Interviews

Interview – Dr. Rosina Sonnenschmidt

Written by Katja Schuett

Our editor Katja Schütt interviews Rosina Sonnenschmidt , who shares some profound but simple secrets of healing.

KS: Welcome to Hpathy, Dr. Sonnenschmidt! It is a great pleasure for me to interview you for our Music & Homeopathy Ezine. We look forward to you sharing your thoughts and experiences with us.

   You studied and earned a Doctorate in Music Ethnology and afterwards worked singing as a soprano in Germany and abroad. Later you qualified as a homeopath (HP) and in other healing practices, whilst embracing an increasingly spiritual orientation. What lead you to your path?

 

Rosina Sonnenschmidt

Dr. Rosina Sonnenschmidt

RS: From the very beginning I searched for the sense of my life because I got seriously ill at the age of 19 (heart deformation caused by diphtheria). Fortunately I met two old ladies who taught me vegetarian cooking, rhythmical breathing exercises and some other natural treatments. Within a year I was cured so that I could start my life with power and self confidence to do my music studies and later research work in North India. When I met the Zen master Koun-An D´Ortschy Roshi (the only authorized female, German Zen master in the line of Japanese Zen masters) I found my spiritual way, which guides me to this day. The other guide for my path was my father, the well-known music clown “Cornelli”. I got his humor and talent for stage performance as a singer, pantomime or clown. Another wonderful source was my training as a medium since 1984 with teachers such as Tom Johanson, Margaret Pearson and Mary Duffy (well-known experts). The extended awareness was very helpful for my practice, as I first look at the positive potentials of a client. These are like a motor for the self-healing power. This awareness also helps me to find the best holistic treatment for the patient.

To get interested in healing was no surprise, as I experienced the needs and ailments of artists for over 30 years. It is a great pity that many artists prefer allopathic quick treatment instead of homoeopathy. They prefer suppressing treatments more than holistic ones. Disease, weakness, failing, and imperfection is not allowed in their mind. On the other side I was overwhelmed by Homoeopathy, because this healing art has a remedy for nearly each sensation   or tiniest disturbance.

First I started the holistic treatment of TCM and integrated Homoeopathy into this healing art. Unfortunately most homoeopaths approach Homoeopathy too intellectually: symptom – remedy – symptom – remedy etc. and become masters of collecting symptoms. TCM with its corresponding system between the great laws of nature and the same laws in the micro cosmos of human beings is cyclic and rhythmic. Being an artist I became more convinced to think in this way. I focused more on my extension of awareness to understand the positive potentials of a patient which are the self-healing sources. Therefore I don´t need many symptoms to decide what has to be done by the patient. My next focus, based on TCM-thinking, led me to the neuro-psycological correspondence between mind and body. About this I published 12 volumes and got a lot of positive feedback as they helped people understand the conflict behind the physical manifestation.

On the other hand I find it a pity that so many Homoeopaths are caught in their self-made anxieties and so-called classical rules. That narrow-minded approach drives them away from the fine arts like music or theatre or any creative self-expression. In my classes, therapists learn first to find something artistic to nourish their soul. No wonder, these colleagues are very tolerant, creative, humorous, and very successful. Humor nourishes the great human potential to deal with conflicts, anxieties and narrow-minds.

Since I am the president of humorcare.com I try to enter the humorless world of Homoeopathy and do my very best to change it, because Homoeopathy is great and the result of a Western genius mind. Why make it small by personal smallness?! Hahnemann said we had to follow his rules and his perceptions. He forgot to say: don´t smoke as I do, don´t be so fundamentally bound to rules, see the exceptions, be creative and go with the flow. Fortunately I hear him whispering these nice words and I love him because of his 3 paragraphs §286 – 289 which disclose the spiritual Hahnemann.

 

KS: With your background you have analyzed the miasms from a cultural-historical point of view. How did European music develop during the last centuries based on the prevailing miasm of the time?

