Minutus

I like Paul Herscu a lot. The other day, I did a exercise that he suggested. As I read a Verat Alb discription by him, I wrote down my visceral reactions. It took me a long time to ge noticeable physical reactions, but I remembered people who I know who are haughty, manipulative, emotionally hard....Next to their names, I wrote down what was happening with me emotionally. Since I try to be neutral with these people (often clients), I tend to suppress my actual emotions. Remembering them was really painful. I ended up with a lump in my throat and feeling somewhat depressed.

In an interesting juxtaposition to Herscu's exercise, Roger Morrison was talking about Kent's MM: How vivid the descriptions are. Well those descriptions are vivid because Kent was basing them on his own emotions and experiences. You know how Kent can read extremely biggoted? Homosexuality, masterbation and a myriad of other sins and inborn failings. Well that is the unsuppressed Kent talking. I just ignore that part. But I love his vivid descriptions.

To see through a patient and all their defenses, I have to first see through all of my defenses. All those emotions that I am working so hard to suppress are mostly defensive. Highly biased judgments in some cases, but more often self subversive attempts to see the nasty side of others in a "nicer" light. Some people talk about writing down your first remedy impressions so that you can throw them out. I think I should write down my first gut reactions so I don't have to suppress them and then probably throw them away. But, in truth they escape me like fish that I am trying to catch with my hands. Any ideas?

Best,
Ellen Madono

Hi Ellen,

So important to keep your observation about your observation in the forefront...and just as important, to share it as a reminder for all of us who
at times can't see the forest through the trees. I love what you shared.

When writing down first impressions while taking a case, the suggestion is to discard them from your thoughts not to through them away altogether.
They may or may not be helpful later on. The other suggestion during case taking or followup notes, is to mark the place where a person may have rambled on,
so that you can revisit the story and ask questions in case your mind may have drifted off during that or those moments.

Also to mark anywhere in your notes where a patient mentions an aggravation, so that you can go back and ask questions about them.

Jonathan Shore mentions that the two times one can fall into the most trouble in case taking, are, first, when you hear yourself saying “no”;
and second, when you hear yourself saying “yes”.

Will Taylor comment:
Abuse history is a very difficult topic re projections and speculation.
Practitioners who have histories of abuse, and those who do not, all have their own personal buttons pushed by this topic when it comes up.
Can we hear this in a case, and feel that we understand it as “ailments from abuse”? I’d suggest not.
“Ailments from abuse” reminds me rather of “Ailments from tall buildings collapsing on you”; I’d be more intrigued by the person who experienced abuse without sequelae

So, the question becomes (if an explanation does not follow spontaneously)
“If you and I were to write a book about abuse, we could fill hundreds of pages with what’s wrong about it. So for you, what would be on page one?”

and I agree about Kent's prejudiced writings and comments.
Early on, when reading Kent, I decided to focus on the plethora of valuable insights he offers rather than where he fell victim to his own lapses of objectivity.

Best,
Lynn
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Imagine Peace
http://www.homeopathicsolutions.blogspot.com/

Dear Lynn,

As a person who has spent a decade meditating (or trying who can be sure which?),
catching each emotional trap as it floats by and letting go of it is not easy. Metaphorically meditating in real life including case taking is tricky.

This will sound like a side line, but please indulge me. I have been suffering from backaches and exhaustion. Today at Aikido my teacher got into a long convoluted discussion with me about changing the way you think. I am trying to quit exhausting myself by trying too hard. Not easy since I actually do this day in and day out. It is a way of life. I work this way with everything. But to change that, I have to change it with everything I do.

Coming back to the previous discussion, the emotional reactions that we have to patients are I found when I began writing down memories of people who are like Veratum Alb (Haughty, hard, compulsive...) are quite similar. In small ways I repeat those reactions day in and day out in many interactions with people who are on the surface quite normal and pleasant etc. But I sense the Verat Alb symptoms and at a deep gut level (that does not appear in my actual demeanor) the effort to keep them in my subconscious is working on me. That is why people are so exhausting. The problem is, like the person (me) above who tries too hard at a martial art and doesn't know how to stop, the person who senses haughty, hard compulsive at some very subliminal level really does not want to think of these apparently nice people that way. So these subliminal emotional reactions are suppressed, ignored etc.

Unlike the Aikido example, the subliminal emotional reactions are not something that I really want to get rid of or grow out of. They are useful case taking tools. What I really want to do is bring them to the surface so that I can write them in my notes and in some cases use them. I actually think that the exhaustion from interacting with people might also go down. After all, suppressing these socially probably unacceptable emotional reactions is hard work. It would be much better to notice them and lay them aside the way I do when I meditate. In other words, meditate in daily life including case taking.

Best,
Ellen Madono
English: tokyohomeopathy.com
Japanese: tokyohomeopathy.jp
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Hi Ellen

See these things as mere concepts in your reality, and traverse back to the root of these thoughts and feelings so that you can observe it with equanimity.
The goal, mine anyway, is acceptance of negative aspects of my reality and a "true sight" way of seeing them for what they really are.

Once they are conscious we make a wonderful step towards resolving them.
Until they are conscious there is little that can be done to work with them. Recognizing them for what they are is a very valuable step. The foremost thing an emotion asks of you is to be felt, which is even more important than it being understood. Sometimes it doesn't even want to be understood, when you give it space and allow it to be fully what it is, it will blossom, it will reveal something beautiful to you. It will raise you to a place beyond where you were before the emotion first set in.

If you fully experienced an event that brought about the emotion in the first place, it would be much easier to identify it again. But if you are still processing that emotion and similar events show up whether in meditation, case taking, reading an article,, watching the news etc. they will frustrate you and seem to increase the strength of the unpleasant emotion.

