Sheila Gore, DSH

Having taught for more than 12 years before training as a homeopath, Sheila has played an active part in the school since studying here. As a student she suggested the adoption of a student representative for each teaching group which is still part of the School structure, she is a mentor, year tutor and occasionally teaches. Since graduating in 1996 she has been part of the core team and recently has taken up tutoring African Students working with Sheila Ryan on the Ghana Homeopathy Project supported by the School.

Sheila says, A friend of mine suggested going to see a homeopath who lived up the road from here and so I did and then that person was running a first aid a weekend course or something that was my memory and I went to that course as well and it wasn’t so much that I got better, I didn’t really get that much better but what really fascinated me was that here was this group of people mostly women who were prepared to jump from allopathic sort of dependency into homeopathic dependency, and I thought what’s going on here, how is that any different,  and why are they prepared to give up this whole history of effective science to jump on board with this, so I thought I wanted to find out a little bit more, and so I spoke to a friend of mine who worked at the clinic in Bath where Janet Snowden worked actually and he said ok I will ask Janet and then that’s how I ended up at the School of Homeopathy.

What is your favourite subject within Homeopathy?
When I went to the tutorials and things like that it was like I remember thinking it was like walking along this fantastic tunnel that was I could feel it was intricate and gorgeous and rich but then the lights were off and I felt that I was just desperate to get to an attendance course where I could feel a bit a like the lights were on so I was very pleased that from the second year, that’s why I really went on actually to the second year because I was so intrigued and by that time I was hooked and I was just really keen to see the richness and see more of it.

What do you enjoy about your practice?
Well helping people actually get them the amazingness of how, I enjoy the intellectual bit as well actually but I did really enjoy the here’s is somebody, I was reminded of it today when I was doing the teaching that here is somebody who had tried lots of things come to a homeopath and this miraculous craft, art whatever we call it was help them, massively help them and really you know really helped make their lives much much better.  I work in a shop now run a shop and you know though I am not practicing that much in sort of conventional sense I sure as anything practice homeopathy in the shop, it definitely happens there its not quite the same but its using all those skills of homeopathy of how to understand what somebody wants, what somebody needs what they are actually saying, that is all part of running a shop and inviting people to sort of, thing they might want to buy or you know a sort of of the shelf thing that might help them for a bit.

What is your favourite aspect of teaching Homeopathy?
Its great to revisit remedies that your very familiar with but just really visit them so that you can help someone else understand them, because that’s a very different thing and like today trying to include everybody in the group, I mean I was trained as a teacher so I love that sort of, how do I structure the hours that I have in order to include everybody, make them feel like they know something as well as they want to find out more and you know I love that process its great.

Advice for someone contemplating the study of Homeopathy?
Give it a go, give it a go. I mean, its, you know often people do things like this for lots of different reasons but I really think that homeopathy even though it doesn’t provide me with my living at the moment it has opened my way, its really opened up my way of seeing, its changed  my way of seeing the whole world, its completely not the same person, and I was just visiting that today with the teaching.  I was a scientist a trained scientist, geologist, I don’t use any of that now in my life really, but homeopathy, you know I was quite closed down you know I had to be sort of scientific, rational and stuff the way I trained to work with geology but homeopathy encouraged me to really look at things in a much more holistic way, much broader way and it’s a brilliant way of seeing the whole world anything you know, its fantastic  and you know so that’s everybody can benefit from that even if you don’t go on to actually practice homeopathy, you know that gives you another whole layer of interesting things to do, you know its not essential I don’t think, I think that just studying it really opens you up enormously.

Describe the challenges of being involved in Homeopathy?
It’s a challenge in lots of different ways, and I mean its enriching and fantastic and all the things that I have said you know, you meet some fantastically interesting people in ways, like I said ways about seeing, and different ways of interacting with information and understanding the information, but also it has its challenges in that you are part of a group that are actually on the fringe of something and you have to really think about it, you know really understand what you think about it, but there are just some spectacularly wonderful people who are part of this homeopathic group and they enrich my life all the time, fantastic you know, just in my own town there are half a dozen homeopaths we meet regularly and they are fantastic or you might go to a much bigger forum where you are learning about a particular group of remedies and that’s its enlivening and emotivating in a completely different way, its marvellous yeah its great.

What are your thoughts about the School of Homeopathy?
Its great to part of this community I think I love coming back here because it does connect me with a community of homeopaths and with people who want to learn and understand homeopathy, and I try to sometimes sit in with other people teaching because that helps me how I teach as well so coming back to the school of homeopathy is partly coming back to a family that I have been with for a long time but also it, its part of my ongoing training really in a way.  It keeps me in the flow and I think if you were, I think I would find it difficult just to be a homeopath in a clinic day after day after day without that student energy input of where you have to put of where you are having to look at things again and reassess and try and make it work for a whole group of people who don’t understand it yet, and maybe that’s because I was trained as a teacher but it also means that you are studying and you are looking at homeopathy in a context and a bigger context than just when you are working with people who are ill so that’s great too.