Please, imagine we work with… movies instead of remedies.
Our remedies being information by their nature are not different from movies, books, music, paintings, etc.
We may prescribe a seemingly similar movie relying on its description, critique and what we see in our patients. And we may hope it makes an impact. That’s what classics is all about.
But imagine we sit and watch many different movies together with the patient while observing his reactions in real time. So we look for a movie that makes deepest impact now.
HERE & NOW is all we perceive.
In no way we can experience a movie yesterday or tomorrow. So eventually we discard all the ideas about the past or future. We dive into present moment and we remain there. We can’t perceive anything else anyway. If nevertheless that “anything else” happens in one way or another – we know it is unreal, it is happening in our Mind, in our imagination, it definitely does not belong to a real world.
When we stumble onto the movie that makes a deep impression to our patient (we recognize it by body reactions and sensations that can’t be faked), we observe, we listen to what is revealed, what is brought from within to the surface:
- something relatively negative, like deep seated traumatic experiences, suppressed emotions or maybe
- something very bright and relatively positive, e.g. old childhood dream that has been forgotten somehow.
Past experiences become present, happening right now.
Surprisingly, no matter what is suddenly experienced with the movies, it is happening now. Childhood memories, traumatic birth process, prenatal situations, even so-called past life experiences emerge suddenly and manifest here & now as sensations. They are experienced now, body reacts as if it is happening now.
The movie itself, consultation environment, openness and awareness of practitioner watching the movie together (serving as a guide to the world of movies, i.e. remedies in our case) become triggers and facilitators for that synchronicity (according to C. Jung) to happen.
Movies do not cause anything.
- They impart nothing.
- They are not energies or vibrations.
- They do not cause resonances (movie itself is not enough for synchronicity to happen).
- They do not bring anything from deep within to the surface.
Movies are absolutely passive. They are potentiated speaking in homeopathic terms.
They are pure potential that is to be recognized in ourselves and then realized.
That does not even directly depend on a plot of the movie. What really makes the difference is how our attention interplays with the movie.
E.g., while watching some movie scene I may spontaneously recognize something in the background that is similar to one of my childhood toys and that may trigger memories of my forgotten childhood dream and insights on how it can be realized now.
Spontaneously means that it happens by itself, unintentionally, unpredictably. All that process is completely irrational and does not depend on our will or knowledge at all. And that’s not necessarily what film director has intended either.
We can’t know in advance what is going to catch our attention when we watch the movie.
Homeopaths say we have to be scientific in selecting the movies for our patients. But prescribing the movie on what we see in our patient excludes many aspects that are hidden.
Ridiculously, one of the goals of watching movies is discovering something we’ve been not aware before! If that is the case, we are surprised by the movie.
If we are deeply touched by it, but we can’t understand what’s happening with us, we may then read the reviews to find the words that match our experience and explain something. (I hope you understand that’s rarely the case with movies, but that happens pretty often with our remedy experiences.)
That translates into homeopathic consultation process in a quite strange way:
the main job of a homeopath becomes to simply be aware of what is happening, to recognize patient’s reactions.
It is about having no prejudices about the remedies (forgetting their descriptions and everything we know about them each time we meet the patient), being open, transparent and neutral.
Surprisingly we are going to find out that recognition does not imply thinking or analysis. It happens spontaneously, as if unexpectedly meeting an old friend while walking in the street.
If that potential of a movie (or remedy) is not recognized, it can’t be realized even if it is present in the movie. After all, it’s not about the movie itself, but about synchronicity that happens and triigers something.
I mean watching movies is absolutely unpredictable and not scientific at all.
N.B. There are exceptions though – acute situations we face in life. In these we may need to refer to some youtube video for a hint or solution. That’s what classical Homeopathy geared towards acute cases is all about.
When not having a acute situation, we watch and explore ourselves and not the movies, actually.
Movies are what we recognize while watching them. And what we recognize comes out of our experience, it comes from within us, not from the movie, actually.
Such movie watching together with our patient is the most natural approach to our remedies. But then one has to rearrange the whole workflow completely as we are going to enter multiple proving experiences watching hundreds of movies each time we take a case. Watching movies almost randomly (we’ll classify them according to levels they address and we’ll train to recognize these levels as the patient enters our office), without a clear goal and observing the reaction is a proving experience, isn’t it?
There is one little difference though. Watching a real movie usually takes 1,5-2 hours. “Watching” a remedy is very different: it takes less than 1-2 seconds to find out if it is important; and if it really is we may need up to 15-20 min to fully experience it, i.e. “watch” it from beginning to the end.
If the remedy is important now – these 15-20min are more than enough for an almost full proving experience. And that’s in case of astoundingly “deep-acting” remedies. In case if smaller remedies several minutes are usually enough.
Remedy experiences are like splash followed by ripples.
Imagine it is like a stone thrown into the water. Whenever it reaches the surface – SPLASH!!! It’s short, but intense and spectacular. It subsides quickly, but rippling remains for quite a long time.
Similarly the SPLASH!!! we get with the remedy starts immediately, reaches it peak in seconds or several minutes. Ok, it may take longer in very deep levels: 15 or maybe 20 minutes, but not any longer. And that’s real proving experience. It is crazy intense!
But if we miss it, all that is left are ripples that are a distant echo of the primary reaction. It is a repeating pattern that continues for some time. Anyway, it is echo. And it’s pretty hard what someone says just by hearing his echo. I mean, if we miss SPLASH!!! we miss the remedy experience!
