Life, Health & The Universe

Missing Links: Reconnecting with Your Body's Healing Power - Author, Kuno Van Der Post

• Nadine Shaw • Season 13 • Episode 6

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What if your body already knows exactly how to heal itself? In this eye-opening conversation, Kuno Van Der Post draws from two decades of osteopathic practice to reveal the forgotten wisdom about our natural healing processes. When his mother made a remarkable recovery after a brain haemorrhage—far beyond medical expectations—Kuno discovered a profound truth: there's more to healing than what conventional medicine offers.

His newly published book "Missing Links in Healing: A New Old Approach for a Chaotic World" serves as a roadmap for navigating the complex territory between symptom and genuine healing. With warmth and clarity, Kuno explains how practitioners and patients often speak completely different languages while using the same terms like "holistic health" and "natural immunity"—creating confusion that blocks true healing.

One of the most powerful revelations in our discussion centers on the purpose of symptoms; That cold you're fighting? It might actually be your body performing essential maintenance. That uncomfortable reaction after treatment? Possibly a sign of deeper healing rather than a new problem. 

Kuno challenges our cultural fear of symptoms, suggesting that our attempts to immediately suppress them might sometimes interrupt our body's intelligent recovery process.

For anyone feeling lost in a maze of treatments, specialist referrals, and recurring health issues, this conversation offers a fresh perspective. Rather than seeing your body as a collection of parts that need fixing, Kuno invites you to perceive it as an intelligent system working relentlessly toward survival and balance. His practical wisdom applies whether you're dealing with chronic health challenges or simply wanting to understand your body's natural capabilities better.

Ready to reconnect with your body's remarkable healing intelligence? Listen now, and discover why sometimes the shortest path to healing isn't a straight line—and why Mother Nature might be the most skilled healer of all.

You can find Kuno's full profile in our Guest Directory

https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/person/kuno-van-der-post

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Life, Health and the Universe, Bringing you stories that connect us, preventative and holistic health practices to empower us and esoteric wisdom to enlighten us. We invite you to visit our website, where you can access the podcast, watch on YouTube and find all of our guests in the guest directory. Visit lifehealththeuniversepodcastpageio. Now let's get stuck into this week's episode. Today, I'm joined by Kino Vanderpost. Kino worked as an osteopath with almost 20 years of clinical experience and currently works as a body adjustment therapist from his local practice in Bellingen on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. Kino is also author of a newly published book called Missing Links in Healing A New Old Approach for a Chaotic World. Welcome, Kino, it's great to have you here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Nadine.

Speaker 1:

That was a very, very brief intro, because I know that we're going to have a lot to talk about. Essentially, we're going to be talking all about your book today. So yeah, thank you for joining me. We're a little bit damp here in Bellingen at the moment. Just experienced a book today. So, yeah, thank you for joining me. We're a little bit damp here in Bellingen at the moment. Just experienced a big flood, so how are you going? Are you stir crazy?

Speaker 2:

Well, kind of we're looking forward to the bridge reopening. We've seen the water come up, now we're watching it go down and hopefully we'll be able to get out of our little zone very soon yeah, we were.

Speaker 1:

I was on the north side the last time there was a big flood, but this time we're in town, so it was kind of cool. We were like tourists, like everyone in town was just like going to look at the flood you'll become tourists in your own town it's kind of novel, but it, but yeah, it's also like after four days you're a bit over it, aren't you sure?

Speaker 2:

it's something to see, though the uh it's quite a sight the swell of the river and the logs and debris floating past yeah, definitely all right.

Speaker 1:

So we're here to talk about your relatively newly published book October, I think, last year, 2024.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I've got book in hand right here and I've been reading it and loving it Missing Links in Healing and so I thought that we'd probably just start by you giving us a bit of an intro about your work, how you got into the work that you do now, like because you've got a bit of a backstory there which I think is probably good to understand before you read the book potentially. And yeah, let's, let's start there and see, see where it flows.

Speaker 2:

Like the river, like the river, like the river. Well, I started my training in osteopathy as a reaction to a situation which was after my mother had a brain hemorrhage and she was left high and dry by the rehabilitation services. And as time went by we started to see more and more of a disconnect between what I understood about health and science and all of that and what was actually being done in medical practice, and there were a lot of things that didn't seem to make sense. And so after a while we thought, well, we can probably do this better ourselves, and without much knowledge or training, we just did the best we could and we found my mother various services that she needed and eventually she made a really great recovery and then spent the next 17 years having a very full and productive life, way beyond the official expectations that were given to us at the time. The time, so that kind of proved that there was more to healing than what was being presented to us by the official system. And so in that process I kind of developed an interest and I set about training to be an osteopath. And again I came up against more and more disconnects during that process of what was understood and talked about in natural healing versus what was actually being delivered in clinical practice, and so over the last 20 years I've sort of tried to find the missing links that would join the two together, and the concept for the book really came about.

