When I was teeing up with my bucket of
balls, the range has flags to mark distances- 50 yards, 100 yards, 150 yards,
and over 200 yards. At the practice
range, it’s easy to just hit ball after ball since a bucket comes with 70
balls. But the goal is to practice your
aim, to control the ball better by improving your swing. So the first thing is to pick a spot to aim,
and to hit your ball as close to there. And that’s a good day at the driving range, hitting ball after ball with
consistency to where you want it to go at the 50 yard, 100 yard and even 200
yard marks.
When I was treating my patients the next
day, I was thinking of how our patients come in with their pattern of
dysfunction and imbalances. Our goal is
to try to change this compensation pattern to a new pattern, a new level of
balance. In our mind, we can see how we
want to fix this body and how it will feel, move and function after a
treatment. Similar to golf, the
beginning of a treatment is like standing at the tee box. The flag in the distance is the end of the
treatment and between the tee box and that flag are the strokes or Osteopathic
techniques we will use to get the patient to a new level of health. For example, for patients with acute low back
pain, their back may feel rigid like a piece of wood due to muscle guarding and
inflammation. To reduce the muscle
tightness, we may need to use a combination of different techniques to reach a
new level of relaxation and movement. To
me, that is like trying to hit my golf ball 250 yards, but instead of using one
golf club or one swing, it might take me two (or three strokes). For example, if we are using HVLA or MET to
increase the range of motion for a joint, we know how far we want the joint to
move. If we are using inhibition to
decrease muscle tension, we know how deep we want to reach. If we are using counterstrain, we know how
relaxed we want the tissues to feel. These are the aims or distances we want to reach with our techniques,
just like if we were holding a golf club in our hands.
The important thing is not how many strokes
or techniques, or even treatments, it might take to reach the flag. The flag is our goal for the patient of what
is possible for their health. For patients who have chronic pain and lived with
a decompensation pattern for years, the chance to change their long-term health
for the better is worth the time, techniques and treatments. As rewarding as it is to have a patient be completely
pain-free after one treatment, not all patients will be like a hole in
one. The prognosis for any treatment
will vary by patient due to the health of their tissue, age, diet and level of
activity.
Thus, I am not sure if our founder A.T.
Still was much of a golfer. But golf to
me is a reminder of how Osteopathy is special. It doesn’t matter what our score is on any one hole, it’s how we do on
the overall 18 holes. This is the
holistic approach to golf, and just like in clinic, even if it takes 1 or 2
more treatments, or 10 or 18 more strokes, to reach our goal for our patient,
as long as their health improves and pain reduces, then that is like golfing
under par.
Dickson Wong
Osteopathic Practitioner
Osteopathic Practitioner
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