Systems of Health and Healing.
Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. (Psalm 34.15)
Go to the section that interests you, or scroll through and read.
To contact Eytan Grinnell for more information, send an email to healing@estanent.com
and describe your area of interest.
Send this page to a friend.
In the modern world
we tend to define illness physically and to limit health to measurable
parameters. As a result, we divert ourselves from a deeper understanding, not
only of sickness and health, but also of ourselves and our place as human
beings in the world. A different view
suggests that to be “hale and hearty” is to be whole and full of heart. To be whole is to be at peace; to be full of
heart is to know one’s feelings and purpose in the world. As
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy, says in his “Organon of Medicine,” In the state of health the spirit-like
vital force (dynamis) animating the material human organism reigns in
supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and
activities of all the parts of the living organism in a harmony that obliges
wonderment. The reasoning spirit who
inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy living instrument to
reach the lofty goal of human existence. (The Organon of Medicine; Sixth
Edition, translated by Kunze, Naude and Pendleton; Published by J.P. Tarcher,
Inc. Los Angeles, 1982. Para. 9, Pgs 14-15. All quotes from this edition.) According to the
modern view of health, however, if we have no noticeable symptoms, if we can
work and play with reasonable energy and consistency, we can consider ourselves
healthy. According to this view,
vitality is not universal; it is not a driving principle of existence. Rather, our scientists tell us, the life
energy is a derivative of the physical world, a spin-off of molecular, or maybe
atomic or sub-atomic activities. Even
the profundities of genetic engineering are founded on this idea, unique in the
world’s history. Never
before have we limited the world to physicality.Never before has one idea of the basis of the universe so
powerfully driven mankind to such a frenzy of activity to prove that it is
so. No culture, no religion has been
able to penetrate so deeply into the fabric of our lives. Our very metabolism
is defined and limited to what is physically describable. Any other point of view is regarded as
“unscientific” and therefore irrelevant. We
have given up the sense of mystery and so pursue pleasures instead of joy,
goals instead of meaning, success instead of satisfaction, and stimulation
instead of will power. In our attempt to rid ourselves of the inconvenience of paradox and ambiguity, we individually and
collectively risk a gradual descent into despair. As the underpinnings of our lives are ignored – for they do not go
away – we wonder why we cannot rest and cannot fend off our gnawing sense of
discontent. For
if health is separate from life as a universal principle, if disease is only a
matter of physiological dysfunction, no matter how subtle, then we are little
more than automatons that just need to be adjusted, a few parts replaced or
tuned. And if cure involves only our bodies, then health is dependent on less
consciousness and awareness rather than more. But
there is another way to look at health and healing. In other cultures and times, and in western culture not so long
ago, the living world in general and human beings in particular were seen
differently: The body is the focal
point of a unique energy, a locus of soul-force and divine reality. The healer or physician has a sacred task
ultimately defined by his or her ability to connect with the whole of the
person -- the body, the feelings, the thoughts, and the soul. If
we cannot touch souls as healers, then we cannot truly say that we heal. Yin and Yang are well known and as much misunderstood. The main misconception is to consider yin and yang to be static and absolute. Yin and yang are not absolutes; like cold and heat, there is nothing that is absolutely yin or absolutely yang. Spring is yang relative to winter, but yin relative to summer. Fall is yin relative to summer, but yang relative to winter. Up is more yang than down, and down is more yin than up, but there is no absolute up or absolute down. So to describe these concepts accurately we should say that yin-ness is more physical, more stable, more 'earthly', more feminine and nurturing, more mysterious, more global and less easily defined. Likewise, we should describe yang-ness as more energetic, more volatile, more abstract, more masculine and directive, more rational, more linear, and more easily described. We must understand the relativity of Yin and Yang in order to use the concepts effectively. Also, we must understand that one of these complimentary polarities is not 'better' than the other. It is not better to be yin or yang. What is better is to have these in proper balance within and around oneself. If we live too much in the abstract or rational realms, things are likely to happen that make us aware of the concrete and physical world. If we live too physically, questions about meaning and purpose are apt to force themselves on us. That said, we want to use Yin and Yang as a way of classifying some of the various methods of healing. By doing this, we will be able to understand more clearly how to use the different therapeutic modalities. Yin and Yang can be subdivided into four groups: yang of yang, yin of yang, yang of yin and yin of yin. These nicely describe the primary energy qualities of the daily and yearly cycles.
