Why did I choose Osteopathy as a profession?

I chose osteopathy as a profession for a variety of reasons, but the main one goes back to a story of my childhood. When I was young, around 6 or 7 years of age, I began to suffer very bad tonsilitis, and my mother was at a loss as to what to do. My mother always encouraged a mixture of traditional and alternative medicine, and so she asked our osteopath at the time for his recommendations. This osteopath recommended a specialised osteopath - called a cranial osteopath - to assist in the pain. As it turned out, I responded more to this treatment than I had to any other treatment we had tried, and as such, I found myself regularly seeing this specialised osteopath with great results. From that time onwards, my mother always kept in mind that I responded better to subtle medicine and homeopathic, osteopathy and energetic medicine than I did to Western pharmaceuticals, and as a result a pattern emerged where it became a very natural part of my life to see the osteopath whenever something was wrong with me, where my siblings may prefer to see a standard medical doctor, or respond more quickly to other treatments.

Over time, I decided to study alternative medicine myself - starting with shiatsu and bodywork, somatics, biodynamic cranial-sacral work, and acupuncture - but I was always longing for the intricacies of the anatomy, physiology and embryological content which was usually reserved for medical students. In my 2nd year of bodywork training, our anatomy and physiology teacher was an osteopath, and I was once again reminded of my natural affinity towards the organization of information and treatment principles in the osteopathic method. In the following years I become more and more enthralled with how the embryological formation of the body could assist in my treatment protocols and “listening” to the body through my hands - and once again I realised that all of the books and resources with the information which truly fascinated me were derived from the cranial osteopathic field and osteopathy in general. It was at this stage that I decided it was time to simply pursue this life-long companion and friend, and become an osteopath myself.

At the stage I am undertaking my Doctor of Osteopathy, it is clear to myself and many clients that my work is already deeply osteopathic in it’s nature, however fulfilling the study of this content in a new light, and deepening into the fields of study which I’ve been pursuing alone, and walking the perimeter of for so long has been an enthralling and life changing journey.