A Holistic Homeopathic Journey of life
by Nandita Shah, India
Holistic homeopathy
Ever since I can remember I have always looked at things from a holistic point of view. As homeopaths we see the patient as a whole, and disease as a result of problems at the level of body, mind and spirit. The goal is to look for the cause of the problem and remove it, rather than control or suppress the symptoms.
Homeopathy is based on Nature's laws and requires the practitioner to have a deep insight into everything connected with nature as well as into the states of the human mind. It requires a sound medical knowledge of the human body. Most of all, homeopathy requires an openness and humility to learn from our patients, from remedies and from nature. The study and practice of Homeopathy is a process of constant growth towards a higher spiritual purpose. Every case is different and brings its own lessons. I am grateful for everything that I learn each day. Not only from my teachers - Hahnemann to Sankaran - but also from my patients. Thanks to them, I am who I am today.
Eye opener
I have always been interested in healthy living. I was vegetarian, and consumed plenty of dairy. About 28 years ago, still in my early stages as a doctor, I heard about the process by which milk from cows or other animals is obtained. It brought many questions to my mind and put me on the path to becoming vegan. And this in turn opened my eyes further. I started noticing medical literature and articles related to health that I hadn’t noticed before. They appeared everywhere – in magazines, in newspapers and in medical journals. I realised that they had been there for decades, but I had not been looking. One of the first of these was an article in the Vegetarian Times, which explained how calcium was not absorbed because of the high protein levels in cow's milk. It stated that countries with the highest incidence of osteoporosis were those with the highest per capita consumption of dairy! Until then I thought that milk was rich in calcium, and calcium was good for bones! But it struck me that none of the patients with osteoporosis were getting well despite all the calcium, vitamin D and dairy products they were consuming. Osteoporosis too, is a lifestyle disease, just like diabetes and heart disease – something that I now know would never occur if we followed nature’s plan. I had been naïve! It opened my eyes but I did not drop dairy completely – not yet.
And so I scoured medical literature. As I read Dr Dean Ornish’s book, Reversing Heart Disease, my thoughts were always on Hahnemann’s work. On the very first page of his book, Ornish says: "This is a book about healing mind, body and spirit". I could identify with this; this was Hahnemann’s vision too.
Despite being interested in health and eating healthy, I was not an epitome of health. It took me a few serious illnesses to realise this. Pneumonia, malaria and finally Guillain-Barré syndrome were my wake up calls.
Disease is delusion. Awareness is cure.
As a homeopath I understood that disease is delusion and awareness is cure. If we prescribe at the deepest levels of the patient’s problems – at the level of delusion and sensation, our results are likely to be higher and longer lasting. Therefore the goal for me was always to understand at least the basic delusion of the patient, in order to select a corresponding similimum. This phenomenal lesson has changed my life and has been a focal point in understanding human beings. It helped me get my highest results with homeopathy, but even more importantly it also helped me understand the essence of the human psyche.
During all my years of homeopathic practice, I noticed that many of my patients came back to me after years, or months, or even weeks with the same complaints, despite the best-selected remedy and miraculous results. Almost two centuries ago, Hahnemann had already described this phenomenon as being due to maintaining causes – our unhealthy habits, unhealthy environment or thoughts. It is pretty hard to identify those, when we see no obvious addictions or habits, nor noxious environmental conditions.
It was only after changing my own lifestyle and achieving the near-perfect health that I now enjoy, that I began understanding the impact of the dietary changes I made. I started suggesting these methods to my patients. Initially I did not have a lot of success in convincing them. Patients seemed just too attached to their beliefs and habits surrounding food. It was not surprising. Habits around food are often started when we are too young to think or question. One of the first things that our parents and our society teach us is what and how to eat.
