Congres 2009: Dinesh Chauhan

"Exploring patterns, energy and sensation in Children’s cases"

It was a most captivating seminar, not only because of  the new insights and inspiration which I have gained, but especially because of the itch it brought on me to start my next children’s case. I have the feeling that I have got new tools that I am impatient to try. And then I think especially of having the children draw and the way of interacting with them - even if this does not seem to bring much information at first -  instead of, as I used to do, quickly revert to the mother for some details that I thought useful. To observe patiently and maintain the interaction with the child even if you can make head nor tail of what is coming, was for me the main message in this seminar.

The insights that came to me in this seminar weren’t completely new, but Dinesh can explain and clarify them in a way that they can find their way into practice. He divides the consultation into a universal part and a human centric part. In the universal part,  four steps can be distinguished:

1. Being a passive witness and ask ‘a bit more’ ‘what do you mean’
2. Focus on what is the focus of the patient in different areas and lifetimes
3. Observe the level of experience of the patient in this moment in different areas of his life (name, facts, emotion, delusion, sensation, energy)
4. Is the patient in contact with this level of experience, or is he denying, projecting or rationalising?

Once these questions are clearly answered, Dinesh will proceed to the ‘human centric ‘ part which contains of three steps:

1. Being an active witness: the homeopath is now directing the flow towards the center by asking about dreams, childhood, hobbies
2. Focusing on these areas by asking “tell me more about…”

Once you are sure of being at the center of the case, because the same comes back again and again in different areas and time periods you can proceed to the

1. Active active case taking. Now you cut all the stories regarding why, what, where and so on. If you are on the right track you will notice:
1. Verbal and non-verbal (drawings, hand gestures…) get connected
2. A complete pattern appears till the source
3. The patient becomes aware and experiences the sensation without projection or denial
4. Now is the time to ask for confirmation in specific symptoms and to come to your own healing as a healer

After this theoretical part we were shown some beautiful cases, of which most of all the octopus case remains with me. It was a spectacular experience to witness how the apparent nonsense in the beginning got real meaning at the closure of the case when it was revealed to be the camouflage technique of the octopus (watch the clip). The young boy who cited  a palette of colour nuances to the homeopath seemingly considered the homeopath as an enemy and threw up these subtle colours by means of a defense system, showing that he was living the disturbance on sensation/source level.  The figures on his paper elucidated his state: a lot of number “8” , an octopus, a cloud of ink, a shark…
What I wonder is, if we western homeopaths in general will have the patience to keep observing this kind of behaviour until it becomes clear.
Another beautiful case was the Na Phos case of a 4 year old boy who did not want to take his own name but used his friend’s name. After long case-taking it became apparent that he did not have an own identity yet but expressed himself through his friends. And than we were shown an Adamas case where information is coming very very slowly, so that the audience at first takes especially notice of the “dullness” of the case. What was repeated through the different areas and in his drawings was the mixture of colours, the shining.. The remedy became “crystal” clear when he drew a diamond on his hand.

On the last day of the seminar, Dinesh treated the history during pregnancy. Starting from a few moving anecdotes, he enumerated (too many) arguments for stating that the child in the womb is expressing its energy and state through the mother. A nice thought is that the mother is proving the remedy of the foetus.
Therefore in the history during pregnancy the symptoms that are not customary to the mother when not pregnant, are the ones that are important.. This was illustrated with a Scorpio case, in which the woman became very suspicious, jealous, aggressively seducing during pregnancy, and developed a craving for oranges. The only special thing about the infant was a hand gesture towards the face of the father. 

Finally we were presented a short and interesting demonstration of the malvales family with a number of children’s cases and drawings. One patient that always touched his mothers’ foot got Abelmoschus (typhoid miasm) after the mother’s narrative of the pregnancy: “We were completely attached, he was a part of my body and part of my soul”.  Another patient drew nothing but hearts and people connected and this child was constantly holding and hugging the mother was prescribed Tilia Cordata, a tree from the malvales family with heart-shaped leaves.  Another patient drawing human figures that were connected, while holding her mothers’ hand got Chocolate. She mentioned that the people in the drawing were eating chocolate.

A wealth of information and tools to proceed in case-taking with children. To conclude this nice citation: While we try to teach children all about life, our children learn us what life is all about