By Jeff Baker, ND, DHANP, CCH

One of the commonest questions that colleagues, ask when they hear about the “new method,” is, “Why do we need a new method?”  In broad terms the answer to that question is simply that there are too many failures.  However, in order to truly answer that question, in such a way as to reduce things to specifics, there is nothing more eloquent than to illustrate by way of a failed case.  After all, aren’t failed cases the handiwork of anyone who is truly practicing?  If we did not have failed cases then we would not be practicing; we would be perfecting, in which case all of our prescriptions would be the simillimum.  Unfortunately, that is a phenomenon with which I am rather unacquainted.  As a result, the case I have chosen to discuss has to do with lots of practice and equal amounts of failure, ultimately resulting in success. 

In this case, as with so many others in my practice, several seemingly brilliant prescriptions were made along the way, resulting in brilliant failures.  I am absolutely certain that were it not for the use of vital sensations and miasm, which are the cornerstones of the new method, as articulated by Rajan Sankaran, I would never have come to the correct remedy. 

For any reader doubting this assertion, I only wish I could share with you the one hundred pages of verbatim, type written notes that were taken over these last eight plus years since I began treating patient K, so you too could have the opportunity to study and struggle and see for yourself if the needed remedy was attainable by any other approach.  Unfortunately there is a space limit to this article, so I will only be able to put down a fraction of what was revealed in the many consultations that ensued. 

K was 33 years old when he originally came in November, 1994  because of “very severe, intense, violent itching, itching like crazy,” a problem that had begun eight years earlier and which continued for nearly another seven years until he got the correct remedy.  He said it was on his arms, shoulders, upper back and abdomen.  “It comes and goes; sometimes it attacks, like bites.  It’s mostly worse at night.”  The itching can keep him awake.  There were no real eruptions present, though there were scabs where he had broken his skin from scratching until bleeding.

Over a long period of time he consistently described the itching as feeling like attacks, having no control over it, feeling helpless, and like a victim of it.  He repeatedly said that the itching was worse at night, worse when he was alone, worse from eating almost any food, especially sweets, which he craved very strongly.

However, K’s problems hardly stopped with itching; there were a whole host of other issues and concerns, ranging from what he called loneliness and separation to cravings for friendship,  love and intimacy to long standing  feelings of hatred toward his father upon whom he depended for money, to anger and rage, episodes of depression, accompanied with thoughts of killing himself, infections of his hands and feet, which were painful from walking or touching them, knee pain, which at times limited his ability to walk and badly decayed teeth.  Additionally there were periods of fatigue, characterized by a tremendous lack of energy, when he would feel that he could not do anything.

Looking at the entire case notes, retrospectively, it is abundantly clear that although K had an array of problems, they never really changed from the outset of treatment.  It took about four consultations before he spoke in some depth about all his issues and then for the succeeding forty plus consultations he just restated those complaints in varying ways.  During that time he received many carefully selected remedies, most of which had either a slight effect or none whatsoever.  He was given (in the following order) Magnesium muriaticum, Sarsaparilla, China sulphurica, Hura, Lac humanum, Natrum carbonicum, Natrum phosphoricum, Hydrogen, Lithium carbonicum, Comocladia, Rhus glabra and Ginkgo biloba.

The following are a few selected passages from various consultations that provide some insight into K’s state:

“Friendship is what is really important to me.  I like really being with one person and giving a lot.  I love very easily, very deeply.  I just meet these people and I do the healing work.  Basically, it’s just love on coming together with someone.  I crave friendships and relationship.  Over the years my attractions have mostly been with men.  I’m free and put no labels on it.  I can be with men intimately.  I could have an intimate relationship with a woman just as easily, but it hasn’t happened in several years.  I’m with a person in every way ... like a complete relationship, which includes intimacy.”

“Not to be able to love (one particular friend of whom he spoke), because he stayed away, was so painful; I almost killed myself.  I have this unfulfilled love with people.  My younger brother and I loved each other more than anybody.  But we really didn’t realize it.  There was no space or time for that with all that was going on in normal life.  I see the same pattern going on for years.  I meet these younger men ...and some older ... with an intense love that isn’t realized.  They become afraid ... I’m me being really open, loving so much and them, running away from what they want most.”

