The animal medical centre at Ponte dell’Ania where I have taken stray cats for free neutering, has moved to Gallicano and its former premises are now a centre for alternative and holistic medicine.
The centre is called ‘Uno spazio per te’ (a space for you) and this is its programme for 2020:
A couple of evenings ago we attended a seminar on psychosomatic medicine given by our family doctor and iconic Bagni di Lucca personality Doctor Vito Valentino
Vito combines learning with fun and vividness. His talks are almost like theatrical monologues and he manages to make his audience easily aware of things they might not even have considered.
Psychosomatic medicine has been around since at least ancient Greek times and the saying ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’ encapsulates the essence of what it’s all about. The problem today is that with all its specialisms the field of medicine has become so dissected that doctors of physical treatment may ignore the knowledge of psychological therapies and vice versa. In fact, all states of health and well-being depend on a complex interaction between mind and body. To give a very basic example: walking is encouraged as a means of improving both psychic and physical health. Too many people today just don’t do enough walking. Since taking this aspect of our well-being more vitally I have tried to keep up my daily intake to a minimum of ten thousand paces using my phone’s pedometer app to monitor this. I have found that my own periods of feeling low seem to coincide with those days where I am just ‘lying about’ and do a minimum of steps. Of course, this also adds a physical aspect in that one accumulates weight and most of us get somewhat upset when we pile on our kilos!
Vito clearly distinguished between external and internal self. Our external self is what everyone else notes about us: our appearance and our behaviour. This become public property and in many cases almost depersonalises us since in so many social situations we only act out our interaction with others using a constructed persona. Furthermore, we may even become intimidated by the apparent ‘possession’ of others into our private person.
The truly private ‘self’ is our interior being which no-one but us can have any really deep knowledge of. Indeed, we often become very upset when others create an image of our inner self which is at complete variance to the one we know and believe to be ourselves. It’s here that the trouble starts. When the inner self becomes confused with the outer self then personality disorders really start forming themselves. Only if one has complete faith in one’s own inner being can one vanquish those daemons of the outer world – daemons which can be embodied by people who, through their own delights or, rather, their insufficiencies, enjoy placing their fabricated image of our inner selves tormenting us no end.
This aspect is, of course, well represented in ‘natural’ cultures i.e. those societies which have not entirely capitulated to western concepts of economic prosperity, artificial reality, somatic pharmaceuticals and psychological pseudo-jargon. The witch-doctor may release a person from possession by the soul of another as equally entrap that person into an image of their inner selves completely at odds from the one they truly know to be themselves.
This situation happened to me in an instance when a particular person did, indeed, attempt to ‘possess’ me. The physiological effect of this was to make me suffer a painful attack of shingles – an event which re-occurred until I had rid myself of the ‘possessed’ spirit – one of the closest situations I have ever had of experiencing powerful psychosomatic symptoms.
Vito illustrated his talk with various objects, including a set of spheres, and interspersed his ideas with a variety of points one of which relates to a Native American tribe who were wondering whether it was going to be a hard winter or not. They consulted the wise man of the mountains who said that indeed it was going to be one of the hardest winters on record, upon which they went to the forest and started chopping down loads of trees for firewood. Later on they returned to the wise man of the mountains and asked him ‘are you still sure it’s going to be a very severe winter?’ ‘Yes it is’ he answered. ‘But how do you know?’ ‘Because when I look down on the forest I see lots of people manically felling trees for firewood…’
To one side of the chair where Doctor Vito sat was a notice proclaiming: ‘Vis Sanatrix Naturae’, meaning ‘the healing strength of nature.’ I’m sure that Wordsworth had this in mind when he penned those immortal lines:
Let Nature be your teacher…
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
There are many other activities covering a panoply of themes listed on the centre’s programme.
For further information do consult ‘Uno spazio per te’ facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/ASD-Uno-Spazio-per-Te-155262395135360/