Celebrating Jeff’s 20th Anniversary as a Heilkünstler
| [SPOILER ALERT : Details on how to win a full year of Heilkunst treatment are given at the end of this story.]. Hey! This is my big day – I launched my Heilkunst practice 20 years ago today on Friday June 1st, 2001. “Deluxe broom closet” is the most accurate description of my first office. I rented a small unused space at the back of my chiropractor’s clinic, and crammed in a tiny desk with chairs, filing cabinet and small book shelf. My cabinet of homeopathic remedies barely squeezed into the corner. Outside in the common waiting room, there was a coat hook, and a boot tray (think “Canadian winter” to yourself as you build this scene in your imagination). We would actually have to close the clinic on days of extreme winter weather, with patients to be rescheduled to a later date. Sitting on my desk halfway between myself and the patient, was a pen and pad of lined paper. I actually hand-wrote my case notes in these early days, and the patient’s remedy chart was colour-coded with yellow and orange highlighters – yellow for wet dose, orange for dry dose. We still use this same colour-coding in our electronic patient records to this day. I didn’t even OWN a laptop in 2001 – my home computer was a full desktop tower which ran Windows OS (if you can believe it). By 2006 I had my first Mac, and was running the magnificent CoRe-Inergetix bio-resonance system, but let’s come back to the pen and paper in our imaginations for the moment. Occasionally, I still come across some of these original handwritten patient notes, and I’m instantly transported back not only to the details of that patient, but am acutely reminded as to how “green” my textbook knowledge was at that time. Textbooks are great learning instruments, but the true process of knowledge development occurs in practice with real patients. I was a couple of years into my practice before Allyson joined me after her graduation. She’s actually the one who found the word “Arcanum” when we were looking for a new name for our newly shared clinic entity. It means “spirit in matter”, by the way – a great description of homeopathic remedies. But this is a story about the early days of my practice in 2001. My practice was just over 100 days old when the events of 9/11 changed everything. I was sitting at that tiny desk when I heard the news, and it remains a key “emotional timeline event” cited by most patients to this day. The cultural and political shifts that reverberate forward from that day are still echoing now. Over the years, many patients have shared with me that this was a defining event that shaped their lives – it shook them to their foundations, and into a much deeper approach to finding meaningful purpose in their lives. You could say that this event became “ground zero” for our generation to activate their true, objective desire function. My professional Heilkunst career, in parallel with my own personal healing journey, were both born at this time. I cannot separate out the deep work I’ve done with my patients over the course of all these years from my own. There’s that famous quote from Carl Jung which says “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” It is profoundly true to say that Heilkunst has changed my life (and continues to do so), but even more important is that YOUR healing journey has been MINE, and vice versa. Heilkunst is not a modality that can be applied mechanically, but one which reaches into, and transforms the very core of our humanity – practitioner and patient alike, on both sides of the desk. 20 years feels simultaneously so brief of a flash of time, and yet so dense with rich experiences. I continue to learn every day, and feel blessed that you’ve all let me inside your own intimate inner world of healing. This summer, I’ll be gifting a full year of Heilkunst treatment to someone who is currently engaged in their own treatment at Arcanum. What’s a big milestone anniversary without a special gift, after all? Every time this summer (June, July, August) that we start with a new patient that you referred to us, you’ll be automatically credited with an entry into this contest. We’ll know it was you from the space on their new intake form, where it asks “Whom may we thank for recommending you to our clinic?” The winner will be drawn in early September. If they’re a patient of Jeff’s, then they’ll be credited with 12 months on their regular treatment plan with him. A patient of Allyson’s would be similarly credited with 12 full CoRe reports to be added to their regularly scheduled sessions with her. Thank you for making my first two decades as a Heilkünstler everything they were meant to be, and so much more than I expected. Here’s to another 20! Love, Jeff |