RS: When I was a professional musician and specialized in renaissance, baroque, rococo and romantic music (15. – 18.century) I experienced the music not only as a singer, but also as a scientist. I wanted to know the historical background for each century and I wanted to experience the music in each era. How does the music affect me, my body, my emotions, my mind? As I was already interested in healing and treatment, especially in miasmatic Homoeopathy and TCM, I realized the connection between the individual and collective consciousness. Studying the social, political and cultural developments of each age I understood the collective sense of miasm. As music is one of the pillars of culture, it is logical that the miasmatic base influences the development of music. It would go far beyond the frame of this interview to explain each age, each music style and its relationship to miasm. I explain it in my book “Miasmen und Kultur”. Perhaps one day it will be translated into English.

 

KS: When thinking of the European giants of classical music such as Mozart, Haydn, Bach, and most of all Beethoven, how did their individual miasmatic state influence their work and compositions ?

 

RS: This is a most interesting question and could be a new research work. Everybody has a miasmatic base out of which we develop our self realization, with many possible highlights. That leads to the fact that a miasm has its sunny sides and powers. On the other hand our miasmatic base is state out of which we can get sick in a defined way. Disease does not happen by chance and the way we express ourselves doesn´t happen by chance, either. Unconsciously we follow the natural law of our miasmatic base. From that point of view we can say the giant Beethoven expresses the syphilitic miasma at its best. On the personal physical level he was a difficult tough character, deaf, representing the shadow of the syphilitic base. But he was a giant on the opposite side to create beautiful music with his inner ears. This shows the vertical dynamic of the syphilitic miasm, which only knows the highest and the lowest, black and white, up or down.

Bach represents the sycotic miasm with its depth, steadiness, and calmness. His genius acts, so to say, from the middle of the earth, with an admirable patience. The way he ignored the castratos, composed already for female voices but added the rare breathing signs as used for castratos, shows his hidden humor. Bach is tradition, everlasting value.

Haydn opens up the époque of Rococo with its psoric lightness and beauty. The twilight of the 18th century created the genius of Mozart with his incredible productivity and stretch between Psora and syphilitic misery. Today, after having studied hundreds of cases of scrophulosis I realize Mozart was an extreme case of this miasm which is a composition of psoric and tubercular aspects. He was a workaholic and the best example of inspiration which neglects all normal rules. He showed the tubercular aspects of scrophulosis in the “two ends of a burning candle” as he died early.

 

KS: What makes classical (European) music so appealing to many?

 

RS: It depends on what you consider “classical” music. The European music tradition is much more than that short period of Haydn – Mozart – Beethoven we put in the frame of classical music. I do not like the term very much because it fixes a time to human-made rules and laws, warning in an unconscious way about new development. See the same in “classical” Homoeopathy or “classical” Ballet which has lead to walls against those who do not follow the artificial rules. I prefer the beauty of each music époque, its varieties and signs of high culture. I was impressed when I was in Japan and experienced how much Japanese singers seek for romantic music in songs of Schubert, although they cannot reach the German romantic style. They are perfect in music of the 18th and 19th century from the virtuous point of view. They are attracted by the opposite of their own mentality. Music is the most wonderful language to develop oneself in a spiritual sense, sometimes according to “like attracts like” and sometimes according to the opposite attraction. That is why I studied Ethnomusicology, which became the keynote of my whole life, as I admire the variety of human cultural expression, the foundation of my tolerance.

 

KS: Miasms not only characterize the different developmental periods of music but also the cultural differences between nations. What characterizes Indian music?

 

RS: If we search for a climax of the art of improvisation in human culture we find it in India. All is improvisation and creativity with their positive and negative aspects. If we want to understand the shadow side of Psora, let the sun disappear for a moment in India and you get breathless from the dirt, ugliness, and misery of the slums.The Indian culture is based on fantastic wisdom and has degenerated for centuries from a high level of corruption. What made me sad while studying the Indian Music and caste system was the fact that India sends her gurus to the West to bring us rules and laws of a spiritual life, but no Indian guru except Mahatma Gandhi has ever used his power to change and release the caste system to realize a democratic social life. Even worse, Since Gandhi, thousands of new castes developed.

