People Watching
For the eighth time in a week your humble reporter found himself at the Atlanta airport. Ahem, I should say, of course, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
It’s a perfect place for people watching. New statistics out today have shown that in 2006 it held its position as the world’s busiest airport, followed by O’Hare in Chicago and London’s Heathrow.
I was chastened to realize that I have been in every one of the top ten airports in the last year or so. For people who like such things, here’s the list of the top ten busiest airports with the number of millions passengers who’ve been through each:
- Atlanta 84.8
- O’Hare 76.2
- Heathrow 67.5
- Tokyo’s Haneda 65.2
- Los Angeles International 61
- Dallas/Fort Worth 60
- Paris, Charles de Gaulle 56.8
- Frankfurt 52.8
- Beijing Capital International Airport 48.5
- Denver International 47.3
Spending a lot of time in airports can stress the physical, psychological and subtle systems of the body, as well as making it easy to lose touch with your spirituality.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: for over two decades I had learned and then taught methods for building resilience and bouncing back from adversity. But it wasn’t until I started flying a quarter of a million miles a year that I got the chance to test and refine the methods under the most extreme conditions. Engineers often talk about taking their constructions and “testing them to destruction.” I did the same thing with the methods I teach. If they couldn’t help people cope with flights, illness or job loss, then I discarded them and looked for something else. And if they didn’t also have another piece – a way to grow in response to adversity, they were out too.
The result has been a whole raft of techniques and methods that have been tried and tested again and again. Over the next year I shall be rolling out a great many of these techniques in a novel format.
Watch this space!
“Every adversity carries with it the seed of equal or greater benefit.”
–Napoleon Hill (American Founder of Personal Success Literature, 1883-1970)
“From the withered tree, a flower blooms.”
–Zen Buddhist Saying
“How you handle adversity in the workplace tends to have much more impact on your career than how you handle the good stuff. The people who know how to overcome adversity are the ones who rise to the top of the organization."
— Martin E. P. Seligman (American Psychologist, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Former President of the American Psychological Association, 1941-)
“Adversity is the diamond dust with which Heaven polishes its jewels.”
— Robert Leighton (Scottish Presbyterian Bishop and Classical Scholar, 1611-1684)
“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous times would have lain dormant.”
–Horace (a.k.a. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Roman Poet and Satirist, 65-8 B.C.E.)
“Adversity is not undesirable. Because, it is only when you are down and out in life that you can realize its true value.”
–Swami Ramdas (a.k.a. Papa Ramdas, Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1884-1963)
Daniel J. Benor's WHEE
I have become convinced that the so-called tapping therapies have a great deal to offer many people, as bizarre a they appear the first time that you encounter them!
I have recently come across another form of therapy developed by the holistic psychiatrist and author Daniel J. Benor. I have met Dan many times, and he is one of the most knowledgeable people that I know when it comes to healing, and this new technique seems to be helping a great many people.
He calls it WHEE: Whole Healing – Easily and Effectively, a.k.a. Wholistic Hybrid derived from EMDR and EFT.
Like the other tapping therapies, it seems often to be a quick way to release psychological and physical pains, and it is said to enhance performance in sports. Interestingly, it also seems to help some allergies. There are many helpful resources and a articles at the parent website: Wholistic Healing Research.
If you are looking for more options in your own path toward wellness, or if you have some stubborn problem to deal with, WHEE and the accompanying materials might well be worth your attention.
Back Pain, The Brain and Pain Cycles
A German research team using a specialized imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to look at the differences between back pain sufferers’ and healthy volunteers’ brains found that individuals suffering from chronic low back pain also had micro-structural changes in their brains. The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago by the lead researcher Dr Jurgen Lutz, a radiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.
DTI tracks the movement of water molecules in the brain’s gray and white matter. Individual water molecules are constantly in motion, colliding with each other and other nearby molecules, causing them to spread out, or diffuse. DTI allows us to analyze water diffusion in the tissues of the brain. In normal white matter, water diffuses in only one direction. So if they are moving in the “wrong” direction, we can use this as an indication that there are changes in the fiber pathways.
The investigators studied 20 patients who were experiencing chronic back pain with no precisely identifiable cause and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers. DTI was performed to measure the diffusion in several areas of each patient’s brain.
They discovered the brains of patients with chronic back pain had a more complex and active microstructure compared with the healthy volunteers’ brains.