Speaker 2:

Last summer I was doing a little talk in Bellingen just for some local people and I called it Missing Links in Healing, trying to explain the difference between, well, I suppose, the many different languages that we all talk, and so we all talk, I think therapists, doctors, patients. What I came to realize is we're all talking many different languages and we often say the same things. We say we're talking about treating patients, not treating disease. We talk about working with nature. We talk about using natural healing processes, not fighting against them. We talk about holism. We talk about natural immunity. But what do all these things mean? And what I came to realize is that everyone has a different understanding of what those things mean, and so when we're trying to find some sort of coherence between what the patient wants, what the practitioner is trying to deliver, what the medical services can offer, there's a lot of confusion arises out of this, because we're all looking at the same situation through completely different lenses.

Speaker 2:

So this was to try and help people in the local area, just something to do on a Sunday afternoon and perhaps promote my business a little bit. I put this on just to try and help some people and explain what it is that I do and how I go about it and, more importantly, the thinking process behind it, which is often the bit that's missing. This was supposed to be about an hour long, with a few questions, and after over two hours the time was up and we were supposed to leave the room and I was still answering questions and everyone was still asking questions, and in the end I had to say come on, please, everyone, it's time to go, and and and. So it could have gone on all afternoon, and, and. Afterwards I thought, well, I'd like to capture some of this and put it in a book. And so there it is, there's the book, you it in a book. And so there it is.

Speaker 1:

There's the book. You've done a pretty good job, so it basically took you what 12 months to get it from that point to published.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so maybe writing. It was about three months altogether, and then the rest was fine-tuning it and then dealing with the process of publishing it as well, which again not my department, but I had to learn.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, cool. Well, so it's a great book. I've been really loving it and I want to like obviously, that's the whole point of having you here is to get more people to to, um, find out more about your book. I want to. Before we get stuck into some of the stuff that's in there, can you kind of clarify for me what osteopathy is, because you mention it in the book and the book is is for therapists and for patients, um, but I'm kind of not clear on what osteopathy is, how it differs from potentially other treatments, and I guess why would someone come to see an osteopath?

Speaker 2:

Right, okay, well, excuse me, if you ask 10 different osteopaths, you'll get 10 different answers, which doesn't help. And this, this was part of the problem um that I felt needed addressing in in in a work such as this. Um, so the the original idea of of osteopathy was that, um, natural immunity and structural integrity are are interrelated. So, um, and the name osteopathy itself causes great confusion, because it was never specifically about bones as a treatment for bones. It was about using the bones as a practical route into the physiology of the whole person. So the idea was that if there was disturbance in the structure, there'd be disturbance in the function and that was something that could be addressed a bit like tuning an engine versus putting a fuel additive in the tank to stop it misfiring.

Speaker 2:

And over the years it's probably been interpreted many different ways. The years it's probably been interpreted many different ways, and this makes it very difficult for the patient often to know what it is they're going to get. They know they'll probably be assessed physically. They know they'll probably be treated physically in a practical way. They'll be moved around and they might feel things change. But again, those are the nuts and bolts, those are the spanners that you see in the mechanics workshop. You see the car going up and down on the lift, but what you don't see is what's going on in the mind of the mechanic as he's doing the work.

Speaker 2:

So the early osteopaths they were trying to influence the flow of blood. So the idea was that if there was disturbance in the spine there would be disturbance to the flow of blood in a corresponding organ. So they were trying to address that. And that idea is kind of fallen out of fashion really, not so much because it wasn't true or didn't work, but basically through medical politics and then the requirements of training and later on regulation. So the modern osteopaths today are probably very different from how we were 100 years ago. So I'm not sure that quite answers the question.

Speaker 1:

I think so. Yeah, and I think that probably part of as you said, there's a little bit of confusion about what you're going to get because, um, I kind of got from your book that there there is that, um you mentioned like holistic health and like this you're treating the whole body and the whole system rather than just like. I mean I I've never had a, an, um a treatment, so I don't really know but like an adjust. I hear the word adjustment, I think yes would that be right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so yes but that actually can be correlating to other physical symptoms. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

Well, it can. And I think where a lot of the theory has been lost is that when you adjust the body, that's simply lining things up. That's not the healing. That's creating the space for healing, that's trying to remove the obstacles. The healing, that's the creating the space for healing, that's trying to remove the obstacles to healing.

Speaker 2:

The healing is what the patient does afterwards and it's a process, and it can be a long process or it can happen very rapidly. And through that process, this is the bit that people are often ill-prepared for. It's often the bit that the practitioner is ill prepared for. Um, they'll treat the patient and then the patient goes away, and then they cancel the next appointment and you, you speak to them and they say, well, what you say, why did you cancel? And they say, well, because I got a whole load of new symptoms. And then, and then the patient goes to somebody else. They go to the next practitioner in town who then says, well, we need a herb for that.

Speaker 2:

And and what nobody's realizing here is that the that change in the symptom picture is part of the healing process and it needs, it needs respecting and it needs to be um handled properly in order to get a good outcome. And if you simply just then go to the next practitioner and nothing against people who use herbs or vitamins or anything else, that was just an example. But if you go to the next practitioner and then they simply attack the new symptom picture head on as a set of symptoms in isolation, with no sense of the bigger picture, no sense of the roadmap, then what happens is you start to throw confusion into the mix and then it becomes much harder to sort it out, and so the patient will reach a new kind of stability. But are they actually healed? And so what I've seen happen time and time again over these 20 years or so is people ending up getting quite lost in therapy. So they know every therapist for every symptom and they know who to go to when they've got an ache, they know who to go to when their digestion's not right or when their mood's not right, but there's always something going on. They never really get out of that situation, they just move around within it.

