Psora – Poverty Consciousness

Did you know…

that there are certain archetypal disease patterns that we bring with us into the world?

Do you have one or more of these chronic problems: skin issues, low grade depression, a sense of there not being enough in the world, common acne, asthma, headaches, insomnia, allergies, colds, bronchitis, earaches? You likely are carrying around one of these archetypal patterns from birth, indeed the first one, called Psora. If so, treating the symptoms won’t get you much other than possibly some temporary relief, even if using herbs or dietary changes. Even treating for the secondary disease patterns as homeopathy won’t help that much. You need Heilkunst, which is the only approach I know of that can systematically address these inherited, archetypal disease patterns, and thus, get to the bottom of chronic, complex disease conditions.

Last week we talked about the chronic miasms in general. This week we’ll start to take a look at them in more detail. There are eight such archetypal disease patterns and they follow a particular sequence. There are four major ones and four ‘minor’ ones, just as in music we can have a major and a minor key. They follow the seasons roughly, but as each season is generally divided into an early and later part (early Spring and late Spring, etc.), we then really have eight ‘seasons’.

The first miasm to appear is termed, Psora. It was discovered by Dr. Hahnemann and traced back to the earliest recorded times through various skin manifestations, including leprosy. The word was taken from the Hebrew term ‘tsorat’, which had the meaning of a ‘fault’ or ‘error’. The two chief characteristics of Psora are dryness and skin eruptions, usually dry and scaly. The allopathic term ‘psoriasis’ for one of the many skin manifestations has the same etymological root. However, Psora covers a multitude of skin eruptions, as well as many other symptoms.

Although Dr. Hahnemann did not identify the origin of Psora, work by Dr. Batmangelidj on the chronic impact of dehydration suggests that this may have been the source of the emergence of the first chronic miasm. The nature of chronic miasms is that they can then, once acquired, be passed on from generation to generation.

Dr. Hahnemann also called Psora, the ‘mother of all chronic disease’ for two reasons. First, the other chronic miasms emerged from it, and second, because each of the chronic miasms also caused the emergence of secondary chronic diseases in a person. The chronic miasms are primary, fixed nature or tonic diseases, and they then give rise to any number of secondary, variable nature or pathic diseases over time in a given individual.

The symptoms of Psora are too numerous to list here, but it we can give an idea of the essence of the disease as it tends to manifest in people. Psora is mainly a disease of deficiency at all levels – deficiency of knowledge, thought, assimilation of ideas and nutrition. There are a host of conditions identified by the prefix “hypo” (hypotension, hypochondriasis, hypotrophy) associated with psora. It causes little or no structural change, but much disturbance of functions, feelings and sensations. It seems to involve largely the nervous and reticulo-endocrine systems of the organism.

The psoric state of mind feels it does not have enough (of anything, be it money, food, energy, love, warmth, etc.). You may be familiar with it if you know anyone who had to live through the Great Depression or a war. They may hoard food, toilet paper, rubber bands or twist ties, for no apparent reason other than, “You never know when you may need them.” The stereotypical street person illustrates this miasm well, when they are carrying with them every one of their possessions, while wearing virtually all of their clothing, including coats and hats, even in sweltering heat. It is not likely to manifest in such an extreme form in most of us, but the underlying traits will be there.

If there is psora in your family history, it will manifest, according to Dr. Roger Morrison in his Desktop Guide, as: Abscess. Acne. Allergy. Anxiety. Aphthae. Asthma. Boil. Bronchitis. Colds. Connective tissue disease. Depression. Dermatitis. Eczema. Headache. Insomnia. Otitis media. Pharyngitis. Phobic disorders. Psoriasis. Scabies. Sciatica. Skin ulcers. Upper respiratory infection (among other conditions).

Next week is the minor key of Psora, or the Malaria miasm. Stay tuned.

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.

What are Inherited Disease Patterns?

