my story

My journey to becoming an osteopath began when I was seven years old. I desperately wanted to be a soldier that was a hero, draped in honour and victory. However, after meeting some ex-servicemen who had seen active combat in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, I decided that it might not be such a good idea. PTSD wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then, but I could see that something wasn’t right with these guys. Their lights had dimmed and I figured that if surviving conflict could make you this depressed, then maybe fixing people could bring about the opposite feelings in me and potentially the too. Then in my teens, I was playing in the woods with some friends who were pulling up sapling trees and breaking them over their thighs. As I watched, I had an epiphany. The twenty or so years of nature producing all these organic oxygen factories from tiny seeds into these components of the infinite and unfathomable complexity of nature was being destroyed in one second of mindless aggression, and I was reminded of those ex-servicemen. Then the words came to me that ‘anyone can break a stick, but nobody can make one.’ Then at seventeen years of age, I was fortunate enough to visit a lady called Mrs MacGregor. She was a blind chiropractor recommended to me by a friend as I had mentioned some neck and shoulder pain I was feeling. When I met her, I was blown way by how accurate her observations of me were whilst using nothing but her hands to feel me and her ears to hear my footsteps. After that first session I cried for three days and after that my pain was gone. I foolishly thought that my problem was solved by the apparent miracle but would soon learn that things have a tendency to come back. Months later I tried to see her again as my symptoms had come back. I was saddened to learn that she had passed away. Although my eyes were opened to the existence of manual therapy, it never occurred to me that I could study it and become a practitioner of it. Then I came to the end of my college and I had no idea what I should do with my life. As I sat amongst my peers who all seemed to have very clear plans about what they should be doing and where they should be going, I sat looking out of the library window at the magnolia tree that was past it’s best and waited for inspiration. Then a friend came to see me at my desk and as I turned to greet him, the book in front of me fell off of my desk and landed open at a page with the words Osteopathy and Naturopathy on it. I had never seen these words before and was intrigued by them so I looked them up. Once I understood what they meant, I was instantly hooked. I looked to see if there was anywhere I could study these disciplines and to my delight there were! I felt my heart flutter as I considered the possibility of becoming an osteopath and naturopath and then I knew my brain was telling me to go ahead with it. I’ve never looked back. My career started in 2001 with locum jobs around the UK until I got the opportunity to work full tie in Newcastle and Northumberland, in the north east UK. Once there, my principal took badly with a bad back, ironically, and I simply took over from him. That was back in 2002 and in 2005 when my principal returned, he offered m the chance to take the clinic on and I knew I had to go for it. I am very happy to say that I have been servicing the residents of Alnwick, Morpeth and Newcastle the whole time and my love of the natural world up here has grown stronger every day. I live here with my wife and three children and remind myself each day of how blessed I am to be in such a beautiful place with such kind and open people that have helped me and held me accountable in my practice.