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The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it. We must flow with it.

Dune, Frank Herbert

Let’s start this newsletter with this quote from Dune. Osteopathy, yoga, and meditation are merely pretexts used to discuss this idea. They are meant to be practiced, hence giving life to those words. They are real-life laboratories. Maybe yours are art, dancing, singing, or even better, everyday life.

But what I know for sure is that what makes a big difference is whether I picture my patient as an ongoing process that I need to join, or as a process that I stop.

Stopping the process – Patients as modern cities

We do not have time for theories. We do not have time for models that try to solve the mystery of life. Theories will always fall short. Always. And we are filled with them. Theories about what is happening in a patient, theories about what is felt. Constantly avoiding a direct experience of life by creating a very comfy protection of theories.

Let me give you an example. During our training as osteopaths, we are trained to ask questions to our patients, and then to run some tests. From there comes a treatment plan, and later we treat our patients.

Even for people who study more subtle modalities, there’s always a protocol or the idea of a gradual evolution in what they are supposed to feel. The whole process is thought beforehand, but it is not experienced.

Practitioners who work this way act as if they have Google Maps for their patients: they know in advance they will turn to the right, then walk 200m, take a left, walk in front of a cafe, take the alley on the right, and reach their destinations. Sounds convenient right?

Maybe we are so used to living in cities that we forgot one thing: life, especially Nature, is not made of perpendicular streets and predictable walks. Anatomy is not a map that allows you to predict your itinerary. Patients are ongoing processes, and “A process […] cannot be understood by stopping it”.

You stop the process when you try to understand it with your big brain without experiencing it. You create a fixed mental image of it, as opposed to flowing with it.

Walking in the jungle – Exploring a desert – Flowing with the process

Instead of cities, maybe we could compare life, our patients, and ourselves, to a jungle. Well, to be honest, whoever has already walked in Saigon knows that a city can be a jungle, but you get the idea.

Imagine yourself in a jungle, or the desert. You cannot turn right in the desert. I mean, this makes no sense. You cannot predict your next step. You cannot plan with your big brain, but you must constantly rely on your senses and adapt.

Now, back to our patients. Maybe, one way of working with people is the same as having a conversation. And I mean a real, deep, amazing conversation: you cannot get into the discussion with a list of questions and a list of answers. You have to adapt, constantly avoiding roots, constantly finding your way.

Patients can be felt as an ongoing process. This can be done when they are talking to you, and when you start to place your hands under their body, and will lead to you experiencing all sorts of things such as pain and tensions that should technically not belong to you. More on that in another newsletter.

Goethe and Frank Herbert

In the third book of the saga, Children of Dune, Franck Herbert will even repeat his idea:

There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

It’s all about the experiencing. It’s about listening. It’s a dynamic process. No techniques can take you there, but words can point at it, and that’s what I intend to do.

As a conclusion to this first newsletter, let me quote, Goethe, the German scientist and philosopher, who basically talks about the same thing:

“If we want to behold nature in a living way, we must follow her example and become as mobile and malleable as nature herself.”

“There is a delicate empiricism that makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby becoming true theory. But this enhancement of our mental powers belongs to a highly evolved age.”

That’s all for today. Should you like to receive my newest articles via email, you can subscribe here.

Love,
Jules