What we call “classical Indian music” is the highlight of improvisation and virtuosity, the highest level of oneness between nature, music, dance, healing power, and transformation, and stands side by side with the European music tradition. If we want to experience it these days, we have to search for a pearl in a jungle of superficial Bollywood and short-cut classical music training. I am sure there are still masters of the old tradition, but at the moment they play a role in the background. To get to peace with Indian tradition I wrote the E-Book “Pfauenlieder, Begegnung mit dem verborgenen Indien” (Meeting hidden India), the result of two research works, published with amazon.de

 

KS: Does your miasm concept differ from Hahnemann’s, and if so, in what way?

 

RS: I do not really differ from Hahnemann´s concept of miasm because he found three miasms in his time, the Psora, Sycosis and Syphilitic. That was the base and is still the base, but the social and epochal development after the French Revolution of 1792 was the expression of a different collective consciousness and therefore resulted in new diseases. After Hahnemann, other homoeopaths found the tubercular miasm and called it “pseudo-psora”. But the development of the healing process showed clearly that the tubercular miasm is like a joker between the psoric and sycotic miasms. If a tubercular disease like bronchitis cannot be cured by a tubercular remedy, it discloses a deeper level. Chronicle bronchitis follows the rules of Sycosis, i.e. repetition of symptoms. Many examples from earlier homoeopaths teach us to give first a sycotic remedy like Thuja, then let Phosphorus follow and the bronchitis will vanish forever.

The tubercular miasm is the best proof that the miasms developed from the first terrible miasm, i.e. leprosies. There we have 4 phases:

  1. The indifferent phase only with brown-red spots on the skin
  2. The tubercular phase creating cavities in lungs or bones or intestines
  3. The tumor phase creating sycotic tumors all over the body
  4. The destructive phase creating syphilitic symptoms which lead to death

A new perception is, of course, the character of the carcinosin miasm, composed of sycotic and syphilitic aspects and the great problem for the last 150 years.

 

KS: Considering that miasms develop in cycles and that they mirror the zeitgeist of the epochal consciousness, what can we expect in the future?

 

RS: It is not easy to overview our present time and to judge in an adequate manner. What I see is the carcinosin miasm which drives to a climax, as there is no more any “white spot” on the chart of our organism where cancer could not manifest. Cancer has conquered all organ systems. If we understand the carcinosin miasm as the utmost sacrifice of life-rhythm, of self-responsibility, and of glorifying materialism we must come to that point to understand the paradox situation and stop it. Homoeopaths with a self-justifying arrogance are blind to the need of a holistic view of treatment. It is true, we cannot treat an aggressive tumor with only one remedy. We have terribly complex and complicated diseases and they need a change in our healer´s mind.

I am sure; if Homoeopathy gets free from all narrow-minded barriers cancer will disappear as well as all other destructive diseases. Why? Because we have hundreds of remedies to catch every beginning symptom of disease and can deal even with chronic processes. I myself do not bother about cancer because I have seen so many healing cases when patients have only the diagnosis or only an operation and no chemo- or radiation treatment. What they need is more than some granules, no doubt. They need to release their conflict, their way of thinking and behaving, their food, and they have to find their personal rhythm of daily life. More and more patients want to follow this holistic way, although it is hard work for them. What I bother about is the coming disease of electro-sensitivity which belongs to the carcinosin miasm as well, because we sacrifice our life to a virtual technical radiating world.

 

KS: You have treated many cancer patients in your practice, accompanying them on their path to cure or death. What makes the difference between patients who find their way back into life and those who don’t?

 

RS: In most cases I have seen, the difference lies in whether they follow the conventional way or the holistic way. An organ system that allows all functions of the immune system and life force to overcome the conflict has greater chances to cure cancer. It is part of this disease to give up one´s authority too quickly, too soon and get in resonance with the hysterical reactions in the clinics. Patients have to learn that they are the master of their lives and no one else, and no doctor. It is a pity that prognosis has stepped into the treatment. Nobody knows when a patient has to die. Statistics have never helped to decrease any disease, so far. Cancer patients are traumatized by the diagnosis and the prognosis. Medical students do not learn to deal with a patient as a human being; they learn etiquettes of diseases fixed on the patient such as “She has Alzheimers” or “He has Hashimotos”. I wonder if it is healthy for the soul of all these scientists on “the other side” to be used to supply such labels.

