Interviews

Jonathan Shore

Written by Elaine Lewis

An interview with Jonathan Shore by Elaine Lewis. Read this fascinating interview with Jonathan Shore about his life with homeopathy.

As I’m writing this, it’s Thanksgiving holiday today here in the United States and I have 5 hours to come up with something to be thankful for! It’s certainly not the election we just had, so let’s see….The new SpongeBob movie? No…. Well, I’m just trying to find a bright light here! And speaking of bright lights, our guest today is one of the brightest lights in homeopathy, Jonathan Shore, MD. He’s an instructor at the Hahnemann College in California, but I hear the college is closing! This is shocking and distressing; Jonathan, can you tell us why?

No need to be either shocked or saddened. Organic life is a cyclical affair filled with the rhythms of birth and death, growth and decay…

This is exactly what I tried to tell my first husband 25 years ago when I was trying to get him to leave. But, do continue. Hahnemann College…

…was begun in the mid 1980’s by a group which included Roger Morrison, Nancy Herrick and myself. The aim was to spread homeopathy in two ways. One by setting a standard by which all education could be measured, the other by producing a group of individuals who would later be the seeds of new schools.

It is my impression that both of these goals were achieved. Certainly many of the major schools now in existence in the USA were either begun by HMC graduates or received a significant influence from them. In its day the College was renowned worldwide for its comprehensive curriculum, its pioneering work in the use of video cases as a teaching tool and innovative real time video mediated supervision model. After 20+ years of formalized teaching both Roger, Nancy and I felt it was time to retire from this structure. It may be said that our biggest failing was that although we spread the seeds of homeopathic education throughout the country none fell close enough to home t o continue the lineage in a local and unbroken form.

We continue our basic and intermediate efforts with a comprehensive video home study course available thru Rudra Press ( contact Bob Shoemaker thru the website http://www.rudrapress.com ) This course is a carefully edited series of live videotaped lectures covering Philosophy, History, Case management and both acute and chronic materia medica.

As for my self I will continue as I have for many years, practice and teach. Although I have no upcoming local engagements I am scheduled to do a seminar with Alize Timmerman in Costa Rica in February 2005, and solo ones in Barcelona in May, Toronto in June and Switzerland and South Africa in September.

I wanted to talk to you about the Costa Rica seminar because I understand it’s about the bird remedies, and you’ve just written a book about bird remedies which maybe you can talk about. Was Costa Rica chosen because of the rain forest, the variety of birds? Do you think we’re missing a lot of cases because of our unfamiliarity with the bird remedies?

A lot of parts to this question.

Lets take the book first. Bird remedies have been an ongoing study of mine for the past 8 years or so. We have collected many cases; I have at least 15 of my own on video and have reviewed many other cases and carefully studied and analyzed all the available proving data. The birds hold a special attraction for me because of their lightness, their desire for freedom and the fact that they partake, in a way, of another world. For years people had been pressing me to write a book but I always felt that I had nothing special to say. Now that excuse was no longer valid. I don’t know if you have ever tried to produce a book but its an incredible amount of work. I knew I could never do it myself so I approached my two colleagues, Anneke Hogeland and Judy Schriebmann. We worked together for more than a year. They did an amazing job. I am hardly ever satisfied with the end result of my efforts but this time the result really exceeded my expectations. I feel we have set a standard for homeopathic publishing, both in terms of aesthetic, user friendliness and content. The book is a practical work of art in its own right, so pleasing to the eye yet so accessible as regards content. It is divided into three sections. The first is a comprehensive overview of the family followed by the core idea, key features, main rubrics, illustrations, mythology and natural history of 15 remedies. The second section are case histories for each of the remedies and the third is the proving information for each remedy. Thus it is easy to go quickly to the essential information yet the basis for that information can be researched and studied if the reader wishes to go deeper. It is available either directly from us at HomeopathyWest (www.homeopathywest.com ) or from Greg cooper at Minimum Price Books.

Ok, so on to Costa Rica. This is the sort of seminar which is really my dream seminar. It contains all the elements for optimal learning; that is an intense immersion in the subject in a setting far removed from the concerns of everyday life combined with the necessary physical activity and relaxation so necessary for the proper digestion of all the information. And even more than this is the possibility to work together with a colleague such as Alize Timmerman. This sort of cooperative effort has always been so much more interesting and rewarding than being the only perceived expert in the room. Also I have a particular interest in group energies. That is to say in what it is possible for a group of people working together to achieve and how this may be facilitated.

