Jacquelyn M., Ann Arbour, Michigan.
I first learned about homeopathy from Dr. Molly Keys, ND. One of my dearest friends, Molly pursued a naturopathy degree and practices as a classical homeopath specializing in care for children and families. Whenever I visited Molly, I would browse her homeopathy books and often when we spoke on the phone or emailed she would share with me her experience as a practitioner. I had learned about other forms of energy medicine, but none seemed as rich, surprising, and frankly peculiar as homeopathy. I loved reading about provings and successful cases.
When I began struggling with chronic migraines and back trouble, which I intuited were linked to deeper emotional and energetic entanglements, I turned to homeopathic treatment for myself. Over the past ten years, I have worked with six different classical homeopaths. Often a remedy would help for a period of time, even up to a year, but then stop working while the migraines continued to worsen. I turned for a time to modern allopathic migraine treatments, but discovered that they soon made the migraines intractable and resistant to all treatment. I stopped allopathic treatment and am now confident that I have found my similimum.
I am still not sure why this journey proved so difficult, despite working with reputable homeopaths and despite my remedy being very common. Along the way, I believe I learned some things about homeopathic treatment through my own experience that would be more difficult to understand in the abstract. Of course, I also had the opportunity to experience the different styles and techniques of six classical homeopaths.
In 2009, I took a very intensive one-year course in breathwork facilitation while living in Australia. Although I had learned some energy work for self-treatment, this experience was the first time I began to recognize myself as a healer. I was very successful in the course and later began a part-time breathwork practice, first in Portland, Oregon, and now in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The style of breathwork I do is very intensive, and not for everyone. Given that, and the fact that few people in North America have heard of breathwork at all, it has been a challenge to grow the practice.
I had considered studying homeopathy in the past, but had not seen a program that would be financially and geographically feasible for me until I came across CCHM’s distance education diploma program. I relish an intellectual challenge and I love that the program is self-paced. I attended a Sunday training at CCHM as a prospective student and thoroughly enjoyed the material and the instructor. I value the emphasis on thorough classical training as a foundation for any style of homeopathic practice.
Still, the decision has not come easily for me. Given the challenges I have had in building a breathwork practice, I have wondered whether my homeopathic practice would similarly struggle. However, while the deep listening and intuitive skills I developed as a breathworker are, I believe, transferrable to homeopathic practice, there are important differences in the two forms of healing. While intensive breathwork is physically and emotionally rigorous, and therefore not suitable for everyone, I believe nearly everyone can benefit from quality homeopathic treatment. While breathwork is very powerful and in some cases supports very profound healing, from what I have researched, homeopathy may reach even deeper, yet in a gentler fashion.
Through the lens of my long-term Buddhist practice, I tend to see all healing modalities as integrated with spiritual growth in their fullest potential. From this perspective, I understand homeopathic treatment to have the capacity to touch the deepest truths in a being and to support each being to come into a wholeness from which they can continue to deepen in truth. This potential is what most inspires me to seek homeopathic training.