Your MIND: The Window To Disease

That patients recover from illness doesn’t really amaze me any more. After more than 20 years of practising homeopathy, what still takes my breath away is the transformation patients go through, completely and wholly, and the speed with which this often occurs.

This transformation is apparent in this short video of young Aneesa Ansari, who could barely sit upright on her own and needed help to walk. She had developed tuberculosis a couple of years earlier. She had grown resistant to the drugs and, over the next two years, developed tubercular meningitis, which had taken the disease process to her brain.

When Aneesa was helped into my clinic, she was disoriented, to say the least. She had been experiencing a high-grade fever that she could not shake off for four months. Despite being admitted to hospital four to five times, conventional physicians were unable to help her. Desperate and frightened, Aneesa entered my clinic, cannula still attached to her arm.

Barely a month after I began to treat her, Aneesa went from being a very sick young woman to a happy healthy and vibrant 24-year-old. And just in case you’re wondering, yes, I believe in miracles and homeopathy is one of them. This wonderful system of self-healing is a lifeline for many, arriving at my clinic as they do with a sense of panic and helplessness.

Is This The Same Patient? (2.11min)

Aneesa is one of many patients who come to MindHeal Homeopathy as emergency cases.

But how does someone so sick recover so quickly and so completely? The lay public is sceptical about using homeopathy in an emergency situation. Isn’t allopathy what you’re looking for in serious and acute cases? 

Before we come to that, let’s take a look at Safina, a 26-year-old homemaker who was brought to me earlier this year. She had been experiencing frequent splitting headaches, and her vision was blurred. After the usual rounds of opthalmologists, Safina had been referred to a neurologist, who found her intracranial (inside the skull) and intraocular (inside the eye) pressure abnormally high.

Doctors then recommended CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) tapping to relieve the pressure inside her eye. They began periodically drawing the fluid out via a lumbar puncture. Thus, Safina had doctors draining fluid from her spine on a fortnightly basis. Finally, doctors recommended that a thecoperitoneal shunt be placed inside Safina’s spine, to make the tapping procedure more convenient! All they needed to do was open the valve and let out the excess fluid when her vision grew blurry. 

Sometimes, the solutions thrown up by conventional medicine boggle the mind. When will physicians realise that you simply cannot ‘drain away disease’ from the human body?

In Safina’s case, the remedy I prescribed cleared up her symptoms in just 15 days. I had located the disease process at its source. Treatment, of course, continued much longer but relief came swift and easily. As with all patients, the upshot was that Safina began to feel more alive and free of the emotional burden she has been carrying. Take a look…

How is this possible? Without returning to the basic tenets of homeopathy, there is one pivotal point I would like to make, and that is: that the MIND is the window to all disease.

Patients usually provide a wealth of information during the initial consultation. All of it is relevant but the important elements are not flagged in red! Evaluating a case and piecing it together is like playing ‘join the dots’. The experienced homeopath must pick out the dots and then connect them to form a complete picture.

We have to first pick out the dots, or, what I call the patient’s ‘key sensitivity’ – their core fears, and psychological and emotional injuries that dictate their thoughts, actions and emotions in their everyday lives.

Cheers For Fears
Fear, by its very nature, is buried deep in the unconscious, its manifestation masked but still visible to the trained eye. But the homeopath does not psychoanalyse. All he/she needs to do is identify the fear and understand how it is expressed. There is no need to go backwards to understand why it exists.

After identifying the patient’s key sensitivity, the next step is to understand how the patient has coped with these core issues. In other words, the homeopath must identify the patient's main defence mechanisms.

Human nature presents a wide array of personalities. Some people act out their feelings and fears, others bottle them up, while still others compensate or overcompensate. Identifying the patient’s coping mechanisms and watching them at work in the patient’s life is critical to arriving at an accurate diagnosis, or in homeopathic terms, the right rubrics.

In Safina’s case, her lack of education and frustration at being unable to offer her children a good education was her ‘key sensitivity’. The other key issue was the constant verbal abuse from her in-laws and her refusal to bare her feelings. Neither did Safina say anything to her parents as she didn’t want to "burden" them with her problems. Her "stoic silence" and controlled nature were her coping mechanisms.