Individual Delusions Rest on Collective Delusions
I understood that I needed to get my patients to question their belief systems and start thinking about food. I started to spread the message that I newly understood, through talks, seminars and workshops. I started helping people unlearn the many misconceptions that we all acquire. As a homeopath I knew it would require the understanding of both the individual and collective psyche to remove these conditionings. Conditionings are belief systems, in other words, delusions. Delusions are perceptions, which do not have truth as a basis. Our individual delusions rest on collective delusions. This is why, even after a correct remedy, patients relapse. They are not yet free because of the collective belief system, which acts as a maintaining cause. Remedies do not work because these delusions are not acknowledged AND are reinforced every day by society. In order to go beyond, one needs to break free of the paradigm. This opens the chance to see the truth, the real awareness, the cure.
Belief systems
Today we are taught several health myths as toddlers. Here are a few examples, which are familiar to everyone:
Milk is good for health
Human beings are omnivores
More protein is better
Let us clear our minds of any ideas we may already have and examine these ‘myths’ anew. This is not easy. It requires letting go of our ‘knowledge’ and years of collected information that overrules our natural instincts.
1. Milk is good for health – we all know that every mammal produces milk only for its young. Cows are no different. Milk is a food needed by the young, at the time of maximum growth. What happens if this is misused? Almost all human infants reject animal milk when it is first given to them. Is this instinct? Should we believe that intellect knows better? Mothers often need to add sugar or chocolate to cow milk so that their children will drink it. From this time on we start losing our instincts and the collective delusion becomes embedded. Reliable medical literature and research including the famous pediatrician and authority, Dr Spock’s, Baby and Child Care, abounds with facts against the use of animal milk in our diet.
2. Human beings are omnivores – this is a big one, which can be questioned and dissected with the help of anatomy and physiology – a long discussion. But for a moment let us stay with our instincts. We walk through an orchard or farm and are tempted to pick fruits or vegetables and bite into them. If you see a chicken or cow walk by, does your mouth water? In the case of a dog, the response is quite the opposite. Does this mean something? What do other primates eat? Can we compare our anatomy? These rarely asked questions are important, because if we eat the food suitable to our anatomy, we will attract very little disease.
3. More protein? How many people do you know with protein deficiency? What are the symptoms? On the other hand, today amongst our patients, there are many diseases from excess of this nutrient (gout, kidney disease, osteoporosis, cancer…). But deficiency is quite rare. Apart from starvation, it will occur in nephrotic syndrome but nowhere else. Another related question: we know that protein is the food that our body requires for growth and repair. Is there a link between protein and cancer, which is a growth? A book worth reading by anyone seriously interested in health and healing is The China Study, by T Colin Campbell.
These are just a tiny example of the questions that started whirring in my mind once I decided to think independently. Nature provides answers if we are willing to listen.
Food is one of the fields around which maximum collective belief gathers. It is also one of the most influential factors on our health. We have been tempted by lobbies and corporations to consume all kinds of unnatural things in no small quantities. Coca Cola, a household name the world over, is a simple example. Advertising is expensive, therefore vendors are unlikely to spend on advertising things that we really need. On the other hand, they need to spend hefty sums to tell us to buy something that our instinct knows that we do not need. So if you want a simple tip to know what to eat and what not, make a list of all that is advertised and stay away from it. Isn't it ironic that we are often more conscious of the fuel we put into our cars than the fuel that we put in our bodies? Yet, just as the wrong fuel ruins the car, the wrong fuel also ruins our bodies.
My Experiences
I found that just telling my patients to change their eating habits often did not work. As I said, collective delusion, conditioning and habits can be too strong. I want them to understand that their body, not their cars, should be treated like a temple. The car is replaceable. There is a stigma about plant-based food: the food is not delicious, not satisfying, not nutritious enough and the general perception is one of deprivation. It’s not true, of course. The meals I eat every day are scrumptious! This being said, every now and then I would get patients who would decide to change. One of those earlier patients who convinced me I was on the right path was a 70-year-old woman who had been suffering from heart disease for three years. Just out of intensive care she had a list of medications one page long! For three years she had been struggling with exhaustion, and could hardly get out of bed. Within just three months of changing her eating habits she was off all medications, and going for a walk at 4 am, and to the gym for half an hour in the evenings! The cardiologist said everything was normal. It was beyond my highest hopes. No medications, not even homeopathy – just a healthy plant-based diet!
