Aside from actually being able to answer your three year old’s questions, I provided this as an illustration of the more general pattern of holistic thinking in health and science, which always finds the living polarity of any phenomenon, rather than conceptually killing everything through a one-sided abstraction, like the proverbial butterfly collector.
If you like, I can also help you with the other famous question of three year olds, of “where do babies come from?”

Upon further discussion, it is always discovered that the child actually is quite good at focussing — on particular activities in their life. Some, or all of the school curriculum, however, does not catch their interest, and so their uncaptured energy gets discharged through other distractions or disruptions, which is misdiagnosed as a problem with the child, rather than a mismatch of the curriculum with their interests and talents.
The tragic solution which is often attempted is a drug-based approach, which I refer to as a “chemical straight jacket”, that wrongly tries to adapt the relatively healthy child to a relatively unhealthy system of education. While much can be said about better alternative forms of education, the key point to ponder in this context is the essential need for everyone to work towards and into their own resonant desire function, and to draw in resources which best support its unfolding and development. To the degree that false forms of education have dampened down this natural impulse we all have, a certain remedial approach is required first to undo the damage already done (such as we do through sequential time line treatment), while working on “fanning the flames” for any ember that can still be discovered within.

This phenotype is one of the most classic images of “stasis”, in the sense of the dynamic interplay of internal forces which animate us having been neutralized by countervailing forces of their daily situation or environment. The classic “mothering” situation, which I mentioned above, is one which typically creates a constant stream of demands, leaving zero time left for the mother to do anything for herself, or focus on her own needs. The structure of the modern family appears to have moved away from the old mode of “it takes a village to raise a child”, where there is usually one single primary care-taker for the child (typically the mother) while the father works throughout the day. Even the not so distant past had more of an extended family structure around the child, where 3 or even 4 generations would live together in a house or duplex, spreading out the child-rearing duties.

The remedy Sepia is made from the ink of the cuttlefish, which is squirted out at its predators as its primary mode of defense. This is a vivid image of the cloud of irritability which the Sepia person exudes in an attempt to keep anyone from getting close enough to make a new demand on them.

Sepia feel their best just after vigorous exercise, with dancing being an activity they especially enjoy. This illustrates how Sepia is primarily a state of stasis, which does well from anything which energizes or invigorates them. They are even energized from witnessing a thunder storm, as they welcome this influx of energy to dispel their internal stasis.

Physically, there are a number of symptoms of laxity of the muscles or tissues, which may appear as sagging facial features, or other body parts which aren’t holding their tone. The sex drive is absent, and sex is seen as yet another demand – the expression “putting out” would be the literal feeling from this point of view. Their food cravings emphasize either sweets, or vinegary or sour foods. Many of the physical health complaints related to Sepia involve the hormonal system in general, including menstrual difficulties, PMS, menopause symptoms, infertility, and so on.

This is one of those remedies where the relief the patient often quickly experiences is a great blessing, and something which is celebrated by the patient and practitioner alike. Being able to witness such a dragged down state of mind lifted is truly a sight to behold. Such a heavy feeling of depression or hopelesness may seem like an impossible vortex to escape from, but the well chosen remedy can do wonders for the inner feeling, despite the outer circumstances not being any different than they were before the remedy. Our state of mind makes all the difference in how we experience and interpret our lives, and such turnarounds are great illustrations of how fundamental the state of mind is in creating either our state of health, or our state of disease.

While the Mom and I attempted to talk, she throwing bits of food at the maw of the perpetually hungry and thirsty  babe to try and placate her need to turn all the focus onto her.  The food was just adding fuel to an already hot little fire!  You could just feel the tension in the child and I bided my time until she superseded Mom’s capacity to quell her imaginative hunger versus her desire to thoroughly explore my office without us getting in her way.  I let Mom know that we’d get only as far as we could today and that it was no problem to set up a short telephone consultation afterwards so that we might answer any left-over questions she might have about her child’s Heilkunst treatment at a time more conducive for her when the child was at daycare.

This little girl was so brilliantly engaging that she just obscured and virtually cancelled out her Mom who kept apologizing, attempting to get the child to “be polite,” coercing her to say polite phrases to thank me.  I laughed to myself thinking about what a botched mission this would be from the get-go as her rebellious nature was already in motion.  This babe was a riotous blur of movement and activity, and rightfully, the last thing in her mind were “please and thank yous.”  It was just a matter of time, before the Mom and I became so engaged that we lost track of the two year old on her mission to turn my office upside down as a function of her destinal path.  I even typed her blood, thinking that would slow her down a bit.  That lasted about 10 minutes!

