For as long as i can remember, I had always wanted to be in the health care field. As a child, I was adamant that I would be a doctor. Whenever anybody asked me why, I would say it’s because I want to be able to help people. In high school, I began to carefully lay out a plan of achieving this. I chose my courses, I studied to get the great marks, and I picked my school all with the end goal of becoming a doctor.

Life is What Happens When You’re Busy Making Plans

So John Lennon says. And at 20 years old, this was a big lesson I learned.

In 1990, within a two week span, my carefully planned out life took a turn. My boyfriend at the time suddenly broke up with me and two days later, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Up to that point, I had a 1 year plan, a 3 year plan and a 5 year plan. And these events were not in the plan! My carefully laid out plan of becoming a doctor quickly unravelled.

My mother was diagnosed with her first bout of cancer in 1990 when I was just thinking about applying for medical school. Being with her throughout treatments, I knew that becoming a doctor was not what I wanted to do. Instead, I chose to go into physiotherapy as I had a lot of experience working with adults with physical disabilities. Soon after graduating, I knew this was not the profession for me. My first job involved working with many who suffered from chronic pain. Although very inexperienced, I knew that just focusing on the physical body was not going to help these people.

I become disillusioned with my job. I found it frustrating and unfulfilling. And as it always happens when you trust and let go of trying to figure it out, I was introduced to the profession of Osteopathy. I knew immediately that this was more in line with what I believed. The main premise of Osteopathy is that the body inherently heals itself. As the osteopathic practitioner, all I had to do was figure out all the blocks to the person’s ability to heal themselves.

My Introduction To Mind Healing

When everything changed back in 1990, it was my first awareness of depression.  I cried for days, I developed anxiety, and I couldn’t sleep nor eat. I went to the university counsellor. I don’t remember what she said but I do remember the book she gave me. That book changed the trajectory of my life, although I didn’t know it at the time.

The book she gave me was called Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain. What that book did for me was made me realize that I could make changes within myself  to change my reality. And it introduced me to a life long love of self help, metaphysics, and seeking for something greater than us. This book led me to more readings on intuition, on wisdom, and on personal development.

What these books and teachings gave me was hope. This came from the fact that I had the ability to think what I wanted to think, feel what I wanted to feel, and thus act accordingly to get the results I wanted. With my limited references, I began to practice the techniques outlined in the book. And amazingly, my life changed within a short period of time. After about 3 months of being in a very dark place, my life blossomed and experiences unfolded to provide me with EXACTLY what I had put out there!

Yoga Gave Me More Mind Training Structure

I started yoga as everybody else does, I needed to get more flexibility. But within the first session of classes, I fell in love with what yoga was about. I couldn’t get enough of it. I read everything I could get my hands on, I did workshops, conferences, and even flew to San Francisco to work one on one with many renowned yoga teachers. I searched for years for a yoga guru. Eventually, I found one and have been working with him for about 5 years now. Life changing!

Science Meets Wisdom

I began my osteopathic studies in 2002. I loved everything I was learning. Osteopathy involves really understanding anatomy, physiology and how everything is connected. The primary role of the therapist is to figure out what’s blocked and help the patient remove the blocks. Once the blocks are removed, then the body can optimally heal itself. This was in perfect alignment with what I had been studying in the yoga teachings and other spirituality teachings I had been following.

From what I can see, all wisdom teachings states that we have two parts to each of us:  our true nature (Self) and our ego (self).  When we become identified the ego, we have sufferings. The key to living a life of peace, contentment, and no suffering is to learn to become identified with our true nature instead. Suffering can be mental, emotional and/or physical. This included physical pain which many of my patients were suffering from.

The tools of yoga, spiritual works, personal development, or osteopathic practices, are used to help the person become more connected to their true nature. In doing so, they become LESS identified with the ego.

Amazingly, I found that when I introduced these concepts to my patients, their ability to cope with their pain is much better, they experience less anxiety, they can do more functionally, and over time, they have hope, they have peace, and they even start to heal from their pain.