Did you know…

that there are inherited factors that affect our health that go beyond our genes?

Until recently, everything was either controlled by your genes or simply unexplainable. However, despite millions spent on mapping the human genome, it turns out that not only do we differ much from the common fruit fly when it comes to the number and types of genes, but most of the genes are not linked to anything in particular, and are known as ‘junk DNA’. Biology has begun to understand that genes are only receptors for something, like a radio receiver, namely, signals from the environment. These signals are not only physical, such as sunlight, air, water, food, but also thoughts and feelings. In many ways, we are and become what we eat, feel and think. Biology has also come around to accepting the idea prevalent at the start of the debate about evolution some two centuries ago, that we can inherit certain characteristics and influences that are not strictly connected to genes. In a real sense, we are more than what is contained ‘between our hat and our boots’.

In Heilkunst, the idea of inherited disease patterns was discovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann between 1812 – 1816, around the same time that the idea of inherited characteristics was proposed by Lamarck and others. Hahnemann spent over 12 years searching for the answer to a problem: despite the clear successes with homeopathy in removing diseases, he discovered that some patients continued to get worse overall. He felt that he was missing something. From diligent observation of his patients, he then discovered that there were certain fixed patterns that could be traced to birth, and also to various disease patterns their parents and even grandparents had exhibited. These were a peculiar kind of primary, constant nature (tonic) diseases.They also had an original infectious nature, once contracted could be passed on to one’s offspring, such as syphillis and gonorrhoea (which Hahnemann named sycosis). So, he termed them chronic miasms in contradistinction to the acute miasms (i.e. infectious diseases) such as scarlet fever, cholera, measles, etc. The passing of chronic miasms from one generation to another does not rely on a physical contact. This, we may consider, belongs to the “unexplainable” part that science hasn’t been able to understand. We may think that during evolution mankind as a whole has inherited some disease patterns from previous generations in a similar sense that we build our thinking and understanding of the world from the generations before us. Each generation or epoch leaves a legacy for the future generations. So, too, disease may be passed on, both in terms of natural diseases (e.g. tuberculosis, lyme disease) and spiritual diseases (e.g. false beliefs).

Miasms, chronic or acute, are primary, constant nature (tonic) diseases. Due to the fixed/constant nature of these diseases, there is a specific remedial agent or medicine for each one of them, which made them relatively easy to treat. However, the interaction between a given chronic miasm and the constitution of an individual produces various secondary disease patterns. These were more difficult to treat, as they varied according to each case. But fortunately, treating for the parent or chronic miasms seemed to remove many of the secondary diseases as well.

With his discovery of the chronic miasms, Hahnemann gave us the ability to treat for deep-seated, chronic, complex disease conditions that had roots in weaknesses that had little to do with the shocks and traumas of this life, but were there already at conception. The more of these inherited chronic disease patterns we had, the more likely that various shocks and traumas would destabilize us. Thus, as important as it is to remove the cumulative shocks and traumas, it is also critical in many cases to go past the point of conception and reach back into the various disease patterns we brought with us.

In our experience, many cases could not be helped without this monumental discovery of Dr. Hahnemann. We encountered many cases where people have tried many other approaches and have had little or no improvement. In the case of children on the autistic spectrum, they are labelled ‘non-responders’. I remember the first time I came across such a case. The doctors and even the natural health community had consistently thrown up their hands. Could Heilkunst do anything, the mother asked? I didn’t know for certain, but knowing that Heilkunst can treat diseases that no one else seems to see or know how to treat, I felt confident it could help at least to some degree. And it did! Since then we have been treating difficult, complex, chronic cases of all types – ones that others have given up on. I still recall one case where a woman did not respond to classical homeopathic treatment and was then told she was ‘incurable’. In tears she came to ask if this was indeed true. I told her that yes, by the tenets of classical homeopathy, this was indeed true, but fortunately, by the laws and principles of the complete medical system that Dr. Hahnemann gave us, Heilkunst, it was not. Her problems were resolved by treating for the shocks and traumas in her life and the inherited miasms.

