Nicole Vienneau  00:00

Welcome, everyone, to the Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION! podcast. My name is Nicole Vienneau, and I am your host, and I'm also a board certified integrative Nurse coach, and we have a really, really fun episode today, because we get to learn about homeopathy, which I know nothing about. 

So all listeners out there who know nothing about homeopathy, this is for you. This is also for you if you do know things about homeopathy, because I think you're going to really align with our guest today. So let me introduce her. Her name is Lauren Briggs. 

She is the founder of Practical Medicine LLC, and she's also the creator and educator for the Homeopathy for Nurses: Acute Care course on the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy's specialty courses. So everyone, let's welcome Lauren.

Lauren Briggs  00:57

Hello! Hello, everyone. I'm so happy and excited to be here today. Thank you for having me, Nicole.

Nicole Vienneau  01:03

Yay! I'm so happy and excited too, because, like I said, I know nothing about homeopathy. So who better to teach us about homeopathy than you?

Lauren Briggs  01:13

I'm so excited to talk about it today. Homeopathy is a love language for me. So, very excited about that.

Nicole Vienneau  01:21

Awesome, of course, now before we get there, we always have to go back a little bit, so taking a trip down history lane, we love to know the story of how you even decided to become a Nurse. 

Lauren Briggs  01:31

Yeah, so I became a Nurse in 2011, so a few years on me, and it was a long journey to where I am now, I will say that. So I started out as a bedside Nurse, med surg, went to ER, got very, very burned out with the system, really, you know, didn't feel like we were making progress forwards in getting people healthy. 

We saw a lot of frequent flyers, and I didn't feel like we were really getting to the root cause of why people were ill or helping them at home holistically and giving them more options on how to stay healthy and stay out of the hospital. 

So I transitioned, after that, into functional medicine with a functional medicine doctor, and worked in her private practice for a long time. And then decided in 2020 that I wanted to become a Nurse coach, and so I found INCA, and you know, kind of did my first introductory call with them, and I remember how exciting that was, because I got to learn what Nurse coaching was, and realized this was absolutely the step forwards for me. 

That I wanted to work with clients and to have my own practice and to be more holistic in nature as a Nurse. So that was for 2020 and that's actually how we met, because you were my mentor instructor for that course, for that cohort. So that's kind of how I got started into Nurse coaching. 

And then after I finished the course in 2020 I opened my own private practice in 2021, and then I also went back and I did some specialty courses. And, you know, wanted to learn more about how I could have a specialty and a niche in Nurse coaching. So I took functional medicine. 

I started taking some homeopathy courses. I had had a homeopathy background myself, personally, and, you know, had learned about homeopathy, but I wanted to go back and get a diploma in it, so I also did that as well. And kind of like, took some time out for education and figuring out how I wanted to structure my practice. 

So when it was opened, I was able to, you know, say that I was an Integrative Nurse coach, that I was double board certified in Nurse coaching and in holistic Nursing, and then also having a diploma in clinical homeopathy. So it's definitely been a journey. The past couple of years, I have been in my private practice and also working on, in the background, a course to teach homeopathy for Nurses. 

So that's kind of where I am at this point, the cohort number one just opened up for homeopathy, for Nurses acute care. So that is kind of where I am right now, at this moment, is teaching that course, still practicing in my private practice, but also being an educator as well.

Nicole Vienneau  04:19

It is a lot. I mean, we think about the pathways for Nurses, and we don't have any limits really. I mean, we can go in and try, you know, being a clinician at the bedside, and then if that's not really speaking to us, we can shift our pathway, try something else, and see what calls to us, and take those steps towards what and how we want to show up in our practice. And so that's exactly how it sounds for you. I mean, you know, yeah, yeah.

Lauren Briggs  04:48

I mean, the education is out there, you know, we can make changes as a Nurse and not have to stick with the status quo of being a bedside Nurse if that doesn't resonate with you.

Nicole Vienneau  04:58

Yeah, yes. And you know, having that background as a bedside Nurse, though, is a great start, and it gives us a platform to stand on, and then we just create more and elevate more and learn more and expand our horizons. And then all of a sudden, you become an educator. You're creating your own course. So cool.

Lauren Briggs  05:17

It is so exciting. I love to bring homeopathy to Nurses, because there's just not enough information out there about it. And how can we... how can we do this? How can we educate in our scope of practice?