(Click on the diagram.) Beginning with the upper left quadrant, we have the most yang area. In the daytime the sun is increasing in strength (yang)and is visible (yang). In the upper right quadrant, the Sun is decreasing in strength (yin) but still above the horizon (yang). In the lower right quadrant, the sun is decreasing further in strength (yin) and it is below the horizon (yin). In the lower left quadrant, the sun is increasing in strength again (yang), but still below the horizon (yin). Using these same four categories, we can place different therapeutic modalities by their energetic quality from least physical and most energetic (upper left) to the most physical and least energetic (lower right). We should emphasize that there is more to this framework than we can describe in this small space. Here we can only give the broad outlines. In the first quadrant, the Yang of the Yang is Homeopathy, a method of therapy that uses the most subtle of remedies. Next, in the second quadrant, the Yin of the Yang, is Chinese Medicine where energy is manipulated primarily with needles and herbal medicines. Third, in the quadrant of the Yin of the Yin, the area of the most material, we speak briefly about modern medicine, and last, in the Yang of the Yin we speak about Osteopathy and Chiropractic. One clue about deciding which modality to use is that the more material the modality the more interested the practitioner is in defining the disease. To put it another way, the more specific and definable the condition, the more likely it is that a more material modality will be able to treat it successfully. (This raises another issue about what successful treatment is, but that is outside the range of this presentation.) Further, we can say that the more specific the cause of the condition is, the more likely it is that a more material modality can treat it. As well as the Chinese notion of Yin and Yang, many people are also familiar with the Five Elemental Phases and with the reality of Qi, the universal life force that can be enhanced and manipulated.But we are not so familiar with some other things about the old Chinese system that made it radically different from the modern medical approach. In old China there were
five different levels of relationship between the patient and the physician: 1.
The simple presence of the
physician would cure. 2.
The physician had to say
something about life style, more exercise, different diet, more meditation,
different work, whatever it might be. 3.
The physician had to give some kind of remedy -- herbs,
foods, or now, homeopathy. 4.
The physician would have to touch the patient in some way,
with massage, acupuncture and moxabustion, manipulation, or other techniques. 5.
The physician would have to give “poison remedies” or
perform surgery. We see here two important
principles. First, as we go down the
list, the relationship between the doctor and the patient becomes physically
closer, but less subtle. The doctor
does more and more and the patient less and less. Except for the first category, which is pure interaction with no
activity, the other categories represent greater authority and action on the
patient by the doctor. Second, as we go down
the list, the disease is apparently more deeply established. The condition of the patient is more serious
and therefore requires more action by the physician. A physician I once
discussed this with pointed out that almost all of modern medicine is based on the fifth mode of interaction. In this mode the physician does almost everything and the patient almost nothing. The physician in this mode is required to
have maximum authority over the patient because his or her method is so one
sided. Also in old China it
was thought that “A physician who must wait for the patient to become ill in
order to treat is an ‘inferior physician’.
Illness shows up in many ways before it becomes physical: changes in
mood, in diet, in sleep patterns, in pulse quality or in attitude. In Chinese medicine as originally conceived
and practiced, all of these could be noted, systematized and treated. Further, the health
insurance system was not separate from the physician. A retainer was paid to the physician as long as the person was
well. If the person became sick, the
retainer stopped until they were well.