Speaker 2:

So the bit that was osteopathy was always about the roadmap that helps you deal with that, and there were a set of osteopathic principles to begin with that again have been changed over time. So there were four fundamental tenets. I'm not quite sure exactly when they arose, but they were all about understanding what the body's doing and trying to encapsulate it in a nutshell, saying if you go to an osteopath, this is what the osteopath is thinking, this is what they're trying to do, and they've kind of sterilized all of that over the years. And so, again, you can't look at the modern interpretation of that and again know what it is that you're getting. Look at the modern interpretation of that and and again know what it is that you're you're getting so, um, so this. This is why I think there's so much, you know, confusion amongst practitioners is because, um is, it is because we've we've sort of lost that compass, we've lost that roadmap, um, and so basically, that's what I've tried to bring back.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So when someone comes to you, is it usually with some kind of structural issue, because I've. So you'd probably say, like someone comes to you with I'm just going to like go, big picture Bad back.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I know that could mean a bad back.

Speaker 1:

yes, I know that's a lot of bad backs yeah, a bad back yeah and you treat the bad back, but that isn't actually what you're necessarily healing. That that opens up a healing process. So is that, would that be? Kind of right and so is it well like that, is it metaphysical, a bit metaphysical um.

Speaker 2:

There is a method yeah, sorry go sorry it. It certainly ties into the metaphysical um, but, but, um. But it's practical. First, osteopathy was always meant to be practical. I mean, it started in the middle of the North Americas in the late 19th century and there the problem was, if you had an injury or you had an illness, it was that you couldn't bring in the harvest, it wasn't that you wouldn't win a medal at the competition this weekend.

Speaker 2:

You could be in big trouble. So it was always practical. What are we going to do now to get this person back to work? But when you see something like a bad back and there's lots of bad backs, I mean that's a very loose term, but it's a perfectly good term. There's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2:

But if you've got a sore back, that's just a, a symptom, and there's any number of ways you can deal with the symptom. You can, you can take drugs for a symptom and make the symptom go away. Um, but what's really going on? And and I guess that's the other thing that um, people often talk about treating the cause, not the symptom. But again, where is the cause really? And and again, you can look at that at different levels. And you can look at it at the metaphysical level. Um, the person is, um you know, spiritually unhappy for some reason, so they work too hard and they get themselves into trouble and end up with with a physical symptom. So you, you might look at it at that level in in some cases, certainly, but where is that disturbance coming from, though? Again, there's always a cause behind the cause.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So the way we were trained in college, of course was to look at the very proximal cause. So where is the site of pain? What is the bit that's hurting? Identify the bits that's hurting and then from that, how do you treat that bit that's hurting to stop it hurting. And if you needed to spread out further from that, you would. But this is very symptom focused, so we might fool ourselves that we're treating cores right. We found a muscle that can benefit from a bit of a rub, or we found a joint that's stuck and we can free it off, sometimes with a pop or a click.

Speaker 2:

We can call that the cause, but there's always a cause behind the cause, and the trouble is that each cause probably has five causes and each of those five causes has another five causes. And eventually, as you follow the trail back, people think they're going to home in and home in, and home in and find one single thing somewhere. Aha, you need to. You know you need to address that one thing that happened in your childhood, or you need to just fix your desk at work. But actually it's not like that. The cause actually spreads out and out and out and out, until there's nothing to follow what you come up with is a million things that could be part of the picture, and any one of them on its own isn't enough to count for the problem. But what you have is a million straws on the camel's back. And so when you start to look at cause from that point of view, it's not about identifying the name of the disease, the name of the symptom, the bit that's hurting, the one thing that's going to fix it. It's about looking at all the straws on the camel's back and saying, well, the one thing that's going to fix it. It's about looking at all the straws on the camel's back and saying, well, where can we lighten the load? Can we take some straws off here? Yes, we can. The person's got a sore muscle. Okay, but what are they eating? Are they sleeping right? Can we lighten the load anyway? So what does what you ate yesterday have to do with a sore back today? Well, it might have quite a lot, or it might not have very much at all to do with it, but there's nothing to be lost by looking at that. There's nothing to be lost by looking at any of the other fields of stress upon the human body, and basically it amounts to looking at stress.

Speaker 2:

Any form of stress, is something that we should be interested in as any kind of healer. Anything that is creating work for the system, placing demands on the system above what's sustainable, is a form of stress. And there's loads of different kinds of stress. There's nutritional and toxic, and physical, and then there's your car and your job and emotional exactly, and then there's all the reasons why the person got themselves into that stress. So at that point, you know you might be thinking well then, why are we rubbing backs at all? Why are people getting on the treatment bench at all, and how is that actually going to help with all of that? And well, I mean, that's a conversation in itself, but there is a great deal of stress that's bound up in the posture, Okay, and your body has a memory, and I suppose the discussion probably starts from there.