(To understand just how identifying the ‘key sensitivity’ is actually the key to every case and, I have discussed my rubrics and remedy in Safina’s case here.)

Interestingly, some patients experience a perceptible change in their health within a couple of days after treatment begins; others in less than a day. There are still others in whom reversing the disease process takes longer.

Get Well ‘Soon’
So what determines the speed of recovery? In simple terms, the human constitution has a genetically determined pace at which changes take places in each individual – changes of all kinds. This includes the pace at which disease sets in, their ‘boiling point’ or the point at which it intensifies before it becomes destructive, the progress of disease from one layer to another, the individual’s tolerance and reactivity to stress, and their ability to absorb and adapt to unfavourable changes in life circumstances.

‘Constitutional speed’ varies between individuals, some ‘changing gears’ quickly; others not so fast. This explains why some individuals recover slowly while others, like Aneesa and Safina, recover from serious diseases in a matter of days or weeks.

Also, closely tied to the recovery process this is the human immune system. We classically think of the immune system as that which fights germs and keeps us free of disease. Many are also aware that the immune system plays a crucial role in healing all ailments. But it’s more complex than that. The immune system does much more, even playing a part in determining your state of mind.

A word here about the way conventional medicine views illness vis-à-vis holistic systems of medicines such as homeopathy. Conventional medicine takes a mechanistic view of the human body and attempts to "cure" individual symptoms. Physicians are of the view that fixing the symptom is tantamount to cure.

They could not be farther from the truth. The truth is that disease is a process and this process manifests itself when the body can no longer cope and adjust to the disease process. As a result, something "gives way" in the body, leading to and overt symptom or ailment. Any attempt to suppress, manage or control (a la allopathy) the symptom or ailment only drives the disease process deeper. Eventually, when the patient is led to believe he/she is cured, they are actually getting sicker!

House-Cleaning Anyone?
Homeopathy, on the other hand, identifies the very source of the disease process and then altogether reverses it. When this happens, not only is the presenting ailment cured; the patient is cured of all that ails him/her at a deeper level. He/she is thus permanently cured.

To present an analogy… a can of insect-repellent will take care of nasty bugs but only a round of pest-control can effect a thorough house-cleaning!

Lesson Learnt: Symptomatic treatment cannot cure. Homeopathy is a science that altogether reverses the disease process. This is another reason this wonderful art and science can cure diseases and disorders that are completely untreatable by conventional medicine - pathological and incurable cases that conventional medicine has long since given up on. House-cleaning anyone?

Open Sesame: The Key To Cracking A Case

It is with a sense of excitement that I write this post (apologies for the delay) as I have been preparing for an upcoming seminar (Mind & Miasms: Throwing The Constitutional Switch, which I will be presenting on April 3, 2011, Hahnemann Day). With preparation uppermost on my mind, I thought I would discuss the subject of my presentation here, which is the all-important role of the Mind in disease – its etiology, expression, experience and reversal – as the key that ‘opens a case’.

Details on my Facebook Page

The mind-body connection has been discussed ad nauseum and has even become something of a cliché to many, both homeopaths and the lay public. While many practitioners acknowledge this truth and even believe in it, they falter in its application as classical homeopathy meant it to be.

In other words, while many practitioners believe they are addressing mind and body, they apply this knowledge only in a general, superficial sort of way. These homeopaths are guilty of the “sin of symptomatic prescribing”, making them no different from conventional physicians whose mechanistic approach separates, rather than blends, mind and body.

Hippocrates

Forgive me if I sound holier than thou. I don’t mean to. This post is a heartfelt attempt to clear a few misconceptions while asserting one simple truth – that there are no shortcuts to practising homeopathy, no formulae to arrive at rubrics and to prescribing the right constitutional remedy.