The physician was therefore financially motivated to keep people
healthy, not just to treat them when they were ill. Modern Chinese
medicine is strongly influenced by the materialistic world-view. When the Communists took over China, they
found that most of the doctors had left the country, which caused a serious crisis in the health system. Ingeniously, but at the sacrifice of the essence of the original approach, the “Barefoot Doctor” was created. He was a quickly trained, rurally based practitioner who knew some basic acupunctural and herbal formulas and could
practice modern medicine as well on a rudimentary basis. The few
pre-Revolutionary physicians who remained reduced their vast medical
knowledge to a few urgently needed and simply applied diagnostic and
therapeutic techniques. In so doing,
they defined illness and cure in ways similar to modern medicine. This approach resulted in a list of formulas
for treatment rather than a dynamic, interactive, even artistic approach to
healing. Through the remnant
of Chinese physicians that managed to leave China with their knowledge --
supported and sometimes challenged by Western scholars and therapists --
something of the original approach to Chinese medicine has returned. Chinese medicine is still colored, however,
by its immersion in a materialistic, fragmented world motivated by a need for
immediate results. The need to treat
many people in order to make a living, the rush to have a ‘successful’ practice,
the demand of patients to feel immediately better have all tended to dilute the
practice of Chinese medicine. No longer does the
physician taking a pulse hover over the wrist of the patient like some great
and delicate bird that senses past history and present need. No longer does the physician interview and
prod and smell and even taste to determine what this whole, miraculous
individual might truly need. As in almost all
areas of modern life, truth seems bound by the exigencies of expedience. There may be more misinformation
about Homeopathy than almost any other therapeutic discipline. This is perhaps because, more brazenly than
any other approach to healing, Homeopathy steps outside the bounds of the materialism. In all other modalities, some link to the
physical world remains, through needles, through spinal adjustments, through
herbal preparations or massage, or whatever technique, the physical world is
acknowledged as the basis for action. Homeopathy
is unique. Though its remedies almost
always start from a physical substance, even the simplest of them approach
dilutions that cannot be said to be physical.
And most homeopaths begin treatment with dilutions that cannot be said
to have any physical remnant of the substance in them. This
is such an astonishing fact that Homeopathy is often dismissed simply on the
basis of an opinion that it cannot work. Nothing, after all, can act physically if it is not itself
physical. There are two questions
here: how is it that the remedies can
be said to have no physical substance, and how can we transmit a remedy that is
not physical? Homeopathic Remedies There is a state
of insanity in the Sciences of the present day. They put all laws aside, in
order to accept, for instance, the Molecular theory, because they want
something that in its aggregate will be large enough to be felt with the
fingers. This
remarkable statement by Dr. James Tyler Kent typifies the problem we face in
our view of humankind. If we cannot
touch it, at least with a physical instrument, say the scientists, it is not
real. Homeopathic remedies were known
two hundred years ago to contradict this view of the world. And they knew it because even then chemists
could not find the substances in Homeopathic remedies beyond about the 12th
potency. The
reason is very simple. A Homeopathic
remedy is produced in a series of dilutions.
A tincture of the substance is made in alcohol or water. A drop of this tincture is put in 100 drops
of a neutral liquid, usually distilled water.
The dilution is shaken hard for a period of time. This is the first potency (1C). The process is repeated by taking a drop of
the 1C preparation and adding it to 100 drops of the neutral liquid. This action produces the second potency
(2C). Between
the 6th and 12th potencies there is the possibility that
the 100 drops of the previous potency will contain no molecules of the
substance. Above about the 12th
potency, this possibility becomes a probability. Most homeopathic practitioners begin treatment of long-standing
cases with the 30th potency or higher. The
obvious consequence of this fact is that we are ‘diluting’ something that no
longer contains a physical substance.
What are we doing then?
According to Homeopathic theory as elucidated by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann in
the late 1700’s, we are drawing out the dynamic power of the substance. Dr. Hahnemann informs us also that it is only
this power of a substance that truly heals.
In a statement that must rank among the most important in medical literature,
Dr. Hahnemann tells us the following: Outer malefic agents that harm the healthy organism and disturb the
harmonious rhythm of life can reach and affect the spirit-like dynamis
only in a way that also is dynamic and spirit-like. The physician can remove these pathological untunements (diseases)
only by acting on our spirit-like vital force with medicines having equally
spirit-like, dynamic effects that are perceived by the nervous sensitivity
everywhere present in the organism. So it is only by dynamic action upon the vital principle that
remedies can restore health and the harmony of life after the perceptible
changes in health (the totality of symptoms) have revealed the disease to the
carefully observing and inquiring physician fully enough to be cured (Para 16
of The Organon of Medicine). And what
is this “spirit-like vital force’? Dr.