Speaker 1:

Really, Wow, when you start to treat someone, because you've seen over your 20 years of experience that this isn't generally the way things go and it's become, from what I can gather, more about the treatment and not about all of the other stuff that goes beyond that Right, when you see a patient now, do you kind of give them the heads up that this is. You're not just here for a neck rub, right, but you know is this going to be an ongoing process and like try and word them up about it a bit.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, because the thing is, although that might be in the plan, just like the car mechanic has to understand how an engine works and everything that is involved in it, at the end of the day it might still just be your spark plugs that need cleaning, sure, and there are a lot of cases like that where actually just a simple reduction in stress in the posture is going to make a very big difference very quickly. But what we mustn't do through that process is do it in such a way that's going to lead into a more complicated stress pattern in order to get a short-term result, and this is something that is a potential pitfall if we don't see the bigger picture. And this is something that is a potential pitfall if we don't see the bigger picture. So the patient will certainly. You know they're not going to be their first treatment where they've got a sore shoulder or a sore stomach or whatever doesn't mean that we're going to start, you know, pulling apart their whole life straight away.

Speaker 2:

But there's always one eye on that. At the end of the day, they want a solution to their problem and they don't want it to go into areas that are irrelevant or they don't want to be led up the garden path. But I think the thing is by being aware of this bigger picture, that is how one avoids being led into the out-of-reaches, and so I think that's actually the thing we're trying to avoid, not the thing we're trying to guide them into, and I think the trouble the unwary often go there through they see a straight line to a certain place and they head straight for it, not realizing that the shortest distance might actually not be the straight line, that's all.

Speaker 2:

So sometimes the slightly curvy route is the most direct route. That's not going to put you in a mess.

Speaker 1:

Okay, would you say that if someone comes to an osteopath, they've potentially exhausted other avenues, or would it be like a recommendation or you should try this guy? He's amazing.

Speaker 2:

Look, I have to be careful, speaking for for all other practitioners um we're just talking about you, yeah, right well, um, so, um, hang on. What was the question?

Speaker 1:

I don't know uh, it was, would would someone have exhausted all other um possibilities? You know they've gone to the go. They've gone to the this, that and the other.

Speaker 2:

Often someone yeah, and then often, but so they might be more open to a different experience by that point well they might be, but very often we're the first port of call, okay, I mean, you know, as as speaking as a, as a the osteopath I was 15 years ago, a few years out of college, it would be very much. Yes, the patient, they know that the osteopath is something to do with bones, they know that it's something to do with backs, so they pick up the phone, they call us and say, can you fix my sore bit? And very often would be the first port of call, so they don't need a referral from their doctor or anything. But I suppose most of our business comes from, as you say, somebody saying, yeah, you should go see this person for that problem.

Speaker 2:

But sometimes, yeah, I mean, I do see people who have been, you know, tried everything in inverted commas and obviously they haven't yet tried everything. Yes, otherwise they'd have already reached the end of the journey. But, yeah, often it is a case of well, it needs a new, fresh set of eyes. And I think it's really important that, even if we think of ourselves, as you know, just a sports injury specialist or something, we all try and develop those eyes so that when we get those situations, we can at least say to the patient yes, I can see a way forward here. And unfortunately, I think that that is often not the experience. I think sometimes the person who's very chronic, which means that their situation has become very entrenched in their system over a number of years, the person who's very chronic, is often told by their practitioner in all sorts of different fields sorry, there's nothing more I can do for you Now. To my mind, that's like saying I have not got anything out of all of my years of training and experience that can make your life a little better, and I don't know, I think I don't think that's good enough really. So, however, we view our own practices as practitioners, I think we all ought to at least try and develop the imagination that there is always something you can do to make life better. Never give up on the patient. You might not be the best person for the job, that's okay. In which case, perhaps help them find out who is.

Speaker 2:

But if someone's inflamed, if someone's in pain, if someone's I mean you know that the patient isn't leading a perfect life, because nobody is. But there's going to be aspects to that that can't be dealt with. But there will always be something that can be dealt with. It might be drink a bit more water, it might be go to bed a bit earlier, or it might be. Let's look at this problem from a different angle. We can't deal with these straws on the camel's back, but we can deal with these straws on the camel's back, but we can deal with these straws on the camel's back. So let's do it and see what happens. It's not going to make the situation worse.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um. So I think it's a terrible thing when, when people are told you know, there's there's nothing I can do anymore, and I think that would be a terrible thing to hear. Luckily, I've never heard that myself as a patient. Um, I think the correct way to phrase. That would be a terrible thing to hear. Luckily, I've never heard that myself as a patient. I think the correct way to phrase that would be I'm not the best person for this particular job.

Speaker 1:

That would be more honest and more helpful and less likely to further the patient's problems yeah, yeah, because they could easily see that as like well, that's it then, I'm done, paul well, and they do yeah and they do.

Speaker 2:

And they, they come through the door saying you can't help me, I've been told, I've been told no one can help me, and and, and I, and I think, well, okay, um, what does that? What does that even mean? Um, but it starts again with a perception of the situation. How do we view that situation? And if we view it as the disease and not the patient, if we view it as we need some technological fix for this, then they're right. They've reached the end of what technology can deliver. They've reached the end of our knowledge about that kind of disease. Does that have to mean they've reached the end of what they can do for themselves or what we can do for them? Absolutely not. If they're still alive, there's always something that can be done.

Speaker 1:

And human connection is a pretty important part of that, isn't it Especially?