Nicole Vienneau  05:28

Yes, okay, so let's go to basics for a minute. So I know, like I said, I've said it now, this my third time. I don't know much about homeopathy. So for a beginner, could you define it, like the basics, for the layman Nurse? 

Lauren Briggs  05:43

Sure, yeah,  I mean, it's definitely a question, right? Like, what is homeopathy? I think a lot of people confuse it with home remedies. And it's not necessarily home remedies. It is, you know, like not garlic and, you know, using turmeric and herbs. Rather, it's its own subset of medicine. 

It's an energetic medicine. So everything is ultra diluted in homeopathy. So they do take a mother tincture, or a natural substance, and then they will dilute that to the point where it's only the energy left of that substance. So we are talking about only the energy, and the way that it works is these ultra dilutions are going to help us to heal the body. 

So we choose the remedy based upon what symptoms the original substance causes in the body. So if you have an onion, per se, we're talking about an onion makes you cry, right? If you chop into an onion, it's going to make you cry. It's going to make your nose run. It's going to make you feel wildly uncomfortable in your nasal passages and in your eyes. 

Then we talk about taking an onion and we dilute it, and then we would use the property, the energetic property, of that onion to then heal the body. So we'd be looking at like cures like, so if those were the symptoms that cause the ailment in your body, then we would choose onion as our remedy, and that would help us with anything that is nasal or causing tearing of the eye. 

So maybe allergies, right? We're thinking about hay fever. We're thinking about a cold. If you have a cold and you have very severe runny nose and runny eyes, then Allium cepa, which is onion, would be the correct homeopathic remedy for you.

Nicole Vienneau  07:29

Well, that is really interesting. It makes me think like, what else? What other things could you explain?

Lauren Briggs  07:35

Yeah, so another good example would be Belladonna. So a lot of homeopathy comes from poisons, and this one is from the deadly nightshade plant, which is considered a poison, but because we're diluting it so much, we're not going to have any of those poisonous effects. 

We're just going to have the energy left from the deadly nightshade plant. So for Belladonna, if you've ever heard of this one before, it would be for fevers, right? So if you ingested the poison by accident, you had the deadly nightshade plan, you would have a high fever, you would have facial flushing, feel very like look very hot, feel very hot, and have a headache. 

So Belladonna is commonly used for ailments where you would have that facial flushing, you have a high fever or you have a headache. So there's always multiple ways that we can use a remedy, rather than just one remedy for one thing, like when we talked about the onion, it's not only hay fever, but it's also cold like symptoms, or flu like symptoms. 

But there's so many ways that we can use remedies. And that's really what I talk about a lot in the course, is how many remedies there are. There's hundreds of remedies, and also maybe five or six uses for each individual remedy. So it's a lot to think about. And in the course, I talk about this a lot. 

You know, you don't have to memorize it all. We don't need to memorize all the remedies and all of their uses, we have books and tools to use so that we can use them as a resource and go back to them. We don't always have to memorize all of them.

Nicole Vienneau  09:08

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I guess that's true in everything— we don't know something, we're going to look it up and find out.

Lauren Briggs  09:14

Exactly. That's why it's so great for Nurses. Look it up if you don't know it.

Nicole Vienneau  09:20

Exactly. Okay. So alright. So now we have the basic understanding, I think, and we can, we can think about that kind of basics as you continue to explain a little bit more. So I would love to know, like, why would I, as a Nurse, why would I want to take this course?

Lauren Briggs  09:39

Yeah, so if you have a basic understanding of homeopathy and you just want to know more, or if you know absolutely nothing about homeopathy, what it is, how can you practice this within your scope of practice as a Nurse? How can you help to educate our clients on the use of homeopathy? 

Or even if you just want to use homeopathy for yourself, for your family and just have a better understanding of a different type, a holistic type, of medicine that is available on the market. It's in natural food stores. It's highly available to us at this point, and it's so underutilized. 

So this course really helps you to understand how to use it safely and effectively, how to educate, how to use it within your scope of practice, and really just to get an overall, you know, understanding and use of homeopathy.

Nicole Vienneau  10:30

Yeah, so I think of like modern medicine, and we take pills and we, you know, prescriptions and that kind of treatment. And so this is using more natural plants and things in our  environment.

