Hi there,
I want to introduce you to the term ‘miasm’. This term/word was introduced to me in the first year of my homeopathic studies. I found it quite life-changing, as it allowed me to somewhat, understand my own health history, as well in some ways part of my life story.
Miasm in very simple terms is an ‘energy’ that resides in man or animal which creates a predisposition to certain illnesses/diseases, i.e. the susceptibility to a disease. Does this sound familiar? You may have heard the term ‘genetically inherited’ or more recently as ‘epigenetics’.
Hahnemann introduced the term ‘miasm’ well before modern medicine coined the term ‘genetically inherited’ or epigenetics, Hahnemann used the word miasm since the 1820s!
You may be interested in my blog on epigenetics I wrote earlier here. Furthermore, Hahnemann showed that certain illnesses were actually connected to others. For example, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can be linked to cancer, urinary tract infections linked to cysts, hay fever linked to bronchitis. For example, a miasm would be seen in the following family health histories, grandpa Jack got bronchitis in his lifetime and his son did not get bronchitis but got hay fever, Sally the mother of Jenny, suffered from polycystic ovary syndrome and Sally experienced re-occurring skin warts. In homeopathy, we call this a ‘miasmatic family history’ in Westernised medicine we call it epigenetics. Some of these illnesses are not ‘connected’ in epigenetics but they are in the miasmatic history.
My Story: I had tuberculosis as a baby and I was hospitalised for a couple of months and I survived to tell the tale. Both my boys used to get chest infections as babies and my younger one developed asthma. This was due to my own family miasmatic history.
Now, this is not the case just for physical illnesses but also mental illnesses. In homeopathy, we also look at any inherited trauma. For example, it is found that the descendants of the Holocaust survivors have different stress hormone patterns. This hormone profile seems to predispose them to anxiety disorders. However, the good news is that healing inherited trauma can heal the predisposition through homeopathy and lifestyle changes (as mentioned in my blog on ‘Do Your Genes Dictate Your Health?‘). By the way, you do not have to talk about any traumas in a homeopathic session, if anything a homeopathic prescription can be made without any information of ‘traumas’ and provide great relief in the presenting symptoms. However, the emotional family history can be very helpful in some cases.
Nowadays, majority of homeopaths work with five miasms,
Psora
Sycosis
Syphilis
Tubercular
Carcinosin
Although a few work with ten.
How does this matter to you?
Well if you are constantly suffering from some re-occurring symptoms that are not clearing you may just need some ‘miasmatic’ clearing. These symptoms may be re-occuring chest infections, sinus inefctions, hay fever, hives, or urinary tract infections etc. OR the other scenario is that they may shift to another symptom. Usually, if they shift they tend to go deeper, from the outside-in or from the bottom-up. I will explain this at another time, but a well-known, outside-in is, eczema that becomes asthma, or a ‘shock’ that turns inwards into cancer. This is not healing the body but suppressing the body and our body will continue to display symptoms in whatever shape or form it wants until the underlying issues are addressed.
My own ‘home grown’ example, is my now 14yr son had developed eczema at 6 months when I introduced him to solids. I took him to a homeopath and his eczema was completely cleared with one remedy which, later I found out was for the traumatic birth I had with him…so a few months later he develops a chest infection and that was cleared with the miasmatic remedy for tuberculosis called tuberculinum. Now eczema also comes under the umbrella of the tubercular miasm. In other words, his presenting complaints of eczema and chest infections were related…and remember I had TB as a baby too? So this was an inherited trait, as a nutritionist, I would explain it as ‘epigenetics playing out its role’. So it was as if the trauma of the not so ‘ideal’ birth ‘triggered the expression’ of the gene for eczema that was then ‘un-expressed’ with healing but then it was re-triggered manifesting as a chest infection. Until his epigenetic/miasmatic history was not addressed he would have continued to present with symptoms that came under the umbrella of diseases linked to his ‘genes/miasm’.
Now, if I had gone say the dairy free, gluten free route with him and kept his ‘nutrition’ under control, I could have managed his eczema. BUT his body was expressing his genetic history. Healing his bronchitis with tuberculinum actually cleared the miasm, reversed his epigenetics and he has never had a chest infection or eczema since or any other tubercular kind of ‘dis-ease’. The only way he expresses his healthy tubercular epigenetic/miasmatic trait is that he LOVES the outdoors, loves the mountains and loves movement (this is pretty tubercular), anyone have a place in the Alps with a skateboarder tribe too?
So embrace your epigenetics/miasms, live with them in harmony and nourish your body and mind well.
I hope this clarifies epigenetic/miasmatic traits with a bit more clarity. One does not need to live with a ‘diagnosis’ and next time you hear someone say ‘oh well, my mother had it, my grandfather had it too, so I am bound to get it’…share this blog with them, you may just save them from dis-ease.
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To Health!
Khush