Homeopathy Simplified with Jonathan Damonte on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

In this episode of The Healers Café, Manon Bolliger (facilitator and retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice) speaks with Jonathan Damonte about homeopathy

 

Highlights from today’s episode include:

Jonathan Damonte

A disease is a label for the set of symptoms, the characteristic symptoms of an illness. Whereas for homeopath, a symptom is the expression of the individual’s effort to maintain their health, and therefore, it’s the expression of their disease, not the disease they have.

Jonathan Damonte 16:01

So, I just want to really say, is that homeopathy is a system of medicine, that buoys…that lifts your own vital healing ability. And therefore, the full resolution is still at play, rather than taking part of your symptom away, so that you just manage to get through but really healing. And what a wonderful way to support an immune system than to guide it rather than overloaded with super nutrients and nutraceuticals and such.

– – – – –

Jonathan Damonte

that became a compendium of symptoms that we would use in which to match the disease person who has those symptoms with a medicine that could produce those symptoms. Homeopathy meaning, similar suffering. So, the substance that can produce the problem is used to treat the problems.

 

ABOUT JONATHAN DAMONTE:

Firstly, a Homeopath and then a Bowen Therapist, two modalities of alternative medicine. I have been in practice sine 1997 first as Classical Homeopath and from 2001 as a Bowen Therapist as well.
Born in London, England where he lived before moving to Toronto, Canada at the age of 18. Jonathan’s father, John Damonte was a Homeopath and respected teacher based in London. He taught many Homeopaths from 1962 till his death in 1975. Several of his students established schools of Homeopathy and he along wth Thomas Maugham founded the Royal Society of Homeopaths in the UK. Raymond Edge, a graduate of Misha Norland’s School of Devon, opened The School of Homeopathic Medicine in Toronto Canada in 1995. He became my teacher in turn, this was a wonderful connection to my father and his teachings. I’d known Misha while he studied with my father and I was always very fond of him as a child so the re-connection was quite wonderful.

Core purpose/passion: Health is all about freedom and in that context we must create the space for an individual to do so. Whether it’s in the freeing of their patterns or in the freedom to choose a style of medicine.

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To learn more about Homeopathy Simplified online course – click here

 

About Manon Bolliger

As a recently De-Registered board-certified naturopathic physician & in practice since 1992, I’ve seen an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.

My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books:  ‘What Patients Don’t Say if Doctors Don’t Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship’ and ‘A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress’.  I also teach BowenFirst™ Therapy through Bowen College and hold transformational workshops to achieve these goals.

So, when I share with you that LISTENING to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience”.

Mission: A Healer in Every Household!

For more great information to go to her weekly blog:  http://bowencollege.com/blog

For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips

 

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About The Healers Café:

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the Healers Café. Conversations on health and healing with Manon Bolliger. A retired and deregistered naturopathic physician with 30 plus years of experience. Here, you will discover engaging and informative conversations between experienced healers, covering all aspects of healing, the personal journey, the journey of the practitioner, and the amazing possibilities for our own body, and spirit.

Manon Bolliger 00:41

So welcome to the Healers Café And today I have with me a very special guest, his name is Jonathan Damonte. And we were colleagues who met like 26 years ago with very much similar passions, homeopathy, and Bowen therapy. And he actually comes from a lineage I would say of homeopaths. Now it was your father, he’s born in in England and moved to Canada when he was 18. And his father, John Damonte, was a homeopath and a respected teacher based in London, who taught some of the key people that you may have heard about, but I’ll let you, Jonathan speak on that. And I just want to welcome you and really explore homeopathy and what it is and where it fits and, and all that. So, thank you for taking the time.

 

Jonathan Damonte 01:47

Thanks, Manon. It’s a nice introduction. And I want to correct you that you actually introduced me to Bowen therapy. And I learned that very reluctantly, I was probably the worst student ever, but it absolutely took over my practice for many, many years and was the gateway for most patients into my practice. And interestingly about being a Bowen therapist, and a homeopath, you have the opportunity to serve up both modalities as they’re very interrelated. And oftentimes, Bowen is as you know, so reliable at removing obstacles to cure by simply relieving patterns and tensions and pains and inflammatory processes, such that it enables you to then target into the case much more easily. And I say that, because that enables me to be a better homeopath, for sure. And yeah, so thank you for that to the path of my practice. I know we have a lot of Bowen therapy history. More homeopathic, in fact, when we really look at our relationship, I think it’s interconnected with …

Read more...

homeopathy.

