FORD
What patients like Mabe seem to appreciate most about their treatment is what’s often called a holistic approach. Taken from the Greek holos, meaning whole or complete, it’s about seeing and treating the patient as a whole person, rather than just a set of symptoms - an accusation often levelled at orthodox medicine. Diane Seymour is a Homeopath in Hebden Bridge and specialises in treating children. She explains just how crucial the concept of holism is to CAM and in particular, homeopathy.

SEYMOUR
Taking a full holistic case is not an ideal, it’s absolutely a practical necessity based on the basic principles of homeopathy. If you don’t take a full case which will cover psychological, physical and in the case of children developmental things - it could be learning difficulties, a whole range of things - you will not have a proper case. And the remedy, which is the homeopathic medicine you give, will not be accurate. So we don’t have any choice - we have to give our patients a considerable amount of time, a lot of focus, go into it in great detail and listen very, very carefully, observe very, very carefully.

FORD
So if I were a patient coming to you what sort of questions would you ask me in the first interview?

SEYMOUR
In the first interview I’d be asking what you’re particularly concerned with right now and take a lot of details around that. Then I would open it out into a wider picture of your general health. And then into areas which I think a lot of people find very unusual in going to seek help in healing which is you ask questions which are getting to know people as a whole - we don’t treat conditions or particular illnesses or particular psychological problems, we treat whole people. It can very helpful for the homeopath and it can be a good indication of the right remedy to find out things like, for example, what kind of weather people find particularly unpleasant or pleasant can give you an indication. So that we ask a lot - we ask about appetite, how warm and cold they are, how they sleep and even if they’re not problems they can still provide us with very useful information.

FORD
Diane, how would you say that attitudes to homeopathy have changed over say the last decade?

SEYMOUR
I think people know more - I seem to have to give less explanations. And people come with assumptions to a certain degree about how homeopathy works and their expectations match what we can do better, which is a great relief I think. Because I welcome sceptics, I think it’s a good thing, I think people should be sceptical about anything that they’re spending time and money on and also involves their health and their happiness - they should be sceptical. On the other hand I have a dread of people who are zealously enthusiastic about homeopathy and I think that can lead them to have inappropriate expectations - we’re not in the business of magic bullets here at all.

FORD
In later programmes, we’ll explore the real value of the therapeutic relationship which is currently being subjected to scientific trials. We’ll also look at homeopathy in more detail, as well as the other members of the so-called "big five" - osteopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic and herbal medicine.

But in Hebden Bridge, all manner of therapies are available, some at the less scientifically plausible though no less popular end of the scale. I went to the Hope Centre - where as well as Yoga classes and reflexology, it offers clients crystal healing. Patients sit in a circle of crystals, laid round them on the floor. The crystals are chosen specifically to deal with their condition and vary according to their ailment. One of the healers is Anna Rewilak.

REWILAK
That’s my doctor’s bag - I have everything in here.

FORD
And your other life tucked away in a cupboard is it?

REWILAK
It’s such a [indistinct words] I do offer medical holistic medical consultations also. Kainite. I mean these are not - they’re changed weekly - they’re not - the same pattern doesn’t last every week.

FORD
But the crystals keep their efficacy do they?

REWILAK
Indeed.

FORD
For ever and ever?

REWILAK
Ever and ever if they’re looked after.

FORD
What do you do to look after them?

REWILAK
Well as you can see these are stored, they’re actually stored in a crystal circuit, you have to cleanse them and there are many ways to cleanse, many, many ways to cleanse - water overnight once a week is actually the simplest way. You can become very ritualistic about it but we try here simple, simple, simple, simple, simple because I want people to do it, we want people to make a change in their lives which is what we’re talking about here - aligning your energy, aligning your energy to your body, to your heart, to your spirit because in essence that is what true healing is - it’s alignment. Five minutes is all I require but for children, I mean they need to get them in because crystals act instantaneously. So I have a young girl that I see on a Saturday morning who’s very, very hyperactive, she cannot sit still, focuses on the carpet perhaps or on the lights but won’t sit still. I have to just get her in it and then the rest of the five minutes is just a consolidate what’s gone on - because it’s the flush, it’s a charge and a flush.

FORD
Now just tell me a bit about yourself Anna, because you used to be a GP in general practice, there’s a very big change to treating people with crystals in this sort of alternative centre, what made you change, what happened?

REWILAK
May I answer that indirectly because you’ll see I could do so much in general practice and in general medicine but I was thwarted by circumstance and by the rules - you join a team you’ve got to play by the rules, you can stretch them a little but in essence if I wanted to achieve what I wanted to follow my dream it’s actually to make people better fully, not just their body, not just their mind but their inner self, their spiritual essence.

FORD
Whilst many medical doctors like Anna are retraining in other forms of therapy, the vast majority of the 40,000 or more CAM therapists in the United Kingdom are lay-practitioners. And while I am yet to be convinced of the healing power of crystals, I found it hard to deny the sincerity of one mother I met who’d been at the end of her tether. She truly believes that her son was helped to overcome his lifelong behavioural problems with crystals.

MOTHER
The schools failed him as far as I was concerned. The doctors failed him because unless they’ve got like a specific illness or something it’s just on that borderline where nobody can help him, if you like, there’s just not enough out there for mothers like me and help. So the crystal healing that was the answer. James came for reflexology and then Anna did the crystal healing on him. And that seems to have opened him out - whole new world to him. He started being able to go on buses himself. He’s actually got a girlfriend now and his communication skills are developing all the time, nearly every week he’s coming home with awards of things he’s done - he’s doing joinery.

FORD
Were you at all sceptical at first when somebody said crystal healing could help?

MOTHER
Yes, naturally, you know I mean you think what can crystals do? But I mean I’ve actually experienced it meself - Anna’s let me sit in the ring and you can actually feel the energy from it.

MORRISON
I think people have an amazing faith in the power of something they don’t understand.

FORD
Sceptics aren’t far behind the faithful here in Hebden Bridge, like local writer John Morrison whom I met in his local pub.

MORRISON
Some will say they have a special kind of energy, a special kind of healing power, something we don’t understand is often more powerful than going and sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. People are willing for miracles.

FORD
So are you saying there maybe a possibility that these practitioners who don’t have much training and aren’t regulated might actually be doing something useful?

MORRISON
I think listening to people is useful and if a doctor has only got five minutes to stare at his computer screen and tell people to take more medication then someone who will sit and listen empathetically to someone who thinks they’ve got a problem might actually solve that problem, yeah.

FORD
But you are quite sceptical about these alternative complementary practitioners aren’t you?

MORRISON
I’m sceptical of a lot of things that claim to do things that are unproved but I’m no different to anybody else - if a doctor told me I had a problem that he or she couldn’t cure, couldn’t deal with, then I’d be like anybody else, I would be clutching at straws but I think that’s what it is a lot of time - it’s clutching at straws. And doctors don’t seem quite as god-like anymore, especially round here where as you know Harold Shipman practised just down the road here, so our faith in doctors has probably taken a bit of a knock these last few years, yeah.

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Content last updated: 08/09/2004