Reconnecting with Nature for Healing: How Osteopathy and the Natural World Align for Wellness

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” –Rumi

As patients enter my office and lie on the treatment table, I invite them to appreciate an alternate perception of themselves.

I invite them to lay and surrender to the effects of gravity. How often does one appreciate the sensation of gravity?

I invite them to close their eyes and envision themselves in a place in nature. It could be anywhere they have been or would like to be.

I invite them to become attuned to the smells of this place, the sensations on their skin, and I invite them to surrender and lay upon the earth of this place.

Do they hear any wildlife? Is the sun warming them? Do they hear any flow of water around them?

I invite my patients into this space.

Usually, the initial experience of a hike in nature is very loud. People are more excited and talk. You can hear your breathing as your body begins to warm up. You hear the crunching of leaves and branches as you navigate your steps.

Then as you get deeper into the forest, it begins transitioning you into a quiet and vast stillness. Your eyes start to appreciate the beauty through the trees. The invitation to go deeper into the forest overcomes all fatigue and discomfort. The sun brings warmth to your heart, and love beaming from your being is limitless.

Through creative curiosity, you explore a place to be, to sit, to bathe in the forest. Watch the frogs and bugs live in all of Mother Nature’s beauty and love. You find a stream of water and allow yourself to be mesmerized by its life force.

Time, then, becomes the variable. How much time does one need to remember? Time for the cells to remember and begin to vibrate as they were always meant to vibrate. Our perfect blueprint is exquisitely expressed in the forest.

I advise my patients to sit in the forest until they begin to resonate with it. In other words, sit in the forest until you begin to feel you are a part of it. You begin to feel and see the trees communicating with one another. You’d be surprised how differently the animals may react to you. The butterflies begin to land on you, and birds grace you with their presence.

We have become lost in the intellect––advised to seek outward for our guidance and answers rather than sitting within the forest of our beings.

It is time to return home. Home to our magnificence.

Our evolutionary beginnings are from the ocean.

We are made of the same materials as the ocean's deepest parts and the cosmos.

We are all one with the natural world.

Allowing ourselves to find healing within the natural laws is only the beginning of the journey.

Osteopathic physicians practicing traditional osteopathic manipulative medicine have been working with and treating the body through the principles of natural laws.

The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing, and health maintenance.

Just like a forest.

So, here I advise:

• I invite you to take your kids on a hike.
• I invite you to take your kids to sit by the ocean.
• I invite you to lie on the ground in your backyard.
• I invite you to play nature sounds as they drift to sleep.
• I invite you to place a plant in their room and ask them to care for it, to talk to it.
• I invite you to allow the natural world to be a part of medicine.

“Osteopathy walks hand in hand with nothing but Nature’s laws, and for this reason alone, it marks the most significant progress in the history of scientific research.” –Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, founding physician of osteopathic medicine, in his Autobiography of A.T. Still