Strategies for Finding a Healing Remedy
Use Polarity Analysis to Heal Minor Common Problems
Minor problems such as a wound, common cold or a belly ache happen suddenly and even if you do nothing about them, if they do not regularly reoccur, then they will disappear totally even if you do nothing to heal them. But they can be uncomfortable. Often they are mostly inconvient. So, why not try? Collect both you questions and your results to show me.
As a beginning homeopath, healing minor problems is an excellent opportunity to hone your skills. Before I learned Polarity Analysis, I usually ignored these problems because repertorizing them produced no convincing results. Repertorization of common symptoms brought up too many remedies and I was too lazy to research them all. Now Using Polarity Analysis (PA), typically I repertorize even the most common symptoms.
I am going to describe my approach to the common cold, but the same approach can be used for any acute symptoms and the most difficult chronic symptoms. Acute symptoms do not recur and they have not had time to adjust to your constitutional defense system. So the injury is shallow and therefore is not permanent or chronic. You only have to find one of a number of different remedies that will heal an acute problem
As the term "common cold" suggests the initial symptoms of a cold are so common to so many remedies that too many remedies will be suggested by any repertory program. Likewise, if you repertorized those symptoms in Doctor Frei's Polarity Analysis, you will get so many remedies with no contraindications that you will be totally discouraged. Take heart! This is my strategy for working with that situation:
Strategies for Finding the Curative Remedy for Common Mild Symptoms
1. Repertorize the the symptoms in Polarity Analysis (PA).
2. Read the materia medical for the remedies that appeared in PA. Note the mind symptoms and the physical symptoms that are located in areas where you have problems. Note the unfamiliar note used to describe those symptoms. Write them down. You can later use these words to repertorized in a larger repertory.
3. Repertorized the mind symptoms in a large repertory. If you are having trouble figuring out what to do or you feel frustrated or too tired to do anything, these are mind symptoms. These symptoms are particularly valuable if you are not normally that way.
4. Finding the center of your case:
a. Repertorized the locations, and the body systems/and or tissues where you are having problems. Nose or headache in the forehead are locations. Respiratory, cough and fever are examples of body systems. Body systems are slightly more important than specific locations. Tissues examples are skin, ligaments, muscles, bones (tissues covering organs are called serous tissues such as the pericardium covering the heart). You can think of tissues as different kinds of cells. You will not need this for the common cold, but mucus membranes are usually involved.
b. Look through the generals chapter of the repertory. Any symptoms that you find there are more important than local symptoms. Symptoms with the same sensations in different locations are also "generals" having high priority as closer to the center of your case.
c. Look through the physical symptoms and prioritized. Generals are most important in body systems for specific tissues are next. For example if there are discharges from several mucous membranes in the nose and the eyes, then that discharging is more important. Mucous membranes are specific tissues.
d. Give high importance to mental emotional symptoms look for similarities with physical symptoms. For example your mind is dull and your pain in your nose is dull. Similar phenomena or sensation in several parts of the body have higher priority. Besides the specific mind symptoms or generalities, there is a general feeling that the case gives you. This is a longer conversation, but don't forget about your general feeling about the person or the case.
e. Let us say you found many different rubrics, but as you analyze your case, you see higher priority "generalities", that is phenomena that occurs in at least parts of the body and you see correspondence between the mind and sensations. Given those high importance as a center of your case. Make a copy of your repertorization and cross out everything that is not central to the case. Do you get a shorter list of important remedies. Do a few remedies stuand out?
e. Be sure to include 1 or 2 rubrics that let your computer know that you are doing a respiratory case. These should be the rubrics that are very important to your case. They could be general rubrics for the common cold. They could be very large that is having more than 160 remedies in them. 800 or 1000 are fine. But they should be at the center of your case as described above.
5. Typically you will not get a very short list of top remedies from your repertorization, look for some odd problem that you have somewhere else in your body. For example you have big calluses on your feet or a hangnail. Typically, I would not try to even cure this kind of problem because it does not bother me much. It is totally unrelated to the center of your case. But, you can use it to narrow down your remedy list. Sometimes it helps.
6. Also if a constitutional remedy has solved many issues, before even repertorizing, I would try that remedy.
7. Don't use over-the-counter combination remedies unless you are totally confused. They will tend to confuse your energy and taking and evaluating the followup will be more confusing.
8. The final step takes you to your beginning repertorization using the PA. Looking at your repertorization from the larger repertory, if you are dealing with very common problems and the symptoms are not very intense, usually you will need to select a remedy from a very long list of remedies. To shorten this list, compare PA repertorization remedies where they overlap with your remedies from your repertorization using a larger repertory. Based on that shorter list, use your materia medica to find the remedies that most clearly describe you and your cold.
Conclusion
The above strategies will help you if you are a beginner. If you are one of my students, send me your repertorization and I will be happy to discuss your case with you. Common wisdom tells us that if we did nothing such minor problem would heal. From my point of view, this kind of repertorization is an exercise and not a necessity. I use it to heal all kinds of minor problems. If you are dealing with the common cold, remember that COVID starts with the symptoms of the common cold. Avoiding medication is always an excellent result of alternative medicine. Healing those symptoms avoids more serious consequences. This basic procedure is also what I use for serious difficult cases. Exercising your homeopathic thinking muscles is well worthwhile even if you fail to find the curative remedy. However with Polarity Analysis, you are much more likely to succeed.