20/07/2024
I’ve just spent a couple of weeks in Georgia, up in the Caucasus mountains in south eastern europe, learning more about Georgian singing. They approach their traditional singing as a means of connecting with their fellow singers rather than as something to perform to an audience, so the whole approach is different. Traditionally the songs were performed around the supra (feast) table, accompanied by plentiful food, wine and speeches. And before you start thinking about the scripted speeches we have at our rites of passage such as weddings, these are much shorter, spontaneous and spoken to traditionally defined topics, as decided by the tamada (master of ceremony).
Why am I telling you this? What, you might wonder, has this to do with homeopathy? I was struck by how open the Georgians were, how they used these dinner table speeches to lay their emotions bare and speak from the heart. Those of us who hadn’t been to Georgia before – myself included – had to overcome our cultural barriers to communicate openly about important topics with people we barely knew.
And it felt so good! No secrets, no “I wonder what they think of me?”, no “I can’t say that I might upset someone” because there was acceptance of each of us, what we brought and what we shared.
As a homeopath I work with the body-mind interaction: daily I see evidence of physical symptoms in our bodies which relate to what we’ve thought but not spoken about. Just think about that nervous tummy when we’re acting brave! The English have long been characterised by their ‘stiff upper lip’ and reluctance to show their emotions: we ALL have many layers of suppressed thoughts and emotions, every single one of us.
So my Georgian experience got me wondering what being a homeopath in Georgia would be like, whether the remedies which are commonly prescribed in England would also be common there, or whether there would be a different pattern….. What do you think?
