When I first qualified 30 years ago, like many just starting out, I had a little impostor syndrome. I would ask myself – do I know enough? As new patients arrived there would be huge butterflies in my tummy.
I hadn’t expected it, but this sense of being an imposter started to lessen as I found my place within the practice – treating people with long term chronic pain. I was finding I could help people who had struggled to find help elsewhere, with anything from back pain and shoulder issues to long-standing neck pain. This was going so well that I started to develop a reputation for being the person to see when noone else could help.
It was from this point curiosity kicked in. I had started to see how I could help people, and now I wanted to know more. I have always questioned the way things are the way they are, and this curiosity was key to my developing practice.
As I started to seek more information, some key books I read were:
Atlas of Human Anatomy by Frank Netter
Leon Chaitow’s Positional Release and Muscle Energy Technique manuals
Rene Cailliet’s series on pain and soft tissue
Where does curiosity come from?
For me, it came from a deep sense of needing courage to find the right teacher, the right books to build and deepen my knowledge of anatomy and physiology, to gain the ability to treat all sorts of conditions and people in long term pain states.
Soon into this journey I found Tom Hendrickson with his own eponymous method, The Hendrickson Method, and embarked on a three-year journey to fly out to San Francisco three times a year to complete the training with him.
Whilst training with Tom there was a comfortable realisation that the journey to deepen our knowledge of anatomy and physiology is never ending. It then gave me the confidence to be curious again. Question why a condition was the way it was, why the injuries are the way they are. The confidence to question and be curious about other people’s opinions and diagnosis.
Knowing that courage and curiosity go hand in hand, as I continued the work I discovered Gary Carter’s Natural Bodies, and fascia focused anatomy approach. The Noigroup gave me a deeper understanding of neurological processes within pain patterns, looking at how we can enable the people we treat to create change and acceptance.
It took courage and curiosity to say yes when invited to teach both by the Northern Institute of Massage and my professional body the LCSP.
When I began teaching, impostor syndrome naturally struck again, and I had to find courage to stand in front of a class and own “this is what I know, this is what I think, this is what I feel”. It was worth it to start sharing what I had learnt so far, whether it was positional release muscle energy technique or Tom Hendrickson’s method.
The curiosity kicked in again – this time I was questioning how do adults learn? Was their experience of education healthy and empowering – or was it a little like mine, that had been a struggle and diminishing until I found out I was dyslexic.
I began to see that some people are visual learners, some people a learn by feel, some people learn by seeing a demonstration then feeling it. Some people see the demonstration immediately and have to practice it. I began creating space in the classroom so that everybody could learn on their own terms, to empower them to embed the knowledge within themselves to enhance their practise
Most recently, it was one of my patients that encouraged me to reflect on my own curiosity and courage. This patient is now into their 80th decade and has osteoporosis, MS and has recently had heart surgery.
One day she turned up as we were piling out of the church after a Pilates class asking me she could join in. At that time she was in a motorised scooter and was barely able to stand. Jose was curious whether the Pilates would help her to gain a little strength and a little more coordination and help her move a little more. I was both curious and needed to be courageous to invite her to a little 1-2-1 session after next week’s class.
Jose came full of curiosity and courage – wondering whether she could create the movement, and have enough in her to give it a go . Jose comes to class each week and occasionally comes to the clinic to use my spring wall for one to one.
It was that one of these one to ones I asked her what kept her going, as conversation with Jose is always interesting and lively. Jose replied, the courage to be always curious and I smiled and said I had been thinking very much the same way about myself on my journey as a therapist.
We also chatted about the courage needed to know things may not always work out how we imagined and be okay with that, and the curiosity needed to have the confidence in knowing there will always be unique ways of seeing and being.
We agreed that these things are what keeps us lively as we progress through the decades, that have kept our humour and our ability to see the whole of the world, not through a small tunnel. Courage and curiosity are something that we encourage within our practice when we’re working with those learning to live with a condition that will last for a lifetime. We need them to investigate ways of living well, and have the courage to make changes and do things differently. And most of all to try to have fun with it, safe and secure in the knowledge that things might not always work out the way they thought we would – but with courage and curiosity we can keep trying.