Homeopathy, from the Greek words hómoios, meaning similar, and páthos, meaning suffering, is a form of alternative medicine that promotes the use of extremely dilute natural substances to treat and prevent disease.

What are the basic tenants of Homeopathy?

Homeopathy presupposes that disease states represent disturbances in the body’s internal balance of a self-healing spiritual energy, called its “vital force.”  To return the energy to balance, the homeopath selects a treatment, called a “remedy”.  Remedies are produced by “dynamization” of certain substances in a process called “succussion.”  Substances to dynamize are chosen that, at toxic levels, produce the constellation of symptoms that the remedy is intended to treat.  This follows the the fundamental rule of homeopathy, the “Law of Similars,” the idea that “like cures like” (i.e. substances that cause a set of symptoms can be used to cure diseases that produce similar symptoms).
Two other rules govern the field.  The “Law of Minimum Dose” is accomplished by substantial serial dilution of remedies.  The “Law of Single Remedy” is expressed in classical homeopathy by choosing the one remedy that most closely fits the patient as a whole.  The selection of remedy occurs via a complicated algorithm, matching the patient’s symptom profile, personality features, and miscellaneous other traits to the indicated remedy listed in the HPUS or Homeopathic Materia Medica.

“Whether I am a small or a big wave of being, the same ocean of life is behind.”

Paramahansa Yogananda