 

KS: You have written a cancer repertory of homeopathic remedies that are of special use in certain types of cancer. How did you compile this?

 

RS: The starting point was and is still the relationship between location of cancer and understanding the conflict behind it. The next step is to understand the remedy which works like a laser ray and reaches this organ. As homoeopathic remedies always reach the emotional and mental level, too, they help to release the conflict as well.

 

KS: Could you explain the meaning of “process-oriented” homeopathy ?

 

RS: Healing is a process which follows certain laws. Our organism is wise and works in a logical way. We have to understand its language of compensation either in a healing direction or in the development of disease. I have learned that homeopathic remedies have electromagnetic power. They can push the system forward (electric) to the next lighter level and can pull the system (magnetic) to the next higher or lighter level. This twofold power we use in miasmatic treatment. We also can use homoeopathic remedies from the viewpoint of constitution. If it is the right remedy the patient will undergo many changes in mind and body. Healing is process and it is only due to your intention why you administer a certain remedy.

 

KS: You said that you don’t know any other therapeutic method which is as wonderfully helpful as homeopathy when accompanying dying patients. What is most important to understand when treating dying patients?

 

RS: The most important thing is to understand is that dying is no disease. Disease can be the cause of dying but the process itself is a natural law like birth. The different phases of dying can be supported by Homoeopathy because its remedies work on mind and body. For example, I often use Arsenicum album when the person cannot decide on the direction she wants to go. The remedy can be placed next to the person and that is sufficient. There is no need to eat granules. A few remedies can be a nice companion on the new path of dying because they allow full consciousness. Sometimes a remedy like Euphorbia heterodoxa helps to replace morphine and Cinis ligni helps to come to peace.

 

KS: You have been researching “dying energetics” and implemented the results into your practice. What do you think each homeopath should consider in his work when treating dying patients?

 

RS: Again I want to make clear that dying is no disease but a natural process. A Homoeopath should know about the five phases and consider if there is a need to support them or not. The dying person needs to be understood his new experience. That is more important than remedies.

 

KS: How do you see the importance of spiritual education for the healing profession?

 

RS: That is a lovely question! Yes, we need a spiritual view of life, man and healing. There are still Homoeopaths who fear spiritual healing and misunderstand it as manipulation. But the human hand and voice transport our real intention. I believe 100% in the intelligence of a sick person, because I focus the higher self, the positive potentials. The ego mind produces the symptoms as only the ego mind can get sick. Both belong to us. As a healer I know that the healing power belongs to the higher self, which knows perfectly where it is needed. I cannot manipulate the healing power, but I can manipulate any treatment. Treatments need techniques, remedies, and diagnosis. Spiritual healing only needs love and empathy.

For the last 20 years we have trained therapists in mediumship and spiritual healing and we always get the feedback that they understand healing in a broader way since their awareness was extended. They learn nothing to do, but to let things happen. This changes completely their understanding of treatment. In fact, healing is much more release than action.

 

KS: Going beyond balancing the vital force, wherein do you see the deeper meaning and implications of cure?

 

RS: Healing is a spiritual process. If I wrote down the patient´s perceptions and inspirations during and at the end of their healing process, we could easily compare it with zen masters. We are spiritual beings, incarnated in a physical body. I never advise patients to meditate or to follow any ascetic ways to support their spiritual development. No. Spirituality has to be confirmed in daily life. That is the real master. Where the patient has become sick, there he has to change his thinking, feeling and behaving. Spirituality is a constant YES to change for the better. But what is better is individual and I let the patient find it out.

 

KS: For the treatment to be curative the patient needs to be actively involved in the healing process. Why is it not enough to just take some pills?

