Letter from the Principal, Cornelis van Dalen.
• Curriculum changed in 2007
• Is this course for YOU?
• Are you already a practitioner?
• What is Naturopathy?
• What is Classical Homoeopathy?
• Why study Homeopathy?
• Why Naturopathy with Homoeopathy?
The year 2007 has brought some changes in the school.
When students start a course of study, all good intentions are made of finishing it. The intense interest of the first few months slowly wanes and the need to learn and remember infinite pieces of information becomes for some a real and painful chore. This is often a test of desire and purpose, perhaps too a trial by boredom or of mental fatigue. Sometimes the student realises this is not what they thought they were coming to learn; it is not for them and so they quit the course.
It is readily observed that more than 90% of students of complementary and alternative medical therapies who graduate from colleges and schools, even universities, do not go on the practice professionally their discipline, their learned healing art. It is challenging for most newly qualified practitioners to establish professional practice in the UK in an environment where state-sponsored medicine is free. So why do they study?
People undertake such courses for the knowledge it brings, often to learn about their own health crisis. This knowledge is put into practice for self-help or to aid members of the family and friends. There are many motivations to wanting to learn. All are high and worthy; to learn is to live, grow in confidence and mental stature; and discover one’s humanity. “Education only ceases when you die, or a little longer depending on your beliefs,” was a truism from the late Sir Peter Ustinov.
To meet the real need of the student of the highest and noblest desire – to help other people – and with the reality of the foregoing comments, the courses of the School of New Physis have been redesigned. The successful foundation seminars into holistic therapy have been incorporated into a broader programme. This is now a two-year course offering the stimulating groundwork, the philosophy and the practical aspects of Homoeopathy, Naturopathy and of Oriental medicine. We have called this two-year certificated course Holistic Therapeutic Education.
If after two years the student wishes to proceed to become a certified practitioner of classical Homoeopathy and Naturopathy, then another two-year programme is commenced. All the intricate details of anatomy and physiology, the in-depth study of the Materia Medica, the intense clinical practice and case management skills, and so forth, come into the last two years – this will be the real hard graft. But how pleasurable this will be for when one understands why a thing is so, learning the intricacies and minutiae will be easier, will be craved and thus one’s final knowledge will be the most outstanding.
Recall your own school days, what did you learn, what do you remember? The minutiae?
Philosophy is the love of wisdom. When one seeks wisdom, especially related to medicine, a whole new world of expression and profound knowledge opens up. Know that while modern pharmaceutical medicine is practiced around the world, and is supported and controlled by the state, it is only one small branch of the knowledge of Man and Nature. The so-called alternative and complementary medicine of today is the tree! For it comes out of, it derives from thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. More people learn and seek homoeopathic, herbal and oriental medicine for treatment of their illness or disease than actually go to doctors of the drug ‘cure’!
The principles of holistic medicine, of life and living, are none so plain as Hahnemann’s Homoeopathy. When correctly practiced Homoeopathy is a total prescription for healing and not just a pillule of one remedy; it is also of diet for the body and soul, suggestions for an appropriate physical and social regimen. Social regimen is our relationship to our spouse or partner – and in sexual relations – as well as our family, for Hahnemann noted that unhappy home life is an obstacle to cure. Thus a homoeopathic practitioner must be schooled and skilled in all areas of life in addition to the knowledge of the tools of the homoeopathic art; classical homoeopathy is extremely complex, yet brilliant in its efficacy.
Is this course for you?
Yes, because there are two options. The first section of two years is a thorough instruction into therapeutics, giving you confidence in mind to help family and friends in sickness and distress as well as gaining a basis of further self-learning in the philosophy of life and advanced thinking. The New Physis course of Holistic Therapeutic Education is broad, extremely interesting, and not too focused on the voluminous of minutiae information, never to be used again after passing the exam.
What happens when you start study and become so absorbed in it, have some brilliant cures with homoeopathy or some diet you have devised and you wish to take this into professional practice? We continue into the second two-year programme, the New Physis Practitioner course for Diploma of (Classical) Homoeopathy and Diploma of Naturopathy. In this programme we improve the detail of what is learned in part one and groom you into the challenge of clinical work and practice management.
Are you already a practitioner?
Medicine needs to evolve if it is to address the changing human condition. The challenge is that medicine today is ever narrow in its focus. This is especially true for material scientific medicine. However, the impulse of Hahnemann’s Homoeopathy is in danger of being lost, and altered by ever more practitioners of reductionist scientific medicine and by abstract thinking giving way to ‘transcendental speculation’. The attacks upon homoeopathy are regular and sustained. Traditional Naturopathic medicine too is diluted and given a label of a multitude of practices. It is our challenge to change this trend and appropriately stimulate the healing arts and so enliven the patients.
Many schools of alternative medicine focus on material aspects and pass by the philosophic foundation of the therapy. Samuel Hahnemann’s philosophy is key to many therapies, not only homoeopathy. Many practitioners have enjoyed the New Physis foundation course of holistic medicine, because it augments so many aspects of how to see the patient – temperamentally, astrologically, and also in the context of universal rhythms and cycles of life. The School of New Physis offers an in-depth study of practical therapeutic philosophy for practitioners and beginning students alike. Undertake the whole course or attend the specific modules of your interest to further your knowledge under the umbrella of continuing professional development.
And so it is, the New Physis programme awaits your participation.