I have a little spot on my desk where I keep hidden a bottle of peppermint essential oil to put in my water, on occasion, along with an all natural peppermint lip balm made by Saponetta Divino.  Before I could move to retrieve my two valued personal items, she had the cap whipped off the lip balm which canon-balled across the desk to land, on the other side of the room, somewhere in my blood typing kit, not to be located until I next typed another patient’s blood a few days later.  The next thing the Mom and I knew, the child had smeared the contents of my lip balm all over her mouth and chin.  The next thing we heard was her exclaim, “Pretty lips, Momma, pretty lips!”  We both laughed pretty hard, diffusing the tension.  Apparently she does the same with her Mom’s lipsticks on occasion.  We both agreed by affirming the babe, “Yes, darlin’ pretty lips for sure.”

 She went home with the pretty lips stick, without the lid, and my firm understanding of her constitution. I also knew why the respiratory issues plagued her, as they were derived from up her parent’s and grand-parent’s genetic history.  The following week, I had the pleasure of starting to treat the Mom, bolstering her confidence about how to effectively navigate a Sulphur constitution, and extending my sympathies.

Phosophorous individuals have very thin skin, metaphorically speaking, and are highly sensitive to their environment, whether of the emotions of the people around them, or literally of changes in the weather and atmosphere. They seek to avoid or diffuse conflict around them, as a means to relieve their own heightened experience of the build up of charge of such energy. On this note, they can tend to be pleasers, or entertainers, always trying to keep the spirits up of those around them. One of the downsides is that they can easily fall into relationships where they completely lose track of their own identity, and become co-dependently lost in the ego of their beloved. More generally, they may have an underlying feeling of anxiety when alone, and have a high drive to be around other people, even if that means having a talk radio station playing in the background.

The positive side to their sensitivity is that they are highly sympathetic to the feelings and experiences of those around them, and are able to communicate about these things in great depth. Communication and expression, as a matter of fact, are core to the Phosphorous personality, who is the most expressive of all the constitutional types. Whether in terms of emotional communication as I just mentioned, or artistic expression, the Phosphorous type is a continual font.

They are driven to try many things, and to have many experiences, that is, when they haven’t surpassed their own limits and driven themselves to burnout. You could say that everyone goes through a kind of Phosphorous phase during their 20s, when exploring all aspects of the worlds’ ideas and cultures is a typical form of expression of our life energy.

Phosphorous children are very bright and talkative, and the parents will often feel that they need to “tie a kite string” to their toe, to keep them from floating off into the ether. Mitten pairs attached by a string were probably invented for Phosphorous children, whose entire winter wardrobe can usually be found in the school’s lost-and-found at the end of the year.

Like all experiences in their life, they usually embrace Heilkunst treatment as an experience they explore with every nuance of their feeling life, and have much to report to the practitioner at each visit.

The over-arching principle which homeopathy is based on is “the law of similars”. This underlying principle is always the same, but the way it is applied will vary based on the type of disease or trauma being addressed. At the level of first aid prescribing, the application of this principle is extremely easy, as it is based on a constant relationship between a particular physical shock, and the remedy which always relates to it.

The remedy which everyone should have in their first aid kits is Arnica. In the first aid jurisdiction, it can be given for every shock or trauma involving a contusion, such as from a fall, or being hit by something. This is pretty much a constant remedy for parents to use with their kids while they are in the first 7-year cycle of growth, which I wrote about the other day. Start a list on the inside of your first aid kit, which says “Arnica for Contusions”. It will be your best friend for sore muscles, and any time you overexert yourself physically.

The next remedy on this list would be Hypericum, which is useful in any case involving damage to the nerves, such as an injury which crushes the fingertips, which are a very nerve-rich area. Also for any dental procedure, which is also a very nerve-rich area. So add to the list in your first aid kit “Hypericum for nerve damage”.

Aconite is sometimes called “The Arnica of the eye” – any contusion to the eye will benefit from early and frequent dosing with aconite. You can write it that way in your first aid kit : “Aconite is the Arnica of the eye”.

What about splinters, or other objects that lodge themselves under your skin? Silicea is the remedy which helps expel any foreign objects, and is best used in a low potency, such as 30ch. Warning : do not use silicea if someone has an internal medical device, such as a pacemaker! Write on your first aid list “Silicea to expel foreign objects”.

What would you use for a bee sting? Apis is specific for bee stings, along with any condition with similar symptoms, such as rapid swelling, redness, and itchiness, as some may have from allergic reactions. A high potency of Apis (such as 10m) is good to carry by anyone who has strong allergies of any kind. To remember the basic version of this, write “Apis for bee stings” in your first aid kit.

