Driving, the quiet rattle of bottles and medicines in the back of the van in my ears, the sweeping strip of bitumen hemmed in by the green swaying forest… A peaceful moment of silence, just to be, as I drive along to my next visit in Nimbin. The countryside changes slowly as I hum along the road, not hurrying today, just taking it easily. A crow flits up from the roadside, black feathers shining in the sun, his eye a wise glint as he is swept up and away with the wind. Up over the hill, the road now rough, clattery, jarring my bones gently, then down and out into more open country, with fields of grass bleached pale and sere by frost before I finally roll into town. A scatter of tourists, along with the ever present dealers touting on the footpath, a rooster parading up and down.
I pulled up at the driveway, and the two whippets I had come to visit came trotting out to investigate. I almost winced in pain when I saw one of them moving, his back was all hunched up, his gait stiff and halted, I could feel that he had a very sore back indeed with just a single glance. Their mum welcomed me in, and before long I was settled on the couch in front of a warm fire.
\”What\’s happened to this fellow?\” I asked, as he came over for a pat. \”It looks like he\’s got a really sore back, from how he\’s moving…\”
\”Something happened a few weeks ago – they were playing, running around crazy as only whippets can, and he yelled out and came into me in quite some distress. He\’s not been quite right since – though a friend of mine who\’s an osteopath has worked on his back a couple of times. His friend here can be really rough sometimes. Or maybe he ran into a tree or something like that?\”
I gently palpated along his spine, and he flinched, looked back at my hand with wide open worried eyes, and the muscles all jumped and quivered under my hands as I assessed his body.
\”Wow, he\’s really tight and painful!\” I said.
\”Yes, I can see that from how he\’s responding to your touch,\” his mum replied.
\”He could really do with some bodywork on that,\” I explained. \”Are you ok for me to give him a Whole Energy Body Balance session?\”
\”Absolutely,\” she replied. \”I\’ll just come and help hold his head, because I know that he was a bit nippy if you did anything he didn\’t like when we first rehomed him.\”
We got him settled on the couch, and I started to ease the pain and tension out of his back. I had to be very careful and gentle, my fingers easing into and releasing painful knots and tension. At first he was a bit restless and uncertain, poised to leap up and run away, but after a while his eyes started to look a little heavy and sleepy, and his body softened more and more under my hands. I released his diaphragm, and then gently released all the deep, core muscles along the underneath or front side of his spine. By the time I\’d finished, all that awful twitchy, painful reactivity to my touch had melted away, and when he hopped down and moved around he was visibly easier.
Then they both needed to have their yearly heartworm injection (they didn\’t like that much, and really, who could blame them?). I sat for a little while, sorting out my record keeping, and chatting about the village. After that, the dogs made sure I was leaving, while their mum gave me a cheery wave goodbye from the top step.