STAGE 2 FOCUSING

FOCUSING

The verification of the focus (found in Stage 1, above) is the purpose of Stage Two. The homeopath should be asking him/herself the following questions as they listen to the patient’s answer.

• Are things getting connected to the focus or center?
• Is verbal or non-verbal language common?
• Is the unconscious description becoming conscious?

Possible questions for Stage Two:

• Out of everything you have talked about, what is the most important?
• What has had the most impact/ is bothering you the most?
• You have mentioned [...]; how does it feel to be in the situation you are in?
• What is the essence of you?
• If I asked you to summarize yourself what would you say?
• Which events/incidents in your life have had a deep impact on you?
• How does it feel to have these symptoms?

The homeopath should start with the chief complaint only if that is the level of experience. If the level is already global, then the homeopath should begin on a more global level. The homeopath should not be restricted or blindly bound by any technique, being faithful only to the method of uncovering the unconscious level of disease.

Once the homeopath is ABSOLUTELY sure of the core of the case, he or she can then proceed to the next stage.

Example: questions tailored to the sycosis miasm and denial.

If the focus is clear:
The homeopath should help the patient to dissociate from him/herself. The following questions gently push the patient in that direction:

• “It has nothing to do with you, I am just trying to explore your imagination, see how your imagination works.”
• “In what situation would I have to find myself in, in order to feel that?”
• “What would it look like in a picture or drawing?”
• “Can you give me an example not related to you?”
• “Right now, if I asked you to imagine, what would come to your mind?”
• “Spontaneously, without thinking, what would be the first connection that’s made? Let the whole universe be your library.”
• “Tell me more about it” until the patient makes connections on his/her own.

As the patient goes deeper and deeper, the patient makes connections between feelings, delusions, thoughts, sensations. This process facilitates leaving the denial state behind and the case taking can move on to deeper levels.

If the focus is NOT clear:

• “Can you tell me three dreams that you would NOT like to have?”
• “Tell me situations in your childhood that you do not want to remember.”
• “Tell me about situations or things which did not affect you but affected others.”

Once the focus is clear, take the focus down to the deepest level possible, down to the source of the vital disturbance. Once the patient touches the source, something will change: voice, tone, tears, gesture, posture. The observant homeopath will see it in their eyes, face, body or stance.

What the patient is denying the patient will come to accept either during the case taking or after taking the similimum.

STAGE 3 CONFIRMING

The homeopath must now continue the inquiry without letting the patient backtrack to the rational, conscious, superficial level.
The confluence point between divergent areas must become clear. Up to this stage, the homeopath only has clues, now the focus gets clearer, and divergent aspects become more connected. This is the stage where everything comes together – kingdom, subkingdom, miasm, sensations and symptoms.

Indications of confirmation:

• Verbal/non-verbal expressions get connected into one pattern.
• Connections are made between the different aspects revealed in stage 1.
• Mind and body symptoms will be related.
• Fragments and disconnected parts come together.
• Non human specific words become predominant, the patient starts speaking the language of the substance.

CASE TAKING HINTS

When the patient describes the source of the disturbance (the wesen or totality of symptoms or disease picture which describes the remedy they need), they become the closest similimum to source. The homeopath needs to allow the space for this to happen. It is important to keep the patient in the state (whether panic, reaction, sensation, whatever is at the center.) The homeopath resonates with the whole process of the patient. This allows the homeopath to recognize the state more clearly, more precisely, and also more fully.

If the case taking is allopathic, (hammering questions from an objective, distant position) then the homeopath will not be able to come to the core and the process will not be healing.

Sitting with the patient, the homeopath learns to allow multidimensional experiencing. As the case progresses, the homeopath’s mind focuses on the center, the core of the patient’s suffering. Mind moves from multidimensional experiencing to holistic experiencing. The homeopath is conscious of bringing awareness to the session, of meeting the patient where he or she is, of applying true listening and witnessing so that what is unconscious can be made conscious.

The best meditation possible, the best healing possible, is to bring the patient into that space. The homeopath creates a space that elicits universal consciousness from the patient as well as from the homeopath him or herself. This is the breakthrough point.

BREAKING THROUGH POINT: TYPE OF CONSCIOUS TRANCE

• Patient automatically makes all sorts of connections;
• He/she is in touch with the subconscious;
• Conscious boundary is crossed;
• 2 “songs” (outer and inner) become one;
• Conscious/unconscious boundaries dissolve;
• Verbal/nonverbal language get beautifully connected.

The homeopath must create a space that prohibits superficial, rational, thinking, and conscious-level discussion. Shatter logical thinking. Both the homeopath and the patient want to go into an area of comfort, a map or context which is familiar: sensation, chakras, psychotherapy, touch, child within, psycho-spiritual techniques, etc. But the homeopath must go to the area least expected, which does not make sense with the rest of the story or the flow. Often, this is the area where one would least expect the core of the case to be. The whole case taking has to be and move according to the patient. Make the patient conscious of his or her dynamic until the inner (hidden) pattern is revealed. The whole aim is to develop a method that is itself the similimum.