The changes were found in regions of the brain associated with pain-processing, emotion and stress response, including the cingulate gyrus, postcentral gyrus and superior frontal gyrus.
Although it is possible that theses structural disturbances are a cause of chronic pain, it is more likely to be the other way round.
This leads us to a very important concept that is not talked about as much as it should be: it is the idea of pain cycles. Pain cycles can have a physical or psychological origin and are thought to be maintained by some of the centers in the brain that process pain and emotional distress. The two are often mixed together: pain is extremely common in both depression and in bipolar disorder, and pain can, of course, make you feel depressed.
Theses pain cycles will often persist for long periods after the original cause of the pain has gone. So we may continue to feel pain long after a broken bone has healed, or we may continue to suffer emotionally long after a bad relationship should have been dead and buried. Many interventions like acupuncture or injecting steroids or anesthetics into trigger points can interfere with the pain cycle. Similarly there are many therapies, including some of the tapping therapies, that seem to “re-set” some of the systems in the nervous and subtle systems of the body.
In my forthcoming book Sacred Cycles, I talk a lo about these vicious pain cycles and how to interrupt them.
“Pain is part of being alive and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.”
–Rabbi Harold S. Kushner (American Rabbi Aligned with the Progressive Wing of Conservative Judaism and Writer, 1935-)
“Softness is a dream in every ache to become a better soul.”
–John Kells (Irish-born British Grand Master of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, 1940-)
Of Horses and Hearts
I live on a horse farm, so I see the interactions between horses and between horses and humans almost every day. Horses are extraordinarily sensitive creatures with their own sets of emotions and highly developed sense of propriety. They are also very good barometers for the emotional states of humans. We could not work out why one of the horses at another farm was consistently bratty with one particular rider, until we discovered that she was high on ecstasy. Her “energy” was a mess and it totally confused the horse.
On the other hand, horses are often used therapeutically with emotionally and mentally ill and handicapped children and adults. My old horse – Mr. Black – was a perfect therapy horse: nothing ever fazed him.
There is now some more research demonstrating one of the possible mechanisms by which horses may be able to pick up on a rider’s emotional states.
I have a couple of times mentioned some of the work being done at the Institute of HeartMath in California.
Some of their work is controversial, but most has been quite convincing.
I have for several years now been interested in the phenomenon of Heart Rate Variability (HRV). As the name implies, it is a measurement of the beat-to-beat variation in the heart’s rate. Alteration (primarily reductions) of HRV has been reported to be associated with various pathologic conditions like hypertension, hemorrhagic shock, and septic shock. It has found its role as a predictor of mortality after an acute myocardial infarction. It may also be disturbed in major depressive disorder.
I knew about it from the days that I worked at the National Heart Hospital in London, but Roger Callahan – the discover of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) – has been able to show that TFT is one of the few therapies that can normalize it. We also discussed it in the context of the vagal nerve and compassion.
From a pilot study by the Institute and Dr. Ellen Gehrke from Alliant University it appears that a horse’s heart rhythms reflect their emotional state and can respond to the emotional state of a nearby human. When in contact, a horse’s heart rate may mirror a human’s emotions, implying a close unspoken form of communication between the two.
The study took place at Dr. Gehrke’s ranch in San Diego, where electrocardiogram (ECG) recorders were placed on her and also on four of her horses. All five were monitored during a 24-hour period in which the horses were under a variety of normal conditions and activities such as eating, grooming or being alone. Measurements were also done while they were being ridden and accompanied by Dr. Gehrke.
The ECG recorders projected increased coherent HRV patterns for the horses during times of close, calm contact between them and Dr. Gehrke. Coherent HRV patterns have been shown to be the result of positive emotions and facilitate brain function.
Dr. Gehrke said, “Horses receive information from body language and give feedback. They don’t think very much, they feel. They are very emotional and honest. They also have a powerful impact on your sense of self and ability to lead.”
I don’t think that cardiac coherence is the whole story. They also respond to micro-movements – small movements of the legs, arms and trunk that are all but imperceptible to humans – and we have seen many of them sense events at long range. I travel a great deal and come home at odd times. But several witnesses saw Mr. Black start to become very excited 20-30 minutes before I would arrive home. In England, Rupert Sheldrake has amassed a considerable body of evidence to support those observations.
