Thanks to my research and travels, I have met truly special people. At this point in my journey, I believe that a true master does not need to feel like one, but only to teach, to pass on all the knowledge he has acquired and developed, allowing students to continue their own research and evolution, free from any form of attachment to their own ego. And Don Leandro was like that: he is and will always be My Master.
I met him at the age of 22. Suffering from pain after an operation on my left meniscus, I was looking for help. I was told about him, a Catholic priest who dedicated himself to healing people with a form of natural manual medicine. At the time he was about sixty years old. He was a big, burly man from the countryside, with white hair and glasses: he didn’t let much of his personality show. He was surrounded by patients and some assistants.
He began to treat me as a “nerve adjuster”, a trade that is disappearing today, handed down from family to family, and that not all family members could practice, since the ability to perceive that “quid” that was imperceptible to most was necessary.
From what the people waiting said, it seemed that Don Leandro knew his stuff. A man of few words, with a strong but gentle touch, he began to treat my sore knee. I was scared: he twisted and turned it in every way with a shocking certainty. The pain did not subside immediately, it took some time, and I healed.
As a skeptic, I wondered if it would have passed even without that treatment, if it had just been a “placebo”, but inside me the spark had ignited: I wanted him to teach me this ancient art. He accepted me as a student: I didn’t want to be a burden and I didn’t understand if he really enjoyed having me there trying to steal great secrets and concepts from him. I timidly interposed myself between him and the patients, when all of a sudden, pointing to a patient lying on the mat in the center of the room, he said: “Go on Maurizio, fix his back.” That sentence marked the beginning of this unique apprenticeship.
In a short time one thing became clear to me: he wanted to teach not only me, but as many people as possible, in order to help people and not let that particular form of medicine fall into oblivion. I almost felt ashamed for thinking he didn’t want to pass on his knowledge to me, or that I was there to bother him… and many other unformulated and indiscernible thoughts that form in moments and situations of that kind.
Writing these lines… well yes, I feel like crying, strongly, from the heart. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. The heart knows.
I soon realized that my master’s technical and cultural background was not only based on the techniques he was teaching me. I had tried to imagine the passage of the “nerves to be moved” and the trajectories to look for during the manipulations, but it was clear that there was little to remember and much more to feel. I liked that because that’s how you have to heal: listen.
The weeks passed and the Don, as we affectionately called him, allowed me to do more and more treatments. Every time I realized that many things had not been said to me. Or perhaps, precisely, how to say them?
The fact was that the Don used a “trick”: for simpler cases, back pain or the like, the trick was not needed; for more complex ones, the intervention of a girl, sitting in the same room, who frantically wrote words on sheets of paper, was needed. They explained to me that she was gifted with automatic writing, able to give us the solutions for the most difficult patients.
What…? She wrote the solutions for us…? Another act of faith… well, yes. Apparently the Don relied heavily on these writings, which came from the world of the dead to intercede, and give a hand, to that of the living. The atmosphere seemed anything but clear to me, but I found that there was truth in the writings.
I now knew the “secret weapon of the Don”, but I preferred to continue to see him as the one who puts back in place back, leg, shoulder, the father who helps you. There was a particular aspect that became more and more defined over time: the techniques used and their correct application were important, but… there was something else. Disappointment…? Were there perhaps several equally effective ways to treat the same patient…? Surely. But what was the common ingredient then? Don Leandro emanated LOVE.
I spent wonderful moments in the small parish of Torrazza Piemonte. Meeting Don Leandro changed the lives of many patients, and this experience changed my life too. Not only was I feeling better, but I realized that I was opening my perspective, I was understanding not only with my mind, as I had done up to that moment at the University of Engineering, but with my heart.
People began to feel good from the moment they arrived at the parish and sat in the long corridor that served as a waiting room. They told us: “How good it feels here… I already feel better… what’s happening to me, Father…?”.
It was therefore Love that made the treatment work. Weren’t they the special techniques… or were they? Feeling, being able to tune in certainly played their part, but weren’t they also part of love, of true love?
I was changing: in the past I wanted to know and know, I was never satisfied. I wanted to learn… and now I was here to learn medicine too. A change of level had taken place: knowing information, having new notions about the human body still interested me, but I had sensed that the Don did it for one great, noble reason: he wanted to help others. He was able to love others, indiscriminately, without any prejudice!
That’s what Don Leandro did.
I had come to know a wonderful secret. It was the most beautiful secret I had ever known. It was worth spreading it, shouting it to the four winds, writing it in all the colors of the rainbow and the earth, but it would have remained a secret. It was a particular secret: it was not the Don who did not want to reveal it, but the others who did not want to internalize it.