Speaker 2:

when you've got a relationship as a yeah, as a practitioner with a patient like yeah, even even just that, even just even just knowing that we haven't given up on them is not not a bad thing yeah um cool.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's get into the book now. All right, I wrote my.

Speaker 2:

I've got loads of notes I don't reckon we're gonna get through all of them but, it will give us some, some things to to work with.

Speaker 1:

So I actually, when I'm reading the book, like I come from a fitness background and I'm um generalizing because, as you said, everyone's idea of what this means is different but I've, like I'm I believe in our natural ability to heal natural health, not you know yes the lifestyle stuff, especially that we can do that can keep us um healthy, and I really feel that your book although it is for practitioners worth working in osteopathy and their patients that this is like this could be a handbook for anyone who wants to look after themselves.

Speaker 1:

I hope so, yes naturally and in well, and you know, naturally as in, with minimal intervention, I guess. Well, we like intervention from people like you, people like me, but you know, I guess it's understanding and believing in our body's capability to heal, and that the message in your book really for me is that we have this like our bodies. Well, where is it?

Speaker 1:

the drive towards survival is relentless yes, it absolutely all our body wants to do is keep going and like a person, a perfect a quote. Another quote was a sick person can take poison and still recover. Basically, pharmaceuticals is what you were referring to over the counter medications. So, yeah, that's the. There's like a couple of quotes that I just wrote down. But that idea I'm just reading my notes yeah, the body's capability to heal and how powerful that is, and that's really something that I'm super passionate about, like just let getting people to re realize, remember that that is what we do and what we can do.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, the body heals itself. We don't heal anything. And this was a real assault on the ego when I first heard this, when in my training, somebody said you guys need to understand you're not going to heal anybody, and at first I thought, well, this would be a waste of five years in university then, and I didn't believe it. And then afterwards I realized no, he's absolutely right and we can't heal anybody. It's Mother Nature that does the work, and I think I also put she does a far better job than any of us can imagine. But the important thing is that the we can't fit. There's nothing we can fix in the human body. It has to fix itself and and this is this is the thing we need to leave her is the natural healing process of the human body. Now, the thing that confuses us as practitioners and as patients is that this works in mysterious ways, so the body will do crazy things to save its own life, and sometimes we don't like those things and sometimes they really scare the heck out of us. And this is where, if you live in a world of, on one extreme, either superstition and magic and so on, or, on the other hand, a world of high technology, where we have control of everything, then this confusing, often frightening process of healing is a place that you don't want to go, um, and and yet that's actually, as you say, where the magic happens. Um, and and. So this is, um, this is where we're. We're missing the roadmap is what is going on when, um, you know, the person cleans up their lifestyle and then, a month later, they're in bed with pneumonia. What's going on with that? And and I wouldn't claim to treat pneumonia, by the way, but but the point is there's, there's something happening there. That's not, that's not random happenstance, it's not just all bad luck on top of old bad luck or or anything. There's that's come from somewhere and it's going somewhere else and within.

Speaker 2:

That is the process of the body trying to save itself, heal itself, repair itself, doing some, doing something really, um, really deep down at the, at beneath our awareness of of what we might call healing, and we see that as the expression of symptoms. Very often, we see that as the expression of symptoms and the symptoms frighten us. You have the superstitious healer who wants to find the right magic to make the symptom go away, and there's the proof of healing. The technological healer wants to have the right technological fix to show that they're in control and the body doesn't need to have this symptom. But nobody's saying well, what is the body telling us through this symptom? How does it fit in to that person, going from this distressed person who's got an awful lot of accumulated baggage within their the structure and function of their body, to the person who's healed, who's more at ease, who's functioning more efficiently, who's digesting better and has more energy and is able to live a fuller, more independent life.

Speaker 2:

Where do these symptoms fit in? What is that process? And it's different every time, which doesn't help. So, again, there are some general patterns and I think this is something that was understood better a long time ago. So this is why I call it a new, old approach, because I haven't come up with anything new. What I've done is just try to reawaken some old knowledge that I'm by no means an expert in, but has come to my attention over these 20 years, and I've seen it borne out in practice again and again and again. Whether it's intentional or not, I see people going through these processes and very often people are very quick to say I've got a new problem or something's happening and I don't understand it or now I need to go to somebody else. I hear all these things and what I'm seeing here is a process that fits a pattern that has been known about for a very long time, and it's not a straightforward pattern, but it can be understood and you don't have to be a medical expert to understand it.

Speaker 1:

But you do need to trust that your body knows what it's doing and you do need to trust that within what you're seeing is a survival mechanism and if you can start there, then you can have a chance of not only turning around a very difficult case but actually getting the patient or yourself, or whoever it is, onto a different level of health so that they're more robust going forwards I feel like this has so much relevance, like across the board, when we're talking about, like being in homeostasis, I guess right and our body's natural ability to heal itself from illness, like in your um, in your line of work, um, as you've sort of mentioned already, you, someone comes into you with the bad back, you do the treatment and then they get sick, they can't make their next appointment, and that sickness is the heal, is actually part of the healing process that's going on in the body and we have learned not to trust that process because I think we we live in a time where it's all about quick fixes, not having enough time to actually go through a healing process, because it's like who's got time to you know rest, um, but and so but I feel like it's got relevance in soma, like just in health in general, like if we get a cold or a flu, um or and I've been.