Another such instance was with a 21-year-young man, with diabetes who was taking three injections of insulin per day, each time after checking blood sugar levels. After switching to a plant-based diet we immediately cut the dose of insulin to half. Within three days he was off insulin altogether. The blood sugar levels were still tested thrice a day to be sure he was ok. Unbelievable? I thought so too.
We have been so warned that diabetes is irreversible. As a homeopath, I had never seen these kinds of quick physiological results with remedies. But with lifestyle changes they became the norm in my clinic.
More importantly it allowed people to get off allopathic medications, enabling the body to heal naturally and making the homeopathic remedy, if needed, easier to find. I saw patients with diseases like manic depressive psychosis reverse their mental disease effortlessly when they got off their diabetic medications. Medications themselves are sometimes the cause of diseases, so it’s important to reduce them as soon as possible.
My challenge now, was to get more patients to make the changes. I found that those who were very sick would easily follow. The others were harder to convince.
Food that Heals - Mind, Body and Spirit
Being a homeopath at heart, changes in the physical body alone could never convince me. Since I did not want to use homeopathic remedies along with diet changes, as this would not make it clear what was working, I asked patients to choose one or the other first. I learned to convince them that there were advantages to taking control into their own hands. I noticed that by changing what they ate, they achieved very positive changes in their state of mind too.
It’s hard for laymen to understand how food can affect the mind but for the homeopath it’s no mystery. We know that every substance has its own energy. As far as milk is concerned, we know the provings of various milks. We also can fathom that every animal raised to feed humans undergoes stress, fear, helplessness, despair, loneliness, isolation, – emotions that are transmitted through the food to us. I have seen that almost all of my patients speak of these emotions, which are out of proportion to their situations. Where are they all coming from in such epidemic proportions? Is this human nature, as I once thought, or are we subjugated by this energy from our consumption of milk? We now know that like ourselves, all these animals produce adrenaline when they are stressed, and this energy is transmitted to us through their flesh or secretions.
Making the Connection
To address the issue decisively, I decided to found an organization called SHARAN. Sharan means sanctuary in Hindi. SHARAN is an anagram for Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature and its agenda is to help people make the connection to nature and to themselves and to reach their highest potential. When we are born, we are connected to everything else in the universe. A child will put his hand in the mouth of a dog without fear. The innocence of children is similar to that of animals, because they are connected. Through our intellect, we lose the natural connections. But our need for unison is still there and so, we begin to collect and adhere to our cultural delusions. Thus, stress and disease begin.
Plant based nutrition is holistic too. It has a wider significance for our planet, for animals, and for every single one of us as well. For example, it takes twelve to sixteen kilos of grain to produce a kilo of meat. It takes an average of twenty times the water and energy to produce animal products compared to plant-based foods. With a plant-based nutrition economy, it becomes possible to save food for starving people, save forests instead of reducing them to fodder and preserve habitats for wild animals that are quickly becoming extinct. It helps us reduce our carbon footprint and slow down climate change.
Our number one killers today – heart disease, hypertension, cancer and diabetes and obesity are all linked to our ‘rich’ diets. These diseases improve dramatically with plant-based diets. From my experience, so do asthma, joint complaints, back pains, digestive complaints, acidity, constipation, depression and a host of other problems. The reason is simple – putting the right fuel in your body seems to resolve everything.
The next steps – More smiles, less complaints
The move from simple prescription to also addressing the recurrent causes responsible for the failures I witnessed over time in my clinic, has led me to help people be in control of their health. My work in this has been more about addressing the motivational factors that impede people to heal themselves rather than help by looking for remedies for them. I do still work with classical homeopathy but usually only after the patient has seen what he can do for himself, and only if required. This has the most positive outcome on the outlook of the patient who consequently feels empowered. It has also changed my life dramatically. Instead of listening for hours to complaints from patients, I now guide them to get well. I get rewarded every day: I look forward to opening my computer every morning because I am sure to get an email from someone who is better or has recovered. More smiles, less complaints. This is what we all want.
