Six years ago I suffered from unbearable toothache. The dentist referred me to a specialist, who said I needed lengthy and expensive treatment that would involve losing several teeth immediately and maybe more later.
It was not a life-threatening condition but it was extremely demoralising. Surely, I reasoned, something could be done other than this proposed drastic course of treatment.
I felt there had to be an alternative but complementary medicine is a bewildering field and I did not know where to start – especially in a foreign country, communicating in my second language.
In the depths of gloom, I turned to a friend for help. She lent me a book, in French. I knew I was not going to read it – I did not want theory and advice, I wanted someone to fix me - but I took it home out of politeness, wondering how long would it be right to keep it before giving it back.
A few days later, I decided it would do no harm to open the book. Halfway through the introduction, I was already seeing my condition in a very different way.
The thesis of Métamédecine: La guérison à votre portée (“Metamedicine: Healing is within your reach”) by Claudia Rainville is that we should not see illness as an arbitrary misfortune to be endured but as a meaningful, even beneficial, message to be learned from.
My body, she said, was speaking to me of its distress in the only language it knew how. Healing had to begin with accepting this and taking responsibility for what I was going to do about it. Each symptom derives from thoughts, beliefs and emotions and can be deciphered. Identify the cause and you take the first step towards getting better.
I know how bizarre this sounds but I decided to give it a try. The principles were simple. Here was a system of complementary therapy that did not require me to trust nor pay any practitioner: I could do it myself but, if there was an invisible cause for my physical malaise – what might it be?
The answer came to me that I was in denial. I was telling myself and everyone else that things were more or less OK – whereas I was really in crisis. I was feeling rootless, disconnected, isolated and disempowered. I was not sure what I was doing living in rural Gascony. I didn’t feel at home and had no other home to go back to, my parents in Yorkshire having recently died.
By my own decision, I was shut in the house alone during the day, writing. If I did go out, I was frustrated with my level of French: irregular verbs and vocabulary seemed to always get in the way of me expressing my most personal thoughts.
It seemed to me that all my issues were manifesting in my dental problem. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds – medicine recognises that stress can undermine the body’s immune system, that lifestyle can lead to physical illness.
But what could I do about all this? One answer was in front of me. I needed to do something positive to make myself feel better and reconnect to France – to talk to people whatever my inhibitions with the language.
After some hesitation, I signed up for a Métamédecine workshop. This meant going alone to a secluded corner of the Dordogne and committing myself to a weekend with strangers communicating only in French.
The organiser, Annick Fauvel, explained the purpose of the workshop. You can only do so much healing by yourself – there comes a point where we need help to get to the root cause of illness. This may mean going back a long way in life, often to childhood. When something difficult, unpleasant or confusing happens to us in our formative years, our body adapts in order to cope with it.
To give an imaginary example, a child who cannot bear her parents arguing may develop a persistent ear problem to make herself unable to hear – or at least to get her parents’ attention. The grown woman probably does not relate her constant trips to the ear specialist to her parents’ acrimonious divorce – but until she does she cannot restore her hearing.
During the weekend each participant was led through a process of “emotional liberation”, which involves relating a problem in the present to a traumatic event in the past through talking and visualisation. The cause and effect can then be understood and the person is able to “reprogramme” himself or herself. I realised that in early childhood I had developed a tendency to isolate myself as a way to avoid my problems – and here I was isolating myself in France.
I was deeply impressed by the workshop and continued to work with Métamédecine by myself. While it does not provide a miraculous secret to everlasting health, it was useful information that ought to be better known – but I found it hard to talk about it.
After four years, I decided to take things further and train as a practitioner of Métamédecine. This requires completing four week-long courses to begin with and I did the first of these last year. I wanted to see how I could learn to use the techniques of Métamédecine to help others.
One part of the workshop involved each of us conducting a session using our perception and intuition. When it came to my turn, I had a mini-revelation. I could lead people into, through and out of their emotional pain, I discovered – and I could do it in French. Sometimes the best we can is simply to let someone talk without judging.
My training is still a work in progress but so far I have learned a lot about sickness and cure. Medicine is mysterious and many, if not all, doctors will admit as much. It is based on science but, in practice, it is an art – what should work, does not always.
There is nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeing health from more than one angle. I should stress that, despite the name, Métamédecine is not a system of medicine but a way of thinking about the subject. Complementary medicine in general is not an alternative to conventional medicine and certainly not a competitor: it is a necessary conjunct. It has, as I see it, four guiding principles.
The first of these is that sooner or later you have to trust the natural, self-correcting intelligence of the body and work with it.
The second is that we are more than just physical bodies. We are complex systems involving minds and emotions. These are an integral part of the whole, and the best medicine – whether conventional or complementary – cures on more than one level.
The third principle is that the symptoms are not the disease – they are the signs of it. It is important to ask how and why illness arises at the same time as treating it.
The fourth principle is that although we are all built to the same model, each of us is unique and in a constant state of change. What works for me may not work for you.
Métamédecine is a hypothesis that I am still testing in a personal way. I see it as a viewpoint from which I gain perspective on medical matters in the context of my whole way of life; I approach my health holistically and try to keep treatment to the least intrusive level possible.
When I have a health issue, I ask myself why. I do not rule out visits to doctors or dentists – but taking pharmaceuticals is the last step for me.First, I monitor my thoughts and emotions, look at lifestyle changes I can make, and use complementary treatments such as homeopathy.
And, as to the initial toothache, it went without the treatment - and I am sure that is due to dealing with my emotions. I have not been checked yet by a dentist but the pain passed.
For more on Métamédecine see www.metamedicina.it