Please, understand, splash and ripples are only an analogy. In practice usually the remedies feel like Liveliness, freshness. It is like someone opens the window, and we feel the whiff of a fresh air in a stuffy room. It really feels like that. But it does not continue for long. So even if the window remains open that initial fresh feeling becomes pretty ordinary soon and is not felt like something special anymore. Again –
the very moment of opening the window is essential if we want to feel the difference.
If remedy is not important now – there is no splash or window opening. By the way, sometimes window seems to open, but not fully and closes quickly. In these cases even several weeks or months may be not enough for a movie/remedy proving. Imagine you hand someone a movie that is neither interesting nor important for him/her and you hope to get the feedback. Sometimes you may have to wait forever, because that movie never gets a priority to be watched till the end. And that’s what happens in majority of traditional provings.
But actually, what happens there is much worse – we force the volunteer to watch that movie and we do it repeatedly. That’s almost an abuse…
Present Homeopathy appeared out of watching thousands of movies remedies with my patients and colleagues in the last 20 years. Strangely enough such direct practical experience contradicts almost every homeopathic belief.
But here in Present Homeopathy we do not care about beliefs. It is all about experience. Simply sitting together and watching the movie. If someone has his/her own opinion, that’s ok, but we don’t care, that’s only an opinion. But if you watch a movie and suddenly tears start flowing out of nowhere and you can do nothing to stop them – that’s an experience, it is real and worth attention and support.
Writing about all that is tricky. Telling you about a movie experience and watching it together is day and night difference.
But then – what is watching movies after all?
At first movies seem like they… are movies! They have physical form (DVD, Blue-ray, film, whatever), they have precise descriptions, they have reviews written by acclaimed critics. Movie seems like it is a separate creature living life on its own.
But when we develop our own relationship with that movie, something changes. We may find that the way we perceive that movie differs from how others do. We may also find it triggers our aspects we’ve never been aware of before. It becomes my movie and I begin to understand why it is important to me. I start seeing myself in that movie.
Then we find out no one has seen that movie as it is. No one watched it objectively, including the director himself. That means there is no such thing as objective movie that’s separate from watching experience at all! Of course, you may argue, but how can we argue about something no one has ever seen?
Movies become experiences. Our own experiences.
From that on whenever we watch movies we watch them from our perspective. Well, that’s how it has always been. But now we do it consciously. We do not even say we watch movies anymore. We say we explore ourselves through the movies.
Watching movies is actually exploring ourselves.
At first it may seem strange as we associate myself with the separate body and mind. So we perceive our self as something little and separate from a big world around us. We think movies belong to that world.
But look, besides our own stuff (experiences, situations, locked emotions, fixed ideas, etc.) we have our family history. So when I find airplane dogfights interesting, I suspect that belongs to my grandfather who has served as a pilot during World War II. Many great insights can be find in works by explorers like B.Hellinger (known for his family constellations), Ch. Flesch (and his biological decoding) and many others.
But then there are other layers leading to so called past life experiences or collective consciousness (C. Jung). So my involvement into martial arts from early childhood has also something to do with strange “memories” of “my”samurai past.
Then something attributed to “me” may be also have roots in the place I was born and grew up, cultural nuances, national peculiarities, etc.
So by watching the movie all these our life experiences and conditions are reflected, movies give u s possibility to recognize and explore these. By watching together and sharing our experiences we may find out that different aspects may be experienced radically differently in each of us.
Each of us has many hidden layers that may be revealed by such movie watching sessions.
And that’s what happens through life. We start with movies for kids. Again, we do not watch everything in a row, but we have our favorites, the ones that reflect our life interests the best. Such natural involvement is kind of diagnostic tool for the the kid to search for his talents and calling. As we grow up, movies change.
Is there one constitutional movie that accompanies us throughout all our life? That’s a funny question, isn’t it?
Movies reflect what is important for us at present moment.
Synchronicity can happen only in a present moment. It means this “life changing movie” becomes such only at the moment we are ready for it. It might have been similar several years ago, but we did not pay attention to it at that time, it wasn’t important enough at that moment.
Is the movie important / interesting now?
That is the question. The present moment is the key.
In real life we usually do not refer to movies as being similar. We define that by how interesting or important that movie is in the moment of watching. Timing is equally important. And that also means,
Our own capabilities to experience the movies are very limited.
We simply can’t make the movie to become interesting now if it is not.
And if we can’t, our attention doesn’t stay with it. And again, there is little chance it is going to make a huge impact on us.
That means performing movie provings in a traditional homeopathic manner is the least effective way.
The more subtle the movie the more ineffective is the proving.
Watching a strange “niche” movie that is selected by someone else and mandatory watching it repeatedly usually makes no sense for us. Actually, it is a pretty dangerous and even abusive practice – especially when performed double-blindedly (that brings even more confusion). And that’s exactly why traditional provings have been almost abandoned by homeopaths.
But imagine you may choose what movie to watch. Imagine you switch through them like people do with channels on TV remote. Up until you find something so interesting, it clearly dominates the others. So that even if you switch to other movies, you can’t forget the impression of that one, and you return back to watch it.
Imagine we do not think about these movies, but we simply observe how body reacts to these.
Such provings are so much more effective. And they even turn to become astounding healing experiences.