Lauren Briggs  10:50

Yeah. And the biggest difference between taking a pill for an ailment and using homeopathy is that the pill is more of a suppression, where it's going to suppress symptoms, whereas with homeopathy, it's helping your body to heal from the inside, so it's alerting your body to a certain set of symptoms and helping it to have that healing response.

Nicole Vienneau  11:14

That sounds wonderful, yeah, right? Instead of just suppressing, and, you know, never really treating anything, now we can start to begin to heal. It's interesting because I just had a flashback to something, and I was thinking about when I started to have hot flashes as I come into menopause, or I'm actually post menopause now, but at the time, I was having some night sweats, and just I felt very inflamed. 

And so I went to a Chinese medicine practitioner, and she gave me herbs, and I made a tea from this herb every day. Different herbs, a blend. And this is, this is probably homeopathy, and I just didn't even connect the dots to this.

Lauren Briggs  11:58

She could have potentially given you some homeopathics. When we talk about tea, it's more like the physical herb itself. Whereas the energy of the herb, it would then be in homeopathic, it would then become a homeopathic remedy. I can show you what a little tube looks like. And inside there are pellets in this tube. 

There's 80 pellets. And every time that you want to take a dose of homeopathy, you would then, you know, twist the tube. Some of the pellets would then come down into the tube, and you would put them under your tongue to have them dissolve sublingually. Have you ever seen one of these before? 

Nicole Vienneau  12:37

No, see, I told you, I'm new! That's great! I love this learning.

Lauren Briggs  12:42

Yes, it's a little bit different, like you said, like the herbs were more of a physical— physical medicine, right? Whereas this is going to be energetic, under the tongue, goes into the bloodstream. Your body starts to realize what we're trying to do, and it starts to heal itself.

Nicole Vienneau  13:03

This is so exciting and so informative!

Lauren Briggs  13:06

I feel like a lot of people know this one too, because it's so commonly used, Nux vomica, people will use it when they have a stomach ache. And so you may just go to CVS or at your local health food store or drugstore and pick it up and say, Oh, I know that that helps for stomach aches or it helps for hangovers. 

They market it a lot for hangovers, because it's for over indulgence in food or alcohol. And so a lot of people pick that up, they won't even realize it's homeopathy. Another one like that is Arnica as well. Like for pain, a lot of people have heard of Arnica, and they don't even realize it's homeopathy. They just think, oh, they know that for bruises, you know, it'll help my pain as well. 

Nicole Vienneau  13:45

So some things have, sounds like have become more mainstream, because I've certainly heard of Arnica. Yes, it just could just be me and seeing it. You know, that's in my purview now.

Lauren Briggs  13:58

That's a big one. Oscillococcinum, which for short, is called Oscillo, that one's for flu. So a lot of people take it when they get the flu, and you don't even realize that it's a homeopathic remedy. Some of them are very mainstream. And then there are ones you've never heard of. You know, it's just, it's all about learning the different ones and realizing sometimes that, you know, you've already been taking something that's homeopathic and you didn't realize it.

Nicole Vienneau  14:24

Okay, all right, so tell us a little bit more about why you wanted to do this, like, what was calling you? How do you... yeah, explain that.

Lauren Briggs  14:34

So I've been using homeopathy personally for over 10 years. I use it on my family. I use it on myself. Whenever something comes up, you know, it's not necessarily an either or situation. You know, it's not you have to take, you know, allopathic medicine, or you have to take homeopathy. 

You can take them in conjunction with each other. So if you are taking an allopathic medicine and you get a side effect from that, right, like you may want to, then add in a homeopathic remedy to help with that. So for myself, I've used it many, many times for many years. I've used it on my family, and it worked. 

You know, that was really the thing is that, you know, if somebody had pink eye, right? And then they took the homeopathic for that, then all of a sudden, it would go away in a day, and I'd be like, Wow, that worked so fast. It worked so effectively, right? 

My son, you know, had whooping cough, and so we used homeopathic remedies for his whooping cough, and he was able to get over that within a couple of days, rather than have weeks of whooping cough. So he was, you know, I've just seen it work so effectively in my own personal life, that I decided that I would go and get a diploma in homeopathy and become a clinical homeopath, and then I wanted to bring that to Nurses. 

