice sensibly.
• Long Term Care. Because our system rewards the delusional belief that none of us will ever grow old, or that the elderly are always someone else’s burden we are incented to become taxation misers, asset hiders, government and social service agency despisers, and poverty-stricken family member impersonators. Treating long term care as a utility would cost each of us pennies on the dollar a month. It would properly remunerate and adequately train the hardworking caregivers in whom we trust the desperate needs of our infirm parents and relatives. This change in perspective would serve to humanize our culture while restoring its economic and moral sanity.

Underlying every chronic illness condition and its matching homeopathic remedy state is a vortex. The engine running the vortex’s cycle is a circular argument that eventuates in a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my clinical work I model illness chronicity as a radical disjunct between what for an individual constitutes a normal need and its associated satisfaction. This relationship becomes disharmonized as a result of physical, emotional or mental trauma. The usual satisfaction then not only fails to reconcile itself with the normal demand, but worsens matters, thus engendering persistent symptoms. As an example, the desperate need to be validated often degenerates into a hopeless search for validation. Consequent behaviors reflect a failed strategy that is subconsciously designed to confirm the individual’s non-acceptability. What we thus have is tautology, a dog chasing its tail, a spiral into illness—a negative vortex.

But if chronicity is a negative vortex then it is reasonable to suppose that movement into health and spiritual growth is its inverse, a positive vortex. Hence my interest in Sedona, Arizona.

Although no photograph, even if taken by Ansel Adams can do it justice, Sedona, Arizona contains some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. On visiting this past October, I was surprised, even stunned to discover this truth for myself, and how the presence of a site influences and overrides one’s visual perception.

Remarkable and bewildering, Sedona’s red rock formations emanate a serenity disturbingly at odds with the violent forces that shaped the area over hundreds of millions of years. These include volcanic activity, tectonic shifts, oceanic and aquifer formation, sedimentation, oxidation effects and every variety of transformative erosive force. One stands dumbfounded before the product: these peculiar and suggestively shaped buttes, spires, mesas and one vast canyon that God in his infancy appears to have playfully created in his sandbox.

Hiking about one encounters the area’s contorted juniper trees whose twisted branches suggest ecstatic possession by an ancient Tai Chi master but which local lore indicates proximity to a spiritually powerful vortex site.

By the way, unless one is drawn to typically commercial venues the towns of Sedona and also nearby Oak Creek as well are forgettable. My recommendation instead is to visit nearby Jerome, once a thriving mining town that nearly became a ghostly dive once the copper went bust. Jerome remains lively, funky and with a bit of its original frontier roughness. Carved into the side of a picturesque mountain one can espy Sedona’s red rocks in the distance.

My venture to Sedona was certainly for the purpose of heightening my intuitive powers as a homeopath and for spiritual development. Apart from awe, wonder and the obvious benefits of relaxation, it is difficult to say that I was immediately struck by spirit of Sedona’s vortex energy. In the week’s time spent there I took six splendid hikes of which the most notable was the Little Horse to Broken Arrow trail. I also meditated at the foot of Bell Rock and climbed to its summit where I managed to get festooned with cactus spikes (homeopathic Ledum by the way, immediately alleviated the inflammation incurred from a one and a half inch thorn). Oak Canyon was a splendid, windy and stunning delight.

But Sedona’s effects were visited on me later.

In the two months since my return I note that my perceptions are sharper while my emotions more intense. I also detect an increase in personal compassion. Though not every day is the same the overall resultant change is enduring. I feel more alive and appreciative of life. My suspicion is that I have undergone the effect of a positive vortex wherein positive ideas within the subconscious are heightened and cyclically set in motion.

Of course, I hope to return to Sedona again sometime soon.

An idea to explore with regard to my homeopathic practice: undertake a trituration proving of a sampling of Sedona’s red rocks. I cannot imagine a more promising investigation or use of a weekend.

 

 

One of NCCAM’s challenges appears to be: While resisting enmeshment with unfamiliar and scientifically questionable mode of knowing, how to evaluate or substantiate desired benefits attending established though non-conventional modalities? My intention here is to argue against acceptance of solely quantifiable data and rejection of soundly derived intuitive knowledge.

But how is the validity of long-established but non-conventional means of knowing best established? The answer: by means of our introducing the appropriate conceptual framework and rationale.

Within the Western intellectual tradition a sturdy framework happens to exist. It is a conceptual bridge by means of which the gleaming techno-city of biomedical science and its cross-river neighbor, the old-world city of non-conventional medicine may be linked. Our methodology not only shields the scientific enterprise from undisciplined applications of the intuitive method such as found in poorly formulated versions of the Doctrine of Signatures, but assists Integrative Medicine in coming to terms with problematic, holistic means of knowing.