Nonetheless, this is very important research and I shall be very interested to see the final version once it has been subject to peer review.
“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”
–Sir Winston Churchill (English Statesman, British Prime Minister, 1940-1945 and 1951-1955, and, in 1953, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1874-1965)
“A man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot.”
–John Steinbeck (American Writer and, in 1962, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1902-1968)
“Wherever man has left his footprint in the long ascent from barbarism to civilization we will find the hoofprint of the horse beside it.”
–John Moore (American Man of Letters and Former Archivist and Librarian for the State of Tennessee, 1858-1929)
“I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.”
–J.D. Salinger (American Writer, Student of Advaita Vedanta and Recluse, 1919-)
And finally:
“In my opinion, a horse is the animal to have. Eleven-hundred pounds of raw muscle, power, grace, and sweat between your legs – it’s something you just can’t get from a pet hamster!”
–Unknown Author
Stonehenge
One of the most amazing monuments in England is Stonehenge. These days most people cannot enter it, but when I first saw it as a teenager in the early 1970s you could still go inside, and it was one of the places that I was taught to dowse. The power of the place has undoubtedly risen with its fame and mystery, but the fact remains that most sensitive people are quite strongly affected by it.
Some of the stones were probably brought from South Wales and the entire Stonehenge complex was built in several construction phases spanning
about 2,000 years, although there is evidence for activity both before and
afterwards on the site. There was a wooden henge of the site long before the stones arrived.
The BBC is reporting that archaeologists have discovered a huge ancient settlement used by some of the people who built Stonehenge.
Excavations at Durrington Walls have uncovered remains of ancient houses. People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual feasting and funeral ceremonies.
It is thought that in ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people, making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain. The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC – according to the researchers, the same period that Stonehenge was being built or re-built.
Mike Parker Pearson from the University of Sheffield, said, “In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards.”
The researchers have excavated eight houses in total at Durrington. But they have identified many other probable dwellings using geophysical surveying equipment. They think there could have been at least one hundred houses, each measuring about 5m (16ft). They are square, made of timber, with a clay floor and central hearth. The archaeologists found 4,600-year-old rubbish covering the floors of the houses.
And archaeologists love rubbish!
The evidence suggest that Stonehenge drew Neolithic people from all over the region, who came for massive feasts in the midwinter where they consumed prodigious quantities of food. The bones were then tossed on the floors of the houses.
Durrington has its own henge made of wood, which is strikingly similar in layout to Stonehenge. It was discovered in 1967.
Both henges line up with events in the astronomical calendar – but not the same ones. Stonehenge is aligned with the midwinter solstice sunset, while Durrington’s timber circle is aligned with the midwinter solstice sunrise. So it would seem that they were complementary.
Stonehenge lies on an extraordinary system of ley lines that crisscross the British Isles, parts of Northern France and parts of China. The lines are usually dismissed as pseudoscience, and it is certainly sometimes difficult to follow what some writers have to say on the subject. There is also a small body of evidence that some people can sense these ley lines. For people who can, the sensation is much the same as feeling the acupuncture meridians of the body. This apparent similarity has lead some experts in Feng Shui to approach personal wellness in the same way that they recommend the placement of plants, mirrors and other objects. Both the body and the land are looked at like gardens that need to be cultivated.
With some people, where they live, how they lie in bed and where they are treated can all be affected by these lines. Others don’t seem to notice a thing. I was once treating a lawyer with insomnia, and things were not going well. Until she went on vacation to England and she was fine for a couple of weeks. On her return to the USA we just moved her bed and the problem was solved. I just wish that it were always that easy!
It took me a long time to be persuaded that what I and others felt at Stonehenge and along these lines was real and not just make believe. But now I am convinced. The Ancients knew something about the relationship of the land to their lives, and we are finally recovering some of that knowledge for ourselves.
Separation and Integration
“The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal.”
–A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)
Many of us feel that we have lost or forgotten something important and it nags at us. In the Matrix, Morpheus tries to capture this when he says, “There is a splinter in your mind.”
What we have forgotten is the hidden secret not only to who we are but also to what we may become.
There are hundreds of thousands of books, websites, classes, groups and, of course, religions that all say that they have an answer to those two questions. And I tend to believe that they probably all do. But each has only a part of the puzzle.
Integrated Medicine was always designed to provide answers synthesized from the very best of what is already available.