THE QUANTUM LEAP

The chart above is inspired by the work of Dr. Dinesh Chauhan, another esteemed member of the medical homeopaths in Mumbai, who provides another excellent resource in his book, A Journey into the Human Core, (Mumbai: Swasthya Homeopathic Healing Center, 2007).

CASE TAKING PROCESS AS A SIMILIMUM

People tend to attract, choose or gather things in their environment which resemble their similimum. Whatever energy comes to you, you become it, and you are that, it is your similimum. They want to be surrounded by that energy. We find that energy in their cravings, relationships, vacations, environment, foods.
Exact matching: for the first time the person meets the true complete similimum in the remedy. Two arrows thrown exactly in the same way – nothingness.

Before the patient receives the similimum, the same state would have been excited by different situations. In psychology, we recollect the acute event. In Homeopathy, we don’t focus on the acute event but on a global state.

The function of the similimum is to make the patient aware of him/herself – the moment of awareness is the moment of cure.

Case taking itself must become the similimum, in that way, it is most healing. It will bring the center/core state out effectively and faster. The case taking provides a mirror of the patient = the similimum. It is individualized, human-centric and witnessing, creating an aura of the similimum to help the state express itself fully. “In this way, the state is fully exposed to the nervous system and the brain, including the limbic system. An automatic, organic, adjustment takes place without the ‘doer’ involved.”

PRESCRIBING

DETERMINING POTENCY
Potency is determined at the passive stage of case taking, where there is an unsolicited level of experience.

ACUTE PRESCRIBING

Treatment of Acute situations.
Acute helps you find the core remedy.
Midpoint between conscious and unconscious (104 degree fevers)
Lose conscious control crystallization of whole state. Entry point of similimum.
If you know his or her remedy – repeat it.
But, if a different state is expressed in an acute state, there has been a change in susceptibility.
Or they have been exposed to a strong external signal. For example: an epidemic.

FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS

1st FOLLOW UP
In the words of Hahnemann: Aphorism 104: Once the totality of the symptoms that principally determine and distinguish the disease case – in other words, the image of any kind of disease – has been exactly recorded, the most difficult work is done. During the treatment (especially of a chronic disease) the medical art practitioner then has the total disease image always before him.

Is there a change related to the core/center ?

Sequence of questions to ask in follow up

1. What changes are there in you overall?
2. When you took the remedy, did you notice any changes physically, emotionally or in dreams? (homeopathic aggravation)
3. Did you notice any new complaints or symptoms? (exteriorization – old symptoms) or aggravation.
4. Did you notice any change in your normal physiological function? (excretions, detoxification mechanisms, acute crisis or fever?)
5. What happened to [state described, focus, sensations]?
6. Now what are your thoughts about your illness? Acceptance of illness/ of yourself/ of situations/ of the whole world?
7. What difference has it made in your life?

General follow up questions in sequence:

1. How are you feeling overall? What changes in you do you see?
2. What difference has the treatment made in your life?
3. What was that feeling and how is it now?
4. How are you compared to [time period beginning of treatment]?
5. What do you mean by better?
6. Better means what? By what percent have you improved?
7. In what ways are you better?

For children:
What changes have you seen in him/her over the [time period]?
What has changed in her/him?

Ask the patient to describe – “Before” what was that feeling?

• Can the patient observe the state as a third person?
• As an observer, can he/she detach from the state?
• Is the person there yet? = sign of cure.

“FORCES” is a way of measuring improvements in the person.

F – Freedom: Moments of freedom from pain, greater freedom to make choices, to communicate. Question: What is the greater degree of freedom you are experiencing now?

O – Optimism: Lightness, seeing possible positive outcomes, feeling that life has a lot to offer, optimizing the possibilities, trusting. Question: What is the greater degree of hope, lightness, optimism you are experiencing now?

R – Relationships: Improvement in relationships, dysfunctional relationships fall away or are transformed, creating healthy relationships with greater harmony. Question: To what extent have your relationships improved?

C – Chief Complaint: Reduction in the chief complaint symptoms. Question: What is the degree of improvement of your symptoms?

E – Energy and Emergence: increase in energy, awareness, coming out of isolation. Question: What is the degree of spiritual emergence you are experiencing now? What awareness of yourself have you gained?

S – Sensation and Susceptibility: Normalizing of the sensation that the person identifies as being at the core of their suffering. Question: What shift in degree of reactivity to your environment, to events are you experiencing?

Footnotes:

1. A method is a systematic or an established form of procedure.
Origin: late Middle English: ‘prescribed medical treatment for a disease’ via Latin from Greek methodos ‘pursuit of knowledge, or scientific inquiry’ from meta- ‘after’ + hodos ‘way.’

2. A system is the set of correlated principles belonging to the method
ORIGIN Greek sust?ma, from sun- ‘together’ + histanai ’cause to stand.’

3. A technique is a way of carrying out a procedure.

Montreal Institute of Classical Homeopathy
http://www.homeopathymontreal.com/