You found me! I am a former researcher in computer science, the author of one of the best-selling books on homeopathy worldwide -- Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy (2003), and of another book on awakening mankind to evolved and expanded consciousness -- Active Consciousness: Awakening the Power Within (2011). I'm currently in the process of finalizing my third book, which bridges the areas of both spirituality and alternative health modalities. My personal blog, which includes most of my newsletter feature articles, can be found at amylansky.com. Here's what you can find on my web site Biography Vita Publications Web Sites I Like Contact Info

Amy L. Lansky, PhD

Born in 1955, I grew up in a suburb of Buffalo -- Kenmore, New York. College years were spent at the University of Rochester -- the next big city over. I majored in math and also studied the budding field of computer science. In 1977, I went off to grad school to study computer science at Stanford University.

The move to California in 1977 was a transformational step for me on a personal and professional level. I was a woman in the computer science department at Stanford at a time when there were very few women (I was the only woman in my class). The department was a wonderland of weirdness -- the days when computers and the people interested in them were pretty offbeat and the societal impact of computers wasn't really felt yet.

I ended up writing my thesis in concurrent program verification under my advisor Susan Owicki. The crux of my thesis was that programs/problems/reasoning could be done in terms of the "events" or actions in the program and their interrelationships, rather than in terms of state invariants -- the normal method. My advisor didn't particularly like my going off in such a weird direction, but I was funded via fellowships (first NSF, then Hertz) so I did what I wanted. That has always been my pattern -- follow my own path, not anyone else's.

I finished my thesis in the fall of 1983. I got tenure-track offers from good schools (Cornell, Yale), but I opted to stay in the Bay Area and took a job at SRI. Soon thereafter I switched from the Computer Science Lab to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab at SRI.

During my years in AI (1983--1997), I made my name in the area of planning -- essentially program synthesis -- the flip side of the my thesis area -- program verification. Initially I worked with Mike Georgeff on the first and probably still one of the best reactive planners -- PRS (now called dMARS). Our paper on reactive planning in the 1987 AAAI conference (Reactive Reasoning and Planning) won the AAAI 20-Year Classic Paper Award of 2006.

I then proceeded along my usual ornery track, inventing a new method of multiagent planning based on reasoning about events (actions) and their interrelationships rather than state pre/postconditions (note similarity to my thesis). This led to the development of the GEMPLAN planner, and then the COLLAGE planner, which was built by me and my team at NASA Ames Research Center, where I worked from 1989--1995.

What about the personal sphere? Well, in 1981, I met Steve Rubin, a Carnegie Mellon grad. We got married in April 1984 and have lived near Stanford ever since. In 1988 we had our first son, Izaak, and in 1991, our second son, Max.

Around 1985, Steve and I embarked on an unexpected path -- we began to sing in rock and roll bands. After a series of bands, we ended up in different bands -- he in Severe Tire Damage (noted for being the very first band to air live on the internet) and I in Not Dead Yet (formerly known as the Wizards -- a Stanford nerd band composed of myself, Dick Gabriel, Ron Goldman, and Tom Gruber). Here's a picture of me with my two sons in a band venue. After six years with Not Dead Yet, I left the band in January 1999 and it later collapsed. For a few years we still did occasional gigs together, but eventually that died away too. Rock n' roll is hard work! Today, I'm still avid pianist. For a few years, I also studied piano composition and wrote several piano and vocal pieces.

During my years as a computer scientist, I always had a major interest in medicine and psychology. Over the years, this interest took a turn towards the alternative. I tried lots of things: chiropractic, network chiropractic, tai chi, qi gong, hands-on healing (e.g. Reiki), acupuncture.

Then, in 1994 we realized that our younger son Max was having developmental/behavioral/language problems. It turns out that he had mild autism, probably as a result of vaccine damage. Helping Max became my life goal. We experimented with food elimination (great gains after stopping milk), speech and language therapy, really thinking and working on family dynamics, focussing on unconditional love and intentionality. All of these things helped somewhat -- Max was making slow progress.

In January 1995, we began Max on a course of homeopathic treatment and later osteopathy as well. This was a major turning point for him, for our family, and for me. The homeopathic remedy that Max took for about 2 years (LM dosing, for those of you who know the field) had a major transformative effect on him. His therapists were amazed; they had never seen anything like it. After that point, he was treated on an occasional basis, like the rest of our family. By the time he was 8 or 9, you would never suspect he had been autistic.

This experience had a major impact on me and the rest of my family. We all use homeopathy now as our primary medical system. We've seen ear infections disappear in hours, stomach flus nipped in the bud, warts drop off, tics and twitches disappear overnight. We were greatly blessed by his healing and our discovery of homeopathy. And I was left with a new mission: to help other kids like Max, and to study and promote homeopathy.

After many years on the academic research treadmill, I began the process of detaching from the world of computing. First, I founded my own little consulting and research outfit in September 1995, Renaissance Research. For three years I did some consulting on the COLLAGE system with NASA Goddard. At the same time, I also served (for three years) as a consulting associate professor in Stanford's Symbolic Systems program -- an interdisciplinary undergrad major that focuses on computer science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. But gradually I began to devote myself exclusively to the study and promotion of homeopathy.