The transformation happens through private consultation but also talks, seminars and workshops, cooking classes and trainings. We have recently conducted a 21-day residential diabetes reversal program and are on the verge of another 21-day disease reversal program. These are residential programs where people can see the changes in their lab reports in just 21 days. The best part is that it almost always works because our amazing bodies are constantly working to heal themselves and given the right conditions, nothing can stop them. I am still learning how my work could be more effective in helping people unlearn all their conditioning. It’s a process of personal growth that I enjoy. Every cure I have seen works according to homeopathic principles, which are basic truths. Healing occurs according to Hering’s law, and more than ever do we understand the meaning of Hahnemann's basic tenet that only one disease can be present in a person at a time.
There is much more to say!
An article is too short to convey the whole process of what I am doing. A book is on the way. If I have been able to inspire you to learn more, then I have achieved my goal. For those interested in learning more about our work, see our website www.sharan-india.org. For questions please write to nandita@sharan-india.org or have a look at my personal website www.nandita-shah.net.
Most important, start questioning your belief system! It’s a huge step to overcome even just the notion that human beings are omnivores. It is all pervading and sacrosanct in many people’s eyes. One question leads to another, and answers come rolling in. Google the word vegan, comparative anatomies and it may change your life just as it did mine.
The knowledge of how to and why make lifestyle changes is useful for every homeopath. Patients often come to us on many medications, and in order for cure to happen, we need to get them off these medications. I know no quicker and surer way than whole plant-based food and constant monitoring with lab tests. We do have regular training programs for doctors, and I believe it is important to do one especially for homeopaths. We endure so many unnecessary frustrations with relapsing patients that should be doing well on an accurately chosen remedy. As homeopaths, we are open to nature, to truth and are willing to explore new ways of getting patients to reach their highest potentials. We all deserve to see our care and efforts come to fruition.
Bibliography
Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine 5th edition. B Jain Publishers 1998, New Delhi, India
Sankaran, The Spirit of Homeopathy, Homeopathic Medical Publishers, June 2008, Mumbai, India The Sensation in Homeopathy, Homeopathic Medical Publishers, 2004, Mumbai, India
Dean Ornish, Dr Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease Random House Publishing Group,1996, NY, NY USA
Vegetarian Times, Feb 1996 Simon &Schuster, UK
Dr Benjamin Spock, Spock’s Baby and Child Care Gallery Books; 8 edition (June 1, 2004) NY, NY USA
T. Colin Campbell, The China Study BenBella Books, Jan 2005, Dallas, TX, USA
SHARAN website – www.sharan-india.org
Nandita Shah
Auroville, India
About the Author
Nandita Shah, is a registered homeopathic medical practitioner (L.C.E.H.) since 1981, graduated from CMPH Medical College, Mumbai. She has been practising classical homeopathy since 1981, first in Mumbai as a private practitioner and then at the Quiet Healing Centre in Auroville since 1999. She has also been teaching advanced homeopathy all over the world – USA, Western Europe, Brazil, Israel and India for the last twenty years and has also presented papers in many International Homeopathic Seminars and Conferences.
Shah founded SHARAN in 2005 and conducts Health workshops in her role as SHARAN’s Health Director. She believes each of us can be our own best doctor most of the time. For the past seven years, she has presented the Peas vs Pills workshops in India, and around the world to over 2000 participants. She also conducts specific health workshops about Reversing Diabetes and Reversing Heart Disease and Hypertension.
Being a homeopath, the mind - body connection has always been an integral part of her work. Her work in health and nutrition has seen many participants make changes that have enabled them to reach their highest potential, not just in their physical health, but also in their emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