Who would have thought that a discovery some two centuries ago, the chronic miasms, would be confirmed by the most recent scientific understandings in biology (epigenetics). Heilkunst has built in an effective way of treating for inherited disease patterns. In our next blogs we will look at each of the chronic miasms in more detail. Stay tuned.

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.

Homeopathic vs. Homotonic

Did you know…

that in Heilkunst, homeopathy is just one small part of a much more comprehensive system of healthcare?

What does ‘homeopathy’ mean and stand for as a therapeutic approach? We read about ‘homeopathy’, we use the word, and it is increasingly being used to ‘sell’ things, as it is becoming popular and associated with ‘safe’, ‘effective’ and ‘natural’. But what exactly is ‘homeopathy’, or for that matter, ‘homeopathic’ as in ‘homeopathic medicine’ or ‘homeopathic remedy’?

To fully experience light, we need to have experienced dark. To say ‘yes’ to something, we need to have the option to say ‘no’. Life is polarity and we understand by means of a polarity and choice. To understand ‘homeopathic’, we also need to understand ‘homotonic’. In previous posts, we talked about two types of disease – primary, or tonic disease, which had a constant nature, such as chickenpox or cholera; and secondary, or pathic disease, which has a variable nature. ‘Homeopathy’ involves a specific method for treating the secondary, pathic diseases using the natural curative law of similar; ‘homotonic’ is the method for treating the primary, tonic diseases.

The founder of Heilkunst, Dr. Hahnemann, initially developed a method to treat the tonic diseases based on identifying the cause (‘homotonic’), whether a given trauma (such as an accident or emotional shock), a drug, or a germ. However, once a tonic disease is within a person’s organism, it can give rise to other, secondary diseases. The secondary diseases in many cases will dissolve on their own once the underlying tonic disease is removed according to the tonic disease jurisdictions, as discussed in previous blogs. However, some secondary diseases can only be removed through another method, by looking more closely at the disease expressions and symptoms besides the cause itself. This is where the ‘homeopathic’ prescribing comes in. A secondary disease can be identified and a curative ‘homeopathic’ medicine can be found for it by analyzing the characteristic symptom image that it produces. Each secondary disease creates a unique symptom picture. While one disease may have some symptoms in common with others, the particular combination and sequence (pattern) is unique, like a barcode. We must be aware that it is not a mechanical process but rather an etheric capacity to ‘see’ the disease image expressed through the characteristic symptoms. All clinical health practitioners and physicians would appreciate the importance of cultivating the ability to observe patients. Once you have this symptom picture you can then match it to a ‘rogue’s gallery’ of disease pictures containing the characteristic disease image of each known secondary disease. This ‘rogue’s gallery’ is called the homeopathic materia medica. Most disease pictures are gathered through a method called a “proving”, that is, by giving relatively healthy persons very small, usually highly diluted doses of a given substance (mostly derived from plants, animals, minerals), and recording the characteristic symptoms that are produced (disease image). With the development and spread of homeopathy more and more disease symptoms in the materia medica books are now collected from clinical observations.

Now we can come to the understanding that ‘homeopathy’ means similar suffering: ‘homeo’ = similar; ‘pathic’ = suffering, from the Greek word ‘pathos’. It is in the suffering or symptoms of the patient that we are looking for the curative medicine or remedy with the ‘homeopathic’ method. So, homeopathy is that method of identifying and treating the secondary or pathic diseases according to the law of similars. That’s why its discoverer, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, took the Greek words ‘homoios’ (similar) and ‘pathos’ (suffering or symptoms) to coin the term. We therefore may use the term ‘homotonic’ for the method that looks at the primary or tonic diseases by means of the causes directly instead of the symptoms/suffering and the remedy is found based on the similar cause/irritants/function.