First, in the summer of 1996, I began my studies with Misha Norland's School of Homeopathy in Devon, England. They have an excellent and rigorous correspondence program. I completed their foundation program and most of their advanced program. I also did coursework in anatomy and physiology. Then I pursued several years of clinical training and workshops under people like Louis Klein, Simon Taffler, and Sadhna Thakkar. I've also studied with Alize Timmerman, Jan Scholten, Jeremy Sherr, Janet Snowdon, A.U. Ramakrishnan, and Rajan Sankaran.

Next, I began working in editing and writing. For two years I co-edited the journal of the North American Society of Homeopaths -- The American Homeopath. Then I began writing. First I wrote an article about Max's amazing cure. You can find it on this web site: Max's Story. This article also appeared in the 5th issue of Homeopathy Online, on a French web site, and in print in an Australian homeopathy journal.

Then I began work on a book on homeopathy. In April 2003, it was published -- Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy -- and it went on to become the best-selling introductory book worldwide, with translations into several foreign languages (currently: German, Greek, Arabic, and Czech). It is not a how-to book. Rather it, is a very broad introductory text that covers history, philosophy, scientific studies, methods of treatment and dosing, legality issues, and more. For this reason, it is also used as a textbook at several schools. I believe the key to its success, however, is that it includes many testimonials of cure from around the world, and for a variety of physical, mental, and emotional ailments. These include a whole chapter on Max's story and about our family experiences of homeopathy in general. You can read more about it and order it at my book web site: www.impossiblecure.com.

At about this time, I also got political. A prerequisite to the spread of homeopathy is making it truly legal. I helped found (and served as an executive board member of) the California Health Freedom Coalition from 2001-2005. As part of this legislative process, I testified before a California Senate hearing on alternative medicine. It took lots of hard work, but in September 2002, Governor Gray Davis signed SB-577, a bill that legalizes the practice of unlicensed forms of medicine in California -- including homeopathy. Now homeopathic practitioners (and other unlicensed practitioners of alternative modalities) can practice legally in California.

Soon after publication of Impossible Cure, I was invited to join the board of the National Center for Homeopathy. I served on the board from 2003 until 2011, most of those years on the Executive Board as Secretary. I also was instrumental in a complete overhaul and redesign of their extensive website, and still participate in helping the NCH when I can.

Going back a few years now, to 1993. At that point, I became very interested in the possibility of higher-dimensions in space after watching an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. My interest in homeopathy, coupled with a long-standing interest in consciousness and psychic phenomena, eventually inspired me to write a paper about this subject in 1996. Eventually, it became widely-linked on the internet and was published in the Noetic Journal as well -- Consciousness As An Active Force. It proposes a view of consciousness as an active force that humans can exert and that influences how we traverse 3-D space in the larger context of four (and possibly higher) dimensional space. Among other things, it also discusses the relationship between alternative medicines like homeopathy and the power of human consciousness.

This paper became the seed from which a larger tree grew. In 2005, I began studying meditation with two inspiring teachers -- Ellen Miller and Gary Sherman (www.creativeawareness.org). Eventually, I realized that my new goal was to write a book based on my consciousness paper. After many years of reading and research, the result was published in September 2011 -- Active Consciousness: Awakening the Power Within. Like Impossible Cure, this new book covers a lot of territory and tries to bring cohesion and clarity to a very complicated and esoteric subject -- consciousness. In addition to promoting the higher-dimensional ideas developed in my paper, it covers modern research on psychic phenomena, esoteric systems of thought like those of Gurdjieff, Steiner, and Kabbalah, and the relationship of all of this to energy-based medicines like homeopathy. It's all woven together in one system of thought based on my notion of active consciousness. The book also includes many meditative and self-examination exercises based on the work of Gary Sherman and Ellen Miller -- thanks to their incredible generosity!

Homeopathy:
Impossible Cure -- tons of info, including my monthly newsletters and a 4-year archive of my radio show.
Homeopathy Home Page
Council for Homeopathic Certification and referrals to certified homeopaths
More referrals to recommended homeopaths
Minimum Price Books -- THE source for all books on homeopathy
David Little's Homeopathy Web Site
Devon School of Homeopathy
Lou Klein's Luminos Schools
National Center for Homeopathy
North American Society of Homeopaths
HELIOS Pharmacy

Vaccination:
National Vaccine Information Center
More links to info about vaccination, amalgam, etc.
The best version of the CDC's Vaccine Injury Database

My writing:
AmyLansky.com -- coming soon
Active Consciousness: Awakening the Power Within
Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy
Consciousness as an Active Force
Max's Story

Other interesting things:
Institute of Noetic Sciences
California Health Freedom Coalition
Emotional Freedom Technique
Reiki Page
Bach Flower Remedies
Quantum Touch
Mercola Web Site -- excellent alternative health views and statistics; newsletter, etc.
International Campaign for Tibet
Disclosure Project
Reality Sandwich
The School of Human Ecology -- Australia

Amy Lansky, PhD