Monday April 9 2012

Friday I was able to present my project before several of my peers and a facilitator. This was able for me to be able to defend my project before an audience of my peers. I realize while doing the presentation that the reason why I was up there was not for them to critique or pick holes in what I was planning on doing but it was for me to do that exact thing. I no what it is that I want to do while in India but everything that I do for the prep course can actually get me much closer to realizing the difference between what I say I want to do and what I am actually planning on doing.

Last night I did a lot of research for an idea that Rem gave me during the presentation on Friday. As I was presenting he informed me that in India the participants/general population that I will be working with are not going to recognize my terminology but that they will recognize the concept. Specifically he was referring to the idea of western and traditional healthcare. I now know that when people refer to traditional medicine they say homeopathy. When they want to talk of wester medicine that say allopathy.

I did some quick research last night on homeopathy medicine and it was amazing how quickly I got real time current and up to date results back from on line. Here are some of the things that I found. "Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine. Practitioners treat patients using highly diluted preparations believed to cause symptoms in healthy individuals similar to the undesired symptoms of the person treated." That is from Wikipedia page on homeopathic medicine. Here is another definition from another source, "Homeopathy, or homeopathic medicine, is a medical philosophy and practice based on the idea that the body has the ability to heal itself. Homeopathy was founded in the late 1700s in Germany and has been widely practiced throughout Europe. Homeopathic medicine views symptoms of illness as normal responses of the body as it attempts to regain health.


Homeopathy is based on the idea that "like cures like." That is, if a substance causes a symptom in a healthy person, giving the person a very small amount of the same substance may cure the illness. In theory, a homeopathic dose enhances the body's normal healing and self-regulatory processes."


Thus we see that it is not the exact same thing as ayurvedic medicine but it is similar enough that it would appear as if maybe the practices or even just the names are used interchangeably. I think there will be a lot of room to study both of them when I get on the ground. This will be the goal of my first few weeks or so on the ground in India. I hope to be able tor early define clearly what type of medicine is being practiced.