Sensory Perception of Remedy Sets

I usually say that Present Homeopathy is all about sharing that happens through becoming one. We become one with our remedies. We become one with our teachers and students, with colleagues and patients. We share our sensations, worlds, lives, Universes with each other directly as experiences happening here and now.

But there is one secret technical aspect (perhaps the only one) we do not share with our patients. Of course we could, but it is a too specific type of skill that needs some time and devotion to get developed. Ordinary people do not need it. It’s truly homeopathic and very natural approach to landscapes that is based on sensory perception of remedy sets.

It’s about perceiving each set of remedies as a particular landscape for sensations to appear.

Such landscapes are unique: they reflect certain perception of the world and human beings, they actually combine different levels/bodies in some special proportions. All that comes from the creators of such sets.

The same happens in arts. Paintings, photographs, music, movies, etc. – they all reflect the worldview of their creators. If we explore them, we learn to recognize the author’s world. So if you haven’t seen that particular painting by S. Dali, but you’ve spent hours exploring his other works, you would definitely recognize that one as belonging to S. Dali.

Similarly, different remedy sets reflect their creators’ and manufacturers’ views and perceptions of the world. By adapting some particular remedy set into practice we also adapt the perception of its creator and/or manufacturer into our lives. That takes time, but is definitely worth it.

For example, in order to use and manufacture Bach flower essences, we should learn to perceive plants and people in a way Edward Bach did. And that’s a really hard task for homeopaths to accomplish. It took at least a couple of years for me. I hope you can deal with that much faster.

You know, E. Bach was smiling at homeopaths’ attempt to “potentize” remedies asking if they wanted to add something extra from what had already been there inherently in the plant and sunlight…

You know, flower essences are perceived in a very different manner: they are much softer (by no means it is a pleasurable softness though – it can become almost unbearable at times!) and there is no homeopathic potency that comes at least close to that softness. Consider flower essences and classical homeopathic remedies belonging to a completely different perceptional realms. Or we could say flower essences are out of the realm of homeopathic potencies.

When Bach flower remedies become part of ourselves we start to implement that softness into our lives, it becomes our everyday experience. That’s very very different from intellectual understanding.

Homeopathic landscape

Homeopaths think their arsenal of remedies is so vast it covers almost everything in Universe. Intellectually, that’s almost true. But on a perceptional level homeopathic remedies are limited to… let’s call it a homeopathic landscape. It’s relatively tiny – even if its borders are ever expanding.

Consider it all has started as Hahnemanian landscape that remains valid up until now. And then different practitioners have added their own to that. So G. Vithoulkas adds something with all these “essences” and his views, R. Sankaran adds his findings, Jan Scholten adds his periodical system with all these stages, etc. That’s how we get that ever expanding homeopathic landscape. It is still amazingly limited.

Please understand me – intellectually it is diverse. Hence we have lots of authors and books each depicting remedies in their own way. But perceptionally… it is very very limited.

Primarily it’s because homeopaths have never been interested in experiencing remedies directly and have seen provings as being separate from everyday practice.

Only when we dive into non-classical remedies, we go through numerous sets of remedies, we get acquainted with their creators – we start getting more and more surprised at how numerous and diverse these perceptual landscapes may be.

Each artist (remedy creators and manufacturers including) has his own interest. Following that interest the he explores the particular landscape. So if the painter is interested in nature, he observes and portrays nature in the way he sees it. If a painter has interest in people, he paints portraits. Or maybe he paints nudes.

Anyway, visiting the exhibition of such painter is an opportunity to get in touch with his interest and the way he perceives the world. If we find that appropriate, we adopt that world view and implement it in our daily life.

The same happens with different sets of remedies,

Remedies as a Legacy

Homeopaths still think learning happens while reading books and watching video cases. That’s pathetic. That comes from complete misunderstanding of the great masters we’ve had. Well, many of them left some writings. But the main legacy we gain from them are the remedies themselves.

Just like composers leave their music, painters leave their paintings, just like every artist continues to live in his works of art, our Masters teach through their remedies. S. Hahnemann, R.T. Cooper, R. Steiner, E. Bach, V. Wall and many many other practitioners had their own perception of the world and expressed it in some unique branch of information remedies.

