The multi-billion dollar profits of the pharmaceutical industry are one of the main forces which keeps this old diagnostic system alive — without such officially recognized diagnostic labels, the pharmaceutical companies would have no legal justification to develop or market any drugs, as they can only be approved in relationship to a recognized condition label. This is why, for example, there has been such a strong lobbying effort by the pharmaceutical industry to have a new diagnostic label created for “female sexual dysfunction”, so that they can tap into a new profit centre, and not necessarily because they have a viable treatment in the works.

The problem with such generic diagnostic labels, is that they have, at best, a superficial relationship to the underlying disease process which is causing such symptoms in the first place. Generic labels can only lead to generic solutions, and therefore only produce inferior results. On a case by case basis, going beyond these generic labels into the true causes of the disease is what leads to a more true and certain treatment plan for each individual patient.

The education process for each patient usually has to include a re-visiting of these concepts, as they almost always bring with them an Allopathic disease label which they are seeking alternative treatments for. “Do you have a remedy for <fill in the blank with a generic label>?” can almost always be answered with “yes and no”. “Yes”, in the sense that we can determine what the unique causes are for you to have that condition, and systematically address those. “No”, in the sense that such labels are generic, superficial, and abstract, and any true form of medicine can only deal with something that is real.

There are two especially unfortunate consequences to these false disease labels : The first, is that many patient’s with complex health issues may be sent home from their doctor being told that there is no diagnosis for their condition, or worse, that it is “all in their heads”. The second, is that they are given a false disease label, but told that “there is no cure for that, you just have to learn to live with it.”. The good news for both of these scenarios is that there is a path to true diagnosis for every disease, and there is a definitive remedy which is curative in every case of disease.

So, here’s to better diagnosis, and better treatment options with Heilkunst!

Hand-in-hand with this concept comes the idea that there is no such thing as ‘localized’ disease — in other words, if someone says they have a “liver disease”, or a “kidney disease”, this is, strictly speaking, not correct. What they have, instead, is one or more diseases which are manifesting in symptoms in the liver or kidney. This is why the surgical removal of a supposed “diseased” organ does not actually remove the disease which caused the symptoms in that organ, and now the manifestation of that disease has no choice but to show itself through a different organ or bodily system. As one homeopath once said, you can prune the apple tree, but this won’t prevent it from growing more apples.

The exact same concept is true in the treatment of cancer — while it may be necessary in a given case to remove a cancerous tumour or affected organ, such a removal of the physical manifestation of the cancer does NOT cure the underlying cancer process, which is systemic. This is why the unfortunate story in so many cancer cases after the supposed “cure” (through a combination of surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy), is that sooner or later, the cancer usually returns — either in the exact same place, or in a new location. While any number of physical therapies are necessary and helpful in treating cancer, they cannot succeed on their own without also employing a treatment protocol which is working to address the underlying disease itself — the non-material root of the disease.

So, if disease is not material, then what is it? This is such a difficult concept for anyone in the Western world to grasp, where our implicit worldview for a number of centuries has presumed that the only thing real and knowable in the universe is matter — atoms and molecules, or even smaller building blocks which make up everything that there is. All diseases, within this worldview, are necessarily defined by a physical set of symptoms, and their causes by a material imbalance. Think of all the mental-emotional conditions, such as depression, which are now defined as imbalances in the brain chemistry.

At its root, what Dr. Hahnemann’s system of Heilkunst teaches, is that disease is an altered state of mind. Each disease originates in a uniquely altered state of mind, and is therefore cured by a remedy which contains that particular state of mind. Rather than using a generic remedy for “headaches”, each patient with headache is diagnosed based on their unique state of mind, and that remedy (which matches their state of mind) is the one which will be curative for their headaches.

This is also the basis for a true system of preventive medicine, as it is possible to identify and remove such a diseased state of mind before it has caused the formation of any symptoms. This is the reason that health is not simply defined as an absence of symptoms (which is a negative definition), but involves the unfolding of a positive state of mind involving multiple dimensions of our being.

So, here’s to your health, and not just to an absence of symptoms!

Take any single aspect of music (such as a particular piece of music, or a certain performer, or a certain genre, for example), and further study will always reveal depths of its uniqueness and character not immediately visible from casual observation. Not only at the musical level itself, but also the entire historical and social context from which the music came from. A well-trained musical ear will hear a piece at multiple levels at once.

