Disclaimer: Any views or advice in this weblog should not be taken as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, especially if you know you have a specific health complaint. Prescribed medication should not be stopped or varied without conventional medical advice. Please remember that homeopathic remedies and other health measures should be individually-selected to match the whole person, not just the unwelcome symptom. For chronic, severe or long-standing complaints, or if you are pregnant, elderly or on orthodox medications, seek professional advice rather than self-prescribing.

Like anyone who works in a helping or caring environment, the team at Phoenix recognise the value of taking regular breaks, so at the end of this week, Phoenix Homeopathy is closing for some annual leave. We’ll then be busy relocating to brighter and more spacious new premises in Hove, so this will be my last blog until 7th April.

The search for a new Brighton and Hove home for the practice has been a bit of a saga: suitable commercial premises in the city are scarce, and square footage is pricey as a result. The search hasn’t been helped by the fact that, before training as a homeopath, I was a commercial litigation solicitor, with experience in commercial property litigation. You might think that this would be an advantage in dealing with commercial agents and landlords – far from it! Where others with less legal experience would have signed on the dotted line, I tended to spot potential problems with repairing obligations or badly drafted clauses in leases, which led to a few stalled negotiations during our search.

I’m a big fan of clear contracts – in life, in law, and definitely in my homeopathic practice. In fact, this is one of the subjects I teach during business skills classes at the South East College of Homeopathy, and I insist on the Phoenix Homeopathy mission statement being posted up on our website. We also provide a copy of our policies & procedures to patients, to make sure that patients know what we expect of them, and what they can expect of us. During the course of a homeopathic consultation, wellbeing issues invariably come up, and I might even suggest negotiating an individual wellbeing pledge from a patient to support their healing: for example, drink more water (you know who you are!).

Although the premises search was long and at times frustrating, with false starts and disappointments along the way, when we finally found our new premises, it all went through incredibly quickly and smoothly: almost as if it was meant to be. This made me think of the fact that sometimes timing is all: if we’d managed to rent first, second or third premises that we liked, we wouldn’t have gained the useful extra therapy room that comes with the premises we finally chose.

The self-healing journey can be a bit like this, too: there can be stops and starts, disappointments and triumphs, but often the end result is better than expected, as in the case of a patient seeking homeopathic help for eczema who found that their lifelong low self-esteem vanished at the same time as their skin cleared up.

For more information about natural healthcare solutions and homeopathy, visit www.phoenixhomeopathy.com/testimonials.php