Hahnemann has informed us in paragraph 10 of his Organon as follows: Without the vital force the material organism is unable to feel, or
act, or maintain itself. Only because
of the immaterial being (vital principle, vital force) that animates it in
health and in disease can it feel and maintain its vital functions. Thus,
according to Dr. Hahnemann, it is only possible to render a cure by using this
self-same spirit-like vital essence of a substance. But even if we do know now how to prepare the substance properly
how do we know which one to use? First,
says the Doctor in paragraph 14: There is no curable disease or morbific alteration hidden in the
interior of the body which does not announce itself to the conscientiously
observant physician through objective and subjective symptoms. This is what the omniscient Preserver of
human life has provided in his infinite goodness. Then, in
paragraph 22, he says that The curative power of medicines consists exclusively (emphasis
mine) in their propensity to produce disease symptoms in the healthy and remove
them from the sick. And on
this simple statement rests the whole of the science of Homeopathy. For if we do not limit our understanding of
what a sign or a symptom is to physical disturbances and abnormalities, but
include feelings, moods, peculiar things, desires, compulsions, times of day,
month or year, periodicity, weather and all the full range of human experience,
then we can begin to understand what a profound and far-reaching statement Dr.
Hahnemann has made. Another
way to understand this view of illness and health is that illness is a language
spoken by the system. The person (or
animal) is trying to communicate. It is
trying to express itself. We know that
in psychological work an important part of the process is that the person
learns to accurately express himself or herself. The whole system is trying to do the same thing, and the way it
‘talks’ is through symptoms. If we
use the dynamic essence of substances that creates these same ‘sentences’ in
healthy people, then the system is helped to express itself clearly. Once it has done that, as often happens in
psychological work, the system doesn’t have to say that anymore and we have a
‘cure’. This metaphor is not complete,
of course, but gives a small insight into the process of homeopathic treatment. The
science of homeopathy is in the extensive ‘provings’ that have been done on
healthy people. A proving is a careful
process of giving the substance to healthy people to find out the signs and
symptoms that substance consistently produces.
Because we cannot drive the person into serious illness to find out how
the remedy acts in these conditions, the provings are complemented with
clinical results collected over decades and centuries of application. A
‘materia medica’ lists the remedies with their actions. A ‘repertory’ lists various signs and
symptoms with the remedies that produce them.
Using both, the conscientious practitioner can discover how best to
apply the remedies to the people who need them. It is
beyond the scope of this short statement to go into the details of
treatment. We only wish to point out
that classical Homeopathy is still here after more than two hundred years; it
is still here after the efforts of many powerful individuals and groups to
destroy it. And perhaps more
remarkable, classical Homeopathy is still practiced in spite of the efforts of
some people who call themselves homeopaths to dilute the revolutionary essence
of this remarkable science and art. Some
basic principles to watch for: 1.
Does the practitioner spend
real time taking the case, usually at least an hour and often two hours? 2.
Does he or she include medical
history and family history as a part of the intake? 3.
Are the questions penetrating
and sometimes odd, reaching into areas you may never have thought of? 4.
Do you have the sense that you
perceive yourself differently after the initial interview? 5.
Does the practitioner usually
give a single remedy, usually in a single dose. (There are exceptions to this,
particularly in acute cases.) 6.
Except in very specific circumstances, are you asked to stop all
other treatment during the course of the Homeopathic treatment? 7.
Is the practitioner available
for follow-up consultations outside of appointment times? The
answer to all of these questions should be ‘yes’. If any of these things
are not adhered to, you are likely not with a classical Homeopath, or at least
you are with someone who is willing to compromise their principles for
expediency. Dr. James Tyler Kent emphasizes a
different quality of the classical Homeopath in his Aphorisms: A physician's attitude in performing his duty to the sick, is
different from that of any other person. He has a different sphere from that of
the ordinary man. This is a thousand times amplified in Homoeopathy. One who
has entertained that peculiar "circumcision of the heart," always
looking to the good of his patient, never thinking of the criticism of man,
acquires an ability to say what is right to do. He establishes a garment of righteousness. To approach a whole human being who
gives his trust to another person that he or she will be treated with
circumspection and respect is a great and high honor that cannot be reduced to
the process of making a living. One is
called or not. If not, it is better to
do something else than treat those in need who are looking for truth. For disease is falsehood. Cure and reliable health require honesty,
patience, and love without judgment.
Though the time the practitioner takes must be paid for, these
qualities cannot be bought.
Introduction
Yin and Yang
(Back to top)
Ancient China: Physician and Patient
Homeopathy: Energetic Essence
(Yang of Yang)
(Back to top)