These musical skills which I honed now find their way translated into new forms inside the consult room, when I am observing the tone of the patient as part of the diagnosis. So often, the real content of the case is not contained in any of the words the patient says, but rather in the tone in which they say it. So many people repeat the same scripts and narratives about themselves  and their lives which seem to portray a certain story, yet which is incongruent with the tone that they use to deliver it.

From one month to the next, when I am discerning the effect that the latest remedy has had on the patient, they are often repeating their same old story to me, yet the tone has shifted. The tone, and the underlying state of mind are always the first to be shifted by the remedy, which is then followed by a shift in the physical symptoms. This is the reason that I am able to be as effective through a phone consult as I am in person. Most patients do not at first feel their own shift in tone, while they remain focussed and stuck on the apparent lack of change in their physical condition. My well-tuned ears, however, are acutely sensitive to these small yet significant shifts, and I can often bring them into focus enough for the patient to see this within themselves.

It’s no accident that Dr. Hahnemann referred to disease as being a “mistunement” of the living power!

First dates can be full of so much anticipation, hope, and anxiety. It’s much the same the first time I work with a new patient. Most patients bring to me their sufferings, along with their hopes to find a cure for it. After the initial assessment, where I’ve learned as much about the patient’s health as possible and developed as clear a diagnostic and treatment map as I can, I send them off with my advice and remedies, with a full sense of anticipation for how they will be when they return 1 month later.

There’s a very subtle, but very crucial shift which I often discern when a patient returns for their first follow-up. As Dr. Hahnemann described it so beautifully in aphorism 253 of his Organon:

In the case of an ever-so-slight beginning of improvement a greater comfort, an increasing composure, freedom of spirit, increased courage, a kind of returning naturalness.

Often, it will be outside the patient’s awareness, and it takes some direction on my part to point out to them what I notice as having changed. Small differences such as the tone of their expression or body language, or even small shifts in some of the patterns of their symptoms they listed the previous month. Until these are pointed out, the patient often has not made contact with this within them self. This is very similar to the same thing I pointed out yesterday about not understanding the difference between a symptom of illness and a healing reaction. There are a certain number of patients who ARE in contact with themselves at this level, and return to the consult room bounding and full of excitement at what the remedy is starting to do for them, and they can’t wait to find out what we will be doing next.

These first remedies I give the patient behave very much as the military use of depth charges, which are used both to assess what’s below the surface, while also causing initial damage to the enemy. The subtle art of conversation on a first date often serves this role of planting certain “depth charges”, to test if certain undesirable elements are hidden below the surface, or if there is likely a safe passage forward.  The subtle and observable shifts and changes that the patient comes back with their second visit are very good qualitative indicators for where the disease has penetrated to different depths in the whole economy of the patient’s life energy. I always anticipate with excitement what kind of shift in their energetic picture the patient brings on their second date, and the much greater clarity I will now be able to bring to their treatment plan.

When patients return for their follow up visit every 28 days, especially in the earlier phases of their treatment while they are still getting used to the new way of thinking about health that they learn with Heilkunst, we evaluate how they have responded to their remedies during the previous four weeks, and in which direction they seem to be moving. The newer the patient is to the process, the less they tend to understand the concept of “healing reaction“, and the more likely they are to miss them when they happen.

A typical conversation at this stage will start with the patient reporting that “nothing happened” after they took their remedies. I review with them my notes from the previous session, and ask them how they are doing relative to each of the points I recorded the previous month. More often than not, they’ll slip into the conversation at one point

“…but I did catch this head cold that is going around the office, and was sneezing with a runny nose for 4 days”.

When I inquire further, this will most often turn out to be a healing reaction.

How can I tell? A healing reaction, although it includes any variety of discharge symptoms, whether physical or emotional, will have the peculiar characteristic of the patient feeling rather well at their core despite the apparant head cold they have. It’s kind of like the idea of “the eye of the storm”, where all kinds of content can be swirling around the patient, yet they feel surprisingly well despite all of that. Also, we come to understand what the typical rhythm that each patient has with the remedies, and the time frame that their healing reaction tends to occur within.  On average, most patient’s have their healing reactions within 5 – 12 days after taking their remedy, but there are occurrences at the near and far end of this bell curve.