You know, I wanted us to have this as an intervention, as an option for teaching as a Nurse coach, especially, you know, we're always looking for ways to educate our clients and on all the holistic modalities that we can educate them on, you know, and being educated ourselves in that. So I wanted to make sure that that was available to Nurses, that we have another holistic modality and option out there that we can teach to our clients.

Nicole Vienneau  16:17

Yeah, and I think of some of the limitations that Nurses feel. So one of them will be, of course, is this in my scope of practice? And how can I even do this and have it align with that scope?

Lauren Briggs  16:32

Absolutely, that's definitely the question. I feel like all the courses at INCA kind of talk about that a little bit. When you go into Nurse coaching, they talk about what's in our scope of practice, what's not in our scope of practice. And I do the same in my course as well. It's so important that we're working within our scope. 

So you want to make sure that you're looking up your specific state scope of practice. Because some of them mentioned things like holistic modality, some of them mentioned homeopathy, three states, in fact, mention homeopathy, and the rest of them do not. And some of them are really vague when they talk about scope of practice. 

What is a Nurse's scope of practice? So the one thing that we can say is within all 50 states, is that education is within the scope of practice of all Nurses. So we are always leaning towards that, right? We are educating our clients so that way we can empower them to make their own healthcare decisions. We give them all the options, they ultimately make the choice.

Nicole Vienneau  17:24

Right. And that is from a holistic perspective, that is the best way to practice medicine when we're offering many options and aligning with solid information and with clinical knowledge. And the best for our clients and our patients in mind, that's the, I think the best scenario for healing.

Lauren Briggs  17:47

Absolutely, I agree. I think if you can make that decision yourself ultimately, then it's the best decision for you, right, rather than someone telling you what to do, which doesn't always work.

Nicole Vienneau  17:57

Right. It doesn't always work, and we see that often. 

Lauren Briggs  18:02

Go home. It doesn't work for me. Never mind. 

Nicole Vienneau  18:06

Never mind, yeah, so I don't really need to address this now anyway. So, from what I hear you explaining this is that it sounds like, and it sounds like these are more acute processes that the homeopathy would work for. So am I right in that, or is it?

Lauren Briggs  18:29

So there's two types of homeopathy. There's acute care, which means something that comes up acutely, right? You know, if we're talking about like, six months or less, right? That's how we define acute care, right? Something that's short term in scope. So it may be the cold, it may be a flu, it may be a stomach bug, right? 

Something that just pops up. You have symptoms, and then we're helping the body to heal those symptoms. Whereas there are constitutional remedies as well, and those go more into personality type and take your whole medical history into consideration. 

So if you have something that's lasted you longer than six months, that's not an acute symptom, that's not an acute issue going on in your body, it's something that you've been dealing with for a very long time. Maybe it's an autoimmune disease, or, you know, a different diagnosis, that's just something long term for you, then you would want to look at constitutional remedies. 

So this course specifically is teaching acute because it's a lot easier to understand the concept of homeopathy when we're looking at acute issues. And then there is the also constitutional, and I talk about that a little bit in the course, like what the differences are. 

But we don't really get into the remedies on that because it is a much more complicated issue in looking at the whole picture and realizing there might be one specific remedy that works for a specific person and their entire medical history and their personality type to help them to heal. And so the biggest difference between like acute and chronic or constitutional remedies is not only how you've had this going on, but how quickly the remedy might work for someone? 

So if you're having an acute issue, the remedy may work within three doses. It may work that same day. It may work the next day, you know. But when you're talking about something that somebody's had for 20 years, it may take six months to a year of remedies to be able to help to heal the body from that because the body's been dealing with it for so long.

Nicole Vienneau  20:21

Yeah, well, that makes sense. Yeah.

Lauren Briggs  20:26

The longer you've had it, the longer it takes to get rid of.

Nicole Vienneau  20:29

We wish that chronic diseases would just go away in one day. Chronic illnesses, yes, absolutely.

Lauren Briggs  20:38

That's why I love acute care, it's so accessible and so easy to see results right away. 

Nicole Vienneau  20:42

Yeah. Well, that's actually a really nice, kind of feedback loop too, when you're learning these remedies, when you're trying to understand it as a clinician, learning them, that you see results quickly. So it's like, oh, yeah, that is that thing for that. Yeah.