“When someone is not in touch with their feelings I get hurt a lot because I feel everything.  I feel incredibly deep love and when they leave I feel incredibly deep pain.  I don’t involve myself in the world in general.  My time is totally open and spontaneous when I am with people.  Without someone to be with and exchange this depth of intimacy and love leaves me very lonely.  It’s very hard.  If someone is there it’s often 24 hours a day.  I need someone I can be close with.  I crave that and when I don’t have it, it’s very hard for me.”

“I never liked my father.  I was always afraid of him.  Fear was there.  He’s so hurtful, so cut off from everything.  He’s a nightmare.  He goes on and on criticizing everything.  I stayed in my own space, separated.  He was wild, loud, like a cartoon character, crazy to me, could be angry, not violent, insensitive.  I was scared of my father, close to my mother, but kind of too close, felt she needed me.  I was my mother’s special because she needed me after her father died. “

“Another time - at hot tub, older men were invading my space.  They would try to touch me, follow me.  I got so angry that I wanted to beat them up.  Angry at father, father stuff.  So angry and not wanting to be close, afraid to be close.  Judging the older man as being weak, invading, being more than disrespectful.“

“I had a dream that recurred for many years ... me running through my (childhood) house, father chasing me.  I would take a path which led down somewhere into the underworld.  Very scary dream.”

“The hardest thing is this loneliness when there’s not someone to be with ... the pain of really being alone and most people seem dead or cut off from me ... the feeling of not being able to connect with people, someone.  I see the essence of someone and who they are.  Then I see the walls and it drives me insane; it hurts so much.”

“If I see someone who I feel some kind of connection with, mostly it’s a guy who isn’t open and I know it’s real and we have something to share that’s real.  I see that person cutting it off, so closed off it hurts.  I feel the actual energy connections with people and I want ... need it so badly.  I never knew how much protection people have.  The more I see it the more it hurts.  I pray I’m quickly with the next person I can be with.”

“I’ve been into loneliness, separation, down.  Had love, physical closeness.  Loneliness is mostly in the evening.  When the sun goes down loneliness really gets worse.  When it gets dark and I’m not with someone.  If I find myself alone in the evening that’s when it hurts.  Then I eat more than I need, to get some kind of fulfillment and then the itching gets much worse.”

“Physically, I shit a lot, i.e. I can shit 4-5 times per day.  Everything I eat comes right through.  I want to take in this nourishment and it’s always leaving.  I can’t hold onto anything.  It’s crazy because it passing right through.”

There are so many approaches one can take in a case like this or for that matter in any case.  At various times I used different combinations of symptoms from the mind (delusions, dreams, fears etc.),  generals, and physical symptoms, all sorts of different totalities to make very clever prescriptions, clever failures all.  I now refer to this way of practicing homeopathy as the “guess work method.”  It relies on a myriad of different analysis strategies, depending upon how the case is evaluated and how the various symptoms are weighted or emphasized.  And to be perfectly honest, it does work occasionally; often enough that it can keep hope alive, which is to say that it can sustain a practice, but real results are woefully inadequate and inconsistent.  Speaking from 24 years of practice, thousands of patients, tens of thousands of hours of hard work in the consulting room with patients and in the materia medicas, I feel it is fair and honest to say that the practice of homeopathy, by and large has been too haphazard.

Whether one chooses to rely more heavily on delusions and dreams, keynotes, generalities, essences, analyses that emphasize small or less well proven remedies etc., etc., I now firmly believe that the fault or weakness lies in the fact that it is human phenomena that are being given weight.  Whereas in the new method, it is the non-human (not exclusive to the domain of humans), universal phenomena, which become the basis for understanding and prescribing.  Dr. Sankaran has referred to these as vital sensations. 

