1). What services do you provide your clients?
My primary modality of treatment is constitutional homeopathy. That is, prescribing a deep acting homeopathic remedy based on the state of the entire person being including their history, symptoms and characteristic physical, mental and emotional attributes.
In conjunction with that, I also use diet and nutritional supplements and botanical medicines as adjunctive treatments. In addition, I practice a diagnostic technique called 'Autonomic Response Testing' (ART) that taps into the autonomic nervous system to gain information about toxicities and infections that are often chronic and overlooked in conventional medicine.
2). How did you get started?
I've been involved with medicine my entire life. My father was an old time GP who had a solo practice without even a nurse or receptionist. I used to drive around with him as a child on house calls and even remember making rounds with him in the hospital.
But my adult involvement began after college when I was facing personal health challenges. I began to experiment with my diet and explored going to naturopathic college. Instead, I ended up in Japan where for 8 years I studied and apprenticed in Oriental Medicine, became licensed and had my own clinic. Then I created and ran a health project in a Sri Lankan village for two years. By that time, I was married with a child (born in that village) and returned to the States.
I was reintroduced to homeopathy soon after - I had read about it years before and was always drawn to it. At that point, even though I had spent a decade or more involved in another form of healing, I just couldn't stop myself from plunging into homeopathic studies and 30 plus years later still haven't stopped.
3). Tell us about your formal training. What part of your studies left the greatest impression?
My formal medical training was in Japan at the Meiji College of Oriental Medicine and then my 2-year apprenticeship with a senior practitioner. My homeopathic training began at the New England School of Homeopathy and has continued with courses and seminars - too numerous to detail - with leading homeopaths from around the world. I have traveled to India to study with various brilliant homeopaths many times.
4). What is the basis of your approach with clients?
The basis of my approach is to understand people - their constitution and the factors that have lead to and are maintaining their state of ill health - in the deepest and most comprehensive fashion available to me. That is why I spend upward of 2 hours during the initial consultation. Homeopathy then provides me the theoretical framework and pharmacological tools to facilitate a healing process for them.
5). What elements of the work frustrate you? What elements bring you the greatest joy?
Honestly speaking, the greatest frustration is how little known and poorly understood homeopathy is in this country currently. Even people who are familiar with the word often mistake it for naturopathic medicine, which is quite different. There is a general lack of awareness of the remarkable history and profound healing potential it offers.
No doubt, the greatest joy is to witness people healing.
6). What do you want Natural Awakenings readers to know about you and your work?
What comes up for me is quite personal, but in the spirit of full disclosure... My father married quite late in life and was in his 60's when I was born. I didn't get to share much of my life with him, but it took me until I was nearly 60 to realize that on some level I had modeled my professional life on his, even though he practiced conventional allopathic medicine. He was a small town physician totally dedicated to his patients: mornings hospital rounds, afternoons house calls, evenings office hours. That dedication is what I is still seek to emulate.
For me, homeopathy offers the perfect way to do so. In this day and age, when the practice of conventional medicine has really become a corporate enterprise, I get the opportunity to spend time with people, to get to know them and the problems they face. And homeopathy provides a powerful tool to facilitate the resolution of these problems without the destructive side-effects so common in conventional medicine. It is particularly suited to both acute illness and the chronic, often degenerative conditions that have become so prevalent.
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Julian Jonas, CCH is a homeopath in Santa Fe, New Mexico specializing in the constitutional homeopathic treatment for chronic and acute conditions. He can be reached at the Center or Homeopathy of Northern New Mexico: www.centerforhomeopathy.com, homeopathnm@gmail.com, 505-557-6470.