What Are Layers In Homeopathy?

Words: Dr Deborah OLENEV

Question: I’ve heard about it. It sounds a tad complex too. “What do layers in homeopathy mean?” Could you please explain.

— A L, USA

Answer: Most of us come into the world carrying the baggage of inherited conditions from our ancestors. These can comprise some of the layers. For example, if someone in the family had cancer, tuberculosis, typhoid. All of those are layers.

Then you can have layers from vaccinations, or illnesses, or traumas, you have personally, or your ancestors have experienced. Even medications you have taken can put on layers that need to be addressed.

We are all complex beings. In the past, people may have been one dimensional and had one predominating disease, but most people, today, especially as they get older accumulate numerous diseases. All of those additional diseases can be layers that need to be addressed.

For example, take an elderly person who has already gone through:

• Cataracts
• Glaucoma
• Hypertension
• Cancer
• Alzheimer’s
• Depression
• Massive tooth decay etc.,

All of these diseases can live simultaneously in one person. Sometimes, one homeopathic remedy will cover a number of the symptoms, but most of the time the homeopath has to address the uppermost layer, or the symptom that is causing the greatest problems at the time and then deal with what comes up next. These are layers.

Also for seekers after health, uncovering the layers as they come up to the top in prominence helps drive the healing process forward and it shows the homeopath what needs to be addressed next. One analogy that I occasionally think of are the shooting range games at fairs where you have to shoot down the ducks as they pop up in order to win a prize. Each duck that pops up is a layer. The job of the homeopath is to shoot down that duck, and then another duck pops up. When you have run out of ducks, meaning symptoms, or disease layers, you are then resting in a state of health (or, the alternative is that you are dead) since you now have no more symptoms. We are hoping for the former, a state as free of disease as may be possible.

I appreciate and thank you for asking this important question, as it gives me a chance to explain what I mean by layers.

Dr DEBORAH OLENEV, CCH, RSHom [NA], is a Classical Homeopath based in Mountain View, California, US. She treats people from all over the world via phone and video conferencing. Dr Olenev has had a passion for homeopathy for nearly forty years and has been in private practice since 1991. She has a vast knowledge of homeopathic Materia Medica, and integrates homeopathy with herbal medicine too. She is the owner of First Aid Cream, where she teaches about and sells homeopathic first-aid creams. She has several years of experience treating autistic children and people of all ages for all manner of health conditions.