Homeopathy and the integration of feelings -6-

Homoeopathy and the integration of feelings -6-

Sensations and feelings


In his recent work Rajan Sankaran discusses the phenomena of sensations and their prominence in suffering. He has discovered that the remedies derived of a particular family or even sometimes an order of plants share primary sensations and reactions in common. Therefore it is important to realise what sensations are and how they are related to feelings.
At the deepest point in all suffering exists a healthy feeling. Suffering emerges to the extent this feeling is buried. In the process of suppression what becomes set up is an alternating state of opposites. These are, a distorted manifestation of the feeling itself together with its very opposite. To move near the healthy feeling being suppressed is to feel aggravated and the further we can get away the more ameliorated (temporarily) we are. This is the main dualism of the state and it exists at the level of feeling. As a result of this primary suppression emerges physical and mental sensations that are part of the expression of suffering. These sensations are very connected and bear much similarity to the suppressed feelings. Sometimes by studying the sensations of a particular remedy or remedies we can work out what the feeling might be. The provings and the clinical information will somewhere indicate it as well. The sensations of suffering also become set up as dualistic opposites suggesting their close relatedness to the feeling from which they emerged.


An example of the connection between the healthy feeling and the sensations experienced is found through looking at the remedies derived from the family of Anacardiaceae. The main feeling central to all the remedies here Rhus Tox, Anacardium etc is that of fear. The Anacardiaceae remedies are indicated for suffering emanating from the suppression of fear. Rajan Sankaran gives some prominent sensations of the suffering here as ‘Caught, Stiff, Tight, Tension, Stuck, Cramps, Pressing’ (Sankaran’s Schema). In the book An Insight into Plants the sensation of the person feeling physically ‘caught’ is stressed as being very characteristic. Therefore there will be a fundamental connection between fear and the sensation of ‘being caught’. Throughout the section on the Anacardiaceae remedies in An Insight into Plants the feeling of fearfulness is very apparent in the cases given. Also attributed to these remedies is the sensation of ‘cannot move’ of being ‘unable to move’, ‘as if paralysed’. This is interesting because it is what people say ‘I was so scared I couldn’t move’ and ‘I was paralysed from fear’.
We can see the connection between the feeling and some of the sensations from what we know about fear. The main dualism here at the level of feeling is that of fear/fearlessness and some of the prominent alternating opposite sensations will include caught/let go, stuck unable to move as if paralysed/moving, motion ameliorates, restlessness. What seems extraordinary is that the reaction to fear of not being able to move is expressed as a sensation even in a state of the suppression of fear. With the state of fear here the person is ‘stiff’ and ‘stuck’ with fear. The state of Rhus-tox is something like sudden fear and helplessness while Anacardium is a lot like the person is suppressing fear of being harmed. George Vithoulkas describes this fear of being harmed in Anacardium "She had fears of falling ill and dying. She imagines herself in a coffin and thinks that she is in danger. She had fears of cars in the street. She was very timid. Felt that everybody was looking at her when she would walk in the street. The illusions are that they feel someone is after them to kill them…Yes, now how is the violence expressed? I will read you this: In a quarrel, she had with her brother she wanted to do harm…Anac. is a remedy that can lead to cruelty” (Talks on Classical Homoeopathy).
We can again see the connection between the feeling and the sensations in the remedies of the Euphorbiaceae family. Here the feeling is of being restrained. Rajan Sankaran gives the sensations here to be of being tied and of being bound. This is also described in the Materia Medica as the feeling of being pulled back, held back. In Croton-tiglium there is ‘Drawn backward feeling’ (C Boger), and ‘Drawing pain as if drawn backward with a string (nipples: eyes) (Frans Vermeulen). Hura Brasiliensis has the expression ‘Pain in right arm, as if it were pulled violently or has been stretched for a long time’. Hura also has ‘Inability to incline forward; he can only walk bent backward; when bending forward ever so little, drawings are felt in the lumbar region compelling him to straighten up’ (Allen)(cited in Frans Vermeulen). Generally, these states have drawing pains, pains that draw to a point and the dislike of parts and affected parts being pressed, along with the tense tightness of skin, the hidebound feeling. The pains here are characteristically also of a constricting nature. An expression here is also disobedience. The person feeling restrained can be disobedient. In the suppression of feeling restrained the reactive secondary state to this is of not wanting to be restrained by anything and so the person might become or seem disobedient to the wishes of others.


An interesting connection between feelings and sensations is given in An Insight into Plants in the discussion of the Liliflorae remedies. Here the feeling is of being left out, excluded, neglected. The main alternating states will therefore be left out excluded/ being included. Dr Sankaran describes an important sensation here as ‘held in’ which exists in tandem with ‘forced out, break out, pushed out’. This ‘held in’ sensation he explains can in turn become oppressed, constrained, constricted and a reaction to this can be that of ‘must move’. To be included is like being ‘held in’. Therefore created from the feeling of being excluded and also included is the sensation of wanting to move.


Another example is the order of magnolianae, which includes the remedies Nux-Moschata and Camphor. Here the main feeling is of strangeness, of being in a strange place or of things becoming very strange, of feeling strange. The main dualism is 'strangeness/withdrawing into ones own world where things are not strange' (Sankarans Schema). At the level of sensation the person experiences this strangeness more as a sense of being bewildered, beclouded perplexed and confused. These sensations will then exist with their opposites.


email: davidquinn@paradise.net.nz