I am always being asked whether Integrated Medicine is an approach toward health and wellness, a method of achieving personal growth and development or some form of holistic treatment?
The answer is “Yes!”
The goal is not to replace other forms of self-care or treatment, but to integrate and enhance them. The reason for using the term “Integrated,” and why it is a little different from Integrative or Integral medicine, is that it aims to:
- Integrate an individual’s current health and wellness practices into a combined whole
- Integrate all the parts of a person, for the quotation is true: the role of the ego is to separate itself from the rest of the Universe, and healing come from the Source: your Informational Matrix, your Inner Light or Soul
- Integrate healing methods that will ensure that each aspect of you being is addressed and respected so that the healing can flow. Not only of your body, but of your mind, relationships, the planet, society, subtle systems and your spirituality
- Integrate your views about the nature of reality: healing is not simply a matter of fixing a physical machine. In any case, this is not always possible. The objective is not to “use” methods and insights to heal the body. It is rather to ask that your Overself or Higher Self teach you the right perception of your body and your mind. That is why I am always recommending that the first thing that you can do for yourself is to develop your intuition so that it provides a delicate counterbalance to your ability to reason. If you have ever been to a gym, you know the importance of exercising not just your bicep muscle, but your triceps muscle as well. One without the other will make you lopsided. So it is with intellect and intuition.
- Integrate the personal you with something beyond yourself. The ultimate aim of Integrated Medicine is not simply to stay well, but to return to Wholeness
And all have been done already with tens of tousands of people around the globe.
Will you be next?
“To have a curable illness and to leave it untreated except for prayer is like sticking your hand in a fire and asking God to remove the flame.”
— Unknown Author (Sometimes attributed to “Sandra L. Douglas”)
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
–Abraham Lincoln (American Statesman and, from 1861-1865, the 16th President of the United States, 1809-1865)
“In the integral Yoga, the integral life down to even the smallest detail has to be transformed, to become Divine.”
— The Mother of Pondicherry (a.k.a. Mirra Alfassa, French-born Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1878-1973)
The Biology of Beauty
When we think about the characteristics that make someone physically attractive most of us probably think that they are purely subjective and culture bound. But recent evidence suggests that this is not true.
In an astonishingly comprehensive study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Devendra Singh from the University of Texas at Austin has analyzed references to fictional beauties from modern times back to early Indian literature. He found that slimness of the waist was the most common term of praise from an author.
I found it very surprising that this association even seemed to hold in times when a more Rubenesque figure was in fashion.
But I think that the key is not the actual number of inches, but the ratio of waist to hips.I have commented several times that the waist to hip ratio is probably a better physical marker of health risk than body mass index (BMI). Though even this needs to be supplemented by other tests.
Professor Singh’s work has nothing to do with making value judgments, but is instead looking at some of the factors involved in mate selection and this work adds to evidence highlighting the role of the ratio between waist and hips in attracting a mate.
All the recent furor over the dangerously shrinking fashion model has again raised the question that although female waist size has become important in modern Western society and culture – and is likely a factor fueling eating disorders – it is not completely clear whether this waist obsession has always been the case.
In what can only be described as a labor of love, Singh has spent years examining representations of women through history, and in one study, he measured the waist-hip ratio of hundreds of statues from different eras.
In the most recent research, he looked at how "attractive" women were depicted in literature, analyzing more than 345,000 texts, mainly from the 16th to 18th centuries. While most of the writings were British and American, there was a small selection of Indian and Chinese romantic and erotic poetry dating from the 1st to the 6th century of the Christian era.
Singh had this to say: "The common historical assumption in the social sciences has been that the standards of beauty are arbitrary, solely culturally determined and in the eye of the beholder. The finding that the writers describe a small waist as beautiful suggests instead that this body part – a known marker of health and fertility – is a core feature of feminine beauty that transcends ethnic differences and cultures."
Other studies have found a link between a woman’s waist to hip ratio and her fertility which may offer some explanation as to why during evolution it became a factor in selecting a mate. The ratio, like breast size and smooth complexion, is partly under the control of estrogen, which is, of course, a key hormone in the maintenance of fertility.
There has been a great deal of work – and even more speculation – about why men and women are found physically attractive. The idea is that beauty is an indicator of genetic and developmental health. There is also some evidence that physically "attractive" people are healthier than less attractive people.
