Lighting a Fire for Homeopathy

I'm so excited to be teaching again! I'll be teaching a class for birth support people and homeopathy at the end of October and just got back from teaching beginning homeopathy students in Los Angeles.

I'm feeling fired up right now about a few issues, one of them is the fact (according to Amnesty International) that as we've medicalized birth in this country, our maternal and infant death rates have gone up. There are now 49 countries in the world that have lower maternal death rates than the U.S. Please click here if you want to know more about this on the Amnesty USA website. I want to give parents and birth providers the support of homeopathy to help them give birth naturally, with gentle, effective help, if they need it.

To the right is a picture of my now 13-year-old baby Kaya, when she was 3 months old. She was born at home, the third of my daughters to be born with the help of a midwife, homeopathy, and the certainty that I was doing something completely natural and right.

Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth, and Postpartum

I'm teaching a two-day intensive class on how to use homeopathic remedies to enhance and ensure health for mother and baby during pregnancy, labor and postpartum. This class also includes a short segment on how nutrition relates to these reproductive cycles. 

Some of the topics we'll be covering:

• Pregnancy Remedies for nausea and vomiting, emotional issues, breech or lateral presentation, digestive symptoms, yeast infections
• Labor Remedies for post-dates, fear of labor, back labor, prolonged and dysfunctional labor, fatigue
• Postpartum Remedies for bruising and swelling after the birth, perineal tears, insomnia, post-natal depression, to help milk supply and to help with breast infections
• Pregnancy Tissue Salts Protocol to help the mother and baby in utero absorb the nutrients they need to build a new body.
• Traditional foods that have been prized over millennia to give mother and baby the nutrients they need to thrive.

If you or someone you know is interested in being a birth support person, this class is your opportunity to gain some essential tools to expand your knowledge.

Series meets two Saturdays - October 29th and November 5th, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Classes will be held at the Berkeley Institute of Homeopathy classroom at 1654 University Avenue in Berkeley.

Email me to register: edi@berkeleyhomeopathy.com or call: (510) 516-1334.

Registration for the two days is $150 if paid for by October 15th, after October 15th cost is $185. Must pre-register by October 22nd.

Teaching in Los Angeles

What fun it was to teach the very first homeopathy class to this year's first year students at the Los Angeles School of Homeopathy a couple of weekends ago!

I loved having the opportunity to introduce the fundamentals of this wonderful medical art to a new and enthusiastic group of students. The director of the school, my friend and colleague Avghi Constantinides, has a rigorous curriculum laid out which kept us working hard for two days in order to get through all the material!

I must admit I was a bit daunted by the technology of teaching to some of the students over the web, as well as those in the room, but it worked out really well, at one point when the students and I got back late from having lunch and bonding in a nearby community garden, the students over the web were chatting away, bonding over cyberspace! 

Avghi and I had a great time doing a quick site-seeing trip through Hollywood and Beverly Hills, topped off with a fabulous salad lunch on the way to the airport on Monday afternoon. Thank you so much Avghi, for giving me this opportunity to do something I love - turning people onto homeopathy!

Homeopaths at Bioneers

I'm excited to be among the nine homeopaths sharing an exhibit booth at the Bioneers Conference coming up the weekend of October 14-16 at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. We'll be giving talks every hour on the hour, giving away all kinds of gifts to those who come by, answering questions about homeopathy and the many related modalities that many of us use in our practices and generally having a great time schmoozing and networking with the hundreds of people we'll meet. I hope you'll check us out if you attend! 

My Beautiful New Office in Berkeley

I've said good-bye to my lovely colleagues and office in Albany, and have moved into a new office at 1654 University Avenue in Berkeley as of this week. It was hard to let go of the office I've made my own for four years now, but I was offered the opportunity to join two homeopathic colleagues in a new office suite that includes a beautiful classroom, two light-filled offices, a big waiting room that looks like a yoga studio waiting to happen, and a kitchen space. To top all that off, it's only three blocks from my home!