Acupuncture is better known now in 2009 than when first introduced to the American public in 1972. At that time NY Times writer James Reston reported that acupuncture treatments he received in China relieved pain he was experiencing following abdominal surgery. Traditional Chinese Medicine’s mode of diagnosis, relying on the appearance of the tongue, palpated qualities of the pulse, and use of unfamiliar concepts such as stagnant qi, hyperactive Yang and deficient Yin served to alienate acupuncture from western medicine. Conventional medicine authorities thus viewing acupuncture as non-scientific distanced themselves from its mode of knowing.

Though endemic to American medicine, homeopathy has received much the same treatment. This has to do with homeopathic medicine’s non-scientific sounding insistence that symptoms represent the expression of an energetic entity known as the vital force.  As we shall see, the fact that qi and vital force are essentially qualitative as opposed to quantitative entities continues to pose a problem for conventional biomedicine.

This desire for distance is expressed in the terms  “alternative” and “complementary” that are attached to “Alternative Medicine,” and then more recently, “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (CAM). A fly in the ointment is the fact that acupuncturists and homeopaths credit these very same questionable-appearing modes of knowing with their achieving what are more often than not, remarkable treatment outcomes.

Phenomenology Defined:

Phenomenology concerns theoretical approaches toward understanding how people experience the world they live in and create. It has also been defined as an analysis of human existence without prior assumptions by the term’s originator, the early 20th century philosopher, Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology helps us with the question: can we possibly analyze human existence without presuppositions? Its literature reflects the study of human experience and consciousness in everyday life, as well as the idea of ‘”being,” rooted in physical and social space.

Advantageous Features:

Phenomenology can be thought of as intuition subjected to rigorous discipline. In practical terms its application utilizes inductive reasoning, or the building of an overwhelming case of circumstantial evidence. The following features characteristic of phenomenological investigation serve to provide a legitimizing context for culture-specific, and dialectically oriented schools of medicine.

Bracketing off of prior assumptions

Phenomenology is perhaps the first formal, academic discipline not only to make a point of sequestering or bracketing off the investigator’s own ideological, cultural, and even, “investigator-related” bias, but to study of the difficulties attached to doing so. The methodology has proven foundational within the social sciences and especially within homeopathy and psychotherapy, wherein failure to recognize the impact of one’s own role, as in transference reactions, or self-investment in a particular outcome undermines a clinician’s effectiveness.

Envisioning a phenomenon in its unity before its components

In 1988 a Royal Society of Medicine study in regard to an acupuncture point, Pericardium 6 detailed the latter’s effectiveness in treating a specific symptom, emesis of pregnancy. In 1998, many eyebrows were raised when studies indicated that moxibustion (heat) stimulation to the acupuncture point Urinary Bladder 67 was effective in provoking a fetus in the breach position to alter its fetal position in the womb. Whereas medical journal publication of these CAM outcomes was hailed as a triumph of evidence-based methodology, what also came to light is a glaring deficiency within the prevailing paradigm:

Despite thousands of years of supportive clinical research in China, the greater acupuncture meridian system to which the acu-points P6 and UB 67 belong has yet to be entirel validated in the west. Within the currently standard investigative model, a potential 367 years’ years of documentation concerning individual acu-points would still fail to reveal what the Chinese have long ceased to question, that the meridian system of qi circulation is real.

An antidote to Common Sense Realism

As opposed to Common Sense Realism (CSR) a view unequivocally accepting of direct observation, phenomenology provides us with a more reasonable perspective on what we think of as evidence. It offers a safe haven to rational doubt, as in questioning whether adoption of an external perspective in regard to our humaneness is at all possible. This matters when: we seek to enter the perceptual world of another species of life, or, when accepting data merely because it is quantitative, we fail to examine prior assumptions at play in a dataset’s creation, or the fact that data-gathering instruments merely extend the reach of our own faulty sense receptors.

A disturbing example of CSR is found in the writings of the renowned Daniel Dennett, a neurological investigator unable to recognize, much less question his own bias in favor of a heavily culture-bound notion: that the brain is a computer. In consequence, for Dennett, the world of human consciousness is a trivial matter, the mere hum of machine!

Other CSR biases:

–Biomedical research’s rejection of the reality of qi within TCM or of Vital Force within homeopathy. This is due to a paradigm-specific belief that force fields must be both quantifiable and NOT subjectively experienced. Thus, despite detectable electrical potential levels measurable at the surface of the skin that offer quantifiable evidence of its activity, qi’s characteristic feature, that it is subjectively experienced effectively disqualifies this mode of energy from scientific investigation. The same is true of homeopathy’s vital force, which expresses itself via subjectively experienced symptoms.

