I have to admit and I know many people with the same issue of dealing with their skin issues. When is it going to get better? What can I eat and what can I avoid just to make it better? What am I doing wrong with my life that is contributing to these issues? I know the frustration. I know the hopelessness you sometimes feel when you just have no idea what to do anymore for your self. Your self-esteem is affected. You don’t want people to see you like this. You want to change but don’t know how.
I have been interested in studying alternative medicine for a long time and had come a long way, with my main motivation to achieve the highest level of health for myself on all levels. I went to school studying many modalities and came out with a diploma as a Wholistic Therapist. I did things I thought were healthy for my body and for my mind and soul. I incorporated more greens and probiotics, even became vegetarian at one point, macrobiotic, learned meditation techniques, went on retreats, traveled and tried to be more active. I wanted to do something with what I studied but never felt like I knew enough or was specialized enough in any one thing. I hoped to find something that would spark my interest in order to follow that passion and keep going with it and be more specialized in something. At this point, I was staying away from many foods like wheat and gluten and the common allergens because I was feeling increasingly more lethargic eating these foods.
Cutting out those foods weren’t enough, as I started to develop a dry skin condition around my mouth. The doctor didn’t know what it was. They thought it might be eczema, but were never sure. Anyway, I had never experienced this before in my life and it seemed to be aggravated by certain foods I ate. I cut out more things from my diet, thinking that I had a sensitivity to these foods. In the end, I had no idea what I was allergic to and what I was not and had this constant rash around my mouth that went from being itchy to raw, red and burning, then to a dry and oozing state and peeling.
This kept going on in cycles it seemed. I saw a naturopath and got an allergy test done. It was frustrating having dinners with my family and feeling like they just thought I was being picky and hypersensitive. I felt out of control, hopeless and extremely frustrated. At this point, I had found an interest in homeopathic medicine, doing a diploma program through the British Institute of Homeopathy. Something was missing from it though. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind on where I wanted to go with my life and came across Heilkunst.
Two people had mentioned this school to me and after some thought and encouragement from my mother, I enrolled in the DHHP (Practitioner Diploma in Homeopathy and Heilkunst) program through the Hahnemann College of Heilkunst. This is where my real journey with my health began, I feel. As a student, we are required to see a practitioner of medical Heilkunst so we can be as healthy as possible when we are ready to treat others. This made so much sense to me and I was excited and intrigued by where this would take me. It was also when I was at my wits end with my skin and had no idea what to do/or not to do with myself. I just wanted to get better. After about a year of treatment, my skin was almost healed, the allergies dissipated and emotionally I was a lot healthier.
Here is some background information on Heilkunst. It is a system of medicine that treats the whole person. The meaning behind the word is “Healing Art” in German. Rather than focusing on the symptoms of a disease, Heilkunst looks at treating the root of disease and destroying it. It does this in a few ways.
Firstly, therapeutic education is important to educate the patient about things they could do and change for their health regime to improve the physical state on the whole. This involves things like supplements, lifestyle habits and exercise. The thing with all these things though, is they can only take you so far and do nothing to destroy the actual diseases. This is why it is necessary to be given homeopathic remedies to destroy the actual diseases that cause the symptoms.
Once this is accomplished and the patient is in a state of balance physically, other things are looked at like the constitutional type of the patient. This is an inherited disposition called a “genotype” that one is born with and when one becomes stressed and/or imbalanced, they tend to create other layers as defence mechanisms or types called “phenotypes”. Remedies are given to peel these defenses away and the constitutional remedy is given to bring balance and a state of peace to the individual. Then, once this is all figured out, each patient submits a timeline of events in their life that contain all the traumas (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual) they have been through so that the Heilkunstler can help lift each trauma off the patient one by one in order from the most recent one and backwards in time with the help of homeopathic remedies. This is called “sequential therapy” and aims to destroy all the diseases in a given individual to bring them back to a state of health and back to their own true natural state of health. This is the process, in a nutshell, I went through and am still continuing. It is a process about transformation and the evolution of your own consciousness.
Today, I have a different understanding about my skin issues. They are complicated and can represent many different things. In my case, the condition of my skin improved greatly when I ended a dysfunctional relationship and started taking responsibility for my own life and actions. To put it simply, I started living for myself again. I understand now that my skin acts as my discharge mechanism and that when I feel imbalanced or stressed, it tends to flare up. It is not nearly as bad as it once was, but when it comes up, I know that I need to take better care of myself and I understand it could just be a healing reaction too.
The thing with skin issues is that they are all individual. Everyone has their own individual process and reasons as to why their skin flares up. It could be their diet or it could be something so much deeper than that, which is often the case. Instead of treating the symptoms alone, Heilkunst is about treating the whole person. In the end it is never just about the skin, but it is about getting to know the true you.
- Disclaimer
Article by Nana Yamada
DISCLAIMER
The information provided on Optiderma.com is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for the advice of an appropriately qualified practitioner.
If you are allergic to the foods, herbs, essential oils, any remedies listed here, you must of course avoid them. For example, consuming food that you’re sensitive to will only cause more (not reduce!) inflammation.
Please consult a practitioner (such as Naturopath, Homeopath, Doctor of Chinese Medicine, Dermatologist, ...) to follow the most appropriate treatment to heal your skin. All legal mentions »
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