The human mind is a wonderfully complex phenomenon, and although responsible for the infinite variety in human behaviour, its chicanery becomes the homeopath’s concern when leading the patient down the path of disease. Let us not forget that the myriad personality traits and their unique expression serve one single purpose – to defend. And herein lies the crux of Miasms.

Miasms Is Not A ‘Concept’

I have been teaching homeopathy for more than two decades and it never fails to surprise me when a student asks me to explain “the concept of Miasms”. Far from being a “concept”, Miasm is a state of being – it is THE primary state of existence of the human individual.

Before I get to the crux of this post, there’s something I would like to repeat from previous posts. Before human beings even walked this earth, the evolution of life itself began at the cellular level. And the way in which the cell reacts to injury and harm – its defences – is mirrored by the Mind. Thus, the Mind is nothing but an extension of the cell and its defences. Classical homeopathy, as we all know, calls this defensive pattern of reaction Miasm.

But it is not enough to determine a patient’s Miasm. No, it doesn’t take a genius to assess Maismatic states. Nor is it a challenge to figure out a patient’s key behavioural traits such as passive aggression, an all-pervasive feeling of abandonment or the drive to overachieve. These are external, outward expressions of the patient’s Miasmatic state.

Oh, That Elusive Key!

But the key to opening a case lies not in the ‘what’ but the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’. Behaviour is nothing but an outward expression of frustrations, disappointments, psychological traumas and other key issues that are turning points in an individual’s life. These are the ‘whys’ or internal reasons (what I call “key sensitivities”) that lead to the ‘what’ (behaviour). Thus, a behavioural description is insufficient, and arriving at rubrics on the basis of behaviour alone can be very misleading.

Hahnemann

Thus the homeopath must ask: What led to this behaviour”? What provoked the patient to become, say, flamboyant and exhibitionistic? What is this particular patient compensating for? What is he denying? What exactly does he fear most? Find the answer to these questions – determine the patient’s “key sensitivity” – and you’ve found the key that will open the case!

It is these key and core issues that are expressed in the patient’s disposition and behaviour, always of course through the prism of his / her Miasm. But to arrive at this “ah experience”, the practitioner must undertake a detailed Case Taking. Like a detective, the homeopath must probe deeper, listen to what the patient is not saying and read between the lines to find embedded clues, always guided by one question – What is the issue the patient is most sensitive to?

A detailed and carefully guided Case Taking will reveal exactly “what makes the patient tick”. Bingo! We have discovered the patient’s “key sensitivity"!

Divining a patient’s key sensitivity is not easy. It means walking through the rubble of a patient’s life with a divining rod loaded with a keen sense of intuition. It means weeding out irrelevant details while picking up relevant clues from debris of the patient’s life. The skilled homeopath eventually pieces them together to form a thread that sews mind and body, disease and health, patient and remedy.

It is only at this stage that the patient reveals their true drug picture. It is only now that you can arrive at the right rubrics and the right constitutional remedy. The right rubrics are terribly nuanced just as remedies are.

Playing “Matchmaker”

Let me illustrate this with an example from my own experience. Mr Shah was many things but most of all, he was a workaholic. In fact, he was obsessed with work, which over the years had become central to his life to the exclusion of all else. When work wasn’t on track or deadlines were not met, Mr Shah turned angry and he turned his rage at both employees and himself.

Kent

Mr Shah was also not a talker and the one thing he didn’t like talking about was himself! No, Case Taking wasn’t easy and I had to depend on details provided by his wife. I arrived at the following rubrics: workaholic; ambitious, anger answer obliged to and prescribed Nux Vomica.

A couple of months later, Mr Shah returned to my clinic. He wasn’t feeling better and his urticaria, indigestion and painful, ingrown toenails had grown worse. I asked myself where I had erred. This time, I probed further and spoke to Mr Shah alone while his wife waited outside. Patience and persistence paid off and after a short while, Mr Shah told me that before he was married, he had been jilted by a woman he had loved. However, the young lady refused to marry him as he wasn’t “doing well enough” (read “good job”).

There it was – an emotional, love angle that had injured him deeply. This broken relationship revealed Mr Shah’s “key sensitivity”. This key rejection had led him to compensate and project himself as an ambitious and successful businessman, an armour that would guard against future rejection.

