Leaving the comfort zone - off to the real world of research, statistics and maybe some dancing...

I've had such a beautiful day today that it's tinged with a little sadness that I'm leaving this part of the world tomorrow, where the elderflower is coming out (champagne anyone?!), the buttercups are flowering in the meadows and my potatoes are taking over our teeny garden space. I'm very content being here, working in a 1:1 environment, seeing clients, working with social media and walking in nature daily (I'm still trying to run...). It's the perfect time for barefoot walking here at the moment and I've also made it into the river for a few swims - complete with heron flying overhead, fish jumping and great company. It's heavenly. Visit Yorkshire if you've not been - and come in May/June time, it's been really wonderful this season. Or better yet maybe don't - and all the quieter for me ;)

But leave it I shall, and I jet off to a conference tomorrow. Well, first for my preconference mini break for Tuesday and some of Wednesday. The conference is the Homeopathy Research Institute Conference, and this year runs in Malta attracting delegates and presenters from around the world. The research is all of a high quality and the conference program is packed, allowing for many presentations in the short time that we're there. I'll be working there so won't see everything but do know that the last two conferences were all available online afterwards for people to download the presentations, and will be able to catch up later on the interesting bits that I missed.

And interesting bits I expect there will be a-plenty. I've been musing recently over the state of homeopathy, and homeopaths in the UK in particular but also around the world. The skeptic attacks, which have escalated over the last 10 years seem to have had something of their desired effect. Less NHS homeopathy facilities, less homeopaths, more fear in the community. We no longer describe what we can help people with on our websites, we talk in vague terms of 'helping the whole person' and whilst to some extent this is right - it's truly amazing how many times you give a remedy for some symptoms and the patient returns the following month to say how something they never told you about is so much better, to another way of thinking it's not helpful. People want to know if you've helped with depression, insomnia, IBS, anxiety before in practice. Still the people who've been helped with those and tell their friends and they appear to be not stopping talking. 

So back to the conference. It's amazing how much we seem to have to justify what we do. I don't know of another profession who has had the need to do it as much as in the world of homeopathy (so please do tell me if you're aware of one). It's always a treat to be amongst people where you can have a conversation about your work without waiting to either have to explain more (which is of course fine) or be told it's pointless and doesn't work (clearly contrary to much of your experience working with it on a daily basis). But to see repeated results, in both laboratory and clinical settings. To observe plants respond to homeopathic remedies (surely that at least has to get rid of the placebo argument?), to see the results of many researchers from all over the world. And also to hear their stories. I was in Rome 2 years ago, but not in Barcelona two years previous although Gustavo Bracho was there. It was him who inspired Ananda More (my interview with Ananda is here) to make Magic Pills, a documentary film about homeopathy which had its World Premiere last night. Gustavo found that despite having successfully used homeopathy in an epidemic (with a group of 2.3 million or so people) he was initially unable to publish his findings in any conventional medical journal. Gustavo wasn't a homeopath, but he was a scientist and part of the Finlay Institute in Cuba, and importantly, a part of a solution to a leptospirosis epidemic. It's not just us in the UK that there's a clamp down on it appears.

Interesting. So out I go, out of my quiet nature bubble of my woods, rivers and leave my wolf and family and head into the beauty of Malta, the beauty of being around people who really get what I do (which isn't to say there's not plenty of them here too). Some fabulous homeopathy research updates. And maybe just a little bit of dancing too...