Lauren Briggs  20:58

So I always say, like, try it on yourself first. You know, try it on your family members first. So that way you know what works and what doesn't. And that way you can help someone else later, who's dealing with the same thing.

Nicole Vienneau  21:10

Right. Okay, so, well, if I'm deciding, okay, I'm thinking about this course, I'm wondering what to do, or if I should take it. I mean, what is one thing that you would want to tell our listeners like, Hey, this is what I want you to know about this course.

Lauren Briggs  21:28

So the course itself is eight weeks long. It is online, self paced, and available to all Nurses. I love that we made it available to all Nurses. So whether you're an advanced practice Nurse, an RN, an LPN, it's available to you. It's within your scope of practice to help and to educate. And so we do go into that and what your scope of practice is in your state. And then I teach you how to use homeopathy, how to use it safely, how to use it effectively, you know? 

Because it's not just, I took one and I was done, you know, right? We have to know how to do it and how to do it effectively and safely. So that's very important in the course. And then we go into all the systems of the body. So if you want to learn more about respiratory issues or digestive issues, headaches, that's a really hard one, because, you know, homeopathy is very symptom specific. 

So whether or not you're having a headache, right? You're having a headache or I'm having a headache, they could be two very different headaches. Your headache could be in the back of your head. My headache could be in the front of my head, on the left side. 

So there's a different remedy for each of them, where your symptoms are, it's going to change the remedy. And so I teach you how to use your resources, right? How to use Materia Medica, which is what we've been using for 200 years in homeopathy to help us to decide what remedies to take, and then, yeah, how to use them effectively so that they work for you, and what to do in troubleshooting. 

Oh, my goodness, right, like you get somewhere you think you have the right remedy, and then it doesn't work for you. What do you do? Is it you didn't take enough of it, or you didn't take the right dose, or you didn't, you know, give it long enough, you know? Or do you need to just switch remedies entirely, you know? 

So I think that's a really big part of the course is not just finding the right remedy, but also figuring out how to troubleshoot when things aren't going the way you expect them to go. So for Nurses, I hope that you know, if you're interested in homeopathy, if you know a little bit about it, or you know nothing about it, this course is available to you, and I hope that you take it and you love it, because so far, we're having really good feedback from the people in cohort one right now.

Nicole Vienneau  23:26

Good, yeah. Well, and I think you said... so in January you start a new cohort. Is that right?

Lauren Briggs  23:35

Yep. Cohort Two starts January 5th.

Nicole Vienneau  23:38

And I was just on the website today, and I said, oh, there's a discount right now.

Lauren Briggs  23:44

Yes, on early registration, and will be until 30 days before the start of the course. I love that. I think it's $200 off right now. 

Nicole Vienneau  23:53

Yeah, it was a significant discount. I was like, all right, we should sign up! Yeah. Why not? Yeah. And if nothing else, you get CEUs from this too, right?

Lauren Briggs  24:05

Yes, 55. 

Nicole Vienneau  24:06

Oh, wow. 

Lauren Briggs  24:07

Yeah, it's a good amount for eight weeks. And, you know, it's not too much work. I feel like, you know, it's pretty balanced. It's about five to seven hours of work per week. So, you know, not too much. You know, most of it is online, self paced. We have two lives throughout the course, but you know, for the most part, you're able to log in for five minutes on your phone, or you can, you know, do six hours on a Saturday. You know, whatever works for your schedule.

Nicole Vienneau  24:34

Okay. And so when you say self paced, even though it's eight weeks, does that mean that I could do, like, two weeks ahead, and then I go on vacation to say Tahiti, and I don't have time to do it because I'm gone for a month, then I come back and I could jump in again? How does that work?

Lauren Briggs  24:56

So for self paced we're talking about, you can get the work done on your own time at home, right? Or at wherever you are. You're in the car. You could do this in the car, but ultimately, you have to start at the same time as your cohort and end at the same time as your cohort. 

So if you want to go away on vacation and take a week off, that's perfectly fine. You just need to catch up. We can't go backwards. I mean, sorry, we can go backwards. We can't go forward. So every week the module will open up— for module one, week one starts on a Sunday evening, and then you have to the following Sunday to complete the work. But like I said, if you want, if you get sick, life happens. You want to go away. You just catch up on two weeks the following you're going to get back or when you're feeling better.

