The Principles of Homeopathy
The principles on which Classical Hahnemannian Homeopathy is based are:
- Vital Force – the life energy that animates every living being. Homeopathic treatment seeks to stimulate and balance this energy in order to improve health.
- Susceptibility – a person’s resistance to disease. Homeopathic treatment works with a person’s susceptibility in order to strengthen their resistance to disease.
- Miasms – the homeopathic term to describe a person’s inherited predisposition to develop certain types of illness. Homeopathic treatment seeks to reduce the impact of these predispositions.
- Provings – homeopathic drug testing. Healthy human volunteers take homeopathic remedies until they develop (temporary) symptoms, which are carefully recorded and collated. This information is used by homeopaths in order to select a remedy.
- Potentization – the unique process by which homeopathic remedies are made. It is a carefully controlled sequence of repeated dilution and succussion (shaking).
- Law of Similars – a homeopathic remedy which gives rise to a certain pattern of symptoms in a proving (see #4) is capable of relieving the same set of symptoms in a sick person. Homeopaths are trained to select the one remedy (out of over 3,000) that will most closely match the symptoms of the client.
- Minimum Dose – homeopathic treatment gives the smallest possible amount of a remedy, just enough to stimulate the healing response of the Vital Force (see #1). Only one remedy is given at a time.
- Direction of Cure – as healing proceeds, symptoms improve in a certain sequence:
- symptoms move from above downwards
- symptoms move from more vital organs to less vital ones
- symptoms move from the inside of the body towards its surface
- symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their appearance