My new office mates, Iris Ratowsky and Joanna Daly, are both experienced homeopaths, teachers of homeopaths, and have been directors of their own homeopathy schools. Iris currently runs  The Berkeley Institute of Homeopathy, with new first year and third year classes beginning in September. I feel honored to join these great women in our new space.

Also joining us is Elaine Daly, MFT - Jo's daughter-in-law - who is coming back to her somatic therapy practice after giving birth to an incredibly cute and happy baby boy AND moving to Berkeley from Santa Cruz with her family last year. Elaine works with children, teens and adults, does play therapy, and integrates body centered and mundfulness practices into her sessions.

We have plans to make this space into a center for bringing homeopathy to our local community, with classes and social activities. As we develop this further, I'll be posting some fun and interesting ways for you to enjoy our new space!

The Melissa Garden; A Heavenly Place for Bees

I recently spent the morning on a tour of The Melissa Garden in Sonoma County, and besides the beauty of the flowers and the natural landscape, I was impressed with how much the bees are cared for. Here is a short introduction to the garden on their website: "The Melissa Garden is a new project that began in the fall of 2007 by Barbara and Jacques Schlumberger at their home. The goal is to provide honeybees, native bees and other pollinators with an almost year-round source of floral resources- free from pesticides. Studies have found that native bees and honeybees both benefit from feeding on a variety of flowers, so season-long the garden is kept filled with an abundance of annuals, perennials and shrubs that offer attractive pollen and nectar to insect visitors. There is a mixture of plants native to California, many Mediterranean plants and others that are appropriate for the site and climate."

As the Schlumbergers have understood more about the bee's needs, they've shifted their philosophy to be more and more hands off. For example, because this summer has been so cool and overcast every morning, the bees need to eat the honey they've made to stay warm, so no one collects their honey. They've noticed the bees are happiest in the most natural hives, so as the bees have swarmed, instead of to the typical hive boxes, they have placed hollow logs in various trees, which the new colonies have happily moved into. They've been focused on the project for four years and started with one hive colony - as new queens have led their young drones to other hives, they have split into nine active hives on the property. Another discovery that seems to make a difference to the health and happiness of the colonies is having lots of space between them, in fact about a football field's worth! So, the hollow logs have been placed with just that much land between them. Of course, in tending the land for the bees, many other beneficial insects and birds are enjoying the garden, a sanctuary for bees became a sanctuary for other pollinators as well.

We were led on the tour by Kate Frey, the master gardener who designed and landscaped the four gardens on the property. She was extremely knowledgeable about the plants, rattling off the Latin and common names, telling us whether they are primarily pollen or nectar flowers, what time of the year they flower, whether they're perennial or annual, how much water they need, which pollinators enjoy them, etc. I took copious notes! We were also given lists of plants that pollinators love from both a UC professor, Gordon Franckie, who is studying urban beekeeping at Cal, and Annie's Annuals and Perennials, a local nursery that specializes in plants that attract bees.

I'm even more inspired to plant year-round flowering plants in my garden. According to Kate Frey, bees love masses of flowers, so no wonder the row of lavender in my backyard is often covered in bees. They also need flowering plants year-round. In California, we have many natives that flower in the winter and early spring; manzanita and redbud are two that come to mind.

Visiting The Melissa Garden is a wonderful experience, I look forward to going again soon. The garden certainly attracts more than insect and bird pollinators to return again and again!

Fish Too

Turns out I have a lot to say about ocean creatures and homeopathy, sushi, and places to buy great, sustainably caught fish. So, in order to keep the last post relatively short, I've written this one.

