What is Heilkunst?

Heilkunst literally translates as Whole Art and was the term coined by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) to describe a new system of medicine/health care. Hahnemann was a keen scientist and observer and disagreed with many of the approaches he learned in medical school (still the base philosophy of today’s Western Allopathic Medicine). In Heilkunst, the health practitioner is asked to acknowledge that every aspect of a person’s life is involved in their health, so that treating a headache requires much more than a pill. Further, the healer must be a keen observer with an understanding of natural laws and scientific principles. Ideally, Heilkunst treatments are gentle, rapid, and lasting.

Heilkunst focuses on supporting the body’s natural state of health through a variety of methods. Counselling, nutrition and exercise systems, massage, energy manipulation, touch therapies, natural remedies for acute and chronic diseases, and even spiritual development are all used and encouraged so that the patient can achieve optimal health.

The Heilkunst system of medicine treats both chronic and acute health problems. Chronic problems, for example, are thought to arise from an inherited predisposition to certain health problems (Hahnemann called these inherited weaknesses Chronic Miasms) that combine with environmental factors such as trauma, exposure to a virus, a toxic emotional situation (unhappy relationship, unsatisfying work situation, etc.), until the body’s energy system becomes overloaded and the disease manifests. For example, a case of tuberculosis a few generations back may manifest as a tendency towards acute bronchitis in the current generation.

A Heilkunst practitioner will ask the patient to create a sequential timeline to discover the physical and emotional traumas that have occurred during the patient’s life, right back to birth. Once all these factors are taken into consideration, a Heilkunst practitioner may then choose to combine natural remedies with lifestyle changes, touch therapies, and counseling to support the ongoing changes that lead to health and happiness—the issue that the patient came in to treat will disappear, but so will many other problems.