“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost
* * *
Last week at my 20th high school reunion an old friend said to me:
“Aren’t you a doctor now?”
What a trip that was.
The reunion that is, not being asked if I was a doctor.
Back in my home town with old friends, folks I don’t even remember meeting (we had a grad class of ~1000!) and an old high school crush that still leaves me feeling giddy and smitten inside – like it was yesterday. Good reminder that our body remembers not only the icky emotions and sensations, but the good ones too.
Seriously, that night was surreal and triumphant for two reasons.
1) The first being that I found myself incredibly excited and so proud of what I do.
And I LOVE, absolutely LOVE what I do.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. I could feel it glowing through my skin last night.
I’ve had the good fortune to follow my nose and do what feels right for me in the past 20 years – a good vibration all around.
I’ve had the spirit to keep discovering and searching for what is really true and important for the health of the human condition.
Sure I could have gone to medical school two times over in the amount of time I’ve been immersed in my educational and experiential process, but there are plenty of doctors prescribing pills and doing surgeries and one more of those isn’t going to help anyone at this point in the game.
2) The second important piece was the realization that I need to have a prelude to my “What I do” statement that goes something like this: “What I do is really hard to explain”
Because it is.
It doesn’t fit in any medical, educational or theoretical model of health that exists. Yet.
Perhaps myself and the few colleagues I have who do similar things are spearheading a new form of medicine?
I sure hope so, because we are seeing folks when no doctor, therapist, physical trainer, psychiatrist, massage therapist, chiropractor or shamanic medicine healer can help.
As I write this I feel like the last of the shackles that have been holding me back from fully owning the power of this new healing paradigm have finally broken off. After all, I did take the road less traveled by, and explaining this kind of road is bloody tricky, and I must trust that those who are meant to hear what I have to say are OK with a little “tricky.”
* * *
For example…
Last week I was catching up with a dear colleague who has had just as much, if not more education, than I.
She is a European living in Canada and can’t believe how much us North Americans are fixated on trying to fix and solve body problems in mechanical and industrial ways. She is considering moving back to Europe where things have at least progressed past the inane protocols of treating the human body as a machine that needs a type of industrial fixing for it to run smoothly.
I know this is the norm.
The truth is that I often find myself frustrated a lot of the time.
Herein lies another real life example…
I have a young client who has been seeing me to help with a severe scoliosis of the spine. The original desire of the doctor was to do surgery to straighten the spine. The prognosis from what I hear with such spinal defects is not good and most of these kids end up with rods put through their precious body in an attempt to get them straighter. Luckily this client has a progressive parent and found me via a Facebook group. A few weeks ago they returned from a check-up at the Children’s hospital and in addition to the pain being pretty much non-existent, the x-rays showed level shoulders (the shoulders are affected by the twists of the spine because they are connected with the collarbones to the sternum and ribs to spine), the vertebrae have stopped twisting in the non-favourable direction and actual measurements show a straighter spine. With no surgery!
What amazes and frustrates me is that the doctor seemed to have no interest in what was causing my clients spine to straighten out!
I’m sure he is a very busy man with a full case load – too busy putting in requisition forms for his others kids who are on the list to get spinal surgery to mechanically straighten their spines. You’d think he might inquire a little bit about this one patient who is actually getting better. I just don’t get it (insert sigh).
Thankfully this frustration doesn’t stop me, but rather, pushes me harder.
Health is such a strange thing.
We want it, but when alternatives arise that actually can save the day, maybe lessen the dependency on medication and invasive procedures, we close our eyes and minds and look to what we have known.
To quote myself from a past article:
“We wait until something unbearably awful happens. Then maybe we’ll get some help. Sometimes the damage can be repaired and sometimes it can’t. Then we bring in the experts, listen to what they have to say and typically don’t follow their advice.”
Perhaps I’m not considered the expert.
People get confused about what I do and so, as I enter in to the next 20 years of my life, I need to make some clarifications about what I actually do:
: I’m not a doctor, but I help people get better.
: I’m not a body worker, but I work with the body.
: I’m not an energy worker – but some serious energy gets shifted when you work with me.
: I’m not a healer – but people do get healed when working with me.
: I do have credentials in the science of the body: exercise science, biomedical science and health science – yet I’m not a doctor.
Also, I’ve been trained in two body-brain base modalities.
One is something called The Feldenkrais Method. The other is Somatic Experiencing. The latter was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, and the former by the late Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984). Peter Levine is still alive and doing well and I’m blessed to be able to assist under him in his Master Trainings in America.
When you tie all of this together, along with my dedication, and my frustrations that fuel my quest for new discovery and my ever evolving knowledge and practice, you simply get… what I “do.”
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