This single fact – the key to Mr Shah’s case – completely altered Mr Shah’s rubrics. The new (and accurate) rubrics: workaholic; ambitious, anger answer obliged to, anger work about (Kneer) = Natrum Mur. Natrum Mur, in the sycotic phase, will exhibit affectation, extravagance and too exclusive.

After discovering the key to any case, the rest is easy. We must uncover how and why the patient progressed from one Miasmatic state to the other. Since all disease reflects a Syphilitic state, we are thus looking for the progression from Psora to Syphilis or Sycosis to Syphilis or, in a classic case, from Psora to Sycosis to Syphilis.

If the patient’s history reveals why the constitution has fallen sick, his key sensitivity will reveal exactly how he has coped; and what went out of control or why he has turned indifferent or what he is compensating for. Critically, his key sensitivity will link effect with cause. Thus, we determine his Miasm at both the physical and mental levels.

When this picture is complete, you will realise that every single time the patient switches from one Miasmatic state to another (“throws the constitutional switch”), it is the “key sensitivity” that turns the key. When we discover the “key sensitivity”, we find the absolute, perfect match, with the levers between human being and plant /animal / mineral meshing perfectly. Only then can we reverse the disease process completely, comprehensively and permanently.

Miasmatic Mathematics?

As I mentioned earlier, there are no shortcuts in homeopathy. Yet, many have fallen prey to them. There are homeopaths who make no bones about prescribing symptomatically (even though they are loathe to admitting it!) and there are those who seem to be more diligent.

Ortega

Alas, the latter, while paying lip service to the Miasmatic interpretation of disease, use set mathematical formulae within its scope to determine a patient’s rubrics. But merely taking Miasmatic mental and physical rubrics, adding thermals and thirst to them and then scouring the Materia Medica for a possible match is simply not good enough.

To guard against the “sin of oversimplification”, let us return to Mr Shah’s case. The patient said he “needed” to be in an air-conditioned environment at all times. Many would instantly classify him as hot. But his need for an air-conditioned environment was actually not linked in any way to his thermals. Mr Shah was a wealthy businessman and was simply used to air-conditioning! It was a lifestyle choice.

So, beware of the pitfalls while weeding the chaff from the grain. And always remember, to make all the levers of the case and remedy mesh perfectly, you must divine the patient’s key sensitivity – you have to play the game of dominos backwards!

 

Back To Basics

Here, I have selected key developments in the origin and evolution of the Doctrine of Miasms to reflect the mosaic of thoughts and shift in focus as the greats explored this wonderful healing science. But is an understanding of Miasms enough? Read on…

Hippocrates (460-370 BC)

In the 4th century BC, Hippocrates pronounced: “Omoia omoiois eisin Iamata”, which when translated from Greek means “similars cure similars”. Hippocrates believed that disease was caused by an imbalance in the four bodily humors as well as the influence of external forces. He firmly believed that medicine should aim to build the patient’s strength (immunity).

Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)

In spite of the law of “similia similibus curantur”, Samuel Hahnemann, founder of classical homeopathy, found that all medicines known to homeopathy failed to bring a real cure in diseases.

He later realised that there was something deeper that determined disease. Many years later, he propounded his Doctrine of Miasms. He called this deeper determining influence “a groove, a pit or a germ”, which he named “Miasm”. Hahnemann categorised this infection as the three Miasms.

Dr James Tyler Kent (1849-1916)

In Kent’s lectures, he said that thinking, willing and doing represent the three Miasms. “These are the three things in life from which finally proceed the chronic Miasm. The person who loves crime lives in it. It becomes part of his nature and shows itself in the external man. The man who loves truth and humanity, lives in that idea, and it becomes part of his nature and it can be seen in his looks and his life.”