It usually takes a few repetitions of this pattern with a new patient before they start to understand the difference between a healing reaction, and, say, a “head cold” which they assume is what they have at that time. I especially need to re-train the patients who tend to rush out every time to get a suppressive medication (and therefore necessitate the repetition of their remedy), instead of calling me for a remedy to support them through the healing reaction, instead of suppressing it. I keep my fingers and toes crossed until that moment arrives when the patient starts to get it, and allows themself to go through the process without interrupting every step forward of progress with an equal step back with anti-symptom prescription drugs.

The Organon is an especially formal and structured form of writing, which almost reads like a legal statute, and contains much content in condensed form, kind of like a “.zip” file on a modern computer. Dr. Hahnemann packed very much meaning into the condensed aphorisms of this book, and like all works of genius, it can take multiple readings to fully unpack all of the implicit meanings and associations contained. One homeopath once famously instructed that a young homeopath should read Hahnemann’s Organon 2x per year for the first 50 years of their practice, and then only 1x per year would be necessary after that.

Let’s have a look at its first aphorism:

1. The physician’s highest and only calling is to make the sick sound, which is called remediation.

Seems like a pretty straightforward and obvious start — the physician’s job is to provide remediation for their sick patients. But is there something more is in that sentence? It refers to the “highest and only” calling of the physician. A calling is much more than an occupation or job — a calling comes from something which we’ve been talking about in this week’s blogs in terms of finding your core desire function. If one’s desire function does not include being a physician, then it will not arise as a specific calling from within.

The other association we can make with the word ‘calling’ is with the concept of ‘resonance’ — the whole structure of Heilkunst is fundamentally built around resonance as the central medical principle. It makes sense, then, that if the therapeutics of Heilkunst are built around the principle of resonance, that the practitioner would be required to be operating their life on the same principle.

There’s another word in this first aphorism that I find particularly interesting, and that is the word ‘sound’. In this context, it has a meaning similar to ‘whole’, as in the phrase “…of sound mind and body”. Right from the very beginning, Dr. Hahnemann is setting Heilkunst apart from the usual conception of healthcare we have today, where the buzzword used everywhere is ‘wellness’. We hear about ‘wellness’ clinics and ‘wellness’ lifestyles — this is a very different meaning and goal for health than the ‘soundness’ which Dr. Hahnemann asks of his Heilkunst physicians. ‘Wellness’ has more the connotation of balance and maintenance, where ‘soundness’ implies the higher goal in health of capacity for creativity, and autonomous self-governance.

Where the “balance and maintenance” of wellness is a necessary condition for health, it doesn’t include this fuller attainment of soundness. This is another reason I refer to Heilkunst as a form of “Naturopathy 2.0”, as the field of naturopathy works towards this lesser goal of wellness, but it is medical Heilkunst which consciously works towards this higher goal of soundness for the patient.

If all of this (and more!) is contained in just the first aphorism of The Organon, imagine what we’d find if we went through the remaining 291 aphorisms in this way!

This treatment involved addressing the recent birth of her daughter. It was a relatively straightforward birth, and the remedies I gave her for this time line event were the typical birth remedies (that is, birth from the mom’s perspective — birth from the baby’s perspective takes a different set of remedies).

When she returned for her first follow-up one month later, she brought a very visible excitement about her treatment, which hadn’t been present at her first visit. The living experience she had with her remedies the first month helped her to “get it”, as far as how treatment works, and what she could expect going forward. This is true with almost every patient — they may understand the concepts regarding how treatment works, but it is very difficult for a concept on its own to generate any type of warmth or excitement in the absence of an experience.

So, what was the living experience that this patient had from her first time line remedies? She told me that after completing the remedies, she had a very unusual moment of re-experiencing the sensations very similar to (but not as intense) as when she had gone into labour. Her eyes widened slightly as she described to me the sequence of sensations she felt as she went through the healing reaction from those remedies.

As with all healing reactions, what the life force pushes up to the surface represents some form of completion of a natural process, which for some reason had not originally occurred in a natural setting where it could be completed. The healing reactions to time line events, in one way or another, will push out a physical or emotional memory which was suppressed when it original occurred.

As I have experienced with many patients, it is at moments like this where they display a true desire to learn more about the treatment, and where we’re going to be going for the remainder of their treatment plan. The moment when rigid skepticism dies, and the patient gives birth to truly engaging with the process of their treatment, and expanding the possibilities of health for themselves.

A broken arm is a certain kind of physical time line trauma and requires a particular combination of remedies to address it, which we gave her as part of her treatment that month. This was one of the more straightforward time line events we had treated in this patient (or so we thought!)