 

Manon Bolliger 03:16

Yeah, and I think too I think with, I mean, like you said, they’re both gateways in, you know, because many of what we experience hides in our body. But it’s like I wanted to really talk about also, why I want to talk about homeopathy is I really have to say this to everyone, but you have a course that teaches it which is sort of, you know, and I had to make a decision because you can, you know, there’s only so many hours in the week, so many hours, days, you know, that you can actually work. And I was passionate about having people become more sovereign more taking charge of their health. And, and I’ve always thought to myself, Oh, if only homeopathy could be simplified, you know, I would love to teach homeopathy. But Bowen was simple. Profound, but simple. So, I kind of, you know, ran that way. And I know you did, too. And, you know, when we reconnected to know that you’ve actually focused on a simplified, but without losing the depth of homeopathy, I thought, Okay, this, I really, really want people to hear about this because, I mean, it’s a passion of mine clearly. So anyway, but yeah, so I definitely want to talk about your course. But let’s some a lot of people don’t know what homeopathy is. So why don’t we start with that?

 

Jonathan Damonte 04:57

Okay, that’s a big subject. So, I’ll try and make…

 

Manon Bolliger 04:59

You can start don’t worry I’ll interrupt.

 

Jonathan Damonte 05:00

Sorry about the light that’s bouncing into this room, it’s coming through a window at a slant here. And I’m in San Miguel, Mexico, where I’m putting the final touches on the course and refining it a little bit further, it’s ready to be viewed. But there’s always work to do, and few mistakes to correct. But, you know, I learned homeopathy at a time, when there was a big boom in the education of homeopathy and the exploration of new ideas and the development of new medicines. And so, my course I want to state is simplified, but not simple. It’s just the course I wish I would have had, that would have taken me the 15 years of struggling to being confident in prescribing to where I am now. And I have a lot of acknowledgement of not just my own, I mean, I’ve just put together other people’s hard work and made a course that would work. For years, and homeopathy is a system of medicine, that is empirical, and scientific in its approach. And how it’s affecting people’s ability to heal is a remarkable story. You know, even now, the improbability of homeopathic remedy working for chronic disease, or acute disease is just mind blowing for most people who experience it for the first time. It’s an extraordinary process that you can give a little sugar pill that’s medicated with a substance that stimulates a reaction that’s so powerful that the healing is absolutely obvious, absolutely clear. So, I’m gonna move forward, so the light’s not weird. And, you know, what is a homeopathic remedy? It is a substance, it is a medicine, it is a tool that provokes the healing response. And why it does that is that in large doses, it can create the similar state of reaction, the patient has. The state of reaction in all spheres. And so, in one way, it’s an inoculation. But given in a very minuet dose. And what’s interesting is that the person who would respond to that minute dose responds because they’re ultra-sensitive, super sensitive to that very substance, because it’s more of the same problem they already have. Is it like you’re explaining it like it’s almost part of the work is finding what is similar to the person because if you gave one of those minuet doses, but it has nothing to do with the symptoms, it’s like taking a sugar pill, and it just doesn’t do anything. Right, like, you know, because people have called, you know, it’s like, oh, you know, my child drank, you know, took the whole bottle, and what do I do? And it’s like, nothing, it’s not their remedy, it’s not going to impact them. Right. So, you’re, what you’re saying is it’s very precise, and scientific in the sense that it’s really based on the symptom picture of that the person has but this is a medicinal dose, right? This is regarding the medicine itself. Let’s talk about what is the symptom. And homeopathic symptoms actually something different than a disease. A disease is a label for the set of symptoms, the characteristic symptoms of an illness. Whereas for homeopath, a symptom is the expression of the individual’s effort to maintain their health, and therefore, it’s the expression of their disease, not the disease they have. And so the homeopathic remedies that work, those that are given for the patients expressed symptoms. And so homeopathy observes those symptoms, as opposed to observing the pathology and giving a medicine based on the pathology. And so, it’s a very different perspective.

 

Manon Bolliger 09:34

Let’s give a concrete example of that. Let’s say like, you know, people might say, Oh, you’ve got the flu. Right. So that’s your diagnosis. But, you know, give us like an example of the different symptom pictures that you might see.

