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The New Zealand homeopathic conference, “Back to Source: Homeopathy, Fountainhead of Healing Wisdom” was held on the weekend (20-21 June).  For me, conference began on Friday morning when I left Kerikeri. In Auckland I met my good friend Jess and we had lunch together before continuing on to Wellington- and there were also 3 other homeopaths on our plane!  We were staying at Mövenpick hotel Wellington which has “chocolate hour” every afternoon, and we were delighted to turn up and …

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Finding the best homeopathic remedy involves lots of details. Coughs can be notoriously difficult to find the right remedy, there are so many remedies with similar symptoms.   However when you have a chesty cough with phlegm have you ever thought about the taste?   I was reading Boenninghausen’s Lesser Writings a while back, and he had a whole section on expectoration (the bringing up of phlegm during coughing), including taste. This was fascinating, with so many different options. Some …

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In a few weeks I’m off to the New Zealand Homeopathy Conference in Wellington, which is a fantastic opportunity to hang out with other homeopaths, as well as listen to a range of speakers on different topics. One speaker at this year’s conference in both New Zealand and later in the year in Australia, is Vanessa Young, author of The Reluctant Homeopath. I figured if I’m going to listen to her speak, I’d really like to read her book first, …

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I grew up on the original Star Wars movies and have fond memories of watching them as a family when they would come on tv. I have also had a Star Wars marathon with my children, and really enjoyed watching them again many years later as an adult.  So to celebrate International Star Wars day I thought I would prescribe some remedies for our favourite characters – as they appear in the original trilogy (now movies 4, 5 and 6). …

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I’ve been debating posting about it this week, because it’s a weighty and polarising topic. As a pharmacist I am required to support public health measures. Vaccination is one public health measure. When we consider public health and prevention of disease over history, our most effective measures have been sanitation and raising the general health through lifestyle. There’s a reason that integrative medicine and holistic practitioners like naturopaths focus on lifestyle factors: if you live in a cold, mouldy house, …

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While it is still early in the year, if you have school aged children and need science fair ideas, planning ahead makes things so much easier. The last thing anybody needs is the stress of a last minute need to a) find a project, b) carry out an experiment, and c) get it all written up in time and presented on the board to be at school by the deadline. If you’re home-schooling, you still have the opportunity to take …

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When I went to the 25 year celebration of the Auckland Pharmacy School last year, I was casually speaking to one of my pharmacy lecturers and mentioned that I had presented a poster at the HRI conference in Greece last year, and her response was “I didn’t know there was research in homeopathy”. It feels like a very fitting theme for this years World Homeopathy Awareness Week, because this isn’t the first time I have had this response, and I …

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Is homeopathy evidence-based medicine? This is a question I have been asked, particularly as a Pharmacist also practicing homeopathy. As part of my study in the paper Quality in Healthcare, we have been looking at evidence based medicine, and asked to reflect on our understanding and use in practice. So I decided to consider what evidence-based medicine actually means, and how this applies to the practice of homeopathy.  First of all we need to have a definition and an understanding …

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I asked recently about what people would like to know more about, and got a diverse range of answers, many chronic conditions in different areas. I will get to them, but before I do I thought about a foundation post, that I can refer back to and that actually ties so many chronic conditions together: the nervous system.  In homeopathy we talk about Hering’s law, the first part of which states that we heal from the inside out. So when …

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I had a teenage client recently tell me that taking a homeopathic remedy should feel like it looks on a video game- you get a health potion and you are revitalised.  Unfortunately, homeopathy is usually a lot more subtle than that, and the results come over time. So I thought I would discuss some of the ways that you can see a change after taking a homeopathic remedy.  A fever- particularly with kids, or if there has been a history …

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There are different schools of thought for New Years Resolutions- that they can be a tool for growth and change, or that they can be overly ambitious and set up for failure.  It does depend on how you design these though- if they have no details, no way of checking in and being accountable, and no plans for achieving it, then it is much easier to discard the ‘goal’ than work towards completing it.  I also tend towards goals because …

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At the moment we have an outbreak in New Zealand… of fear. There is a lot of effort going into scaring the population about measles and its complications, and pushing MMR vaccination.  My personal opinion is that vaccination is a personal choice- and if you consider all of the risks for the disease and the vaccine, and you choose to go ahead with vaccination I am happy to support you- this includes with homeopathy and targeted supplements like vitamin C …