Treating for the secondary or pathic diseases, is much like detective work. You have the description of a criminal from witnesses and the observation made by the detectives on the scene, and then you try to match this picture of the criminal in terms of his appearance, distinguishing markings, behaviour and M.O. (modus operandi), to a catalogue of known criminals in a police database.

In contrast, the primary or tonic diseases can be identified from their cause. For example, if you are sick or in pain, and this is in some way connected to or following an accident, then you don’t need to focus on the symptoms, but only on the cause – the accident. Take a very simple case – you have a pain and you know that it is there because you were stung by a bee. You don’t need to examine the symptoms; simply give yourself a dose of Apis mellifica, a medicine made from the honey bee, and the pain will be gone. If the pain does persist in some form, it might be because the sting traumatized a nerve ending and in that case you would take the remedy for nerve trauma, which is Hypericum perfoliatum. When a medicine is used to remove a tonic disease, it becomes a homotonic remedy, and when a medicine is used to remove a pathic disease, it is a homeopathic remedy.

Here’s a somewhat more complex example. A woman came to see us suffering from a mysterious rash. Many others had prescribed various drugs, creams, salves and potions – all focusing on the skin symptom itself – but to no avail. In the consultation she mentioned that the rash had appeared shortly after a fearful car accident. She had never had any skin problems prior to the accident. After ascertaining the nature of the shock (essentially emotional), we gave her the remedy for that type of shock and her skin symptoms disappeared within a few days. We could give many more such examples.

Each time when you suffer a tonic disease, this disease can engender one or more secondary or pathic diseases in you. To get at the pathic diseases, you need to examine the symptom picture or image produced and see if you can then find a medicine that produces this same picture in a healthy person. In the case of more than one pathic disease, you have to identify each one according to its characteristic symptom picture and match this disease picture to a medicinal agent that is known to produce a similar disease image in a healthy person. Testing of medicines on healthy persons, using safe, diluted doses is termed a ‘proving’. Once we know what symptoms a given medicine will produce in a healthy person, we can then use that medicine to remove a similar disease in a sick person. We all know that cutting onions produces various characteristic symptoms, like a hay fever condition or certain symptoms of a cold. If you then come down with something such as a cold that produces symptoms similar to that produced by cutting onions, you could take the homeopathic version, Allium cepa, and remove the secondary disease behind the symptoms.

To conclude, homeopathy only treats secondary diseases; it cannot really treat primary diseases. For that you need to use a different method or approach, ‘homotonic’ prescribing. In Heilkunst, we include both  the homeopathic and homotonic method and apply each according to the nature or type of disease in a given case.

The term ‘homeopathic’ is also often used for various ‘natural’ formulas that contain herbs, vitamins, and other ingredients in a highly diluted form. But neither the ‘natural’ aspect, nor the dilution makes something ‘homeopathic’. It is only homeopathic when it is applied to a secondary or pathic disease according to the law of similars (in this case similar suffering or symptoms = pathos), which involves a substance that has been proved or tested in its effects on healthy persons (‘provers’) and these negative effects (only temporary in the provers) are then matched to a similar disease picture in a sick person.

Thus, Heilkunst includes homeopathy, but goes far beyond simply homeopathic treatment, as this only is able to treat secondary, pathic diseases, not the deeper primary or tonic diseases.

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.

Iatrogenic jurisdiction

Did you know…

that conventional medicine is the leading source of death in North America?