 

Jonathan Damonte 09:52

Well, you know, everyone has the flu, however, it’s the characteristics of the individual. I’ll give you a couple of examples of a recent flu and I had it as well. So, I can speak from experience. So, one patient came actually with a rib injury. And they had an acute pain from a fall. And it was causing a lot of symptoms. And on top of that they had a flu. And on top of that, they also had a chronic disease, of constant swallowing and clearing their throat, since a broken collarbone. And the remedy that was given, not only resolved the constant scraping of 27 years, but also the flu, and also the rib injury. And so, there’s the remedy of I said, the names Bohjalian. It’s not a common flu remedy. And yet it is a neurologic remedy is cough and scraping remedy. And it fit the picture of the patient. Whereas the same flu, we had very similar red nose blowing nose, we were at the same dinner party the other night, and my symptoms were entirely different. And my symptoms fit another remedy. My symptoms were if I can remember them, now, we’re just a dry, hacky cough, a flu that wouldn’t progress a fever that wouldn’t develop. And I gave myself a different remedy entirely. So, and I recovered, you know, post-haste, I’m still a little bit, you know, sore, dry throat and occasional cough, but that’s mostly from mucus that’s still wanting to dry up. But otherwise, my energy is fine. And I’m back to normal. But same flu, absolutely, for sure. 100% certain is the same flu, two different remedies entirely. And her symptom picture, with the other accompanying symptoms, entirely a different remedy. And it’s a, it’s actually we’re all talking about it as a miracle, because for 27 years, she couldn’t talk without clearing her throat, and it was annoying to everyone she was around. It is miraculous.

 

Manon Bolliger 12:25

And it’s kind of funny, when you know, you talk about a case like that, it just reminds me how, you know, sometimes it’s in an acute that you find one more symptom picture that can go okay, this is it, you know, whereas, you know, sometimes the hardest thing to treat is a common cold because there’s nothing strange, rare, or peculiar to it. It’s just, it’s there, like a rib pain could be similar to another, you know, I’m not saying that there aren’t differences, but it’s the whole picture that also and the way the person lives that that makes it so, you know, so exciting and unique and easy in a sense to to, you know, prescribe, right?

 

Jonathan Damonte 13:10

Wonderful. I mean, you can go online and look for the flu remedies in homeopathy and you’ll get a list five, six good candidates. How do you differentiate which one would be the best one? Why you take one that works for a little bit and then the next dose that doesn’t work? This has always been the dilemma of homeopathy is that even homeopaths have tried to give the remedies, specificity according to a disease. Well, there are some remedies that are very specific, you know, have you hurt yours, if you bruise your leg, arnica will work. If you bang your finger in the door Hypericum will work if you have seasonal allergies, maybe Allium Sapa would work, but not more than that very rudimentary. First day, but and that can be miraculous. No question, we should all have that tool. But it’s when you get into the individualization of their symptoms that you begin to understand that it’s not as cut and dried as using the usual suspects of remedies you do need with every case, to find what’s unique in the symptoms of the individual. And acute, like you say, are such a useful time to work with a homeopath because there will be that unusual expression that gets pronounced unusual expression of symptoms that gets pronounced at that time and enables you to find something that might work much more profoundly for chronic problems as well.

 

Manon Bolliger 14:51

And I also want to raise one of the issues you brought up you said I because I think you were sick on Friday, and today we’re Monday so it’s not you know, many days later, but you know, you still say you have a little bit of things going on. But the idea with homeopathy, it’s not a suppression of the expression of symptoms, it really helps move things along it, it sort of unblocks the way I see it, like unblocks, the person’s, you know, inability to heal. Because now it’s like, oh, you know, the body recognizes this and then wants to heal. And then we just observe it. And, you know, there’s plenty of rules I’m sure you cover in your course of when you repeat and all these things, but it really isn’t suppression of symptoms, you know, because that’s, sometimes people ask, well, you just cover it, you’re just looking at the symptoms, and you’re taking them away. And that’s not…yes, but not, not in the same mechanism. You know, there’s, you know, other things at play here.

 

Jonathan Damonte 16:01

So, I just want to really say, is that homeopathy is a system of medicine, that buoys…that lifts your own vital healing ability. And therefore, the full resolution is still at play, rather than taking part of your symptom away, so that you just manage to get through but really healing. And what a wonderful way to support an immune system than to guide it rather than overloaded with super nutrients and nutraceuticals and such.

 

Commercial Break 16:43

Manon Bolliger here and I want to thank you for taking actionable steps towards engaging your healing journey, and helping others discover their path by watching, sharing, subscribing, and reviewing these podcasts. Every review and share helps spread the word these different perspectives and choices and options for healing. And thank you, I’d like to invite you to sign up to my free seven sequence email tips on health and healing for everyday life. You can go to https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips, thanks so much.

 

Jonathan Damonte 17:25

Which is fine. Absolutely. There are going to be times when those are useful but that isn’t touching the essential healing element within us. Animan called the vital force, and that’s a very good term even today.