Dr P S Ortega (1919-2005)

Ortega was the first to describe in detail the three basic Miasmatic themes or “big” Miasms. He was also the first to correlate Miasms with cell pathology or fundamental alterations in normal cellular functions. He classified these as Deficiency (Psora), Excess (Sycosis) and Perversion (Syphilis). Ortega said the original Miasmatic diseases that Hahnemann explored represent three fundamental expressions of imbalance and that these were inbuilt or innate predispositions as reflected by the human constitution.

Ortega also applied the doctrine of Miasm to the observation of the human being by describing its expression in an individual’s attitude and appearance.

He was also the first to reveal the Trimiasmatic drug picture.

Dr Prafull Vijaykar

Vijayakar

Building on Orgeta’s observations, Dr Vijaykar further explored the correlation between homeopathy and modern science as expressed in cell pathology, extending it to genetics, embryology and physiology.

He explained that every cell or living thing has a survival instinct. To survive, a cell has to defend itself against any kind of hostile stimulus. The primary reaction of any cell is to defend. Dr Vijayakar defines Miasm as the defence of a human being to any stimulus or action. He said it is how a human being defends and reacts that decides their defence. Dr Vijaykar equated Miasms to pathology at the cellular level.

Dr Vijayakar also elaborated on Ortega’s doctrine that Miasm is reflected in one’s constitution, looks, behaviour, nature and attitude.

His Chart of Suppression, which helps understand Hering’s Law of Cure, is invaluable in understanding the progression of disease from one layer to another.

Dr Rajan Sankaran

Sankaran

Dr Rajan Sankaran is best known for his understanding of disease as a delusion, his use of mind symptoms and dreams, his classification of remedy states into kingdoms and his additions to the existing Miasms. According to Dr Sankaran, Miasms represent the pace and desperation perceived by the Individual in a given situation. He classified pace and desperation into ten types: Acute, Typhoid, Ringworm, Psora, Sycosis, Malaria, Tubercular, Leprosy, Syphilis and Cancer.

His work on the plant kingdom and the elements has helped in the application of homeopathy by pointing the practitioner to the sensitivity of the patient in each case.

Conclusion

Every great homeopath before us and those among us too has made great strides in adding to this amazing system of medicine. Unfortunately, bickering, squabbling and petty one-upmanship occasionally eclipses these contributions.

We must applaud each one and strive to add to this great pool of knowledge and its application if we are to hone our skills and heal with confidence and certainty.

I thus conclude that while Miasm is the lock that guards the entry to a case, the patient’s core sensitivity is the key that opens it. After determining the patient’s key sensitivity, we must observe its expression at all Miasmatic levels.

Remember, just as every patient has a key sensitivity, every remedy too has its own unique sensitivity. It is only by understanding both that we can find the perfect match and arrive at the right constitutional remedy.

So how exactly does the practitioner determine this key sensitivity? Unfortunately, the answer cannot be found in the textbooks. The process is the result of assimilating the wisdom of the greats and blending it with the practitioner’s own intuition.

At my upcoming seminar, ‘Mind & Miasms: Throwing The Constitutional Switch’, I will demonstrate with video cases precisely how homeopaths can recognise the key sensitivity in different remedy pictures. Armed with this understanding, it is easy to treat even the most challenging and baffling cases – pathological, incurable and psychiatric disease cases.

Re-awaken the healer in you…

- Dr Anita Salunkhe, MD

MindHeal Homeopathy is an ISO-certified clinic based in Chembur, Mumbai. To find out more about The MindHeal Way, call: 022-25230530 / +91-9930363981. Or write to us at crm@mindheal.com Website: www.mindheal.org. We’ll be happy to answer all your queries.

Is Your Personality Making You Sick?

How many times have we complimented someone on how “well” they’re looking? You know, that “prosperous’, full-in-the-face, filled-out appearance that usually suggests good food, the comforts of life and pots of money.

Now I have nothing against living the good life but what I am trying to say, to use a cliché, is that looks can indeed be deceptive. To the lay reader, this may sound farfetched but acquiring that “prosperous look” may not be reason to bring out the champagne.

King of all he surveys?

It could be indicative of an individual burdened with the stress of “making it big” or an individual whose body has accumulated so much stress over time that it has had to add ballast or “harden” itself lest the scales tip into a dangerous state of cellular chaos and disease.

