The Future of Homeopathy

Homeopathy is at a crossroads. The future looks bright, but I have some deep concerns also. It seems there is a growing divide between those who want to see homeopathy legitimatized by standards and regulation and those who recognize the individual uniqueness of the homeopath, client and remedy. This I do not think can be standardized.

The group that wants to see homeopathy become mainstream medicine strives for a standard model of education as well as competency. This effectively lowers the standard of homeopathy to the lowest common denominator. In this model, every school must teach a standard minimum curriculum and testing. This is the same model that we have seen in the education of children in America. Much emphasis is put on testing with the individual who excels, being ignored. I think we have an educational vacuum in America as we are losing our brightest individuals to a standardized process. Read this very well written article. It is the same for homeopathy as with our children. http://personalliberty.com/school-crushes-childs-natural-love-learning/

Once a medicine becomes mainstream it is subject to regulation and control. We see this in allopathic medicine today. A doctor who has an idea about an approach to the treatment of a disease MUST follow a described protocol or he will be subject to reprimand and could lose his license to practice medicine. This destroys the individual approach to healing and limits the availability of new innovative ideas about healing.

Homeopathy, being only and individualized approach to healing, would loose it's very essence through any type of standardized approach. I can imagine in a  future of main stream medicine where homeopathy has been standardized, only a list of approved medicines to treat a particular disease could be used. Any deviation would be deemed unacceptable and the wide pallet of remedies that could be useful to treat the individual would become obsolete.

Currently homeopathy is the fastest growing alternative medicine. More and more people are waking up to the limitations of drug therapy and turning to homeopathy. We need more practitioners. But the practitioners we need must be well trained and not necessarily well educated. There is a huge difference. The main tool for the practice of homeopathy is the homeopath. This person holds the key to understanding the case, what is asking to be healed, the rubrics to select, the correct remedy and the best case management.There is no standard protocol for this process. Just as no two patients are the same no two homeopaths are the same either.

Standardizing homeopathy to become more accepted by mainstream medicine is not the answer. The drug and insurance companies control the future and direction of allopathic medicine. If homeopathy were to be included in this, I am positive in order for it to survive, homeopathy would be fundamentally changed and the art would be lost.

The good news is, the main stream medicine has relegated homeopathy to quackery at worst and ineffective at best, homeopathy has still flourished and grown. Each individual state controls the regulation of the practice of medicine. Homeopathy falls through the cracks in most states. Because it is not addressed it is easily considered illegal. But more and more states are adopting Health Freedom Laws that allow the choice for non-invasive alternative treatments to be legal and fall to the consumer and are not regulated.

There are pros and cons to this. The pros are that homeopaths become free to practice their art and the consumer gets to benefit. The cons are that there is the possibility that a person who is untrained could become a practitioner. I see this more often though in the allopathic world and other modalities where a weekend course in homeopathy is offered to their members and the next thing you know the doctor is now handing out remedies without real training and calling themselves a homeopath.

This brings us back to the idea of standardizing homeopathy. In my opinion any standard for a credentials in homeopathy (which is not a legal title to practice) must include many hours of clinical work. I say work because it is one thing to practice, (which would indicate being a beginner and not have competency or responsibility), and another to actually work as a homeopath, making decisions that matter. When there is responsibility involved in the prescription, there are consequences as well. If ALL homeopathic training included years of this type of training, we would be bringing forth a much higher level of competency in our new homeopaths.

The level of successful prescriptions would rise and homeopathy would quickly become even more sought after. The biggest detraction from the success of homeopathy are inaccurate prescriptions and ineffective case management (poorly trained homeopaths). This leads to the client leaving and saying, "homeopathy doesn't work." This news travels faster that the good news of the successes in homeopathy.

For homeopathy to grow we need better training and less education. If passing a test is all that is required to become a homeopath, then the future of homeopathy will fail. If the new "standard" for homeopathic training includes many years of being a homeopath before a credential is given, then homeopathy will continue to flourish. Some of the best homeopaths today have not had any formal training. They have had many years of doing homeopathy though, and with this comes competency and confidence.

At Resonance School of Homeopathy all training is through live cases and real people. We are training homeopaths. We are not educating our student/practitioners for passing tests. They are receiving mentor-ship on cases they are working on outside of class. The focus is on their own personal, spiritual development to be the best they can be, not only in homeopathy, but in their life. They are the tool for homeopathy. The training is on self development and not on lineal learning. We use both sides of our brain in being a homeopath. If you can not see what is asking to be healed in the client you will never be able to give the right prescription. Please, come join us. The future looks bright!