In 2004 Satoshi Kanazawa and Jody Kovar from the London School of Economics published an intriguing study in the journal Intelligence with the controversial title: “Why Beautiful People are More Intelligent."
The basic idea is that evolutionary processes have, both genetically and socially, led to what we call assortative mating, in which partners have been chosen for their strength, good health and even height: all attributes which have given their possessors a high status. I must be honest that even though I’ve seen the data, when I see and hear some of the comments of a few people in the public eye I still question the association between beauty and intelligence.
There appear to be a few features that characterize physically attractive faces: bilateral symmetry, averageness, and secondary sexual characteristics. Attractive faces tend to be more symmetrical than unattractive faces.
Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) – random differences between the two sides of the face – is usually not found to be attractive. And this may be why: it increases with exposure to parasites, pathogens, and toxins during development. FA also increases with genetic disruptions, such as mutations and inbreeding. Developmentally and genetically, healthy individuals have less FA and more symmetry in their facial and bodily features.
Across many societies around the world, there is a positive correlation between parasite and pathogen prevalence in the environment and the importance placed on physical attractiveness in mate selection. The theory is that in societies where there are a lot of pathogens and parasites it is especially important to avoid individuals who have been afflicted with them when they select mates.
Facial averageness in another feature that increases physical attractiveness: faces with features close to the population average are more attractive than those with extreme features. The evolutionary reasons for why average faces in the population are more attractive than extreme faces are not as clear as the reasons for why facial symmetry is attractive. Some current speculation is that facial averageness results from the heterogeneity rather than homogeneity of genes so that would mean that individuals with average faces are more resistant to a larger number of parasites. Therefore like FA, facial averageness may be an indicator of genetic health and parasitic resistance.
There is good data that infants as young as 2-3 months gaze longer at a face that adults have judged attractive rather than a face judged unattractive. And other research has shown that 12 month old infants exhibit more observable pleasure, more play involvement, less distress, and less withdrawal when interacting with strangers wearing attractive masks, than with strangers wearing unattractive masks. They also play significantly longer with facially attractive dolls than with unattractive dolls.
2-12 months is not nearly enough time for infants to have learned and internalized the cultural standards of beauty through socialization and media exposure. So the research data seems to suggest that the standards of beauty might be innate, rather than learned.
Even though there is all this evidence for a evolutionary and biological factors in beauty, it is a mistake to use such a simple model to try and explain away all of our partner preferences.
By the time that they leave high school, most people have grasped that physical attractiveness is an important first step in attraction, but after that becomes highly
subjective: delightful but not essential.
This work also fails to take into account the attractiveness of factors like radiance, humor, attention, attentiveness, energy, self-assurance, movement, grace and gesture.
Neither can it take account curiosity, presence, charisma, compassion and spiritual awareness. All of these can be extremely attractive, but are hard to explain on simple biological and evolutionary models.
And, by the way, all of these additional factors can be learned: whatever your weight and measurements, whether you are tall or less so and whatever your age.
You can learn to develop many of the things that genetics may have forgotten.
“Beauty awakens the soul to act.” –Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet and Philosopher, 1265-1321)
“Beauty is not in the face, beauty is a light in the heart.” –Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese Poet and Philosopher, 1883-1931)
The Irreducible Mind
I get a great many requests for recommendations for books and papers that either debate or provide support for the topics that I discuss on this blog and in my books and articles. That is why I’ve been constructing some reading lists at Amazon.com and linking them to this website.
A friend recently commented that she was surprised that the book and CD series, Healing, Meaning and Purpose that was created for a general audience, contains over 800 books and websites. My response to that was that I think that my readers and listeners are all grown ups who should be able to check everything that any author says!
The days of authors or speakers waving their hands about and making airy statements are finally coming to an end. If an author tells you that "science" proves what they are saying, they must show that they understand the topic themselves. I just saw yet another paper in which the writer said, "Quantum mechanics proves what I’m saying, but let’s not get into that." Well, that’s just the point: let us indeed get into that to see if what you are saying holds water!
Which brings me to a book that I’ve just read and reviewed. It is entitled Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century and it is an extraordinary achievement. For the last century, the vast majority psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have believed that thoughts, emotions and consciousness are the product of physical processes in the brain. And , of course, the brain is heavily involved in many mental phenomena. The question has always been if neurological activity is sufficient to explain the whole of human experience.