Nicole Vienneau  25:36

Plus you could just, you know, if you are on vacation, you could just do your learning with your pina colada in hand.

Lauren Briggs  25:44

That's true! All you need is internet, so it can be on your phone... wherever you are.

Nicole Vienneau  25:52

That's awesome. Oh, goodness. All right. So what else should we say? What else would you like to tell us about the class, the course?

Lauren Briggs  26:03

Yeah, so I think it's a wonderful course for Nurses. You know, as I said, it's available on INCA's website. It's easy to sign up for it. I think that, you know, it's a fast paced course. You know, it's only eight weeks, and you learn a lot in those eight weeks, but it's not too overwhelming. 

I tried to make it so that it's very accessible to Nurses and using what we already know. You know, we're not going into the basics of symptomology, you know, we're just going with learning about homeopathy and learning how that works into everything that we know and that we do as Nurses already. 

So I hope that, you know, it sparks an interest for some people that there is more to medicine than just allopathic and that there are other ways to heal, and even if it's just for yourself and not for clients, but that it just helps you to understand what homeopathy is, and so that way you could even try using it on yourself or your family. 

Nicole Vienneau  27:06

Yeah, those are excellent reasons. I mean, gosh, sign us all up, plus you get to see you and teach... You get to teach us. And yes, you've got a beautiful energy, just getting to learn and then you also mentioned some live sessions. What do those look like?

Lauren Briggs  27:27

So they're an hour long, and they're question based. So as you go through the course, obviously you come up with lots of questions about homeopathy, about what we're learning. So it gives you an opportunity to have one on one time, you know, not necessarily one on one, but with the other participants, as well with me. 

So that way you can ask your burning questions, and you also have access to me by email. If you missed the live, you can always watch the recorded one. And I have a lot of students who are emailing me weekly with their questions, and that's good too. I'm happy to help, you know, there's a lot of questions that come up when you're learning something new.

Nicole Vienneau  28:01

Yeah, it's nice to be on... have that opportunity too, to hear other people's questions that you may not have even thought of, and then all of a sudden, it's like, oh my gosh, that's a great question. I need that answer too, you know? So, yeah.

Lauren Briggs  28:16

Learning is a collaboration. We need to work together.

Nicole Vienneau  28:21

Yeah, yeah. We do. We do. So if we have questions, how do... what's the best way to contact you about the Homeopathy for Nurses course?

Lauren Briggs  28:33

Yeah. So email is wonderful. It's a great way to get in touch with me. I can give you my email, or...

Nicole Vienneau  28:41

We'll definitely put your email in the show notes, so people can find you there, but that's a great, easy way.

Lauren Briggs  28:47

Yeah, email me, you know, with your questions if you want to get in touch with me directly. If you're looking for the course itself, it's on INCA's website: inursecoach.com, you know, just go to the specialty course for Homeopathy for Nurses: Acute Care. 

Nicole Vienneau  29:01

Yes, we'll, for sure, share the link. 

Lauren Briggs  29:02

There's lots of information on there as well, and how to sign up. 

Nicole Vienneau  29:05

Yeah, we'll share that link in our show notes as well. So it's easy to find that. And then, you know, we love to ask a question. The question, I've been asking lots of questions, but we'd love to know what's on your heart that you would like to share with us today, Lauren?

Lauren Briggs  29:27

You know, this course, and homeopathy has just been my baby for the past two years. I've been working on this in the background while practicing, you know, in my private practice and just creating this course. 

And it's been lovely journey to really put what's in my head onto paper and be able to share that. And it's just such, such a great feeling to know that Nurses are now learning more about homeopathy, using homeopathy. It's so important to me, and I just want to share that, like I want everyone to know it and love it and use it and experience it and get better and feel better.

Nicole Vienneau  30:10

Yeah, we want that too.

Lauren Briggs  30:13

That's what's on my heart, at the moment, it's just sharing, sharing homeopathy with Nurses.

Nicole Vienneau  30:19

Yeah, beautiful. Well, thank you. Well, thanks for being here with us, Lauren, and for sharing a little bit of your love, your latest project. And yeah.

Lauren Briggs  30:29

Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.