Physician, Heal Thyself

I often hear people refer to homeopaths as healers. Each time I hear this, I am a bit taken aback, especially when it comes from a fellow homeopath. It is my humble opinion that we each are responsible for our own healing and could not bring healing to another by our own volition. We may initiate a process with another individual either by prayer, good intention, education, or homeopathy but ultimately it is the derangement in the person's vital force that produces disease and it will be the very same vital force that establishes order and healing. We may inspire, but we do not do the healing.

The exception to this rule is when we heal ourselves. We are the only ones we can heal and it is our responsibility to our clients and ourselves to do this healing. As a fellow member of the human race, we are bound by the same natural laws as those we are trying to help. So we must do all we can to heal our lives and be free to use our reason-gifted mind so that it can employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence. (Samuel Hahnemann, Organon Aphorism 9)

We must become the unprejudiced observer that Hahnemann spoke of. If we do not heal our own wounds then we will carry those with us and they will influence our own ability to see the case clearly, without prejudice. When we still have our own wounds, it is nearly impossible to see beyond them. When we have a case before us that resonates with our wounds, we may as well be giving a remedy for ourselves instead of our client. We can only help those that we are healthier than. We could never deeply help someone who is healthier than ourselves. Our ability to perceive their dis-ease will be limited.

For us to heal, we need to take a very hard look at how committed we are to our own healing. It is a very good idea to seek homeopathic help from a fellow professional homeopath. Trying to treat ourselves is like trying to see the backs of our heads. Having a good homeopath who can help us heal is essential. We can learn much about the healing process as we experience it ourselves.  

Lonny Jarrett MAc, the author of Nourishing Destiny, has written an article for the California Journal of Oriental Medicine that really sums this up well. Here is an excerpt from the article. I have taken the liberty of substituting homeopathy for acupuncture here:

"For too many of us, the 'holistic' and 'integral' nature of Homeopathic medicine remains an intellectual abstraction that is, for the most part, confined to the cognitive line of our development as practitioners. We recognize theoretically that health is a manifestation of the synergy in a delicate web of functional relationships and that an optimal state is reached when every function performs it's task for the sake of the whole. But how many of us practitioners have reached a state of development where we are literally living 'our' lives for the sake of the whole. It's one thing to understand homeopathic theory and it's another thing entirely to possess a level of personal integrity that literally becomes a clinical force for good, in and of itself."

"First and foremost, we who are holding ourselves out as 'healers' must become the types of human beings that inspire in patients the felt sense of the possibility of living at a higher stage of development and the urge to strive for that goal. We must become the type of people whose presence it is impossible to maintain cynicism regarding the possibility of achieving a higher state of integration. Only in setting our wills on this type of development ourselves will we be able to activate a patient's will as the driving force that lies at the root of authentic integral healing. Minimally, this means practitioners becoming serious about looking into the deeper implications of our medicine and what it actually means to live up to them beyond some retrograde postmodern fantasy of living in harmony with nature."

"It also means, at least, taking seriously one's own higher insights in life, striving to live up to them, and having the kind of results that speak for themselves to show for it. Simply, if we practitioners are going to ask patients to change in the most significant ways then we have to be living proof that change is that possible." 

Let Mr. Jarrett's words inspire all of you to continue to heal yourselves. Making healing ourselves the first priority in our lives will only help us to help our patients better.