Putting Well-Being Front and Center: An Osteopath Visit to Casa Beatrix

Note to readers: I am not sure how my last post was in January, 9 months ago. That’s… embarrassing. All I can say is that I am sorry and I will try to do better. Thank you for (still) being here, and if there’s anything you wish I would write about in particular, let me know and as I hopefully come back to better habits, I’ll try to be mindful of any requests or preferences received. Happy reading!

A few months ago (agh, time!), back in August, our friend Vince came up from near Castelo Branco and spent 36 hours at Casa Beatrix. That was nothing new. What was different is that Francois reached out to friends to let them know about osteopath sessions available.

Two sessions on Friday afternoon, two on Saturday morning, and one on Saturday afternoon – we could have squeezed in one or two more, but that already made for five very happy clients.

Our osteopath friend did sessions out in the sun. Gorgeous.

I love the idea of enabling well-being, and of doing days where an osteopath is available at our place – maybe in parallel to a massage therapist or Reikki practioner…

The magic of osteopathy

I first met an osteopath in Bolivia, of all places. Melanie was Swiss, just visiting, and told me about this incredible practice that gave her the tools to gently handle patients and rebalance their bodies.

It turns out that sometimes, an ache in your hip is due to a stubbed toe, or a pain in your shoulder is because you are overcompensating – subconsciously of course – for an imbalance at hip level.

When Melanie first manipulated me, it felt like such a light touch that I wasn’t sure anything was happening. But the next day, I felt slightly sore, and better.

Carving time and space out for well-being

Even when we live in cities with all sorts of medical professionals at our fingertips, we tend to react and get help when we are sick or not feeling well instead of investing in our health.

In ancient China, apparently you paid your doctor every month that you were NOT sick. That way, the incentive was for medicine men to keep their patients healthy. I don’t know if it’s true, but that sounds much smarter than the way we do things.

Living in rural Portugal doesn’t help. Well, it does – we are living closer to nature, surrounded by fresh air and living more balanced lives. Sort of. We also have a tendency to push ourselves to our physical limits as we work on our farm projects. Worse, I know I assume that the medical care available is a little old school and conservative, with very little support when it comes to “alternative medicine” (to be fair, all my experiences point in that direction).

That’s why the idea of bringing healers together – and I mean healers in the broadest sense of the term, including an osteopath and maybe others in the future – to offer their services to our community here… that resonates. As a bonus, we had a “community dinner” on the Friday evening.

The potluck dinner we hosted on the Friday night was also about well-being, because mental health and belonging are a big part of that too!

What would you want to have access to, whether while you are here on holidays or if you live here?

Let us know, and we will see if we can make it happen.