And then these branches diverge into other ones. Let me give you an example. R.T. Cooper started what he used to call arborivital medicines. Then E. Bach kind of continued the tradition and made his 38 flower essences. He burnt most of his writings, leaving a couple of small brochures. That’s because his flower essences speak by themselves! And then many branches of modern essences started:

A body of work is comprised of multiple pieces that are cohesive in nature. It usually doesn’t represent an artist’s oeuvre, a word that most often refers to an artist’s lifetime of work.
Alyson Stanfield

Consider these to be bodies of work by different creators.

I must admit, I haven’t got in touch with all of them. But I try to use any opportunity. Several days ago together with my colleague we went through sea essences (Passific ones). What an experience! Many of these appeared to be a living sea creatures and not the plants we’ve been expecting. A very very different experience from other essences.

So yes, technically these all are essences. But sensory perception is very different.

Please, take a time, explore these links. Meet the people who make them. If you can’t meet them in person – read them, watch interviews, whatever. Usually they completely devote themselves to that landscape they live in and they have a very special feel and understanding of what they are doing.

These creators are different. Sometimes almost radically different. But their interest is similar.

The landscapes these plants have been gathered at are so different! And they address different landscapes in us!

Recording Present Experience

It’s so simple. Present experience is what artists express in their art. Painters paint, composers compose, poets write poems, dancers dance… Homeopaths make remedies.

Remedies are like snapshots of present experience: we do not use words to make them – when making the remedy we immerse ourselves into experience and it kind of becomes grounded into substance: water, alcohol solution, sugar pills, bees wax, etc.!
We also may manufacture remedies as a dynamic representation of that present experience – more like a video clip (preferably without an end) rather than a snapshot – so we end up with a remedy that is kind of adapting to the dynamics in a patient. It changes with patient’s situation. But that’s another theme and it’s too practical to be written down. It’s all about experiencing it ourselves.

That’s why we’ll start by consciously breaking the Totality into parts

In our usual homeopathic practice as we start as beginners and we learn how to listen, we break down the Totality into parts (bodies/levels). We learn to recognize these landscapes and also sensations that arise in them. We do that for learning and teaching purposes. That’s very human-like.

So when we explore physical body we submerge into its sensations and we do not care about anything else. We simply stay in the present moment, we immerse 100% into that experience. We do it with each of 7 bodies for many many hours.

Each body/level is explored with the help of corresponding set of remedies.

Practical Learning

First of all we need a teacher who shows us how to sense. This part is crucial and I’m in doubt to my teachers who taught me how to listen. Usually we think we sense. But such thinking is just the opposite to what real sensations are about. So we need a teacher.

In case of Present Homeopathy a teacher introduces you into some remedy set. During a seminar a teacher finds several remedies in it that appear to invoke a present interest to you and/or your colleagues. These remedies become a key to that landscape: they unlock and bring to the surface sensations you’ve perhaps have never experienced in your life before.

Then you go back home. You play with that remedy set for a month or two. You read remedy descriptions. You try to find some info on manufacturer. You try to know the creator better, so you look for books, articles and interviews. But what’s the most important – you start implementing these remedies into your everyday practice:

You test them on yourself and take them from time to time depending on present interest.
You experiment with your colleagues and listen to these remedies in groups – that’s very important.
You also do it with your non-homeopathic colleagues – that can be a very refreshing experience. Your other holistic colleagues may have another understanding, another view; so even if sensations are the same, perception can be different, distorted by different understanding of reality.
You test that set of remedies on each patient of yours.

Dealing with chronic cases mostly (unless you practice Homeopathy in an emergency room) you apply that remedy set in a proving mode when working with patients. You go through all the set and you find a remedy that gives the deepest response from a patient. You explore what this remedy brings to the surface from deep within.

Naturally you find out sensations never repeat – even with the exactly the same remedy! Soon it becomes clear it is almost impossible to recognize the remedy by sensations. Well, that still may happen, but it’s more of an exception than daily routine. It’s because there are no “remedy sensations” – all these effects appear to belong to patients themselves.

Assigning the sensations we get with the patient to remedies makes no sense – these appear to be always unique, individual and extremely context-dependent.

Here theoretical studies of remedies make no sense anymore.

Eventually with the same set of remedies you get numerous experiences. that are always unique. And yet, something unites them. We call it the landscape of the remedy set.