Welcome to everyone who has questions about the healing process of homeopathy! We cannot answer questions about physical concepts, but we can share our knowledge and experience. This article follows on from comments and questions from patients. We felt it was important to clarify once again what patients experience during Hahnemannian homeopathic treatment.
Homeopathy is a genuine long-term therapeutic choice, a real conceptual leap, unsettling for those who are used to chemical treatments and retain a materialistic view of human beings. Pathology is no longer a binary state—I am sick/I am cured with medication—but just as a wound takes time to heal, the body, through homeopathy, will receive information that allows it to gradually recover a form of integrity and balance.
An example of this process
Imagine that you have had high blood pressure for 4-5 years, which has not been controlled with antihypertensive medication.
The first step is to balance your blood pressure while continuing to take antihypertensive drugs. As you continue with homeopathic treatment, you will gain energy and be better able to follow lifestyle and dietary measures, such as eating less salt, exercising more, and perhaps reducing stress. At the same time, the hormonal functioning that causes hypertension begins to change. This is the time to start reducing the dosage of chemical medications. The dosage is reduced as long as blood pressure readings remain stable and acceptable. To achieve this result, it is necessary to find the similimum, i.e., the homeopathic medicine that is best suited to your overall condition.
One day, chemical treatment is no longer necessary because your blood pressure has normalized. There are still moments of stress and annoyance when your blood pressure can spike, but by continuing homeopathic treatment until you have a fever or rash, you are—almost—permanently cured, without the need for chemical medication. Just a small drop of water, once a week. All of this often happens very gradually, almost without you noticing.
Those with strong egos will think that they alone are responsible for their recovery through diet, exercise, or other means, but to the homeopath's eye, if the accompanying symptoms have disappeared and the disease has moved to more superficial levels, we know that this is not the case and that this recovery is the result of homeopathy.
Homeopathy, a centrifugal force
The factors involved
Homeopathy is humble and faithful. We often post examples of spectacular cures on the forum for our own inspiration and because these are the most instructive cases. Reality further erodes the ego of practitioners as a whole, especially in the West.
While we can still hope for recoveries that are all the more incredible given that people live in poverty (on the other hand, if they do not have enough to eat or are subjected to undignified living conditions, the recovery process will be hampered), the situation is quite different in our country, where most of the pathologies currently seen are chronic, particularly mental and emotional ones.
Yes, homeopathy can cure these conditions. However, several limiting factors can hinder this process, as we are working with organisms that have low energy levels, i.e., low levels of health.
1 - Time: if you have been suffering from insidious anxiety and depression for more than 10 years, don't expect to be completely cured within a year. You will get better, but you will still experience anxiety and difficulties, and your old symptoms may return temporarily during times of intense stress. Depression is a more serious condition than recurring tonsillitis. Recovery from deep depression takes around four years. So, even if some people have the impossible dream of a complete recovery in a few weeks, it is NOT POSSIBLE.
Some patients, imagining that homeopathy replaces chemical medicines, cannot understand the self-healing process that is taking place. After a few months, the benefits are not sufficiently quantifiable in their eyes, homeopathy seems useless to them, they become discouraged and give up.
There is a dynamic to the treatment. Unlike a placebo, homeopathic treatment becomes increasingly effective with each dose. The initial effects may be subtle or invisible, but over the weeks and months, you feel more and more like yourself, balanced, creative, in control of your life, and the little everyday ailments gradually disappear until the illness itself is gone.
The simillimum is increasingly difficult to find on the first try in the West, so we must give anti-psoric remedies that are appropriate for the patient. I treated one of my friends with her Carcinosin nosode, then with the anti-psoric remedy Lycopodium for two long years before we finally found Valeriane, which helped her sleep immediately... It would certainly have been more comfortable for her to start with Valeriane, but this product would have been less effective if it had been prescribed before prolonged administration of these other complementary medications. She will certainly return to Lycopodium later.
Cocaine provides instant healing, the ad promises!
2 –Tolerance to the progression of the pathology. Hering's laws apply in order to understand the necessary evolution of the patient's symptoms in order to achieve a cure.
Eczema that appears while the antibodies typical of rheumatoid arthritis disappear or decrease dramatically is an excellent sign for the homeopath. If the patient cannot tolerate this eczema and applies cortisone, the case may be permanently ruined. You worsen the prognosis of the disease, which was favorable, or at the very least prolong the treatment time. We are not monsters, so we will do everything we can to limit this inconvenience, and we will even allow you to use cortisone if it is too unbearable.
But if the desire to heal is not greater than the discomfort experienced by the patient, we quickly find ourselves going round in circles. This is a far cry from the supposedly benevolent siren song of modern medicine, which advocates zero pain at any cost, but we are perhaps more realistic and aware of the weaknesses of our poor human bodies. The same applies to fever.
If the idea of getting sick panics you, and you have a chronic illness, don't waste your time with homeopathy. There is no such thing as freedom from suffering on this earth, contrary to what advertisements bombard you with all day long to lull you into complacency. Listen to the philosophers and sages of all countries and all eras; we are no better than they are.
3 - Energy levels Patients have become extremely weak. We can no longer hope for a recovery as complete as in the past, due to the consumption of drugs, vaccines, various forms of pollution, and our transformation of society into a selfish and unhealthy cesspool.
Patients can compensate and help by being rigorous (without being inflexible) about daily health and dietary rules, and possibly practicing qi gong. Human organisms (and probably animals and plants) have never been so fragile, and we have to deal with it.
4 - The madness and pressure of the world we live in,where the mad seem wise and the wise seem mad, in the words of David Little. This is a variable over which we have little control. It is up to each of us to limit this by practicing temperance and the golden mean in the face of life's aggressions, or even, why not, by attempting a spiritual practice...
5 -Homeopathy forces you to face yourself, which is very difficult for some patients. You will no longer be able to hypocritically hold back the anger that simmers inside you, especially at the beginning of treatment. It can feel like a real wake-up call. Of course, we try to minimize this discomfort as much as possible, and you can choose to spread out the treatment so that this process takes place more slowly. But you will not be able to avoid facing who you really are.
Homeopathic treatment is a real journey undertaken together with the practitioner. During the first consultation, it is as if you were a black box to be analyzed little by little. The initial prescription is a kind of reactivity test. By sending a ping-pong ball (the remedy), we gauge its return to readjust the prescription. Despite all our precautions, surprises are not uncommon: explosive reactions, reactions that are too weak, old and hidden trauma that suddenly resurfaces, etc.
The more the practitioner gets to know you, the more you get to know yourself. Mutual assistance becomes exponential, as does treatment. Patients with mild chronic conditions are often able, after four years of follow-up, to suggest a particular homeopathic remedy for their flu, minor abdominal pain, etc. This development of their autonomy is wonderful.
6-There is no such thing as a single, lifelong miracle cure, especially nowadays. Referred to as a panacea in the past, Hahnemann made it clear from the outset that only a course of treatment using a succession of appropriately indicated medicines could bring about a cure.
Here are a few lines summarizing the main difficulties encountered. Despite all these limitations, which diminish as treatment progresses, homeopathy rewards the patient a hundredfold. Your health improves, in other words, you move further and further away from serious, chronic illness (barring a terrible accident). You increase your health capital and your hope for a high-quality, independent life. Old age arrives with greater serenity, without too much pain or discomfort, and even fewer endless prescriptions for chemical medications! If you are of childbearing age, you increase your children's potential level of health. Your creativity and talents blossom, allowing you to find the place in society that best suits who you are.
Personally, I think it's worth it!
Dr. Goudard.