A study done several years ago by Gary Null, PhD, Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, Martin Feldman, MD, Debora Rasio, MD, Dorothy Smith, PhD showed that the “total number of iatrogenic [induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures] deaths is 783,936. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate is 553,251. “It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.“[http://www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm]

Conventional medicine terms the negative effects of drugs, that is, the unwanted ones, ‘side-effects’. However, such effects are an integral part of the action of a given drug. All drugs have negative effects. It is just hoped that the desired or ‘positive’ effects will outweigh the negative ones. Drugs are given in relatively crude, material doses and have complex and largely unknown chemical impacts on living organisms. While the chemical effect of one drug is tested, though often just in terms of possible short-term negative effects (ignoring more long-term, chronic effects), the interaction of one drug with another is seldom if ever tested, much less the interaction of three or more drugs in a living human being. The lack of understanding of the interaction of different drugs leaves health hazard in a person’s system, like a mine waiting for explosion. The adverse effects of interactions from different drugs can be devastating and cause chronic health problems under the radar.

Despite the lack of testing and understanding of drug interactions, the use of prescription drugs has steadily increased over the years, as well as the over-the-counter self-medicated drugs. (Thanks to the relentless pharmaceutical campaign.)The average senior in North America is using several drugs, some 62 percent in Canada using 6 or more and of those over 85, some 29% were on 10 or more drugs.[http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/pdf/internet/SENIORS_DRUG_INFO_EN] The figures for the US are similar. We have the problem of the growing use of prescribed drugs, particularly the opiates:

Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States. The increase in unintentional drug overdose death rates in recent years (Figure 1) has been driven by increased use of a class of prescription drugs called opioid analgesics (1). Since 2003, more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined (Figure 2) (1). In addition, for every unintentional overdose death related to an opioid analgesic, nine persons are admitted for substance abuse treatment (2), 35 visit emergency departments (3), 161 report drug abuse or dependence, and 461 report nonmedical uses of opioid analgesics (4).[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ mm6101a3.htm]

In Heilkunst disease nosology (classification), the iatrogenic jurisdiction deals with the primary, constant nature (or tonic) disease contributed by the drug disease effects, drug-drug interactions and drug dependence. We call this type of tonic disease, the iatrogenic disease. With the understanding of the principles on tonic disease (See previous blog: The Two Types of Disease ), the disease effects from a given drug can be addressed safely and effectively in Heilkunst, using dynamic and potentized doses of the drug itself based on the curative law of similars. Thus, we can use the remedy Pencilliinum to remove any negative, disease effects from taking penicillin, or Vancomycin for vancomycin use. Such remedies are called isodes, made from the drug (in energetic form) itself. Because of the method of preparation, they contain nothing of the drug in material terms. The energetic imprint of the drug can be used on the basis of the law of similars to remove the shock of the drug to our life energy, and the body’s natural healing power can repair the damage at the tissue and cellular level to restore health.

We have been made more aware of the ill effects of vaccinations through the works of many authors (Isaac Golden and Robert S. Mendelsohn are two examples). The number of vaccinations that children, in particular, receive has increased dramatically, from perhaps a half-dozen several decades ago, to 4 times of that at least in the first two years of a baby’s life. [http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-schedule/history-of-vaccine-schedule.html] While the principle of prevention by means of immunization is a valid and good one, the injection of crude viral material, along with various toxic adjuvants or preservatives, such as mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde, which is termed ‘vaccination’, is risky, with many adverse (that is, disease-inducing) actions. Many autistic cases have been triggered by vaccine injections. Our experience is that many conditions from allergies and autism spectrum disorders, to numerous immune system problems can be improved significantly once the iatrogenic disease(s) engendered by vaccinations are removed using energized forms of the vaccine material. For example, to remove disease effects from an MMR vaccination injection, we would use a highly diluted, dynamized remedy called MMR, taken orally. There is no more MMR matter in the dose, but by the law of similars the energetic imprint left in the making of the remedy removes the shock to the system caused by the MMR vaccine.

As you can see, with the wide-spread use of prescription and self-medicated drugs and the vast dumping of vaccine injections, the number of iatrogenic diseases is high. They are the tonic diseases routinely addressed through Heilkunst treatment, effectively and safely.

Next week we will take a look at another tonic disease category that goes beyond the usual and common, taking us into the realm of diseases of the mind. Stay tuned and in the meantime, have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.