And not an object out there

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When it comes to feeling people’s pain or tensions during osteopathic sessions, some people might wonder if it is actually useful or not to help their patients. I would argue that it gives you an edge when it comes to treating people, and I believe we can all develop this skill to a certain extent. But in order to let people decide on that, I am going to describe what a session looks like.

I also came to realize that the more I would listen, the more sensitive my body would become. The more it acts as a space inside which perceptions can speak and can be heard. Hence practicing is actually the way to becoming better at it, so I hope this might lead people to at least try.

Lastly, I know that some of the readers of this newsletter experience things the way I do. And I hope they will feel once again that what I talk about is quite close to what they experience. Very few people talk about it, hence it can sometimes feel a bit lonely.

When I meet a patient

I am on my own in my treatment room. I am just waiting, not doing much. I might be writing a few words for this article, but at the same time, I feel as if I am a space in which perceptions, including my body, appear. I’ll come back to that in another article.

And life is like a dancing flame to me. Perceptions come and go. It would be sometimes very tempting to identify them as a hip or as a vertebra and to try to do something. But I don’t really identify them and even less identify with them. Maybe though, a perception will appear from afar. Not afar as in a distance, because perception isn’t outside at all, but afar as a music that would start very gently. I like to think about this banger called Boléro by Ravel. Very gentle at first, and seconds after seconds it speaks louder and louder.

Finally, my patient would enter. This means that the perception that “my patient is” would start to speak louder. They would sit and explain to me why they are here. They would probably have lower back pain. And while they would be talking to me about this pain, the drums playing Boléro would get slightly louder and play the music of pain in “my” lower back. A sharp point, slightly to the right of my 5th lumbar vertebra.

And the more the patient would talk to me, the more perceptions I would get. The pain stays there for now, but I can hear the flute now, which takes the form of a twisted hip. Insane sensations of a twisted hip that appears in the space of my consciousness, knowing that I haven’t moved. Depending on my knowledge of anatomy, which means depending on how developed my kinesthetic knowledge of a hip is, I might experience the ligaments as torn, how the tendons suffer, etc.

I would then ask my patient to sit down (dressed up, always) and initiate contact. Touch, when you think about it, is the collision of the perception that I am with the perception that the patient is. A bit like two stars dancing in the immensity of space before becoming one. I am not monitoring what is happening under my hands. At least, not only. My hands are placed on my patient’s body as a way to increase the volume of Boléro.

The adventure doesn’t stop here, and by adventure, I mean listening. Boléro isn’t done playing, and now my right leg feels absent. There’s no way to express it better, I feel it as “empty” or almost as if I have no right leg. I feel that I don’t feel my leg.

I use touch as a way to make those perceptions change. I would use osteopathic techniques until the leg would be “back”. So I never give up on the perception. I never leave the perception, because perception isn’t triggered by my patient. Perception is before my patient.

Use the technique that you want, though.

When the perception has changed, the single star will become two stars again and they’ll resume their journey through space just like nothing happened. But both stars are different now, changed by their encounter.

A sentence by the founder of osteopathy

A very interesting thing about osteopathy is that when you read about the very first osteopaths, they clearly tell you that they don’t fully understand what the founder of osteopathy was doing. There would be a lot to say about that, but I particularly like this sentence where he kind of gives a pretty good indication of how he was diagnosing things. I wouldn’t say it is exactly what I do, but one could probably argue that there are some similarities:

“Do you know, Arthur, when a patient comes to me for examination and begins to talk to me about symptoms, how she suffers, and what her trouble is, I seldom observe the patient’s clothing. I never notice whether she is beautifully dressed and wears silks and diamonds or covered with homespun cloth. I am listening to her story, and while listening, I am seeing in my mind’s eye the combinations of systems which go to make up the whole of the body structure. I am concentrating on her story, trying to determine through the description given to me to structural alterations which have occurred to produce the symptoms described.

“I am seeing first the bony framework[…] I am seeing, especially, the positions of those bony parts […]Then I see the ligaments[…]Then I see the muscles[…] I am also seeing in my mind’s eye[…] I see its division into the cerebrospinal part[…]I further see the arterial system[…]Then I visualize the venous system…”

The Lengthening Shadow of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, page 185.

No mobility test

When we study osteopathy at school, we learn a form of very outdated biomechanics which leads us to run some “osteopathic” tests. We would move a joint in a specific direction, define which one is restricted, and work to improve this mobility.

I do not run those tests. I really work the way explained above. Even when I touch, I do not palpate the way people palpate. I never try to feel something that is “out there”. One way of saying that is that the hand doesn’t touch, but we touch with our hands. Perceptions appear “somewhere”, and that’s where I am diving. Not in the hands. I don’t run tests, I don’t feel a rhythm, etc. Obviously, I do run some medical tests if needed. But this ain’t the same thing.

The other thing that feels important to me is that I only stick to the perception. I never try to develop a method, I never try to give it a name or to create a protocol. I don’t ground myself, I do not meditate between sessions in order to feel more, I don’t imagine a link between my patient and me, etc. I am constantly listening because life is constantly changing and my next patient is going to be different, even if they have the exact same pain. But I can’t work based on memory. I need to meet my patients where they are. And even more, I need to meet every instant as a new one. Every single millisecond of a session, and, if possible, of life, has to be met without relating to the previous one. Nothing is ever the same. You are different from when you started to read the beginning of this article.

But only if you listen.

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

Love,
Jules