What about food poisoning? You know, when something was a little off with your recent meal, and it has decided that it needs to come back out through every orifice you own? Cold sweats, queasiness, and feeling like you’re on death’s door are all a part of this very unpleasant experience. Arsenicum is the specific remedy to treat food poisoning generally, or Carbo Vegetalis, if the food poisoning was specifically from fish. Add that to your first aid kit.

These remedies, in conjunction with a well-trained approach for handling any first aid situation, are relatively easy to learn and apply, as their application is very formulaic. You certainly don’t need to have a Heilkunst consult to figure out which of these remedies to use, although in the midst of the heightened emotion in such a situation, it is usually best to have at least one person on the scene who can make a more objective judgment about what is needed by the patient.

I previously described the relative functions of our four bodies, and these will provide the structure for understanding the first 4 of the 7-year cycles of growth and development.

At birth, the baby’s physical body becomes visibly separate from the mother’s, and it begins its first 7-year cycle of development, which is primarily about taking command over the physical body. Think of all the schoolyard games, scraped knees, and even learning how to walk and ride a bicycle that occur in these 7 years. Of course, there are functions of the other bodies emerging, too, but they do not overshadow the primary mission of the physical body during this stage.

Somewhere around age 7, when the first baby teeth begin to be replaced by adult teeth, the child’s etheric body is “born”, and now separate from its mother’s etheric body, alongside its already separate physical body. In terms of education, this is the point where the beginning of academic learning can healthily begin, and having teachers with good character to be good “role models” for children at this age becomes critical, as the etheric body primarily navigates life through impressions. A gentle rhythm to the school day is important at this phase, as subjects which change too quickly during the school day create a kind of mental “indigestion” for the child, as is frequently seen in public schools, and lays the foundation for chronic illness later in life.

Puberty, starting somewhere in the vicinity of age 14, marks the third phase, and the point at which the child’s astral body becomes independent from its parents. Educationally speaking, this is the beginning of the time that students need to learn from experts in individual disciplines, as they are now ready to be educated at the level of pure concepts. Emotionally, the young teen is driven to socialize more and more based on individual resonance (“best” friends, etc.), and a stronger feeling of a separate “I” begins to grow stronger, as is seen in the rebellion against parents and other authority figures.

The fourth cycle begins around age 21 (the traditional “age of majority”), where the young adult now has their ontic organization (“Self” or ego) completely separate from their parents, and is (theoretically) able to enter the world as an independent, autonomous individual. This cycle, from age 21 to 28, is a time of grand exploration, whether in terms of exploring the world through travel and/or exploration of different world-views, religions, philosophies, or aesthetics. This is a good time for the expression “I’m willing to try anything once”, and for the young adult to begin to “find themselves” as a separate individual.

The sketches above are an idealized form of natural development, and of course, in the context of the conflicts and pressures of modern life, a patient will not have had the opportunity to unfold each of these stages in its natural form. A big part of Heilkunst treatment is to release anything in the way of allowing the individual to fully heal for anything missing from each of these stages in themselves.

I was perplexed, as I keep giving her different potencies of the homeopathic remedy Lachesis, but nothing changed for her regarding this feeling of guilt. Lachesis, by the way, is the primary remedy we use for unresolved feelings of guilt, as related to underlying issues of self-esteem and self-worth. The law of cure being what it is, when the similar remedy is given the the patient at the right time in the right potency, the disease state is annihilated.

So why wasn’t this remedy working? In my inexperienced state, I assumed that I had the right remedy, but hadn’t hit a high enough potency yet. In fact, what I discovered further along in her treatment, when we got into treating her chronic miasms (inherited disease tendencies from the family tree), is that we hit upon the cure for her guilt state when we treated for her Sycotic miasm. I had known this remedy relatively well, but I hadn’t known the emotional side of it too intimately until I saw the resolution in this little girl. The emotional state of the Sycotic miasm also contains a type of guilt, but one which is different from the Lachesis guilt — this guilt has more of a basis in an immoral feeling, in the sense of having done something “bad” or immoral, as opposed to the Lachesis feeling of being inferior.

The instantaneous disappearance of this state of mind and behaviour in this girl, once she was given the correct remedy, was a great early experience for cementing the differential between these two remedies firmly into my mind’s eye. It also gave me a good general lesson about not favouring certain remedies because of some bias on my part, but to always remain open to different possibilities with each unique patient. The deep participation of each patient is what makes an accurate diagnosis possible, and the human tendency towards lazy short cuts and assumptions will always get in the way.

Not to mention that I helped keep this child from thinking she was going to be arrested and jailed!

Before we get into the heart of that discussion (which I’ll do in another blog post), we first need to clarify something even more fundamental to this issue. The problem with beginning the discussion at that point, is that the word ‘homeopathic’, has itself not been clearly understood. The diluted or potentized medicines which I referred to above are generally wrongly called “homeopathic remedies”, as if it is the dilution or potency of a medicine which is what makes it ‘homeopathic’.

