Today, I wanted to talk about the whys behind homeopathy, and how I got here. I know that there are a lot of people out there who think homeopathy is synonymous with herbs or natural medicine, but it’s quite different! (In a recent instagram reel, I share my thoughts on people confusing homeopathy with essential oils… yikes!)
To help distill what homeopathy is and clarify the confusion, I’m going to review some of the basics, including the power of true healing that can be found with homeopathy. Just to give you a heads up – this is one of my favorite topics! I was a beginner once too and I love guiding others along a similar path of discovery and hope that is homeopathy.
What Homeopathy is NOT
Ok, let’s start at the very beginning and clear up some common misconceptions about what homeopathy is or isn’t. Homeopathy is not herbs! It’s not supplements! It’s not essential oils! And it isn’t home remedies!
Homeopathy has a rich and amazing history, particularly in the United States. I told you guys in a live, where I talked about Americans for Homeopathy Choice, that homeopathy is legally a drug in the United States. The first homeopathy school was opened in the late 1800s. And the people who founded the school were actually students of the Father of Homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. This opened what was called the Golden Age of Homeopathy. About half the hospitals in the USA at that time were homeopathic with the other half being conventional medicine. There were also a lot of medical schools that were homeopathic. Because they were the first schools to accept female students, if there was a woman doctor in the 1800’s you can bet she was a homeopath. Same goes for allowing African Americans to attend medical school. You can bet they were homeopaths.
I remember reading a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder where Laura and her family had come down with malaria, or “‘fever and ague” as they called it back then. The family was super sick and suddenly a kind African American doctor showed up and treated them. Laura remembered because it was the first time she’d ever seen a black person before, and my first thought was, “Hmmm…seems kind of unusual for an African American man to be a doctor in those times.” And sure enough, when I looked him up, he was a homeopathic doctor! A lot of the supporters of homeopathy were abolitionists, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and many many others.
Anyhow, I digress. What homeopathy is is a complete system of medicine. It is simply a system of medicine that treats likes with likes. Meaning anything that causes illness in its crude form will cure it in its homeopathic form. To help explain this, there’s the classic onion example I’ve used many times, because it helps illustrate this concept in a concise way for beginners to grasp easily.
Imagine you have seasonal allergies which present with watery eyes, burning sensation in the eyes, egg-white runny nose, and when you go outside in the fresh air your symptoms alleviate. An onion is something that could cause our bodies to mimic those same allergy symptoms. If I were to chop an onion, I would develop those same symptoms of watery eyes, burning sensation in the eyes, egg-white runny nose, and I would need to go outside to find relief. The symptoms brought on by an onion mimic those specific allergy symptoms. So how does homeopathy help? You could take the homeopathic form of an onion and it will stimulate a cure in your body.
But how does it actually do that? Imagine suffering from those allergies, and your body’s immune system is telling you “Human! I’m so sorry! We are working on these seasonal allergies, but we can’t seem to figure them out!” But then you introduce the homeopathic form of onion and your body recognizes the dilution of the onion, and says “Oh, no! Everyone! Stop trying to fight the seasonal allergies because we have a new invader. We are now being attacked by an onion! Let’s protect the human against this new invader!” Your body’s immune system then mounts up an attack against the onion, but since the homeopathic onion is diluted beyond its observable chemical form (as my son says, the homeopathic remedy acts like a hologram of an onion), your immune system’s attack goes right through the false disease–the onion hologram–and instead fights the intended disease. Thus the seasonal allergies are cured.
Homeopathy Changes How You Think and React to Health Issues
What’s really interesting about homeopathy is that it’s closely tied to REALITY, which is really a unique and novel frame of mind these days. People really struggle with sticking to the facts because we’ve lost the ability to observe. I recently did a social media post where I shared that society is confused about why we are raising the sickest generation of kids to ever walk the earth, but at the same time, we are taught to push away symptoms. We anesthetize and numb all of our pains and discomforts. We divorce ourselves from reality. We feel that symptoms should be stomped out with a pill. When actually, we should be leaning INTO our symptoms as a sign that our bodies need something more in order to heal.
That’s where homeopathy comes in. It literally trains you to listen, to lean into the symptoms, because they will show us the path out. Homeopathy will help us select the right remedy that will lead us to the other side of the illness, not suppress the symptoms. But, that road map of like heals like ONLY WORKS if we carefully follow the symptoms. The symptoms are our road to the right remedy. And that means, homeopathy keeps us very close to REALITY. It won’t let us wander off.
So let me share two powerful examples with you that illustrate that the power of homeopathy goes beyond just the remedies we take.
Homeopathy has taught me that when we run from symptoms we will pay for it later. Let me explain. Ok, so we have symptoms. And fine, using the symptoms to help us find the resolution of the problem is one way of dealing with it. But what’s wrong with anesthetizing the symptoms? It’s less painful and sounds good.