 

RS: I focus the intelligence of a patient and his right to understand my way of treatment. I have, for example, created the painting “House of Miasms” so everybody understands his healing process and the logic in step-by-step shifting from the worst to the next lighter level. I use many humorous strategies to wake up the patient’s humor. It is well-known through research the effect of laughter. It helps to visit a higher level of awareness and influences the immune system as well as the nervous and endocrine systems. The remedies work much better on the soil of humor!

 

KS: What role does creativity play in life and the curative process?

 

RS: Disease is the result of lack of rhythm in life. At the end, mind and body get narrow, stiff, and unhappy. Rhythm is it! Everything in nature and in its mirror of human beings is rhythmic and creative, also. Life is movement and creativity. There is no reason in healing to avoid rhythm. In many cases therapists are simply too lazy to be creative. In my practice I meet many doctors and other therapists who have lost their sense of life-rhythm, their happiness and creativity. Healing is simply the memory of natural laws. The main law is rhythm. To encourage the patient’s self-expression, I use music, singing, dancing, painting, poetry etc., they are a standard part of my treatment and more important than pills.

 

KS: Do you use music itself to support the healing process?

 

RS: Of course! But I do not follow the normal music therapy. I know by experience that Baroque music is extremely helpful to activate the alpha-brain-waves and bring patients back to harmony and joy of life. Beside this I consider it as important that therapists listen to music or make music, learn an instrument or join a choir. Life is vibration and vibration can be sound and color. The patients learn to feel color in sound and sound in color. For that I use different styles and types of music for them to listen to.

 

KS: The holistic treatment of animals plays an important role in your practice. What did animals teach you?

 

RS: I have specialized on birds. I learnt their “language” and they were my teachers in understanding miasmatic treatment as well as the meaning of the tubercular miasm between Psora and Sycosis. It was pure logic in watching the process of disease and healing. What experience proves many times I consider as useful. Whoever would argue against my miasmatic treatment I would ask, “How many birds have you treated and how many lives of birds could you save?” The same situation I faced with so called classical homoeopaths who did not respect that birds or humans came back to health, but criticized that I did not follow the classical rules. What arrogance!

 

KS: You have written a great many of books on homeopathy and other healing methods. What will be your next project?

 

RS: As I have a wonderful young teacher for E-books and Self-publishing print-books I’m enjoying the belletristic genre (writing of letters) for a while. Two more issues of miasmatic healing arts are planned and a nice book about Green Tea-therapy. As long as my inspirers “upstairs” send me messages I’ll continue writing. My favorite subject is, of course, humor. Together with a well-known psychologist I’ll write a book about “paradoxes in Homoeopathy and Allopathy”. This is pure fun!

 

KS: Do you have special advice for beginners of our healing profession?

 

RS: Love human beings with their light-and-shadow aspects. Develop your sense of humor. It keeps you happy and creative in the face of serious diseases. Trust the logical language of the organism and study the self healing strategies. Last but not least, only trust your own experience; that is the ultimate truth.

 

KS: Thank you for sharing your valuable knowledge and wisdom with us today!

About the author

Katja Schuett

Katja Schutt, Msc, HP, DHM, PGHom, DVetHom, has studied homeopathy with several schools, amongst which David Little’s advanced course stands out as it offers a really deep insight into homeopathic philosophy and materia medica (simillimum.com). Her current focus lies in working with animals and studying history, the old masters, and research.

5 Comments

  • Puty you launch straight into using the abbreviation TCM assuming we all understand this, please help me rather than leaving me inadequate!!!!!!!!!

  • RS sounds like she would be wonderful to include as a ‘dinner party guest’- lots of intelligence and humour. I have enjoyed some of her books in the past and look forward to delving into more.

  • DEAR DR,
    YOU DID NOT TELL THE FULL FORM TCM IN YOUR TALKS. . PROBABLY IT IS A PART OF YOUR HUMOUR. THANKS FOR TELLING THE FULL FORM IN YOUR REPLY ABOVE NOW
    THANKS

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