Mainstreaming Hanna Somatic Education | 5: Transforming the Mood of Western Medicine

Now, here's the thing about mainstreaming Hanna somatic education:  It promises to change the tenor or emotional climate of whatever scenario is involved.

Case in point: The Medical Profession

Anyone who's been involved in mainstream medicine has experienced the brutality of it.  Procedures (and sometimes examinations) hurt.  The examination room contains instruments made of metal that promise to hurt, when employed, and prompt patients to fear, every time the doctor or attending nurse goes to that little table at the back of the room, what medical torture may be about to ensue.  Many drugs have side effects and those taken orally taste bad. Surgeries, however necessary, leave patients with a painful recovery and often, limiting after-effects. Therapy is expected to be painful.  Pain management is part of the speciality, anaesthesiology.  That, alone, is telling:  a person has to cease to feel to feel an approximation of, "ok".

Enter somatic education.

Our clients actually do feel better.

What would (or will) happen when clinical somatic education infiltrates the medical profession?

Our entry point may be nurses, who experience the brunt of difficulty serving patients.  Lifting injuries are common.  Stress and burnout are also common.

I imagine what happens as a nurse gets the relief from somatic education that she hasn't gotten from physical therapy.  She actually feels better.  She now knows that there's something available that can help not only her and her colleagues, but also the patients who come through their care.  The reputation spreads: At the end of the "tunnel" of medical treatment, they know, is a process that can rapidly still the anxiety of their patients, restore their comfort, leave them feeling whole, ready for life.  The medical procedure has resolved into a great calm that leaves them feeling OK, instead of feeling as if they've been through a war.  We are first a resource that helps the most beleaguered in that profession, the nurses.  Then, on to physicians' assistants and nurse-practitioners, who are very influential.

Am I exaggerating?  I don't believe so.  What do you feel?

Now, what happens within the larger medical profession, as not only word, but reputation and regard for somatic education spreads?  After the initial skepticism and dismissiveness and results have had time to show themselves, some of the emergency mood of medicine dissipates.  A kind of reassurance develops in the background, underpinning mood of the profession.  Why?  Better outcomes.

And what happens in the attitude of the general public?  They come to regard medicine as more nurturing, more humane because even though medical procedures may still be traumatic, the overall outcome is better, calming, reassuring because things actually turned out well -- and cost less, too.

Any improvement over the status quo has its beneficial effects.  Someone with vision can foresee them.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Daydream the scenario I just described.
2. Write to me.