Well, sure, not experiencing pain is nice, but that too comes with a price tag. In homeopathy, we understand that when we suppress a symptom, it pushes those symptoms deeper and tends to bring about a chronic problem.
Take the example of eczema and asthma. Many people suffering with the painful symptoms of eczema seek relief through pharmaceutical methods such as oral or topical versions of corticosteroids. However, rather than addressing the cause of these symptoms, these treatments simply mask the symptoms, thus pushing them deeper. Eventually, these symptoms are suppressed and the body finds a new way to express the problem. For many eczema sufferers, the problem presents as asthma. The link between those with eczema eventually developing asthma as well is well documented. But when a person visits a homeopath for their asthma, the homeopath will treat them by selecting the right remedy to help the body resolve the symptoms. Overtime as a person improves, that person may realize that their asthma is improving, but their eczema is returning, usually to a lesser degree. This might be very disconcerting to the person because they feel like they’re getting worse because now they’re long gone eczema is back. But to the homeopath, this is a very good sign because the asthma was actually always suppressed eczema. The homeopath will then treat the returning eczema, and then the person is truly made whole. The asthma, which was actually suppressed eczema, is gone.
So in the moment of suffering and pain, we learn patience and we learn how to look at the reality of what’s going on.
I’ve also told the story about how my son got the impetigo from hell illness. It’s a bacterial infection, usually staph, that is really contagious and likes to spread. But my son’s spread like wildfire and spread all over his legs and was even crawling up his torso. It was ugly as sin. And I was REALLY tempted to give him the antibiotics that my doctor prescribed. However, my doctor also told me that the condition wasn’t serious. Ugly, yes, but he wasn’t developing sepsis or cellulitis or anything. And, while my doctor did recommend antibiotics, I knew that my son was not in a dire, life-saving situation. So we decided to look at what was happening NOW. He was fine. And we had time to continue pursuing the right remedy with my homeopath.
Ultimately, my son got through the struggle without taking antibiotics. But, more happened in that process. We were closer, bonded over the situation more than before, and my son came out of it with an innate sense of his body being able to do hard things. And, he too learned to do hard things. It was a wonderful lesson for him. And, while it wasn’t fun, homeopathy teaches us that sometimes life isn’t fun, but if we handle things in the right way, there are rewards in the end, like a gut that is intact and inner growth.
Test the Truth For Yourself
Another thing that is really neat about homeopathy is that the medicines are very diluted. They are diluted in a scientific process of sequential dilution. This makes the medicines non toxic and safe. Although the medicines are highly diluted, they still carry their powerful healing ability. It’s a wonderful medicine.
I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic, so I appreciate that same quality in others. I never ask others to take me at my word, rather I want you to test all of this out for yourself and use your own powers of observation to come to your own conclusions. I find wisdom in the scripture, “by their fruits ye shall know them.1” For homeopathy, follow Samuel Hahnamann’s advice to: Try it well and correctly before making your decision.
With homeopathy being so diluted, you can confidently put my words into action without fear of it being toxic or unsafe. Acute cases are the perfect time to put your knowledge into action and test out the healing power of homeopathy. With that said, the key elements to testing out homeopathy are well and correctly.
Get All of the Basics Easily in One Place
When I say teaching others the truth about homeopathy is one of my favorite topics, I mean it! And, because I’m so passionate about it, I want it to be easy for others coming to homeopathy to learn these foundational principles. That’s why I created my Intro to Homeopathy workshop. In this hour long recording, I speak about the basics in an engaging and easy to understand way.
One of my attendees from Oklahoma, Crystal B., shared about her experience taking the workshop.
“Paola, you hit it out of the park with your Intro to Homeopathy class. You are so fun and engaging to listen to. I had never heard your story before about how you came to find homeopathy, I can relate to you so much. I’m not a complete newbie to homeopathy, but I was surprised at how much you shared in this class that was new and eye opening to me! You explain things in such a way that it is easy to understand AND remember! Oh! And the 11 page gorgeous and colorful handout?? Perfect for this note taking girl! I hope you make more video classes, I will purchase every single one of them!”
As you can see, this class is great for beginners, but also relevant for those who have experience with homeopathy. If you really want to go into a deep dive on homeopathy and to get some wonderful handouts that we created with all of this intro-level stuff and more, then this workshop is for you. I’ll talk about a Materia Medica, how to take a simple acute case, I talk about exactly how the medicines are diluted, what a proving is and why you don’t want to take a homeopathic remedy too frequently. It’s an awesome class!
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Learn More About My Health & Homeopathy Curriculum for Families Here: https://paolabrown.com/homeopathy-curriculum/
- Matthew 7:16-23 ↩︎