Speaker 1:

You talk about this four-week um healing process. What did you say um spontaneous recovery, I think is that in relation to like that four-week period that you talk of, where we'll naturally kind of oh no, I don't think there's a specific four weeks.

Speaker 2:

I may have mentioned a process that in one case was four weeks, but it never stops. But at times you'll see an emerging process where the body puts everything else on hold to deal with something that it feels it's time to deal with. So a homeopath once told me you need two colds a year. At the time I thought, well, that's very interesting, I want to know more about this. And at the time I was living in London and not really looking after myself that well, I was going to college and eating sandwiches on the tube train to get to college and I said, well, what happens if you have six colds a year? And she said, well, that's not good. So six colds a year means that you're under it, but you're coping. Your system is still producing those processes that you need to clear it out. So it's not a virus that makes your nose run or makes you cough or raises your temperature.

Speaker 2:

That's you, that's your body doing that and it's doing that because it's yeah, it's doing it because it thinks it's the best thing to do. So why anyone would want to stop that, you know, is a mystery. Unless, I mean, if you had to play I don't know a violin solo for the president or something, then maybe I would take the Nurofen. But I'd have to understand that that comes with a consequence. It's not a magic bullet. It doesn't just magic the thing away and make you well. It's using the credit card to get you through a situation. But flip this around if you know anyone who's got, you know, very advanced disease that they've had for a long time, something that's very chronic, very debilitating possibly I mean I've got to be careful with with examples, but because they might be close to home for somebody, but somebody with advanced cancer or rheumatoid arthritis or any number of other things, even asthma, ask them how often you get colds and you'll get some very interesting answers.

Speaker 2:

And very often you'll hear, well, never or hardly ever, because they don't go through those periodical maintenance processes, right, so they're driving the car without an oil change yeah is what they're doing, um and so when they, when they start to clean up their life, or when they start to take a different approach that doesn't involve further poisoning, further suppression of symptoms, they start to take a more health-based approach, involve further poisoning, further suppression of symptoms. They start to take a more health-based approach where they go well, look what are the other straws. And for themselves, they may, for any number of reasons, may be under guidance, or they may just decide one day they've had enough of the life they're living and they want to do something differently. And they clean up the diet and they maybe take a bit more exercise, or maybe a bit less exercise or do any number of other things that may promote natural regeneration and remove stress from their system. So it's got a chance to decompress a little bit. Then they start to go through a process and they go oh, just when I was getting it all under control, now I've got the flu. I'm so unlucky and sometimes all it needs is you just got to say no, this is actually the best thing that could have possibly happened. Now a word of caution, because obviously what I'm not saying is anytime you get sick, rejoice.

Speaker 2:

Bad things do happen and I need people to understand that that, um, it takes some interpretation. If you get a new symptom, if you're worried, if you don't know what's going on, um, do take advice. If you feel out of your depth, um, what I don't want, what's going on, do take advice, if you feel out of your depth. What I don't want people is people getting worse and worse and worse in an unfamiliar situation, thinking everything's okay and then delaying help that they might legitimately need. That's a reality. It does happen as well.

Speaker 2:

People do get serious things that come on very acutely and that can be life-threatening and need help with, and that, I suppose, is where the training of the practitioner comes in as well. The practitioner's got to have the clinical knowledge and know their limits also. But at the same time, the patient also needs to know who they can, who they can trust. So when these things happen, it's not just oh great, you know, I've got, I've got a, a substance from a tree bark that can stop that.

Speaker 2:

But actually you can look at that situation and and and say, well, look, I know what's going on here, I can see what your body's trying to do and at this point we're just going to let it happen or we're going to help it in some way, and then also know in an instant hang on, this isn't right. You really need to go to accidents and emergency. This is not a healing crisis that we're looking at here. This is something else, and we do get cases like that. All of this stuff is kind of almost missing from our therapeutic lexicon in a way, and I think you know my training in these areas was somewhat limited. I came out of college knowing how to recognize something that was serious and needed medical attention, and I learned to recognize something that was safe to treat, but I didn't learn to recognize something that was interesting, confusing, perhaps even unnerving. That was a sign of something happening, and knowing when to do something about it, when to leave it alone and let nature take its course.

Speaker 2:

Um, so again, big missing link here, and and so the emphasis, emphasis of this, this book really is how we think about these situations, so that we don't waste opportunities but at the same time, we don't lead people into trouble sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you talked about trust between the patient and practitioner, but I think that a lot of the like that word trust is something that was coming up for me and it's like us trusting ourselves and our own ability and that kind of that feels like that's a very distant, maybe not even a memory, Maybe not even a memory. I was talking to my husband about it the other day and I was saying you know, when I was a kid, if I got, you know, I can remember from four or five as much as an earache, it would be straight to the doctor, Right Straight on, and I think for our kind of age group, definitely that was like you put your trust into that medical system and so it was the answer to everything, Because we just haven't been taught to trust ourselves and that there is a healing process. But I mean, we've also proven it time and time again. If we have had medical intervention like, for example, I had a cesarean, I healed and you know people have a cesarean, I healed.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and you know, people have tooth extractions that seem quite dramatic.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

But they heal. Like we have this amazing capability but we've just we're not taught to trust that. So that's a whole process in itself, isn't it just? And I would say, like I've, I've done a couple of experiments in the last little while, since I've been reading your book and I had like this weird pimple thing. It's very small, like very small experiment. I had this weird pimple thing right right in the corner of um under my eye and it and like I was like I'm just gonna leave it for four weeks and see what happens and oh yes and I've had like a sore elbow.