 

Manon Bolliger 17:45

Yeah, and you actually have a whole background in orthomolecular medicine and you were quite involved in that for many years, you know, for so it’s interesting, because that is very much one way of approaching and of supporting, but it doesn’t replace the vital force, it doesn’t wake up the body, it may give it everything it needs, which if it doesn’t have what it needs, okay? You know, it has to be looked at, but it’s like something enlivens us to heal, you know, that, you know, and that’s what I mean. I think that’s the part I’ve enjoyed the most in watching the incredible ability of our bodies to actually heal, you know, it’s quite something. Now, I wanted to address the other thing, a lot of people say, oh, yeah, it’s you know, its energy medicine, therefore, it’s not biological. It’s past avocados a number which is true. So, it’s 21 to the whatever 10th degree or whatever it is, or no 10 to the 20 ones degree. Anyway, but um, but the point is, so how is it? Do you have to believe in it for it to work? And that’s one of the things saying, well, I’ll never believe in it. So, it won’t work for me. What’s your take on that or your experience with that?

 

Jonathan Damonte 19:17

Well, I think neither belief nor understanding is necessary in order to respond to the effects of homeopathy, babies, animals, plants, these are all being medicated by practitioners and home prescribers and seeing wonderful results. So, in research, we now have through spectrometry, and analysis of parts per gazillion I mean, literally gazillion. Billion is too small a number to be able to measure what are actually, molecules of the original substance still found within the homeopathic remedy. What perhaps we don’t understand is how the human body could be so sensitive to those parts per billion molecules. And yet it’s there. And what’s most amazing is that a scientist, a doctor 250 plus years ago, was able to empirically show that to be true. And when he wrote about homeopathy, he said, please just repeat my experiments. That’s all I ask, and many homeopaths did, and homeopathy has a long, long history of validation. And it’s now coming, that we can, through modern science, empirically measure these dilutions. And soon we’ll understand the pathways of reaction. You know, how does someone have a peanut allergy to parts per billion of peanut? How do we how do we react to that small number? And yet we do we see the effect and it’s the same with homeopathy.

 

Manon Bolliger 21:11

And, you know, and I think when you bring in the history, too, it’s like, we, you know, it was doctors, because that’s what they were, you know, they practiced homeopathy. And it’s really after the Flexner Report, that really started the whole sort of money-making control of pharmaceuticals, which we’re now seeing big time play out, you know, in the last three years. You know, when something’s driven, not really for healing, but really for financial gain. It’s, um, you know, are we going to call that medicine, you know, call it pharmaceuticals, if you want, but, you know, I think this is why it’s such the perfect timing for people to look at these, you know, older modalities that really helped people heal. And, you know, I think it was at the beginning with malaria right. You know, Hanuman was it was with quinine, actually, right? That the Peruvian bark, which was the plant where he measured, when people develop fever, when they had the chill when they had, like, precisely what time, the direction of the chill, you know, the thirst of the person, or the lack of or all of those things, right, it was so precise, that there’s not just one remedy. There were several remedies that were again, like we talked about the flute, different manifestations, you know, different people having different impacts, you know, and I think we’ve come, you know, full circle. You know, some people never stopped and understood that, you know, healing is healing, but I think a lot of people now are going whoa, what have we been doing with our bodies? Your thoughts on this? Sorry, I just certainly get carried away as I get so excited about this.

 

Jonathan Damonte 23:19

I mean, interestingly, in the original origins of homeopathy, that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, wrote a treatise on discerning the medicinal effects of drugs. And he did this by taking the medicines. In fact, he had a group that followed him, that also did the same experiment of taking these drugs that were used in medicine for the most part and eliciting from the side effects of taking it while you’re healthy. What are the symptoms of those drugs? What are the side effects of those drugs? And that became a compendium of symptoms that we would use in which to match the disease person who has those symptoms with a medicine that could produce those symptoms. Homeopathy meaning, similar suffering. So, the substance that can produce the problem is used to treat the problems. And we all know this phenomenon by cutting red onions. You know, if you’ve cut three onions, you’re going to feel it in your eyes and nose. And what does that symptom feel like? Awful, burning, irritating, streaming mucus, wanting to get it out of your eyes. Well, that’s very similar to pollen allergies in the spring. So sometimes Allium Sapa, red onion, is used that way, a very good example of homeopathy. And so, I’ve ran I’ve diverted your question. I just wanted to bring it back to the empirical part of homeopathy. And that I wanted to bring in another point. But I know I’ve missed one of your questions. So, could you repeat it?