Our “prosperous” friend’s rounded and filled-out appearance betrays the face of what classical homeopathy calls the Sycotic Miasm. (Click here to read about the 3 Miasms and understand what each one means).

To recap, for first-time readers, Miasm is a state of defence whose purpose is to protect the individual against threat, both perceived and real. It is an energetic and biochemical stance or reaction adopted by mind and body whose sole and ultimate aim is self-preservation, no matter how twisted, self-defeating or debilitating it might be.

All life on earth including ourselves is powered by an innate intelligence that governs all growth and development. It’s what keeps us alive and kicking. It is this innate intelligence – or vital force – that prompts the body to sacrifice a part to save the integrity of the whole. This is the reason why we fall sick.

Psora: Mother of all Disease

Having said that, let’s talk about defences. Now, defences are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Think of defence or Miasm as a default setting of the human race, something we possess by virtue of being alive and human.

The human infant is much too vulnerable at birth. Merely adjusting to life, with or without traumatic experiences, calls upon the infant and adult alike to adopt various types of defensive reactions to the onus of living, as it were. The defences one uses necessarily belong to one’s Miasmatic repertoire and are determined by it.

Again, to recap a little, each of us belongs to one of 3 Miasms and the one that typifies you is determined by your genetic make-up, constitution and temperament. This is your basic nature, which forms the matrix that assimilates all your life experiences. It is the tendency of your body and therefore your mind and your personality to react to everyday living in a specific way as determined by your genes.

Thus, your defence system, and the diseases you develop are also determined by your Miasm.

Miasms & Disease

Sycosis: Fighting Fit

So, what is the connection between Miasms and Disease? Disease manifests itself when your vital force or life force is overwhelmed, burdened beyond its capacity and unable to absorb stress or fend off infectious agents.

All disease – and this may be of special interest to those who suffer from chronic complaints – are defences the body uses to contain, accommodate and localise a life force under continued assault. This assault could arise from a variety of sources, more often than not, mental, psychological and emotional factors like deep-seated feelings of insecurity, inferiority, guilt, fear of rejection, loss and abandonment.

It is important to note that the diseases we get are chosen by our Miasmatic state (not by pathogens and other infectious agents!). And when they surface, it indicates just one thing – that the body’s defences cannot cope and defend against stress or pathogens any more. The body then throws up a symptom or sign to signal that something is amiss.

Syphilis: The Destroyer

Since I wrote my last two posts, I have been receiving a stream of emails with questions about Miasms, how and why we “switch gears” from one Miasm to another and whether one Miasm is “better or worse” than the others.

‘Choosing’ To Self-Destruct

Before I answer these questions, I’d like to introduce the case of Richa Gosar, one of my patients who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and whose cure was as dramatic as it was quick. This, again, raises another question: Why do some people recover more quickly than others?

Richa’s arthritis was so severe it had deformed her wrists and hands and had affected her knees as well. The pain was so debilitating, it had completely confined her to bed for about a month before I consulted with her.

She said the pain sometimes drove her so crazy that she would throw things about the house and deliberately hurt her husband because she “blamed him for her predicament”. There is another angle to Richa’s situation – she had been treated by another homeopath for a decade before I met her but since she had only grown worse (watch the video), she threatened to “call the cops on him”!

Rather than take that as a warning, I found Richa’s story heart-rending. Not only did her rheumatoid arthritis indicate that she was in the Syphillitic Miasm but her behaviour too clearly reflected this. The Syphillitic Miasm, which is characterised by a tendency towards violence, destruction and being out of control, was mirrored in Richa's violent outbursts and her need to cause pain. It was clearly mirrored in the disease she chose – an autoimmune disease, where the body attacks itself.

Rheumatoid Arthritis: Homeopathy Cures In Months

I thought it would be simpler to negotiate the complex labyrinth of Miasms through a Q&A. So here goes. The general reader will thus be able to understand, not only how homeopathy works, but a Q&A will also provide a framework for individuals to corroborate their own experiences.