Speaker 1:

I exercise regularly and my elbow was a bit sore and I was like I'm just gonna leave it and see what happens and right, okay it's like it's better. I've given it a little bit of a rub and some red light, but you know really just oh yeah, that's where the four weeks thing came from.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was the right at the start of the book. Yes, yes but that was specific to that, that one example in the book, which is um, but yeah, and, and, um, and, and. The trick. The trick there is to identify something that is going to get better on its own, yeah, um, and, and, of course, things. Sometimes things will get worse, but well, the fact is, things will get worse because they well, they, they have to because they have to start from not there to be there.

Speaker 2:

So there is a worsening process somewhere within that. So, again, experience and judgment comes into that. Um, I think there's nothing wrong with taking advice for any of those things sprained ankles, pimples, whatever. The question is, you know what advice do you take, and I think that's where your own intuition comes into. It is you know, if you think well, this doesn't resonate with my own worldview, then move on. But at the same time, if somebody, just somebody, just you know, gives you the worst possible thing oh you, you've got to, you've got to do this or you're going to be in trouble. Get another opinion, shop around for answers, and I think if people do that, they'll get, they'll start getting better answers. The market will start to bring forth better answers. Um so, um, yeah. As as for the pimple, well, close to your eye, well, it went away.

Speaker 1:

Is my point right? Well, it is I trusted in the process of like that was there and then then it wasn't, but it wasn't in your eye no, it wasn't in my eye. I didn't fuss with it. I didn't poke it, prod it.

Speaker 2:

Try and squeeze it I was just like just left it no one else can see, can see it.

Speaker 1:

But we can do those things on our you know, a pimple on your face, most people would squeeze it, try and put something on it to shrink it, you know, cover it up, whatever, so that you're messing with it. It's a small example, but I think that sometimes, if you can do those little experiments on yourself, you can build a little baseline of trust. Oh, my body is actually capable of healing. It's the same as going through a fever rather than taking the Nurofen right.

Speaker 2:

That's right. So that comes with confidence, and there's nothing better for confidence, I think, than having contact with people who've walked that walk, and there's a bit of a shortage at the moment, and so there's a risk of reinventing the wheel, and that can be problematic. So, again, I just want some of this older knowledge not to go away really and to try and bring some of it back. But there's probably an awful lot that's known that I can't cover in a work like that, so I've kept it very general. What I haven't said is this is how you treat a sore elbow. This is how you treat a pimple on your face, but what I have said is this is how you treat a sore elbow. This is how you how you treat a pimple on your face. But what I have said is this is how you might think about the process. This is how you might might interpret it.

Speaker 1:

This is how you might find the help that you need and it's yeah, it's like the principles for like how the body works, right like you said, it's a roadmap or blueprint, yeah, that's right. Yeah, which is amazing and it's like what I love about it is that it's really easy to understand and it's really easy to read and it's interesting.

Speaker 2:

I love to hear that. I love to hear that.

Speaker 1:

Because you want to keep reading it, because it's just full of so many kind of like oh, that makes total sense yeah, it's brilliant, brilliant. Let me have a look at my notes. I feel like we're probably like we haven't touched on the, the lots of things that are in the book, and you've got how many?

Speaker 1:

14, 14, um 14 sections, really sections, yeah, well, there's 14 missing, missing links, 14 missing links, and we haven't really kind of gone into deep detail about any of those. But I think that's okay. I think we've got a good idea of like well, we've we've talked about the, the trusting the body and spontaneous recovery.

Speaker 2:

We've talked about the healing crisis we've talked about. We've talked about complexity. In a way we've touched on it the, the body is a chaotic system and and and that nothing repeats. Nothing's ever the same twice. So actually, in a way, we have, we've- covered a lot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you mentioned to me in an email I've written this somewhere that here we go. More than anything, your book is for the next generation of healers, so can you talk a little bit to that? Like what's going? On with when you talk about healers, um. So can you talk a little bit to that, like, what's going on with um? When you talk about healers, what is that osteopath specifically, or is it like something that's new and emerging?

Speaker 2:

for us. Okay, um, so my background is osteopathy, but this book wasn't written for us, for osteopaths, it wasn't written about osteopathy. So the the point was to take my own experience from seeing healing through that from that vantage point and helping others with what I know. A book about osteopathy specifically, but the discipline is mentioned and the theory is mentioned a lot within that, and there are good reasons for that, because I think the early osteopathic premise was a brilliant idea that was hugely successful in its day and there's a lot that it taught us that I don't think needs to be exclusive to osteopaths and, moreover, that the modern osteopaths many of them probably wouldn't necessarily recognize those ideas or, if they were trained, like me, they wouldn't necessarily be able to translate them into a case in front of them and how to address that. So I think the label isn't helpful and the allegiance to a particular discipline isn't helpful. It's the thinking process I want people to get at. Now, the trouble is that if people have already got 10 years' experience, 20 years' experience, like in in practice, or or more, um, I'm unlikely to change their minds. That's, that's just. You know nothing, nothing negative about people, but I think that's just realistic, that, um, people get, get on a certain track and they carve their pho and that's the direction they go in. But there are a lot of people out there who I think are probably like me before I trained thinking well, I've heard about this natural healing thing, I've been told all this theory by my homeopath friend or my acupuncturisturist friend and it sounds brilliant. And I went to an acupuncturist or a homeopath and and and it was slightly different. It was good, but it was, you know. But I really want that, that inspiring, visionary stuff that I heard about before. I, you know, before they got in their groove and and business took over and all that sort of thing took over. So I'm speaking to those people who are at that stage, really, of where am I taking my career? What's a good idea? And when I get my training, how can I get the most from my training so that I can keep it pure to an extent and not in a way get, you know, too brainwashed by the educational process itself, because I think that happens.