–The distinction between “anecdotal evidence,” on the basis of which a report to the effect that an acupuncture treatment effectively reduces pain or enhances function is pejorative; while  “evidence-based,” a term for exactly the same idea bathes a physician’s perception of an unusual therapy’s effectiveness in the warm glow of acceptance.

Though we must admit that one of our most highly esteemed sciences, physics is rooted in common sense realism its founder, Isaac Newton was himself a product of a world in which a more phenomenological approach, Natural Philosophy, ruled the sciences. Newton’s introduction of mass, force and gravity was initially resisted as these novel concepts at that time suggested unnatural, magical entities. Nor, since the meaning of his equations had first to be interpreted, were any of Newton’s precise calculations alone, sufficient to cement the case for gravity. At a time when philosophical questions suggested by scientific investigations were still viewed as honorable, Newton once having succeeded in his quest for truth remained thereafter committed to alchemy and spiritual pursuits.

Curiously enough, with the modern advent of String and Superstring theory whose core assumptions persist in defying empirical verification, the physical sciences have themselves, come full circle with Natural Philosophy: In the absence of confirmatory data, we are left with no choice but to compare the aesthetic merits of interpretative models of subatomic activity.

Conceding biomedicine’s deliberate obtuseness with regard to natural philosophy (resistance to accepting the benefit of breast feeding a child, or the desirability of good nutrition, both examples of common sense wisdom that no Randomized Double Blind Study has yet managed to validate) we might infer that the demise of Natural Philosophy has hurt as well as advanced biomedicine.

Recognize emergent natural phenomena

Emergent phenomena because they express creativity, exceed rather than equal the sum of their parts. Thus, the relation that creative phenomena hold in to their constituent (or more accurately, antecedent) elements is almost impossible to explain.

The physicist, Werner Heisenberg’s famous “Indeterminacy Principle,” gave a theoretical limit to the precision with which a particle’s momentum and position could be simultaneously measured. This struck a blow against the belief that the more we reduce phenomena to their smallest components, the more accurately we predict the movement of atomic and sub-atomic particles.  Deprived of this certitude we are left with only the jumbled and unpredictable “phenomena” themselves to discuss.

Likewise, the Scottish philosopher David Hume discovered a dirty truth about cause and effect explanation: We are never able to satisfactorily demonstrate that one phenomenon is actually the cause of another. When speaking in cause and effect terms, Hume found, we are instead postulating an association between two unrelated phenomena. Since cause and effect do not exist, the best we can manage to do is model relationships between phenomena. Models sound flimsier than fundamental laws but they are more reliable and durable when it comes to explaining what takes place in the universe.

Whether we like it or not, we know scarcely the first thing about the greatest “whole” of all, organic life, at least not with regard to the mysterious and sublime events at work during embryological development. For all our talk about incremental evolution and an organism’s seeking of evolutionary advantage, little that is meaningful can be said concerning the engine in charge of life, consciousness; why living things even bother to seek evolutionary advantage; or the fact that organic life is explosively and spontaneously creative.

Excavate levels of meaning in language

How is it that some of our most powerful myths such as those of Greek antiquity perfectly describe subconsciously experienced illness processes? Why do we say, “he went blind with rage,” as opposed to ‘deaf with rage,” or “lost his sense of smell with rage”? Why is the expression, “Go with the flow….” associated with the 1960s? What is the reason that in moments of illumination we report hearing the voice of God as opposed to seeing God?

Myths do not endure in culture, nor do metaphors entrench themselves within language unless they embody an enduring truth. This holds true especially in homeopathy where a patient’s pet expressions reveal much about the nature of his or her inner reality. Homeopathy in fact, can be viewed as the land where metaphorical expression is literal.

A chief proponent of phenomenological language excavation was Martin Heidegger, the philosopher responsible for characterizing language as the house of Being. While shaping phenomenology to my own purposes, my forthcoming book, Interpreting Chronic Illness, the Convergence of Acupuncture, Homeopathy and Biomedicine (to be published by the American Association of Integrative Medicine) provides answers to the questions I have posed, above, as well as a general method for interpreting the inner meaning of symptoms experienced by individuals afflicted by chronic illness.

In my experience homeopathy is one of, if not the single most profound of all healing modalities. Of course, this is true only when the remedy prescription is highly accurate! But yes, when such is the case one would be hard-pressed to find a health care intervention more finely tuned to the precise issue underlying a client’s illness.

