Peris Gumz is a co-owner and core faculty at the a Teleosis Homeopathic Collaborative Active learning community of students and alumni/practitioners Integrated clinic, cases taken & managed by students One-year acute course Three-year professional program Primarily Boston-based ACHENA accredited

Exploring Your Health Narrative An NCH webinar With Peris Gumz Thursday, January 17, 2013

A couple of key questions: First: what are we talking about? Health narrative – how you talk with yourself or others about health, illness, symptoms... And why shine a light on that?

Why shine a light on that? In the absence of a narrative (or guiding questions or a practice of saying “Isn't that interesting?”), the default position is often somewhere between fear and panic.

A couple of examples: a) A fever can kill you. b) I must be really sick, I only want to sleep. c) OMG, my symptoms are returning, I'm relapsing, I'll never get better. a) A fever can be a healing strategy. b) Sometimes we sleep so more of our vital energy can go to our healing. c) Nothing in nature goes in a straight line. It's normal to feel some dips in a recovery process.

Tonight's program: (Assumption: There is value in consciously cultivating your own health narrative.) Consider our own personal resources Reflect on the homeopathic paradigm Images for your contemplation and practice

Exploring Your Health Narrative GET READY!

Teleosis Homeopathic Collaborative

Exploring YOUR health narrative Teleosis Homeopathic Collaborative

Probably like you... Field of Dreams by Emily Stauring

We need to get personally comfortable With wholeness Vitality The role of illness EVEN IF that means simply being willing to be in uncertainty And actively live with the questions

In search of historical context Jacalyn Duffin History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Intro Lovers & Livers: Disease Concepts in History Charles Rosenberg The Cholera Years Explaining Epidemics Hippocratic triangle Observer /physician Illness Patient

A new angle on the triangle Hippocratic triangle Observer /physician Illness Patient A homeopathic triangle Homeopath Remedy Client This is a very different dynamic.

Many & varied skills

Nested bowls

Calling forth another vision Same data, informed by different point of view

What's right about what's wrong? Let's imagine every symptom has a function... Or if you're feeling a little more radical... a gift

Homeopathic paradigm – a few key points Wholeness Energy Individuality Co-existing with prevailing paradigm, like an open secret A homeopathic triangle Homeopath Remedy Client Illness is NOT an independent entity What's right about what's wrong?

Tonight's program: (Assumption: There is value in consciously cultivating your own health narrative.) Consider our own personal resources Reflect on the homeopathic paradigm Images for your contemplation and practice

Some of our best teachers might not be homeopaths Homeo-dynamics (not homeo-stasis) Balancing act between health and illness Direct experience

Ilya Prigogine Nobel prize in mathematics, worked with systems How systems change when info added At overwhelm, when system can no longer incorporate info coming in, system must disintegrate ** and re-establish / re-organize itself at higher level Consider emergency and emergence Consider the phoenix Consider a young being at puberty. Also cited by Margaret A. Newman in Health as Expanding Consciousness

In summary Your personal experience of health and healing is the bedrock of your unique perspective of homeopathy and wholeness. Consciously cultivating your health narrative will support your practice, your clients, and your joy in life. The wholeness and connectedness paradigm is much broader than homeopathy, and you will find good teachers and inspirations in many other fields. If you lay down a track for healing and wholeness, you will begin to see it everywhere.

So why shine a light on this?

Before we close What's useful What's not What would be helpful now