Osteopathic Health Access

This post is a commentary on the audio text “Osteopathic Thinking” by Dr. James Jealous.

“Wholeness is where the power to be normal overrides the movement of the pieces.” James Jealous, from the audio lecture “Osteopathic Thinking”

Perhaps it’s not possible for a human to grasp wholeness. We are designed to break things into parts. We do this to understand reality and survive. We are designed biologically to seek shelter, sustenance, and even our instinct for love and community could be pinned to a survival instinct. To perform these life-critical acts we see parts, we see obstacles and ways around them, we record memories, fragments of the whole, and return to them as truths even as we see the fallibility of our minds.

But we aren’t only here to survive. As Jim says, “man has always been trying to find out who he is” and this quest is as innate as the one to live. And in this pursuit, we climb mountains, we sit in stillness, we look into the depths of silence, all because of some gnawing need to know….

We could say that the pursuit of understanding wholeness is a spiritual pursuit. We could say that it is a nice idea but survival comes first, therefore we must continue to break things apart to really understand them. We could say that science is how we will survive in order to have time for spiritual pursuits.

But what if there is another way to look at this, instead of two parts, that there is one part. That we are gifted with the capacity to see parts and seek the whole but that these are gifts of our perception, and not reality at all. What if the idea that there are parts is no different than the fragments we call memories? What if reality is both spirit and matter as one normal wholeness?

Jim understood this, and he spent his life, as do many osteopathic physicians, trying to really grasp the reality of these two concepts; wholeness and normal. He did this through study and teaching, through practice, and through contemplation.

Let me say it another way – the parts are the illusion, and the wholeness, which we rarely see, is the reality. The illusion is that any part would be a part if it weren’t for the existence of the whole.

Healthcare, today, accepts a reductionist scientific approach to medicine. It is all about the parts, and only parts. If it can’t be broken into parts, it can’t be studied. If it isn’t studied, well, it generally is suspect. We do need the scientific method. It has great utility and has saved lives. The issue is that we believe it is the most superior method of gaining information. In some cases, we take it one step farther and believe that if a study hasn’t been done the information must not exist.

In this we’ve lost our way. Each scientific fact is only a single moment in time in a single place. If we don’t see it for what it is, it’s no better than the much maligned anecdote.

Tomorrow a study might be designed that shows us how that single moment is wrong, or just gone. Medicine is filled with more scientific mistakes than successes – that’s the nature of science. But as long as we keep our eyes on wholeness, and on normal, we can make good use of reductionist tools. The minute we decide the parts are more true than wholeness we’ve lost our way.

This applies to the hands-on osteopath as well – if you think you know how the body is going to heal, because you think you understand the biomechanics of the SBS, you’ve got yourself at a single moment in time in a single place. It might work today. But if you convince yourself it’s the whole you will fail. It might be a treatment reaction, it might be a patient you can’t get better, it might be a longing in your soul …

So we have to keep at this – finding normal, trying to understand wholeness. We have to recognize when we use the parts that’s all they are – parts. And spend some time thinking about the idea of wholeness overcoming parts, and having power. I’ll leave you with one more quote from this audio lecture. This little pearl is the antidote to burnout, to reductionistic thinking, and to the deep fatigue taking over so many of our patients… It’s a clue as to how to let go of the need to believe in parts over wholeness. And it’s a simple idea that’s accessible to all of us. Before I share the quote, remember to listen to this audio lecture – I’ve barely scratched the surface of it’s lessons. You can get it on this website, along with many more hours of learning.

“The way you diminsh willpower is by falling in love with something that causes you to enjoy patience” – JJ