That said, the question can be raised: what happens when homeopathy is utilized simultaneously with another powerful modality, for example, acupuncture? In my experience using both modes of care together is not optimal. Here is why:

The timeframe for an accurate constitutional remedy is usually in the vicinity of six weeks. The timeframe for a single powerful acupuncture treatment is several days (which is why acupuncture works best when performed at least twice weekly).

Let’s employ the metaphor of our having been assigned two work projects. The first work project will account for perhaps, sixty percent of my yearly income and will require my full-time involvement five days a week. While thus engaged I am offered a second work project that if given my full effort could be completed within three days. Assuming that I were to accept this second project on top of the first one, which project would be likely to suffer? At least according to my reasoning—and this is my own chosen metaphor—the second project would suffer. This is because, despite my greed I should be unwilling to risk under-performing in relation to the project on which my livelihood principally depends. Thus, the smaller project receives less than my optimal effort.

Similarly, acupuncture being the “smaller” project is diminished in its effectiveness. Being an acupuncturist as well as a homeopath, when the choice is left up to me, I opt for acupuncture especially when confronted with a client in obvious physical pain due to musculo-skeletal trauma. Otherwise, but especially when dealing with chronic illness my choice is constitutional homeopathy. I refrain from using both modalities together except for when seeking to blunt the edge of a homeopathic aggravation.

Despite a professional bias in favor of homeopathy other modalities hold tremendous healing and diagnostic value. Just now I should like to single out the usefulness of nutritional counseling as well as the remarkable skill of well trained Reflexologists (who perform foot massage based on ancient Egyptian or Traditional Chinese Medical diagnostics) and—provided you can find such a person—-a Medical Intuitive who is gifted with “second sight” diagnostic capability. As it happens Helen Chin Liu, a remarkable Reflexologist has recently joined my practice at Vital Force Health Care. I recommend her work highly. Read more about Helen at http://www.healingplacemedfield.com/.

From time to time I also have the privilege of working in conjunction with an extraordinary Medical Intuitive, Wendy Marks. Check out her video magazine interview at http://boldfacers.com/index.cfm?page=videos&video_id=142&channel=profiles.

Let’s discuss the well-known Curse of the Bambino.  This refers to the Boston Red Sox’ inability to win a World Series after basically giving away to the New York Yankees, and for a piddling amount of cash, Babe Ruth, who as it would turn out would become widely recognized as the greatest player in the history of baseball. In 2004 with the Red Sox’ miraculous come from behind playoff win against the Yankees, and their subsequent rout of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals the infamous Curse was finally, and after 86 years was put to rest. How did this come about? Homeopathy provides the answer.

The power of the curse was not mystical. Rather, it represented an entrenched fear and its related behavioral rigidity. States of stuckness of exactly this sort are routinely identified by classical homeopaths as underlying disease states in their patients. But “remedy states” need not be cured by homeopathic remedies alone. Homeopathic “behavior” can also do the trick.

The fear underlying the Curse of the Bambino was that team management might again some day commit an error as serious as giving away Babe Ruth, the great Bambino. The associated rigidity is: beware of making any baseball trades that are even remotely suggestive of this possibility. When installed as a core front office belief a fear such as this delimits managerial flexibility, creativity, and thereby places the team at a disadvantage with respect to other teams in the trading marketplace.

There exists a shibboleth in baseball that the value of even a handful of good players cannot equate that of a single great player. The reason for this is that truly great players are irreplaceable while many even very good players can be readily exchanged for others having equal value. Avoidance of any such trade would be fully in keeping with the fear and associated rigidity of the Bambino Curse. Now, homeopathy teaches that “Like Cures Like.”  Thus, the homeopathically recommended way out of the dilemma is to indeed engage with the original error, but to perpetrate a micro-dosage of the mistake. Yes, facing the demon once and for all is better than doing nothing.

Nomar Garciaparra the Red Sox shortstop had been anointed the greatest Red Sox player since Ted Williams by no less a luminary than Ted Williams himself. Yet in 2004 General Manager Theo Epstein was inspired to trade the inimical and  irreplaceable Garciaparra for three talented but lesser lights: outfielder Dave Roberts, and infielders Orlando Cabrerra and Doug Mentkiewicz. The day on which the trade was announced talk show radio hosts went berserk. The trade was denounced in the newspapers as another Babe Ruth giveaway.

One can of course say that the team’s improved chemistry due to the three new players, each of whom went on to play significant roles in the Red Sox’ 2004 triumph that lifted the Bambino’s curse. I would argue that it was Epstein’s fear-dispelling moxie that did the trick, thereby liberating the team to perform at its optimal level.