Naturopathy -the Basics (3)

It was probably Hippocrates who was the first physician to say that symptoms are like golden pearls of information that are to be used to find out the true cause of a condition. Symptoms are merely the patient's expression - they are like a flag being waived in the practitioner's direction saying' this is what my body is attempting to express, but please find the cause'. Symptoms should never be suppressed with chemical drugs or such like. We have to take the whole person into account with our treatments. We are not just jumble of dissimilar organs and tissues that require a different medical approach for each - instead we are a wonderful blend of togetherness! If one part of the body starts to fail, in time it will cause others to fail. This topic of holism is nicely answered in many of the fixed laws and principles of traditional medicine such as the 'Mother -Son' and the 'Five Transformations (Elements)'.

Constantine Hering (1800-1880) spent his life examining the human body and he gave us 3 laws of cure. He states that when patients are treated with natural methods, cure takes place in certain directions - from above downwards, from the internal towards the external and that during cure symptoms appear in  areverse order than they did with the formation of disease. Quite simply he was saying that when a patient is being treated with naturopathic methodology (fasting, homoeopathy, herbs, acupuncture, reflexology, healing etc.) he/she takes the opportunity to self heal and do it in specific ways according to the laws. An example of 'top to bottom' would be the migraine headache that eases with correct treatment only to present an upper dorsal tension which, in turn, gives way to low back pain. An example of the 'interio-exterior' law would be the asthma that eases with correct treatment only to give way to eczema on the skin. The asthma may have been caused originally by applying suppressive treatment to the ezcema (cortizone based ointments for example). The return of symptoms, as outlined in the third law may be transient or long lasting. They are often called the 'healing crisis' and are simple the person's self healing vital force attempting to produce homoeostasis within. This so called 'unitary' theory has stemmed from the 3rd law. It states that dis-ease is a force (of energy) that proceeds from organ to organ and from system to system throughout our lives, always getting deeper and producing a more chronic symptom picture. When self healing commences, the patient's healing energy is called into action and the symptoms re-appear and proceed from the deep towards the superficial. This is often why when, after a couple of treatment sessions, a patient will remark that they feel better within even though symptomatically they may be the same.

Next time - What is Vital Force!!!