My first degree in alternative medicine was in Classical Homeopathy, Bowen Therapy became an addition to my work and I’ve now used both therapies together in my practice for 19 years. I focus on pain and chronic disease and most clients under my care receive treatment using both these therapies.
Pain and misalignment might be as a result of mechanical injury and strain, or as a result of a disease process. The conditions caused from disease, injury and strain should recover in a normal and timely manner. However, this is clearly not true and it is important to understand why recovery after well chosen therapy or medicine fails.
Importantly, our emotional reactions to the stresses of our life or the strain of managing our disease may also be a factor in the patterns of chronic symptoms. We all know that stress is a factor and a cause of many health concerns, from muscle tension to cardiovascular disease, though addressing this is not always acknowledged as being fundamental to fully recovering. The idea of long standing patterns of reaction coloured by our emotional past is not new and most therapies will acknowledge this idea. These patterns of emotional reaction underpin the body’s physical ability to recover from our chronic pains. I am not saying that emotional issues are the cause of maintaining illnesses but that commonly a pattern of emotional responsivity is a maintaining block to recovery.
An emotional behaviour that can interfere in our recovering from the body’s pain is seen where a pattern of reaction to the stress or traumatic experience has continued to affect our body’s self regulating and healing processes. Commonly, we see the body in a protective response of inflammation and guardedness. Examples of this can be seen in muscular pains, nerve impingement, even our urinary system and in many bowel complaints and in syndromes like migraine and chronic fatigue. We should suspect and explore the issues when our recovery is limited or not holding just as strongly as further diagnostic assessments such as further scans and blood tests.
This concept is proven when there is a resolution of the emotional cause and the body’s pattern of emotional response is freed, this is where homeopathy comes into use. Don’t mistake homeopathic treatment as a psychotherapeutic process it is not. It is a prescription of a medicine based on absolutes that when decided on properly rely on the clients physical symptoms, the nuanced characteristic of those symptoms, the pathology of the disease and only in small part their state of emotion and only that which is changed in their state of illness. We can often see the pattern of that emotional state exampled in other moments of stress throughout their life and this is very helpful in helping the client understand the underlying emotional connection to their current health situation.
An example of this is a client with chronic muscle pain, hot flashes, digestive issues and headaches heard about the clinic from a friend. She first came expecting to receive Bowen Therapy for her problems and it was the first treatment choice. After two sessions that certainly had some benefit, a break of a two weeks was provided, on returning their symptoms were relieved for only a few days in total though the overall intensity is markedly less. I suggested we consult for a homeopathic treatment option as well as a repetition of the Bowen Therapy treatment. Using information about the client’s physical symptoms and isolating usable the data to an argument for a homeopathic medicine or to argue against it. We call this repertorization which is the process of choosing a remedy through a database of symptoms. Not all symptoms are useful for differentiation of remedies so it is not the only tool used in prescribing. There are detailed symptom descriptions of homeopathic medicines that need to be read and confirmed to further cement a decision.
In this case the remedy given was Belladonna a plant based medicine used very commonly for childhood infections. Emotionally, they can’t express their need and not being able express a need leads to them expressing that need physically instead. A dose of the chosen medicine was taken to test the clients response, the response is evaluated before the medicine is repeated. The remedy chosen firstly covered the physical symptoms of the hot flashes, muscle pain, digestion and headaches. The remedy also had the similar emotional state of the client when feeling their worst now. Any connection to their emotional past is naturally mirrored in their emotional state now.
Importantly, the clients emotional state or pattern of emotional behaviour cannot be inferred from a past trauma or stress, it can only be seen for what it is now while unwell, so it is the expressed emotion only as it pertains to their behaviour now. Such as wanting solitude when the symptoms are bad or anxiety about their situation when they might need to perform for work. We look at what is the state of mind (emotion) not what it might be. It is never an assumed concept of their mental state. We look at the absolutes of their symptoms such as if their headache is better for a hot wrap or an ice pack.