Working with vital sensations requires a somewhat different way of listening to the patient and investigating the case.  Since there is no rhyme or reason to the vital sensations that patients express; the focus shifts from the patient’s story line to that which is truly peculiar and unifying in a case.  While stories are many and varied and often fascinating, even riveting beyond comprehension, they are all too often subtle traps in that they do not unify the case, but rather lead to fragmentation and with that fragmented thinking, also commonly referred to as case analysis strategies.

Obviously what is needed is a way of reliably connecting disturbances of the vital force, within our patients, with that which is vital in our medicines.  That is precisely what vital sensations do.  The vast preponderance of our medicines derives from minerals, animals and plants, which do not have human qualities, but they do have their own unique and consistent properties, which turn out to be sensations. 

So it only stands to reason that if our job as homeopaths is to find that right remedy, that simillimum, then we need to know what to look for in order to link a person with his or her curative substance.  In order to accomplish this our awareness in practice needs to be highly tuned to that which is non-human and therefore strange, rare, peculiar, yet characteristic, not merely of people, but substances. Ultimately, what we are after is the general sensation, which is common to the mind and body and comes up in the same form in all circumstances (Sankaran on the Levels of Experience, 2002).  Such sensations belong neither to the mind or to the body; these are vital sensations.

Using this way of working in K’s case made all the difference.  After working with the method of using vital sensations, I became aware that K used the same words, the same sensations, to describe his itching, his general state, his dreams, his other physical complaints and virtually every area of his life.  The following quotes illustrate:

“Itching feels out of control.  Something is invading me in some way.  It makes me feel powerless, no control over it.  Violated.  Also, I can’t wear nice clothes as I get bloodstains on them ... something bad, wrong, dirty.  My father judging me for being bad.  Something ugly about me.”

“When I was traveling this summer I got stopped and my van was searched.  I was scared for months after that ... still am ... coming into my home, invading my home.  Fear of going where I want to go.  Fear of going to new places, new things.  Afraid to show my fear and love to anyone.  Afraid I won’t be left alone.”

How does it feel to be invaded?  “Really violated.  Invasion now is like dancing, if someone comes into my space, stops me.  Or if somebody tries to be close to me in my space I get angry at that ... this negative force I can’t break away from.”

Speaking of how he felt about his father, both in dreams and as a child: “Afraid of this uncontrollable force coming at me--him trying to hurt me.  Feeling helpless.  Unable to do anything about somebody trying to hurt me, coming after me, feeling powerless.  He was always this darkness, this bad force, this out of control monster.  I was controlled by him.  I had no control.”

“ My teeth, a major problem, I am focused on it (for years)  The decay is black, dark, coming up from inside, underneath.  Like my dad talking, in his negative, controlling way, that darkness and the smell is ugly, dirty, dark, inside of me, I can’t get rid of it.  The dentist just wants to pull the teeth.  I won’t let him.  I’m very afraid that is just violent intrusion ... pull this part of me.  Like the good me in this dark, negative world that just wants to do these violent things to me.  This is just like the world in general.  Like there is something bad and wrong that has to be removed from me.  Like I am an innocent child just violently invaded.” 

“The other day a weird thing happened on the beach.  A big rock hit me on my ankle out of nowhere and I was in pain and fuck, what is this, out of nowhere!   Makes me feel like I was attacked.  At the time I was walking on the beach and there was a Hawaiian boy, all this sexual energy I was very uncomfortable with.  His energy was very afraid and trying to get something.  It was right after I passed him this rock happened.  It was invasive, his energy.  It was a total freak thing; this rock jumped up and hurt me.  It could be a long time till it heals.”

“I want kissing with the mouth, but now there is all darkness inside.  A dark force is invading my home ... black on my van..., invincible mold, dark force has invaded me ... so metaphorical for me, like a dentist taking out my teeth.”

Dream:  “I heard this click and tone in my forehead, like alien abduction, monitoring me in my sleep.  I went back to sleep and woke up to this click and tone, right above me, scary, like alien beings doing something with me in my sleep.  Used to be scared as a kid in that house at night.  Scared of people, black people coming to rob us.  Father had all this fear of black people.”