My contribution to the content of this seminar will not be the usual bird seminar, but an opening to another level of exploration, a beginning study of the relationship between the bird remedies and drug remedies. Birds ( which come from another world ) and drugs ( who yearn for another world ) have certain features in common which it is my intent to explore during the seminar. Of course Costa Rica ( and especially the nature preserves where we will be ) is sure to resonate harmoniously with this topic.

I have presented comprehensive seminars on bird remedies in many countries ( USA, New Zealand, Australia, Holland, England, Switzerland and Germany ) and will do so in Barcelona in May and Toronto in June of next year. In almost every place where people have attended these seminars they begin to see bird cases. There is no doubt in my mind based on this broad based experience that there are many unrecognized cases out there.

Have you looked back in your difficult or unsolved cases and said, “Oh my God, this was a bird case!”

Yes I most certainly have but don’t forget I have been looking for birds for the past 8 + years so it is quite some time since an unexamined potential bird case passed before my eyes. Mostly I am too busy struggling to solve my current cases to spend much time on the failures of the past.

SO AM I, especially with Anacardium cases! Do you have many of these? It’s shocking the number of Anacardium cases I’ve had! These are the people who really seem to be “possessed”, quite frankly. There’s a whole issue of “devils” with these people; they dream about devils, they speak to devils, devils speak to them, they’re angry, they frighten people, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I give Anacardium, and they do well, but the relapsing is relentless! They move into Stramonium, then they may move back to Anacardium, then back to Stramonium, the potencies have to be raised higher and higher; I’m wondering what your experience has been with these kinds of cases? Have you noticed a pattern, a kind of consistency?

I have some anacardium cases, maybe 5 or 6 where the remedy has worked really well but I have never come across the connection with Stramonium.
You might want to check out Mancinella

Mind; DELUSIONS, imaginations; devils; after her: hyos., manc., zinc-o.
Mind; DELUSIONS, imaginations; devils; sees: absin., ambr., anac., ars., bani-c., bell., cann-i., cupr., dulc., hell., hyos., kali-br., kali-c., lach., manc., nat-c., op., orig., plat., puls., stram., sulph., zinc-o. Mind; DELUSIONS, imaginations; devils; taken by, that he will be: bell., manc., puls.
Mind; FEAR; devil, being taken by the, of: anac., manc., puls.

You make a great point about Mancinella. I’ll ask my client to order it. All I know about it is the famous keynote–fear that a tormenting thought will drive them insane. Have you ever had any Mancinella cases?

No.

Regarding the bird remedies, do the people who need them express an interest in birds or a love of flying? I had a friend once who had ducks everywhere in his apartment–paintings, ceramics, wood-carved ducks, and he hunted ducks too; is this the kind of presentation that leads you to suspect a bird remedy?

Yes.

A-ha! I was wondering about that!

As a final question, is there a memorable or remarkable case in your long career that you could share with us?

My most memorable case is one from 30 years ago. This was the one that converted me to homeopathy. I had been aware of homeopathic remedies for some years and was using them but not in any classical sense. I tried all sorts of things, dowsing, muscle testing type stuff, keynotes, etc etc. The remedies never worked. I believed with my mind that they could work but not with my heart. That is, I had never actually experienced that it could happen. By chance I met another physician who was studying homeopathy and he was very big on the repertory. He said it was the only way. I thought this is a crazy idea to try and make sense of this huge book with pages and pages of symptoms but he was so insistent I said OK the next case that comes I’ll give it a try. The next case was a 16 year old boy who had had asthma since early childhood and nothing had ever helped. He just wheezed every day. So I gathered all the symptoms I could find and looked each one up in the repertory. Made a list of all the remedies in each rubric, added them all up ( you know it took hours and hours to write out each rubric and all the remedies ) and of course when you do it that way the remedy most likely to come out on top is Sulphur as it was by far and away the remedy with the most symptoms in Kent’s repertory of that day. Anyway I gave him Sulph 6x three times a day. After a few days his asthma was completely gone. All those years and it was just gone. It was like a miracle for me that those little pellets could do something like that. It touched me so much it brought me to tears. This is the case that changed my professional life

Jonathan Shore, thank you so much! The Costa Rica seminar February 19th – 26th truly does sound like a dream seminar. I hope you get a very large turn-out. For those of you who want to learn more about this seminar, please click here:

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About the author

Elaine Lewis

Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.
Elaine is a passionate homeopath, helping people offline as well as online. Contact her at [email protected]
Elaine is a graduate of Robin Murphy's Hahnemann Academy of North America and author of many articles on homeopathy including her monthly feature in the Hpathy ezine, "The Quiz". Visit her website at:
https://elainelewis.hpathy.com/ and TheSilhouettes.org

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