Kurt and Reiner Mosetter
It began in the cradle
Reiner and I grew up in a dream world of philosophy and nature but we lived through our father Werner’s severely disabling and painful affliction with multiple sclerosis. We were witnesses to the unspeakably inadequate, entirely unsuccessful and shortsighted ministrations of academic medicine. By the time we were born, our father already was suffering from pain and difficulties walking.
From 1964 and 1967, respectively, through 1987 we silently experienced with great emotion the ways that innumerable MS specialty clinics, university departments, neurologists, pain experts, internal medicine specialists and general practitioners not only mis-managed my father’s treatment so badly that he finally became unable to even sit in a wheelchair, but also led countless other patients toward suffering, pain, inability to walk, and death through their shortsighted and inadequate medication regimens. Even worse, like the families of hundreds of other MS and pain patients, together with our mother, we experienced psycho-emotional incompetence and recklessly arrogant misconduct on the part of so-called experts in the so-called evidence-based system of academic medicine.
Our sense of futility and hopelessness – as well as our fury in the face of such obvious systemic failures – led us toward creative resistance and a search for alternatives. So, the perspectives of Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine opened up entirely different, expanded and more effective options for treatment. Between 1986 and 1987, exceptionally gifted teachers of Ayurvedic, Tibetan and Chinese medicine opened up valuable windows of insight and action for me.
During the same period, the pioneer biokinematics expert Walter Packi and the specialist in orthopedics, chirotherapy and Atlas therapy, Tillmann Goerttler, were trailblazers for an intelligent and professionally excellent kind of academic medicine. From 1988 to 1995, Tillmann Goerttler gave me with valuable assistance learning biokinematics and Atlas therapy as a master teacher and mentor. Being at his side and watching his daily practice opened me to the luminous side of academic medicine, and left me with a strong resolve to study academic medicine – and motivated me to bring together diverse realms of knowledge.
Reiner followed in our father’s footsteps and studied philosophy, literature and German studies under his tutelage. During our father’s period of restored health between 1987 and 1991, we both developed a joint determination to develop an interdisciplinary conceptual model for understanding the underlying conditions and reasons for his recovery and for many similar miraculous recoveries, and to teach this model to others.
Influences and Inspirations
Our motivation for this desire was continuously nurtured by our many mentors. Besides Tillmann Goerttler, Gottfried Fischer, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Psychotraumatology has been a key figure for us since 1987, and has helped shape our thinking, action and practice. We understand today that the body, psyche and soul are just as inseparable as pain, bodily experiences, biography and arousal patterns in the brain. Through work on etiology and biographical research it is possible to contact the roots that underlie many illnesses and then be able to treat causally.
Education, Advanced Training and Mentors
In addition to my formal study of human medicine starting in April 1987, based on our work together in his practice, Dr. Goerttler came up with the idea of becoming an officially recognized naturopathic physician. “With your knowledge, you could open your own practice right away!” These were his words after a few months working with a combination of Atlas therapy and muscle treatments at acupuncture points or muscular origins and insertions. It was no sooner said than done, and this was followed by setting up naturopathic practices in Bechtoldsweiler and Gutach in 1990 and 1991. As a physician and expert in biokinematics, Walter Packi provided the impetus for deepening our theoretical and clinical exploration of “kinetic chains.” So, the Chinese “stomach meridian,” the “Brügger axis,” the sterno-symphyseal syndrome, and Walter Packi’s kinetic chains turned out to be one and the same phenomenon.
Even before Walter Packi’s work, the Austrian internist, rehabilitation and neural therapy specialist Otto Bergsmann had described the muscle meridian as a kinetic chain in 1985. From the time of our very first contacts with Otto Bergsmann, he became a proponent and advocate of Myoreflex therapy. Thus, in 2000 he edited the first book on Myoreflex Therapy, published by the Facultas-Verlag, and organized the first Myoreflex Therapy Congress for an expert audience in Vienna. As a fatherly friend, he continued to help edit our writings through his final days, before passing away at age 83.
Virtually from the first moment, my doctor-father Gottfried Fischer guided and nourished the development of the Myoreflex concept. In the spring of 1988, based on the professional field of clinical psychology, Gottfried Fischer offered me a doctoral dissertation on the topic “Outcome Measurement Research in Psychiatry.” To this day, along with Reiner, we have published studies together, presented conferences and continuing education programs in the areas of psychotherapy, etiological research, the biography of pain, and about new solutions for patients suffering from multi-level problems. Our close and friendly collaboration is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2013.
Diet, Metabolism and Biochemistry
Between 1987 and 1997 I was taught in Katmandu about the essential role of nutritional behavior and metabolism by the doctor of Ayurvedic medicine, Dr. Mana. Also in Katmandu, the doctors of Tibetan Medicine Dr. Rinchen and Dr. Kunphen enhanced my understanding of Ayurvedic medicine with the wisdom of Tibetan medicine. A personal physician of the Dalai Lama and Yeshe Dondon and Dr. Barry Clark from Dharmasala in Northern India helped round out my training in Tibetan medicine – not only in Asia but through several week-long stays with us in Germany and Switzerland through 1999.
At the same time, I was taught about medical biochemistry by a friend of our father’s – Professor Werner Reutter – Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Free University (today Charité) in Berlin. The special focus of my period of learning and research under Prof. Werner Reutter was on glycobiochemistry, that is, the specific function and activity of sugar in the human body. Cellular signal recognition, cellular signal translation pathways, cell adhesion behavior, and cellular and extracellular communication pathways are regulated and transmitted through signals from specific simple sugars. From 1994 to 2008, we were able to research the effects of natural molecular substances from Nepal and Tibet in cell cultures at the Charité in Berlin.
Neurobiology, Brain Research and High-Performance Sports
It is in this area that the circle closes. Not only have Asian medical models and concepts derived from experiential medicine been shown to be correct and to contain precisely the same findings and connections, but they also are more easily translatable into treatment concepts. The missing links for establishing a comprehensive picture were in the areas of neurobiology and brain research. As if on cue, the brain researcher and neurobiologist Prof. Dr. Dr. Gertraud Teuchert-Noodt from the University of Berlin joined our group of rigorous teachers and mentors in 2002. Thanks to her many hours of personal supervision, we are indebted to our “brain-research mother” for having taught us precious areas of knowledge, about the ways that neuroplasticity, neurogenesis and neural “learning” can contribute on multiple levels to salutogenesis. Our cordial relationship has made it possible to take many steps forward under her inspiration and rigorous teaching and to perfect the efficiency of therapeutic design.
Besides Gertraud Teuchert-Noodt, another major influence on our thinking and methods has been the Stuttgart physicist, psychologist and brain research, Günter Haffelder. Since 1999 we have mutually benefitted from each other’s work and have developed a warm friendship.
Finally, the specific insights into the muscular system related to Myoreflex Therapy have also been taken up by high-performance sports. Between 2006 and 2008, a very productive collaboration developed with Ralf Rangnick, Bernhard Peters, Jürgen Klinsmann, Roland Eitel and a number of other leading figures in the sports world. From these professional athletes, we learned the essentials of the world of professional sports. What is also special in these relationships are their warm friendships and trusting collaboration.
In the Here and Now
So we can look back at a successful history of 20 years of intensive activity and learning about Myoreflex Therapy. Every day brings with it the same question – Where do we want to go? Along the path in the here-and-now: exactly where we are…