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There are two remedies from cannabis in our homeopathic literature: Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Sativa. Cannabis Indica is what we call marijuana, while Cannabis Sativa is hemp. John Henry Clarke notes in his Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica that they are botanically identical, and that Cannabis Indica is East Indian Cannabis Sativa, what is different is the soil and climate in which they are grown. However, as we now know, there can be differences in plants considering the quantities of …

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Every year as a Pharmacist I need to identify two goals to focus on for my Continuing Professional Development. This year, I chose to look at Medicinal Cannabis, as we are dispensing more CBD and THC, and I recognised I didn’t know much about it. For me, writing helps me learn and assimilate the information I have found out, so over the next couple of days I want to discuss Medicinal Cannabis, and then to take it back to homeopathy, …

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My children have been obsessed with this movie and the songs for weeks. Despite hearing the music on repeat every hour of the day, it took a wet day for me to sit down and watch the move for them. I’ve always been a fan of musicals, so animated K-pop movies are not that big a stretch and I really enjoyed the movie. If you haven’t seen it, this does contain some spoilers, so be warned! What the premise of …

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Last year I looked at three remedies through the lens of Te Whare Tapa Whā. If you would like to read about Phosphorus, Nux Vomica and Sulphur you can find them here: https://www.homeopathbarbara.nz/homeopathic-remedies-through-a-te-ao-maori-lens/ This year I have chosen three other remedies that I use often, and have taken a new look at them. This is a snapshot of each remedy and does not encompass all the possible symptoms, but I have tried to get the essence so you too can understand …

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I have recently finished a 9 week course on Astrology for Homeopaths, and I have been amazed at the depth of information from an astrology chart. I’ve never really resonated with the daily or monthly horoscopes you used to get in a newspaper or magazine, it never made sense that everyone within that 30 day period would have the same response and reaction. Now I have done this course I understand that there is so much more to astrology than …

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When I studied homeopathy I learnt to be careful of Staphisagria. That it was indicated for “honeymoon cystitis” but in cases of abuse it could bring back flashbacks, and Morrison’s desktop guide even cautions using it when there is a situation the client cannot get out of as it can make them more reactive and potentially cause more ‘turmoil’.   I was extremely cautious about using this remedy for a very long time. I then used it with a client …

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One of the tricky things in homeopathy is trying to predict how healing will happen, what is the exact effect that a remedy will have for someone with a chronic or long term condition. Because the remedy is stimulating the body to make changes, and the body itself has it’s own level of importance, we cannot predict the effect of a remedy like you can with a drug, herb or supplement. With medicines, we have pharmacodynamics, which is the study …

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Thank you for all your good wishes for my time away- I am back working and all caught up on my many emails now. I thought I would do a brief recap of my holiday, and also talk about the conference, my reason for being there! I will have a few more in depth posts about certain parts of the conference over the next week or so, until everyone is thoroughly sick of hearing about it. Flying to Greece was …

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𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐊𝐢𝐭   When you’re travelling, there is a balance between packing light, but also taking everything you need as well as some “just in case” remedies to be prepared. The good thing about homeopathy is that the doses are small, so you can take a good number of remedies and it takes up less space than supplements! Despite this, you still want to keep your kit small, and what you take depends on both where you are going and the availability …

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We are looking for New Zealand Homeopaths to complete a survey and then be interviewed by a member of the research team.  After the 2023 Demographics Survey, questions were raised: What does success as a Homeopath and meaningful practice look like? How and why do Homeopaths balance other jobs and practice? How does unpaid work and commitments impact on practice?  This research study is open to qualified, practicing Homeopaths living in New Zealand. The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes, …

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One thing I do when I’m learning about something is try and make connections with things I already know. This is part of Piaget’s theory of learning, where first you try and assimilate knowledge into what you already know, before accomodating the knowledge and coming into balance with your new understanding. It’s probably also why homeopathy can be a hard paradigm for people to understand, as if you come from a conventional medical background it is completely contrary. I’m not …

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One of the most important things about being human is the urge to create.   This creative force is what brings children into the world, creating life from two mere cells from separate parents. Women then grow this life and facilitate this creation of a human being in the womb.  While the physical is important, equally, it is creativity that feeds the soul.  In my practice I see more women than men, and sometimes when we are identifying what is …

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