 

Manon Bolliger 25:14

I don’t think I can remember it exactly. It’s fine. It was just, you know, there’s so many aspects, I do think we’re going to need to do two interviews. And what I’d like to do is when we post this one, that people who have questions about homeopathy, anything, you know, to post them so that we can actually address them directly. And maybe next time we do it literally live, we’ll see if we can organize that. But you know, I think there’s so many questions, because there’s, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about it. And, you know, there’s an unnecessary complication about it. In some ways the principle is simple. And I think that’s what you were, you were kind of getting back to, and talking about indirectly about the law of similars. Like curing like, and that was actually Paracelsus right? A philosopher who came up with that, and then Hanuman, literally turned it into a practicing medicine, it’s a phenomenon of nature, that is an observable fact. And if you can repeat this, with, you know, all kinds of substances, you actually are creating this medicine system which is…so I know, there’s a big study saying, oh, homeopathy is, you know, be us. It doesn’t work. And I think it was in The Lancet. They published it, but what did they do? They gave everyone the same remedy for diarrhea. And then they said, Oh, it only works for some people. So how could it work? Well, that’s the old model, you give a one size fits all. And it doesn’t work for everyone go figure. We could have told them that. But anyway, so time to look at this, again.

 

Jonathan Damonte 27:21

A lot of researchers trying to disprove homeopathy, and you can do it easily, you can easily you can easily disprove homeopathy. And yet, there is plenty of research to prove it proves in effect. In fact, much of the foundation of my course is based upon Swiss research into ADHD. And this research proved that homeopathy was more effective than any other possible treatment. And then, in fact, three out of four patients would improve with long term homeopathic care. And that’s a 70 to 75% success rate. That’s unheard of in medicine. Unheard of. And that was individualizing the patients. And what you think about ADHD is just, I mean, it looks, they all look the same as someone with ADHD, but they’re not. They’re each one unique and needing a specific treatment. So, you know, in homeopathy, we now have 5000 plus remedies. Unwieldly any pharmacist trying to juggle 5000 drugs would just pull their hair out. The same for homeopaths. And so, in my learning how to be a better homeopath, I went backwards in time, to a time when there were just hundreds of remedies. And that’s really what I’m teaching. I’m not disavowing all the new medicines, I’m sure they’re great. But in terms of need, there’s plenty of remedies. And learning about how to differentiate them is better in small numbers. All homeopaths did very, very well. And we now have tools that can amplify their knowledge and make it exceptionally easy for anyone to prescribe successfully. From the mother who’s deciding between aconite or Bella Donna or Nux vomica it’s no longer a complicated choice can be simple.

 

Manon Bolliger 29:32

So, we’re gonna put an end to this one today. But just before we do that, and I’ll put the link to, you know, to your, to your training afterwards, but what is the distinction and we’re gonna get into it next time that what is it that the methodology that is different?

 

Jonathan Damonte 29:52

So, the methodology is using what are called characteristic symptoms, as opposed particular symptoms. And that was a way of generalizing the symptoms in terms of the homeopathic language of the symptom picture. And using those and makes life much simpler. The further, we can utilize what are called pooler symptoms, where the same symptom can be expressed in the same remedy twice. So for instance, a remedy could be thirstless, not wanting to drink, and be in the symptom for that, but it can also be thirsty. And it’s the difference between the two grades, that we’ll have to explain another time. Mathematical certainty, for the choice of medicine.

 

Manon Bolliger 30:54

But so, your course because I’m gonna give you the last word, but just to, to, so that people look out for that, or part two, is, could be for the complete beginner. But it also can be useful to people who have been exposed to like, through naturopathic school or whatever, to homeopathy, an understanding of it, you know, maybe 70 hours, 100 hours, but they don’t…they don’t have a method that has as reliable results without putting in, as you said, that many years. And I know, I put in, I put in that many years, most of my cases where like, it took me, you know, 10 to 11 hours to work on one single case, you know. So, it’s, it’s an arduous way. But it is open then to to people with different levels of knowledge, right of homeopathy.

 

Jonathan Damonte 31:52

Absolutely. It’s open to everyone because everyone can use homeopathy. And the methodology is that simple that a mom could prescribe for their child, a practitioner could prescribe for their neurologically demanding patient very quickly using the same information they’re already taking. It’s a remarkable process. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger 32:21

With that, I’ll just say thanks very much. And I’ve enjoyed this and I’m looking forward to part two.

 

Jonathan Damonte 32:27

Thank you so much.

 

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.

 

* De-Registered, revoked & retired naturopathic physician, after 30 years of practice in healthcare. Now resourceful & resolved to share with you all the tools to take care of your health & vitality!