She came back the following month, however, with a completely unexpected reaction to the remedies — a strong headache had emerged for a few days after taking these remedies, which was not at all a typical symptom for her. This was a symptom which wasn’t related to the symptoms of a broken arm, nor to the following item on her timeline (which is often where the life force spontaneously goes when it is ready to move forward to the next necessary treatment.)

“Did anything else happen when you broke you arm? Maybe you struck your head at the same time?”

“No,” she said.

When we questioned her further about the broken arm, she revealed that there was another element to the story of her broken arm — it had occurred within another context, which was that she had just received news of the passing of her Uncle just before she slipped on the stairs outside the door of the house and broke her arm.

Ah ha! This headache is one of the typical physical symptoms we will see in a patient when they are going through a state of grief, whether related to a current event, or a past event on their time line. We immediately treated her with this grief remedy, to complete the whole event of the broken arm, before we knew we could logically move on to the next event to treat on her time line. Normally, we would have treated the broken arm with the grief remedies at the same time, in a compound event like this.

There were some very key lessons I learned from this :

• To be very thorough in case-taking, and not to make assumptions.
• The patient isn’t always sure about what to include on their time line, and needs to be guided and prompted to complete all the information.
• The patient’s life force will always tell you exactly what it needs, whether it is a conscious knowledge in the patient’s mind, or not. Without following it, the treatment will progress blindly, and often ineffectively.
• In other words, the time line is a great map of the territory, but the living, breathing movement of the life force is the necessary guide to navigate through it.

I want to point this out, because even amongst patients who have a strong aversion to engaging with any aspect of conventional medicine, they still tend to adopt the language of these common diagnostic labels in describing their own health. It’s only human nature, after all, to try to identify a problem in order to move on to a solution for it, and using this common language of medical conditions seems like the obvious path to that end. This is usually one of the very first ideas I need to re-educate new patients about, and teach them instead to speak about their health issues with a new language.

For example, instead of asking for a remedy for their “headache,” they learn instead to ask for a remedy for their headache which “starts every morning around 10am, over their right eye, and then gradually moves to the top of their head and settles into more of a throbbing sensation towards lunch time. The only thing that keeps me from losing it is periodically sticking my head out of the window to get a big gulp of fresh air. It’s usually all gone by lunch time, and no matter how badly as I felt during the morning, I always feel on top of the world after it passes, and it’s as if it never happened.”

Now the patient is talking a language which will lead directly to the curative remedy! You’d probably not be surprised to learn that most patients pick up this way of thinking and talking about their symptoms quite quickly.

This whole system of false disease labels is unfortunately reinforced in the context of the medical-pharmaceutical industry, where it is not legally possible for a doctor to give a prescription without basing it on one of these labels, nor for a pharmaceutical company to get approval for a new drug without it being for a specific diagnostic label. That sounds like a good system at first, but not once you realize that these false disease labels perpetuate an approach to medicine which does not generally cure disease, but merely masks symptoms, or suppresses their manifestation.

Oh wait, here comes another patient about to ask me about a disease label…..

Just as when we are dealing with an infectious outbreak, and can anticipate that we may be likely to be exposed to a certain illness, we can also know and anticipate when we are expecting to live through an emotional shock or otherwise traumatic experience. The idea of immunisation or “prophylaxis” is as valid here as it is within the realm of infectious illness. Examples can include pre-scheduled surgical procedures, difficult emotional contexts, such as “meeting the in-laws” for the first time, or high stress exam or interview situations.

In any anticipated situation such as this, patients are interested to learn, we are able to “immunise” them from much of the damaging aspect of the situation, and allow them to better “digest” the experience as completely as possible while leaving as little residue as possible. The immunising remedy in each case will be identical with the remedy which we use to clear a particular type of shock or trauma when we’re clearing a patient’s time line. The remedies which we use, for example, to clear out a traumatic childhood history of emotional abuse, would be the exact same remedies we would give a patient who is anticipating that they will be subject to an emotionally abusive situation in the near future which cannot be avoided for whatever reason.

Along these lines, homeopaths have long observed that the recovery time from surgery is much quicker and easier when the patient has prepared by taking the corresponding remedies both before and after the procedure. Patients have confirmed very quick recovery times, which have often surprised their surgeons, as well.

Remember that while not all stress can be avoided, it can be greatly mitigated with this simple application of preventive medicine. Is there a situation you are approaching which you could use some help getting through?