This new book presents the most comprehensive and critical analysis of phenomena normally ignored by psychology, including mystical experiences, the placebo response, stigmata and hypnotic suggestion, memories that survive physical death, near death experiences, automatic writing, out-of-body experiences, apparitions, deathbed visions and many more.
It comes to the inescapable conclusion that the mind is not generated by the brain but is instead limited and constrained by it. There is no hand waving, and no "science has shown that…" Instead everything is laid out in front of you. There are a hundred pages of citations and references. Despite that, it is an easy and enjoyable read.
I have no personal connection with the book, but the next time that someone says that there’s no proof for any of these phenomena, and that emotions, cognitions and consciousness are just byproducts of biochemical processes in the brain, refer them to this book.
And if Santa brought you any gift cards that you haven’t used yet, you might want to have a look at the book for yourself.
Dark Matter Mapped
As we have discussed before, many creative scientists working at the
cutting edge of physics and astronomy have a strong intuition that dark
matter is more than just an astronomical curiosity, but something of
immeasurable importance to all of us.
An extraordinary article was published this morning in the journal Nature.
Dark matter does not reflect or emit detectable light, yet it is thought to account for 80-90% of the mass in the Universe. Using the Hubble telescope astronomers have presented data at the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, Washington, showing a map of the cosmic scaffolding of dark matter upon which the stars and galaxies are assembled.
The research involved over 1,000 hours of observations followed by many more thousands of hours of analysis. The research provides the best evidence yet that the distribution of galaxies follows the distribution of dark matte, because dark matter attracts “ordinary” matter through its gravitational pull.
Previous studies of dark matter relied on simulations, this one details its large-scale distribution in 3 dimensions. As the authors said in a press conference, it is like suddenly seeing a map of a city for the first time, when before all you had to go on was an aerial picture of the street lamps at night.
What is fascinating is that this is direct confirmation of what until now had just been a theory. But interesting problems remain, so we certainly do not know everything yet.
Students of the Ageless Wisdom will be intrigued by these findings that seem to echo predictions and statements about the Universe made many centuries ago.
There are some amazing pictures here.
I shall keep you informed as this story develops and as its practical implications are revealed.
Growing Evidence for the Efficacy of Homeopathic Medicine
When you first hear about homeopathy it sounds like utter nonsense: "like curing like"; vital forces; miasms and super-dilute remedies that no longer contain a single molecule of the original substance.
The trouble is that – apart from two centuries of clinical experience – there is a respectable and growing body of evidence that there is indeed something to homeopathy. David Reilly from the Center for Integrative Care in Glasgow, Scotland, has written a very useful paper that is available for free download.
Over in the "Resources" section on the left hand side of the blog I have a link to a reading list that I put together for Amazon.com.
There are many good introductory books on homeopathy, and I have mentioned some of the best. There are also a few books that delve into some of the science that could well provide a mechanism by which homeopathy may work.
In the coming weeks I shall be putting together some more reading list as well as summaries of the research into this fascinating field.
There is a final point. Homeopathic medicines, Flower essences and many forms of "Energy medicine" seem to have been becoming more effective over the last few decades, and this observation was one of the reasons for believing that New Laws of Healing are emerging.
Let me give you a simple example. Two weeks ago, I heard about a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy was being seen because of a quite severe mood problem. She had such severe morning sickness that she asked to have a trash can positioned next to her chair. Many experts believe that morning sickness begins as a reflex to expel food toxins that might harm the baby, but then develops into a neurologically-mediated cycle.
The patient had never heard of homeopathy and probably did not understand why she was asked some apparently irrelevant questions. She answered that she would feel better in the evening, if she applied pressure or a wash cloth to her stomach. She also reported that the sudden cold spell had made her much worse, and that stress and spicy foods made her much worse.
She was given the remedy Nux vomica in a very low potency. The nausea and vomiting stopped immediately, never to return. And her mood – which had been bad for many months before she became pregnant – also improved.
This is another one of those "N of one" reports, and the plural of anecdote is not data. But I was trained by homeopaths, some of whom had been in practice since the 1930s, and all had sat at the feet of some of the greatest homeopaths on the last century. Yet they all said that problems like morning sickness normally need repeated treatments over several days. Not a single treatment and it’s gone.
If you keep you eyes open you will be amazed to see how the efficacy of some forms of treatment appear to be getting better, while some others are becoming less effective with time.