K’s love for greenery, fruits and vegetables, his rambling, unstructured speech and life style, his sensitivities to foods, sunlight, and people led me to know that he needed a plant remedy.  The vital sensations that ran throughout his entire case were invaded (like aliens), controlled, violated, forced, (coming) into my space, danger and strength.  Although the family to which these vital sensations belong is not in volumes 1 or 2 of Dr. Sankaran’s Insight into Plants, I had been fortunate to learn from him that these are the vital sensations of the Fungi family. 

Miasmatically, the case was much easier to understand.  The key words associated with leprosy were in abundance throughout K’s case:  Isolated, confined, secluded, cast out (separate, alone, great loneliness), hopelessness, dirty,  tears himself (scratches to bleeding), loathing (hatred of father and himself).

There are two remedies that Dr. Sankaran has indicated are at the cross point or intersection of the Fungi family and leprosy:  Secale cornutum and Solanum tuberosum aegrotans.  While Secale is a very well proven remedy, Sol-t-ae. is a relatively smaller remedy.  The deciding point that led to giving Sol-t-ae. was that it is known to have violent itching.  Secale, on the other hand is not known for that symptom.  Since K’s chief complaint was exactly that, violent itching, Sol-t-ae. was given.  I also noted two other confirmations in Solanum tuberosum aegrotans’ relatively short list of mental symptoms:  Fear of robbers and Destructiveness.  K had specifically said on several occasions “over eating is self destructive.”

In the last 13 months K has received three doses of Sol-t-ae., the first two doses were 1M and the last was a 10M.  Since getting the remedy there has been a dramatic decrease in his itching, to such an extent that he can go for many months with no itching whatsoever.  Equally impressive has been the reduction in both his level of hopelessness (feelings of separation and isolation) coupled with feelings that the world is safer, less invasive and dangerous.  He has had a number of experiences and awarenesses that have given him a sense of comfort.

Previously one of his greatest fears was of being violated and overcome by a man, where he would be under the control of the larger, stronger man.  In such a situation he imagined that he would be badly hurt or killed.  He spoke of such a person as a dark force, nobody he could ever connect with.  Six months after the remedy he described an encounter:  “After I saw you last time, this huge local guy got very angry that I got some paint on his car, after accidentally hitting his car door.  It was a scary experience, but he opened up and we worked it out.  He is this big, tough guy.  I even talked to him about my fear, we spent a while talking and ended up hugging.  It was very intense, but everything was fine, no violent energy.”

On another follow-up he spoke about a dream:  “Reunited with an old friend, D .  The two of us were together and then my father came into it.  My father was the whole issue between me getting close to D;  he was in the way.  They had an interaction, my father was talking and D gently put his hand on my father’s face.  My father was being loved and accepted by D.  My father feeling loved by D and him being in acceptance, allowing D and me to be close.  Him not having to be critical and judgmental and get in the way of the closeness.  This was a big healing dream for me.”

Most recently K has had all four of his decayed teeth extracted.  He had not been willing to have a dentist go inside his mouth for fear that he would be violated and invaded.  He decided, on his own, that this would be good for him.

This is only one of many cases that have been solved by utilizing this method.  Without using vital sensations there was no way I would have been able to give K the remedy he needed.  If I had searched the materia medica for remedies with violent itching that would have reduced the list to 303 remedies, not very good odds that I would have come to the remedy in his lifetime.  The beauty of the method is that it is consistent, reliable, and eliminates many of the common pitfalls and errors that are frequently encountered.  I am very pleased to state, without qualification, that results I previously never imagined or thought possible are now very much within reach.  This is an extraordinary time to be practicing homeopathy.  A great debt of gratitude is owed Dr. Sankaran for furthering the work of the master.

Jeff Baker, ND, DHANP, CCH lives, with his family, on the island of Maui, where he practices homeopathy with his wife, Susie.  Jeff directs the Maui Academy of Homeopathy, which, for the past twelve years, has presented seminars and more recently extended courses in advanced homeopathic practice. He welcomes feedback or enquiry and can be reached by e-mail at mauiacademy@earthlink.net