Why We Get Sick

What determines your Miasm?

There are essentially 3 Miasms – Psora, Sycotic and Syphillitic as explained briefly in my last post. Briefly, Psora is typified by extreme cellular and emotional sensitivity and diseases characterised by inflammation and pain. This is primarily how the cells, tissues, organs, body and mind react to stress (I use ‘stress’ as a generic term to denote physical, mental and emotional factors that burden or injure the mind and body).

The second Miasm, Sycosis, denotes a tendency towards accumulation and excess. Hence, under stress, the body produces fluids and tissues in excess of what is normal, to harden and protect the body from assault and injury. Sycotic defences and personality traits thus reflect ‘accumulation’ and ‘excess’.

The third Miasm, or the Syphillitic Miasm, is characterised by a destructive tendency – either inward or outward directed. This Miasm may also be characterised by extreme dullness, listlessness and a loss of interest in life. Diseases of the Syphilitic Miasm are clinical depression, uncontrollable anger, autoimmune diseases and the like etc.

The Miasm you belong to depends on your genetic endowment, biochemistry and inherited predispositions. Let us not forget another significant influencer of our personalities – the foetal environment and the forces that impinge on the mother during pregnancy and the birth process.

Yes, the mother’s moods, emotions, stresses, energy and intake of harmful substances all shape the developing foetus much more than we would like to imagine and they all shape the Miasm the infant is born into the world with. After all, what we elevate as ‘higher functions’ (of the pregnant mother) – thoughts, feelings, moods, etc – are nothing but complex chemical reactions within the body and these are easily passed on to the growing foetus.

All these inhertnt and inherited factors are collectively called your ‘constitution’. Thus, a homeopath prescribes a ‘constitutional remedy’.

Can one possess a combination of Miasmatic elements?

Every individual has a dominant Miasm. Although some individuals experience and exhibit a specific Miasm in its classic entirety, many of us are a combination of Miasmatic elements, despite our dominant Miasm.

Do all of us progress from Psora to the other two Miasms?

Not necessarily. One may be born into any one of the 3 Miasms. Let us take the example of a child born with the Syphillitic Miasm. An infant born with a pathological illness or disorder such as hydrocephaly, HIV or autism is typical of the third Miasm. This is evident in the physical destruction that is already present in the infant.

Does one remain in a single Miasm throughout life?

It all depends. One may remain in the same Miasm throughout one’s life or may switch Miasms. Switching gears or Miasms is very common. What is crucial is the direction of change. Psora to Sycosis to Syphilis is not healthy but the reverse is a good sign as the individual reverses from a state of mental and physical destructiveness through the ‘hardening’ stage and then into the Psoric or sensitive stage.

One’s state of health is always reflected in one’s appearance. In the following video, notice how my patients ‘look different’ on the road to recovery.

What's Your Miasm?

Why do we ‘switch’ Miasms?

This brings us to the all-important question of ‘switching’ or changing Miasmatic states. The short answer is: Of course, most of us change Miasms as we go through life, depending on life circumstances.

For instance, a cyst or benign tumour develop in individuals who are in the Sycotic Miasm. The development of the growth itself indicates a heightened disease process. But should the tumour turn destructive and cancerous, it indicates that the individual has ‘switched gears’ from the Sycotic Miasm to the Syphillitic Miasm.

Under sustained stress, a Psoric individual may develop simple arthritis with no structural damage to their joints. But when the immune system and the body are exhausted, the individual could turn Sycotic, exhibiting the development of osteophytes. If they were to switch to the Syphillitic Miasm, they would progress to osteoporosis.

This, of course, is a simplified explanation meant to illustrate a point. Many individuals develop different types of diseases through the course of their lives – but always according to the law of Miasms.

So what exactly makes us switch gears? Life is a complex and colourful thing full of hope, anticipation, pain, disappointments, excitement and happiness and a whole lot more. As we experience this marvellous miracle, most of us encounter experiences whose impact is sudden and powerful. It is these life experiences that often cause us to switch to a more healthy state or one ridden with disease.