Cornelis van Dalen ND, Dip Hom, IMSS, DSSTM
London, United Kingdom
What is Naturopathy?
Naturopathy is a 19th century word meaning ‘nature cure’. A Naturopath, in simple terms, is one who applies natural therapies in professional medical practice. A Naturopath is Nature’s doctor. When the word was coined, medical practice was using crude drugs, purging, blood letting. Yet many realised that the body heals if given the right treatments: fasting, proper nutrition, hydrotherapy (water cures) and exercise or rest. Today, Naturopathy is synonymous with natural therapies and products.
The tradition of Naturopathic medicine was originally European, with many influential figures as far back as Hippocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, Hahnemann to name a few. The modern Naturopath draws upon their insights and techniques, which we are witnessing as the revival of traditional medicine now known as alternative medicine. So often when conventional medicine can be of no help, people are turning to the Naturopathic practitioner.
Health and vitality is the natural state of life: it is our right to be healthy and live life for its intended purpose, whatever that may mean individually. Throughout history, plague and pestilence have ravished to earth, and medicine of all descriptions have been sought to restore health. The question of why we become ill may remain obscure and mysterious. But Nature cures. Given the right conditions the body will self heal or self-correct. It is the role of the Naturopath to help nature cure.
What is Classical Homoeopathy?
Hahnemann’s Homoeopathy is based on three principles: the law of similars, the single remedy, and the minimum dose. The work of James Tyler Kent (1849-1916) brought the work of Samuel Hahnemann into a new dimension. The Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, which is his supreme contribution to all future physicians, guiding them to the cure of diseases. Kent states – ‘There is no disease, only sick people’. His use of the patient’s mental symptoms as the supreme importance to the case, that which expressed the very deepest level of the patient’s disturbance, was of primary importance.
Through JT Kent we arrive at what can be termed Classical Homoeopathy. Others have evolved varying pathways from the work of Hahnemann – each with their efficacy and adherents. The School of New Physis teaches the supreme foundation of the homoeopathic art. What the student makes of this, in the evolutionary path of healing, is up to them. There are many schools of homoeopathy but there is only one New Physis and its adherence to the spirit of Hahnemann and Kent.
Why study Homoeopathy?
The New Physis School is based on the assertion that Samuel Hahnemann’s Homoeopathy, as a medical science and practice, is the highest system of Nature Cure known to man at this time.
Hahnemann (1755-1843) called his system of medicine Homoeopathy from the Greek: homoios (similar) and pathos (suffering or disease). For healing of a disease Hahnemann showed that the one remedy should be used that provokes a similar set of symptoms in a healthy organism to those symptoms of the disease to be healed. He had revealed the principle of like cures like.
The introduction to Mrs Grieve’s A Modern Herbal notes: ‘Most of the modern scientific work on the right use of herbs we owe to Hahnemann and his followers’. When this is properly understood, the genius and validity (and indeed the efficacy) of homoeopathy is one most outstanding achievement in medical therapeutics. The study of this is a unique aspect of the New Physis curriculum.
Hahnemann took herbal medicine to higher dimensions. Many of the herbs and mineral remedies were proven more powerful healing agents when the remedies were diluted and succussed. Even the poisons (or used as drugs) became therapeutic agents when diluted and potentised according to the Homoeopathic principles.
It is of greatest service to mankind and its sufferance when homoeopathic remedies are employed for the mind or mental aspects. How we express ourselves in health and in sickness, our peculiarities, idiosyncrasies – our temperament – is important for the selection of the healing remedy. Only the Homoeopathic Art of healing acknowledges mind symptoms in the human in the selection of remedies. Homoeopathy acknowledges the Spirit Dynamic, the Vital Principle, which represents the man in totality.
Why Naturopathy with Homoeopathy?
Naturopathy, as a philosophy, and to some extent a mixed or eclectic therapeutic practice, is offered as a grounding or balance to the study of homoeopathy. Many tools and practices, which are learned in the study of Naturopathy, are of vital use in the day-to-day management of the patient in his or her recovery to health. Naturopathy is more than fasting or detoxification. It adheres to the age-old principles of assimilation and elimination. This, too, is true for Homoeopathy.
With naturopathy comes the knowledge to prescribe diets, and physical, social and sexual regimens for health. This is as essential as any prescription; in a letter to a patient dated October 16, 1830 Hahnemann demonstrates the holistic approach in explaining to the patient every facet of what was needed to bring him back to health. This knowledge too the modern practitioner must acquire.
Additionally, the practitioner is called upon to answer effectively the many questions of the patient. Patients are well versed. Modern medical science has grown into specialisations, the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Additionally, there are many aspects of the alternative therapeutics. It is the objective of the New Physis curriculum to train and offer knowledge beyond the realms of specialisation, and into the greater sphere in which therapeutic understanding and practice is based, and so be able to meet the inquisitive patient.
Importantly, Homoeopathic philosophy ever debates the ethics and the efficacy of current allopathic medical practice. It is ever beholden to all to seek what is good and what is false, as an independent initiative.
Why two diplomas?
In our changing world of complimentary and alternative medicine, practitioners ever face the prospect of needing to align with various professional associations. The New Physis practitioner qualifies for both the homoeopathic and the naturopathic criteria for affiliation. The School of New Physis is a member of the Complementary Medical Association, U.K. (CMA)
© Cornelis van Dalen 2004-2008. All rights reserved