As I was unpacking my suitcase, my first roommate at University told me rather emphatically that she worked with brain-injured children and that she would not work at a place unless they did "patterning." I was emboldened by this to tell her that I was a staff member at The Institutes. To my astonishment she had no idea what that was.
Realizing that I was not making points with her, I could not resist asking, "Well, who invented patterning?"
"Oh," she exclaimed, "It was invented over a hundred years ago!"
At that point The Institutes were barely a quarter of a century old, but we were already a part of the folklore.
In the early days of The Institutes, the staff were often referred to as "The Patterning People." The word patterning has assumed a power and life all its own. It is often used as a one-word description of the entire program of The Institutes. It is curious that a sophisticated and carefully designed neurological program that embraces hundreds of techniques and dozens of programs should be boiled down to one word. However, if we have to put everything we do on one hook, patterning is really not a bad place to hang our hat.
My first memories of patterning are not my early experiences as a patterner but rather my even earlier adventures as a patternee. As a young child, I was often asked to hop up on the table so that parents or doctors could be taught how to pattern. Being patterned is a very interesting experience, I can tell you. If you have not tried it I highly recommend it, especially if you are a patterner.
As I got bigger my baby brother took over my job and I officially joined the honorable corps of patterners. Back in those days when all our children lived in the United States, patterning teams began to spring up wherever a hurt child needed one. Today in the United States it is almost impossible to attend an event of thirty people or more without meeting at least one patterner or a relative of a patterner.
That incredible network of patterners has now become an international army that embraces virtually every nation. The honorable corps of patterners is perhaps the most diverse group in the history of planet earth.
It contains eight-year-olds and eighty-year-olds, but curiously all its members are young.
It is sometimes highly educated and often uneducated, but its members are always highly intelligent.
It speaks all languages, but its mother tongue is the universal language of love.
It worships in many different ways, but all those ways hold that the child is sacred.
It is sometimes rich and it is often poor, but only in the pocket, never in the heart.
It is black, it is brown, it is white, it is yellow.
An international army that never leaves the wounded behind
Hands on head, hands on arms, hands on legs.
Begin.
This is how it feels to crawl,
This is how it feels to breathe,
This is how it feels to live.
Big hands, big hearts
From the youngest to the oldest, from the richest to the poorest.
They give their time, their energy, and their love.
Their reward?
A simple yet profound gift from each hurt child, a message:
"This is how it feels to live,
This is how it feels to live,
This is how it feels to live."
May they prosper, may they grow, may they continue to make the earth a finer place for all.
by Janet Doman