Sometimes all it takes is the death of a loved one, a financial crisis or the break-up of a cherished relationship to push us into the Syphilitic Miasm. This doesn’t mean that everyone who experiences these crises switch gears. Like I said, the mind and body are a complex interplay of numerous factors and although there are definite rules, they always interface with the nuances of the individual’s constitutional make-up.

Also, it does not necessarily require a dramatic or sudden event to turn our Miasmatic gears. Often, disease results from the accumulation of stress over time. For instance, being in an abusive relationship, or a state of severe but sustained anxiety can also throw the switch. The process is subtle and is apparent only when signs and symptoms of disease show up.

And why focus only on the negative? On the flipside, positive life experiences that cleanse the self can play a crucial part in healing. Choosing homeopathy is just one such experience. Meditation, which calms the mind and body; an epiphany or a sudden awakening of the kind experienced by Eckhart Tolle as outlined in his book Power of Now; a sudden unburdening of guilt; and a change in life circumstances can all spontaneously reverse destructive processes in our minds and bodies without us making a conscious or deliberate attempt to do so. Have you ever wondered why some people ‘spontaneously recover’ from cancer and others are cured of addictions? Well, now you have the answer. This is self-healing at its best!

How fast do we switch gears?

How often have you heard of someone who has “died of grief” or perished soon after a debilitating health diagnosis? Alternatively, there are others who live long after these events take place.

The answer lies, not in any dark or sorrowful emotion but in one’s constitutional make-up. Sometimes, it takes years, even decades, for disease to develop. These individuals have a ‘slow constitution’, one which is slow to react to change of any kind. On the flipside, their road to good health is longer than those who have a 'fast constitution'.

‘Dying of grief’ or the shock of a grave diagnosis merely reflects a mind and body that has switched to Syphillitic mode very quickly because in homeopathic terms, death is the ultimate ‘destruction of life’.

Bear in mind that your constitutional make-up is decided by your genes and foetal environment and it is the basic matrix of your existence, a filter through which all experience passes and are assimilated.

How does a homeopath determine your Miasm?

There are many tools a homeopath uses to determine Miasms. The first and most obvious one is your appearance. Whenever a patient walks through my clinic door, I almost instinctively observe their facial features and body language.

In fact, Homeopathic Facial Analysis has been used as a very effective medium to assess Miasmatic states, and researchers at the Victorian College of Classical Homeopathy in Australia are conducting fascinating research into this area.

There are other ways to determine your Miasm, and often a combination of tools provides a complete and holistic picture. Arriving at the ‘right constitutional remedy’ is a nuanced process and it requires a considerable amount of information.

The Case Taking provides a wealth of information about your mental make-up, sensitivities, life circumstances, motives, attitudes and sensibilities. So, even if your Miasm is apparent from your appearance and body language, a full consultation compliments it by providing the whys and wherefores.

Thus, it is not without reason that classical homeopaths have been called ‘detectives’, divining clues to an individual’s mental and physical make-up. We have also been accused of ‘asking too many questions’ during consultation. “You have to tell them everything,” is an oft-used phrase used to describe the initial interview.
  
Personality & Miasms

Allow me to clarify that a homeopath does not engage in counselling and although the list of questions in the initial consultation is indeed long, the reason is precisely to procure clues to your Miasmatic state.

It’s incredible how much we give away without realising it, how much we say through our expressions and how much we slip between the lines. A skilled homeopath assimilates all the information, sews it together and then draws up a picture of your Miasmatic state.

So even if the initial consultation lasts around 60 minutes, that’s just 60 minutes to being handed a ticket to the superhighway of god health!

This is the second and concluding part of our previous discussion on Miasms.

Re-awaken the healer in you...

- Dr Anita Salunkhe, MD

MindHeal Homeopathy is an ISO-certified clinic based in Chembur, Mumbai. To find out more about The MindHeal Way, call: 022-25230530 / +91-9930363981. Or write to crm@mindheal.com. Website: www.mindheal.org. We’ll be happy to answer all your queries.