This all started 8 years ago. While being in an empty mindstate working my days as a regular, just started physio in the Netherlands. Really didn’t have any or very little success with all the patients visiting me. Even when I was very driven to succeed, there was no foundation to give any treatment. So there I started to think about ‘something else’. Really at that point, I had no clue what the ‘something else’ should be or look like. But I had to change from the way I was working my hours and days.
As I had did one of my final internships during my physio graduating year in South Africa I decided to write some random emails to some random people I could find on Google. Asking all of them if they had a space for this Dutch man in their practice. I was willing to cross the world and learn a different way to work in a different culture even. Little did I hoped for, but within a week some unknown guy replied me that when I would be in the neighbourhood I could come visit him to have a chat. I didn’t need no more and a few weeks later I flew to Cape Town for a little vacation and a chat with this guy. That guy was Douglas Heel. Again, I had no clue who I was talking with or what he was doing. The only thing I wanted was a new job in a new environment to get my adventure starting. By the end of our friendly chat Douglas invited me to NOT come and work with him but to follow his course and quote: “then we’ll see what happens”. Well … I couldn’t imagine what was going to roll out for me.
I flew back to my home town in the Netherlands and booked my spot in a course in London, UK. a few weeks later. Still clueless of what was going to happen. When I arrived at the course, the room was filled with some 25 other persons. And the first thing was told all of us was “everything you know is not true”. Wauw! I can imagine that everything I know at that point is not true, but also the guy sitting next to me, owning a successful practice for many years has been told that everything HE knows is not true. I was fully in.
With all the theory and practical tools we’ve learned, I was blown away from the first until the last minute and I couldn’t wait to put this ‘be activated’ in to practise.
From the very first patient until this day (8 years later!!) I didn’t stop treating everybody, that is 100% with the be activated tools. Nobody leaves my room without giving them what they deserve. The 1-2-3 pattern is not for everyone but even for the people that can’t or don’t want to get involved can have some minor improvements. They can get their breathing more right, they can get their eyes to see in a better way, they can stretch this and that muscle in a better way than before.
But for the people who are open for something very effective and also straight forward treatment this is all they could wish for. Very many powerful results. From years and years of the same injuries which are gone in a few sessions to people who are getting emotional because they wished they have found this before, to people that can’t believe their eyes because what they ‘knew’ wasn’t possible for such a long time is now being shown to them in such little time in the first sessions. And so on and so on.
The biggest impact of all of this is that the framework of Be Activated is honest and is for the people. It makes my work as a physio day in day out very easy. The problems that come into the practice are the problems of the patients and not my problems. Instead what so many of us get told that we as practitioners have to solve the problems. I, as a physio can put the mirror up and tell my patients what I see, what they can see and what they can do to get the best possible results they aim for.
I would like to thank Douglas Heel for replying my email some years ago. I am very grateful that we spoke in Cape Town. That gave me such a motivating direction until today and many days ahead. Thanks.
We will meet again in the (near) future, I’m sure!
Lennard Croce