How to choose the right Homeopathic potency

Potency is probably the most difficult concept to get your head around in homeopathy. You just can't think in terms of 'strength'.

Choosing the right potency is more like choosing the right key to fit a lock.  If you were to show a child a huge iron castle-door key and a tiny modern safe key, which do you think the child might believe was stronger?

In a similar way you have to choose the right potency for the job. Have a look at this chart, it doesn't cover every possibility, and different homeopaths have had success with their own systems, but this will give you the general idea.…

 

 

When a homeopath makes notes of your symptoms and feelings he is separating them into groups.

• Physical
• Mental/Emotional
• Specific
• General

Physical and mental/emotional, are self-explanatory.

Specific symptoms ‘stand-alone’. (The patient may point to a specific place on their body) whereas generals relate to the whole body. (Say "All down the left side" or  “It’s always worse in damp weather”.)

In the chart you see that there are two axis’:

physical to mental

and

specific to general.

So, using the chart, let's take as an example fear of flying.  Fear would be more mental than physical, which would place it some way along the ‘physical-mental’ axis. However the person is not generally a frightened type of person, so on the ‘specific-general’ axis we would stay toward the specific end. Therefore we might select a 30c or more probably 200c.

So the remedy for fear of flying would be Argent nit and we would use it in the 200c potency.

Let's try another example. We often get asked about warts, verrucae, and molluscum. This would be totally physical. We would select right at the physical end of the ‘physical-mental’ axis on our chart. But what about the ‘specific-general’ axis? This would depend on whether it was one isolated wart, an outbreak or even if they are generally warty, having lots of moles, warts and excrescences. So that would determine your placing on the ‘specific-general’ axis, meaning that although it's a very physical condition the degree of generality could indicate a 6c, 30c or it would be higher if the patient was this way by nature!

So the normal remedy of choice for warts, verrucea and molluscum Etc would be Thuja, and whilst 30c would be a typical potency, higher might be indicated.

So when would we use a very high potency?

When a condition scores high on the mental or emotional range and also describes the whole person, not just how they are at this moment.

But remember we've just been placing a single symptom on our chart. Your homeopath will want to collect a lot more information before he decides on a remedy that fits the totality of your symptoms and chooses a potency.

Although this all sounds very complicated, don't worry, choosing the correct remedy is far more important than the precise potency.

For Free Professional Advice on choosing a Remedy or Potency simply click the link.