The origin of the word ‘homeopathy’ literally means “similar suffering”, which is the principle of application of the ancient “law of similars”, or “like cures like”. To begin with, then, what makes a medicine homeopathic is its relationship to a given disease, regardless of whether that medicine has been diluted, or not. The pharmaceutical drug Ritalin, for example, is actually a derivative of the drug speed, and its application to children with ADHD (ie children who are “sped up”) is a form of homeopathic prescribing.

Once you start to fix in your mind this concept of “the law of similars” indicating a qualitative relationship between the medicine and the disease, rather than referring to anything about the quantity being prescribed, you will start to understand the whole issue with a lot more clarity.

To crystalize this concept even further, let us consider some other common examples of similars being applied in various life situations, beyond the usual medical context of a substance (ie drug) being consumed:

• A teenager who feels calmer after they listen to loud “head-banging” music, because it mirrors a similar emotional state within themselves.
• Within Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, a play inside the play is staged as a mechanism to flush out the suspected killer.  This is an example of the law of similars, as far as presenting an image through the play of what was hidden, and to be flushed out in the characters (the hidden murderer).
• Example of feeling “heard” or “understood” by someone who shares with you that they’ve had a very similar life experience to what you are currently suffering.
• The parenting technique of discharging a whining child by mirroring their behaviour and emotional tone back to them, by whining and complaining about your life very similarly to how they are raising a complaint or demand with you. This can have a very stunning effect on younger children in particular. The dose and potency administered here, by the way, can be very easily overdone.
• Prescribing a specific book or film to the patient, which contains a character or situation very similar to what they are currently suffering. Here, the remedy comes from the library instead of the pharmacy.

Whether in the classroom, the family, or the workplace, the radial force of the sulphur constitution is very difficult not to notice. A sulphur lives directly in the “here and now”, which usually makes them very charming, or occasionally annoying to those around. A healthy sulphur is full of life, and are usually always in motion. The parents of sulphur children are usually asking for my help for developing coping strategies, and an unhealthy parent with a weak ego structure is easily buried by their vivacious child. For sulphur children, it is imperative that the parent constantly and consistently enforces appropriate boundaries around the sulphur’s world, in line with their age and stage of development. The radial force of the sulphur drives them to constantly seek out and touch all 4 corners of the world, and beyond, and will be constantly testing their parents and their limits. Slacking off on the boundaries is a grave error for the parent of a sulphur child to make.

While we’ve seen all sorts of conflicts and health challenges arise in children of every constitutional type as they engage with the “mass education” system, it is often the sulphur children that are the biggest cogs in the wheel of the system. These days, the proposed solution is usually an ADHD drug, or something similar, however this does not address the real disconnect between the needs of the student as a unique individual and the standardized curriculum. The sulphur child just happens to be the “canary in the coal mine” in this particular battle. All children have the same inner plea as do sulphurs, which is to be treated as an individual, and allowed to pursue their own interests. The sulphur child is just much more vocal about it, and the least willing to conform to external expectations.

In marriages, we have observed that each of the 6 constitutions naturally pair up in a pattern that repeats a majority of the time. Each constitutional pair is a set of a matching ‘radial’ and ‘spherical’ personality types which provide an excellent mutual point of balance. The radial sulphur constitution most frequently marries the spherical calcarea type, who are usually best suited for containing and organizing their energy and charge into more productive avenues. In return, the sulphur keeps calcarea away from their tendency towards inertia. Being a calcarea type myself, and married to a sulphur, I know this dynamic quite intimately!

As is true for every constitutional type, the knowledge that your spouse or child is a sulphur is extremely useful for understanding how to participate the relationship in a healthy way, rather than in a more reactive way to behaviours that otherwise don’t make sense.

As I mentioned, sulphurs live life in the moment, which means they live in their own sense of time rather than clock or schedule time. I used to be very frustrated by a friend of mine, before I learned about the homeopathic constitutions, and realized that he is a sulphur. Until then, I had always been so frustrated that he would always turn up late when we were meeting, as he was running on the inner time of his own world and experience. I learned that I needed to structure social meetings so that the meeting place was somewhere that I would have something to do while I waited for him to arrive.

Also, it may be good news for you to know that the healthier that a sulphur becomes through the process of Heilkunst treatment, the less “edgy” and difficult they become to deal with. Every constitutional type is actually quite a joy in a state of health, and there are no “good” or “bad” constitutions. A truer understanding of the essence of each type goes a long way in understand our self and others, and how to interact most harmoniously.