Often easier said than done!

Lynn
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Imagine Peace
http://www.homeopathicsolutions.blogspot.com/

Very nice, Ellen. Paul wasn't seeking our subjective reactions when he taught me, but he may have added that component after one of his former students, a sports medicine doc, asked him if he realized that he moved his foot a certain way just before he was about to prescribe Ignatia to someone.
When we pay close attention to our kinesthetic and emotional reactions to particular remedy "types," it makes it easy to recognize a strange energy that's new to us.
I wouldn't throw away my initial reactions to a patient. Mangialavori uses these in presenting his cases. I'm always delighted by how finely he matches these impressions (appearance, way of moving, way of talking, etc. -- even how fine their Italian is) to the remedy. If a patient is boring us with his/her narration, that's part of the picture. I had another homeopath refer a patient to me because, as the homeopath put it, "My brain just shuts down every time this person opens her mouth." This constant litany of symptoms of dubious prescribing value but suggestive of real suffering. Sometimes, as I had to do finally, you just have to sit in stillness and let the words wash over you -- listen to the music instead of the words. At least with patients who don't seem able to organize their thoughts coherently. That, of course, is also part of the remedy picture.
Peace,
Dale

From one Aikido practitioner to another, and Homeopathy is the Aikido of medicine.....

One definition of Aikido is "The Art of Not Doing"....you just wait for Uke to show you, physically or subconsciously, what his move is going to be, then you get out of the way and take his center.
In order to do that, in some way you have to be indifferent or at least not concerned by the result: whatever move you do is always perfect, and if it does not lead to the expected outcome, then you follow with another one, then another one, then another one....until, in your practice, you do not need to add anything, ever (that is not really achievable....).
So your sensei right; trying hard, as we all do, is necessary to learn the ropes, but then you forget the rules, the names, the positions, you just are there and move accordingly....OK, easier said than done....

Now replace Aikido with Homeopathy and you have the same frame of mind you need for a successful consultation: blank, no preconception, but full awareness and perception...........and this comes from a totally left-brain, materialistic, down to earth, focused on science and demonstration, logical, realistic guy.....so it is achievable by anybody, no kidding.

Not sure if this is going to help or shed some light or anything else, but I felt I needed to write that.....

Onagei Shimas!

Joe.

Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind". www.naturamedica.webs.com
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Reading this topic reminded of something Jung had said about listening to
patients describing something..maybe it was a dream...and Jung said he would
get bored so his consciousness would slip away and when some real "energy"
came out of the dream or ramblings...he would automatically come back to
consciousness. So he wouldn't waste his time or exhaust himself listening to
everything the patient was saying. Or something like that...it was over 30
years ago that I read that.

this reminds me of listening to Rob Bannon years ago.
he was trying to teach this seminar how to take a case by
being in a meditative state with your eyes wide open. this
was his approach to receiving the case without prejudice.
t
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Hi Carol,

I wonder why that stayed in your consciousness? Is it the words of a master? To me there is something in that story about trying too hard with the external activities. Pages and pages of notes. Exact words of the px. And at the same time staying in contact with those subconsious emotions. These external and internal activities are not easily compatible activities. Or are they? Was Jung in an inner dream watching his subconscious reactions as he went through the motions of a consultation?

I was reading The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence... By Stephen Harrod Buhner. Here are some related thoughts. After some very esoteric meditations on the inner lives of plants and some what of a hand holding guidance, Buhner devotes a chapter to entering into the inner lives of patients. He is talking to a woman (px) who is ashen and panting from asthma. He talks ordinary consulation talk and at the same time his mind is going into her lungs. He is doing similum thinking with a swamp plant that he described in a previous chapter, skunk cabbage arising in the background of his descriptions her lungs. Her lungs and the problems of skunk cabbage are similar and he is feeling that similarity as he delves into her lungs. Goes into the bronchial tubes then into the cells of the tissues. The gunk in there and the mud of the swamp sound so similar in the description. The reader gets it right away. Yet he is doing ordinary consulation talk as he goes through this dream. Both happen at the same time.

There is something of that going on here with Jung and what we do too. Herscu makes a related description of his own inner observations. We are not just paging through a mental repertory. Paul Hersu says the provings, MM and our cases are all the same excercise. In the exercise that I mentioned before about reviewing ones personal responses to a MM description of Vert Alb, we are being encouraged to include our gut reactions in the reading of MM, cases and provings. It is really all the same process. There is an internal observation and conversation, a dream maybe and an external one that is all the motions of a consultation.

Best,
Ellen Madono
English: tokyohomeopathy.com
Japanese: tokyohomeopathy.jp

I feel strongly that when one is working, it has to be "purely for the recipient" - for the case at hand. That is - your own ego needs to *not* be there - it can only lead you astray and make your work "worth less". It's important to see the case, and not to care what anyone thinks of it (and it is an IT - it is not personal about you) and what anyone thinks of you is not relevant.

The rule I like, is

"Leave your ego at home, then nobody can walk on it."

(and by the same token it cannot get in the way)

I want ALL my perceptions, knowledge, alertness, brainpower, experience etc, tuned in to "the case".
It's as if I do not exist while I am doing that, (after all it is not about me) so I am in "case-mode" at the time.
It's important to be independent of the good (or bad) opinions of others and to live one's own life:-)

Opinions of others are gifts (to treasure or to learn from)...they do not make you what you are.
You are not more or less because of what someone else says or does.
Only you make you what you are, by the choices YOU make.
For me it's a choice to put all my perceptions on "the case" (not on the client, but on the case, as an "it", a thing, that I am aiming to resolve) when I am working. That OBJECT-ivity works for me, and it still allows all my past experiences to be of benefit if appropriate.

Namaste,
Irene

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Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."