First of all, I was excited to learn from Wikipedia that when sushi was first eaten, it was fermented! Sushi was originally made by fermenting fish with rice, then throwing away the rice and only eating the fermented fish. I imagine it was quite tasty and full of good probiotics. Beginning in the Muromachi period in Japan (AD 1336–1573), it was made into a fast food by using vinegar to flavor the rice and no more fermentation! By the 1800’s this form was popularized all over Japan. In one area of Japan, near Lake Biwa, in the middle of the island of Honshu, sushi chefs still make it the traditional, lacto-fermented way. I'd be interested to know if any sushi chefs in the U.S. have ever offered fermented sushi on their menu!

Speaking of sushi, I came across a restaurant in San Francisco, Tataki, that was one of the first sushi restaurants to take on the concept of sustainable dining in 2008. The owners' goal is to preserve the art of sushi, and so they feel they must safeguard the health and biodiversity of our oceans by only serving responsibly sourced, environmentally friendly seafood. The chef/owners, Karen Lui and Raymond Ho, follow the recommendations of their sustainability guru, Casson Trenor. He wrote Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time (North Atlantic Books, January 2009).

 Here are a few additions to sustainable fish shopping options in the San Francisco Bay Area:

The friendly folks from Hudson Fish, Yvette and Mike Hudson, set up shop at the Thursday and Saturday Berkeley Farmer's Markets, the Saturday El Cerrito Market and the Sunday Kensington Market. They fish out of San Francisco Bay, their fish is local and seasonal, and they only use sustainable methods to catch fish that are not endangered. They have wonderful fresh fish week after week. My family especially enjoys the Maguro tuna that we cut and eat raw, sashimi style, and the butterfish or black cod. Their line and pole caught salmon is also very fresh and flavorful.

 Berkeley Bowl and El Cerrito Natural Grocery are two grocery/butcher stores that publicly source their fish. Berkeley Bowl sells some fish that isn't as sustainable as others, so it's good to read the signs and talk to the butchers. El Cerrito Natural Grocery only buys and sells fish from reliable and sustainable sources, just as they only supply organic produce in their store.

If you want the freshest and most directly sourced fish and are happy shopping from home, Vital Choice is a great web-based mail order sustainable fish and organic supplies store located in Bellingham, Washington. Their main products are fresh, wild fish packed in dry ice, that can be shipped within two days to your home. They also sell canned and smoked fish, nuts, dried berries, oils and vinegar, and herbs and teas. They very carefully source their offerings, and as they say, only 1% of the salmon they are offered for sale meets their requirements for sale to their customers. They offer free shipping for any order over $99.

On a completely different note, I so enjoy watching sea creatures doing their thing, especially when I know we’ve made a homeopathic remedy from that species. It helps me gain insight into the behaviors and sensitivities of those creatures, which I study as a homeopath, in order to see them in the people who come to me for help. When people are ill, they develop a complicated pattern of symptoms. Homeopaths correlate these symptoms to the symptoms exhibited by healthy volunteers when they took a homeopathic remedy developed from a particular animal, plant, or chemical in a homeopathic proving (this is where homeopaths discover the symptoms substances can cause, and therefore cure). One of the things I find fascinating about being a homeopath is seeing how my clients seem to have taken on the characteristics of a creature or substance ...which they may or may not relate to. By careful questioning and observation, homeopaths look for that specific remedy substance that is exhibited by our clients, and so they need homeopathically. I feel a strong connection when I have the opportunity to observe the animals of the ocean, especially when I’ve heard from my clients about their reality and they need a remedy made from octopus, jellyfish, cuttlefish, shark, dolphin, sea star, or seahorse.

The ocean is rich with a huge variety of life; homeopathic remedies are made from a small number of ocean species as well as the elements that make up the sea; Aqua marina and Natrum muriaticum are made from ocean water and sea salt respectively. There are also remedies made from many mollusks, such as Calcarea carbonica (oyster shell), Pearl, Cowrie Shell, and Nautilus. This is one of the many reasons I love homeopathy - I get to study biology, botany, and chemistry as a way to better understand human behavior.