How do dreams figure into Homepathic prescribing?

My dreamlife becomes very active and meaningful when I'm on the right remedy. The night I started on my first homeopathic remedy (nat mur) I began a series of dreams that, over a year and a half, followed the resolution of a bird phobia that I'd had for many years. It wasn't a very serious phobia but I tended to avoid pigeons and would have bad dreams where largeish birds were somehow oppressing me. They might be sitting on my head and shoulders and I'd be afraid to breathe. I hadn't gone to the homeopath for this reason though I probably had mentioned the problem.

I'm wondering what significance vivid, meaningful dreams have in homeopathy. Perhaps for some of us there needs to be a dream effect or it's not the right remedy? I am an artist, maybe that's a part of this. Other remedies have also had a dream effect, though none so incredible as the year and a half unwinding of the bird phobia.

Any ideas about the dream effect?

Divina, thank you for your response.
I am so impressed with the generosity of the professionals, and the well-informed, on this list. It shows a true love of and excitement about the subject, so different from conventional medicine.

My dreams differed a bit from your description, if I understood correctly. They were relatively positive from the first dream with nat. mur.

In it, I came across very large birds sunning themselves. One was a red pigeon the size of a turkey. I said to a companion "Look at that beautiful bird!" It was the first dream I could remember having involving birds that wasn't actually a nightmare. I continued to have periodic bird dreams in which I became less fearful and more powerful. In the last dream I was in an airplane hanger and the floor was covered with dead black crows or ravens. I walked comfortably, fearlessly, among them as though I were in charge. It only occurs to me now, 5 years later, that it being an airplane hanger was not an accident.

So, it seems that, rather than an aggravation the dreams started healing immediately. Maybe the timing was just right since there were also immediate positive repercussions in my waking life too. I was suddenly able to move forward and make decisions easily.

Could you make any suggestions for a beginner's readings in homeopathy? I do have Boericke's Materia Medica but it is not easy to decipher.

Thanks again,
Contenta

Contenta, what a lovely name.
As regards the curing of your bird phobia in such an aesthetic and pleasing manner, it most likely came about because Ignatia is one of the few remedies covering bird phobia, and Nat Mur is the chronic remedy relating to Ign. When you had feelings of the bird phobia, it would have been an Ignatia "spin off" from the underlying NM picture.
I think you might enjoy Didier Grandgeorge's book - it has a lot of poetic images of the remedies and is well-written.
Thanks for sharing your experience - I learnt from it.

Hi, Contenta!

I think your experience is a wonderful illustration of actually "working through" a phobia or longstanding fear--seeing it become disarmed on a very deep level. Sounds like you have done extremely well on your remedy--and that probably explains your name...

Okay--good books to read to learn more. Well, for a good, "quick and dirty" summary of the main "big ideas" of homeopathy, there's Jacob Mirman's book that you can get on-line at www.demystify.com. For something juicy to sink your teeth into...well... let's see...that would depend on what really "turns your crank"--philosophy or materia medica...

When I first started to learn about the remedies, I really liked Margaret Tyler's book called Drug Pictures. From there I started to read some of the Journals that are published--such as LINKS and Homeopathy Today. Homeopathy On-Line, which you can find easily at www.lyghtforce.com and its list of links, has some very well written articles about different remedies which detail how they are made, how they were applied, what symptoms they produce, etc.

Reading proving notes of each remedy can seem tedious at first, because it is easy not to see their relevance out of context--but once you can "see" in your mind how a symptom could be played out in a variety of people, you get a better idea of what it feels like to experience the influence of a remedy...and what a patient would feel like if he/she needed that particular remedy. Proving notes can be hard to find, but you can get some of Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura on-line at www.homeoint.org/english
and you will find some very good proving information published right here on homeopathyhome.com's home page. I'm currently working my way through Nancy Herrick's book called Animal Mind Human Voices, in which she publishes proving notes for 8 new animal remedies, including several "milk" remedies, a remedy made from butterfly, and another from dinosaur bone relics. All very interesting!

But you can see where my interests lie--in the remedies themselves, over the philosophy. For that I always go back to the Organon. Open to endless interpretation, but still very clear (I like to think it is, to me--?), it truly is the sourcebook. I love my 6th Edition by Wenda Brewster O'Reilly...it was given to me by one of my teachers, way back when I first started to learn (thank goodness, because it is NOT an inexpensive book and it was quite out of my reach at that time).

Anyway, there's plenty to keep you busy...
Enjoy,

e rimana contenta
Divina

Dreams figure prominently in homeopathy.

When homeopaths conduct a "proving" or research and testing on a substance from which they make a remedy, it is often found that "provers" on the remedy will experience dreams which are strikingly similar. For example, those who proved the remedy Thuja had a common experience in that they all dreamt of talking to people who they knew to be dead; also, many of the provers had dreams of falling from a height. So we know from the scientific research that thuja causes human beings to have dreams with this particular content. We don't know why that is, we just know that it is the case.

We use this research to help us in our casetaking and remedy prescribing. If, in our casetaking, we have a patient who experiences dreams in which she speaks to dead people, or dreams in which she is climbing to a height but then suddenly falls, when we repertorize her symptoms we will find thuja among the remedies to consider, because that substance is known to create the experience of those dreams in those who proved it (therefore, it can cure that particular dream symptom--like cures like).

In your case, if you dreamt of birds, and had a fear of them, while your dreams were filled with oppressive birds in the past, we would consider your dream symptoms in our repertorizations for your case. If you experienced an even more vivid dream of these things after taking a remedy, that is a sign that the remedy has "aggravated" that symptom...so you would see these dreams more vividly at first but then they would eventually resolve or stop being the nightmares they once were (you would experience a change in the dreams you had).

Know that sounds kind of muddly--but how's that for a start?

Divina

Oops! One more thing (yes, the previous post was not long winded enough!)

MIND, DREAMS, animals, of
birds, of:
bani-c, bell-p, choc, com, corv-c, irid, kola, limen-b-c, op.

plus many other subrubrics outlining different types of birds, singing birds, biting birds, or black birds.

What this means is that all of the above remedies in the bird-dream rubric caused the provers to experience dreams of birds. So, the nat-mur has the effect of producing this symptom for you--indicating that you MAY need one of the above remedies, if they more closely match your case (all other symptoms considered).

Divina

Dear Contenta,

you have discovered something I found out only after a year of prescribing for patients, that is that when on the right remedy, patients dream quite intensely and vividly. I use this as one of my first key indicators for a good remedy. Sometimes this is the very first thing they will notice. After this , improvement is sure to follow.

A well chosen remedy works on the subconscious mind and the instincts, thus the activity created in the dreamstate.



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David Kempson
Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine
Member A.H.A(Australia)

Anna, Divina and David,

Grazie for your responses and suggestions. I look forward to some fascinating reading. My only reservation about exploring homeopathy is that it seems incredibly complex. It must take many years to have enough knowledge to be able to use it. In the meantime I guess I'll just satisfy my interest and see where it takes me.

Any opinions on the best repetory? Murphy's seems on the expensive side, is it worth it?

ancora Contenta

Yes I prefer Murphy because it is more modern, has more remedies in and is easier to use HOWEVER if you are starting off you really must get to grips with Kent first to learn the language if nothing else.

With all homeoapthic books including Murphy's rep you can by a cheaper Indian version if you don't mind the unique musty smell which never goes and handle the books carefully as they have a tendancy to fall apart!!

Thanks Ricky, I'll do that.