Holistic healing with homeopathy

Homeopathy awareness week 14-21 June

Homeopathy is a gentle, holistic system of healing, suitable for everyone, young and old. It focuses on you as an individual, concentrating on treating your specific physical and emotional symptoms, to give long lasting benefits.

Homeopathic treatment works with your body’s own healing powers to bring health and well being. Patients are treated as individuals, not as a collection of disease labels and all symptoms are treated - mental, emotional and physical.

The healing system has been used in the UK for over two hundred years, but has an honourable tradition dating back to ancient Greece with Hippocrates’ Law of Similars or ‘like with like’.

It was Samuel Hahnemann, a brilliant doctor working in 1796 who developed the scientific and philosophical foundations of this gentler way of healing and these scientific principles form the basis of successful homeopathic practice today.

If you visit a homeopath, they will understand that establishing good health involves treating both mind and body, so time is taken to listen to your emotional and physical symptoms. To stimulate your body’s own healing process, a remedy closest to your individual symptom picture is prescribed. “Healing begins from within your body, strengthening your health and immune system, without any danger of damaging side effects,” states the Society of Homeopaths.

Homeopathic remedies are a unique, potentised energy medicine, drawn from the plant, mineral and animal worlds. They work by gently boosting the natural energy of the body, and are very safe, even for pregnant and sensitive patients. There is no danger of addiction or toxicity. Working on the principle that ‘like treats like’ means that an illness is treated with a medicine which could produce similar symptoms in a healthy person. The active ingredients are given in highly diluted form to avoid toxicity.

Homeopathy works holistically, treating the whole person. There is some evidence to suggest it can help a person manage the symptoms of acute fevers, sore throats and toothache, to chronic illnesses such as arthritis, eczema, asthma, anxiety and insomnia.

This history of homeopathy in the UK is a long one and you can read more in the interview with the chairman of Nelsons on page 10. It began in the mid 1800s as a very aristocratic pursuit and while this has changed, the British Royal family always have been and still are advocates. Homeopathy went into decline and was almost out of use altogether by the 1970s but there has been a great resurgence.

Homeopathy in Scotland has a long and very distinguished record. It has been practised here from the very origins of the therapy in the UK and many of the greatest homeopaths in Britain have come from Scotland.

Perhaps one of the best things about homeopathy is that despite the differences in approach, homeopathic and conventional treatments can work very well alongside each other. Consulting a homeopathically-trained conventional doctor allows the individual patient to receive the best of both worlds, with the most effective treatments being tailored just for them.

For more information on homeopathy, visit the British Homeopathic Assocation’s website at www.trusthomeopathy.org

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