Heilkunst Treatment for Animals
Achieving Animal Health Through Heilkunst
There are three areas of health that are addressed when an animal is treated using Heilkunst.
Regimen
This is the realm of healthy diet, exercise, nutrition, supplements, sleep, hydration, relaxation, etc. Here we find imbalances because of too little or too much of something that is needed by an animal to function properly.
Medicine
This is the realm of disease proper. Disease is not simply an imbalance, but a deeper impairment of the life force. To correct this impairment, a substance is needed that can remove it (called cure), which is a medicine or remedy. This realm consists mainly of the treatment of various shocks and traumas (physical, medical and emotional) acquired over the animal’s lifetime, as well as the potential for various inherited diseases (chronic miasms) that are carried into this world with every living being, a gift from our parents at conception.
Therapeutic Education
One of the greatest contributors to ill health is false beliefs about ourselves and the world. We may think that no one loves us, that we are not good enough to be successful, or any of a number of false thoughts. These can easily be shown to be untrue, but they dominate our thoughts and end up shaping the nature of our world. If we think we are not worthy, we will do things (even unconsciously) to undermine our success; if we think we are not loveable, we will take actions that drive love away. These levels generally are addressed in the order given above: regimen, medicine and therapeutic education.
Therapeutic education is more interesting to apply in the case of animals!
Initial (Intake) Consultation
We must first ensure that we are providing the best environment for the maintenance of health. In addressing any obvious imbalances in your companion animal’s system, we can remove various symptoms that are due solely to those imbalances. If your pet is not getting enough of the right food and exercise, enough fresh air and clean water, its body will begin to manifest complaints. In the first part of the consultation, you will be asked about your pet’s dietary and exercise habits, its level of water and supplement intake, and any other aspects of regimen that may be useful, including other therapies that you may be following (e.g., acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, etc.).
In addition, you will be asked for information about any allopathic (conventional) drugs or herbs your pet is taking so we can determine the potential interactions or nutrient depletions. The process and meaning of preparing a chronology or timeline of the physical and emotional traumas in its life will be explained, and you will normally be expected to bring this timeline along with you to the main consultation.
Main Consultation
In the main consultation, you will be asked to describe the nature of your companion animal’s complaints and your health concerns. Your practitioner, or Heilkünstler, will then look at and discuss the traumatic timeline in the context of these concerns, and will also discuss the role of various inherited predispositions relevant to the case. This constitutes the main part of the treatment.
Following this analysis, you will be given an initial remedy (or remedies) to start the process of sequentially removing the various shocks and traumas that have contributed to the current ill-health (or dis-ease) or that are impeding your animal’s attainment of better health. Each remedy is matched with a particular trauma.
Certain events may consist of a complex of traumas and will thus require a complex of remedies to address. This is known as sequential or homotonic prescribing. The timeline provides a map of where the life force will direct itself next and gives the practitioner a useful means of assessing the right sequence of remedies required. Sometimes an acute (pathic) remedy may be required for acute incidents or flare-ups and sometimes for accidents or surgical procedures undertaken during the course of the treatment.
Another part of the treatment is to identify your pet’s constitutional remedy. This relates to its innate nature, and its corresponding remedy can help strengthen its life force during the process of treatment.
As well, you will be given advice about regimen and the ways in which you can do more to assist the healing powers of your pet’s physical body.
Healing is very important to complete the restoration of health, which is started by the removal of disease by the right remedies.
Follow-up Consultations
The purpose is to assess regularly, according to the natural rhythm of removal of disease and healing (remediation), the progress of the treatment. You will be asked to describe any changes you notice that are out of the ordinary over the month since your last visit. Your practitioner uses these changes to assess the effectiveness of the remedies and the need for new or additional remedies or new potencies, particularly in the context of the timeline. You are encouraged to raise and discuss any unusual occurences in your pet’s condition and life more generally, even if they appear to be minor.