Speaker 2:

I think the you know we go into college thinking this is great. I love this theory, I love this idea, I love this discipline that I'm getting into, and now, here's the reality sort of takes over and pragmatic behavior takes over. Well, okay, I can see what's happening with this patient, but they won't understand me. And you know, it's almost five o'clock, and and I, and I think that that, probably, that probably happens in every walk of life. And so the next generation of practitioners they're the best chance, I think, of taking a good idea, hanging on to it and, in a way, asking that of their own training and their own, that of their own training and their own, and and when they, when they start seeing their first cases, when they come out of college or in their college clinic, they'll, they'll, they'll see these cases and they, and they may just, um, they may just see them in a slightly different light from well, here's, here's the tissue causing the symptom.

Speaker 2:

What are you going to do for that sore bit? What are you going to do for the, for that named disease? Um, and then, of course, patients themselves. As you say it's, it's also a book aimed at patients who, you know, may feel like they're in a bit of a quagmire and can't make sense of things and and often get sent from pillar to post and um, help them, try and see what's going on. So again, maybe they can. It might not necessarily change their doctor's mind, but it might help them form their questions. It might help them give an idea what kind of services to ask for or what kind of reading of their own to do, so they get the information that's really going to help them instead of that's. You know, just dr google, um, well, you know what that's like now.

Speaker 1:

It's basically well you can get an answer one way or the other, can't you? I've got a sore elbow. Does it mean this? And and it will say yes, it means exactly that. And then you go oh my god, sore elbow. Does it mean this? Yeah, it means that too yeah, it's probably basically elbow itis.

Speaker 2:

And here's the, here's the um, here's the drug to cure the itis, and and, and and that's. That's really how it's mapped out. You know, dr, google is is um. Okay, it means lots of different things, but it it's become very, very structured. Even in my time since qualifying, you could find all sorts of different ways of looking at something. Now and now the information you can get through that process is very carefully curated to keep it pertinent to the medical model.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah, if you yeah yeah, you, where you are a symptom, you are a condition, you are a disease yes and and and the pathway for this, this symptom, this disease, is this, and these are the things that can mean, these are the tests that might apply, and here are the drugs or whatever, um, and and it's being very kept, that it's not being left to chance, and so, and that process is just so based on fear as well.

Speaker 1:

You might have this and therefore you might die or, you know, have your arm chopped off, and therefore you need to take this thing to prevent that from happening.

Speaker 2:

It's very fear-based well, the bottom line is always seek medical advice. The bottom line is never trust your own body.

Speaker 1:

It knows what it's doing.

Speaker 2:

Yes, exactly which sometimes is the case. I'm not saying in every case, but sometimes that is the case and that's that's what, what you really need to hear yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

well, I love, I love the book. Thank you, yeah, massive congratulations for getting it out there. I think in your profile in the guest directory, you've got a link to your website. Is that the best place for people to access the book? There's also a contact email address where people can contact you direct.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if people want to contact me direct, then the email on my profile is the best way to find me and they can certainly do that At the moment, just really for speed of getting it out there. At the moment it's on Amazon and Booktopia and Barnes Noble in America and Waterstones and Blackwell's in the UK, so you can get it on Amazon everywhere. But you don't have to use Amazon.

Speaker 1:

There's other services that are available, we can put those links in as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah that'd be great. We'll put those links in so that people can access it. And I can certainly send it out from here if people want to email me, if they're local.

Speaker 1:

there's a there's a drop into the place they can.

Speaker 2:

They can drop, drop into clinic, say hi and have a chat, um, and there's the yellow shed. Have some copies and I think go vita in taormina, have it as well. Um, but if they're further afield, yeah, email, email me or just look on any of the big name online retailers and you'll find it.

Speaker 1:

Brilliant. That's so good to hear. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a really great conversation. I've loved it.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you, nadine, I'm glad we could make it happen. Well, I'm very happy to have been asked on.

Speaker 1:

This is unfamiliar territory to me me well, you might have to get used to it. Now you've read the book, I'll try thanks, you know thank you, nadine before you go, can I ask you a small favor.

Speaker 1:

If you've enjoyed this show or any of the other episodes that you've listened to, then I'd really appreciate it if you took a couple of moments to hit subscribe. This is a great way to increase our listeners and get the word out there about all of the wonderful guests that we've had on the podcast. If you'd like to further support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash, life, health, the universe. You can find that link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.