Arthur John Rosen • Therapeutic Reflexologist & Craniosacral Therapist – I’m not a medical doctor — please read my full disclosure before acting on anything here.
I provide natural therapies that support the body’s natural healing abilities, and share what I’ve experienced and witnessed along the way.
I learned that change is annoying, but if we want to change our lives for the better, we need to do the the things we don’t feel like doing .
You are the kind of person who has been handed a verdict at some point — a diagnosis, a prognosis, a sentence that sounded final. I want to tell you why I’ve learnt not to trust verdicts quite so completely, and what changed my mind.
I heard someone paraphrasing an idea recently, loosely attributed to Voltaire, though I can’t confirm he actually said it in these words: change is annoying, but certainty is absurd. The person went on to say that’s exactly what you observe wherever you actually look — not in theory, but in practice.
I think about that a great deal, because I was handed a certainty once, and it turned out to be wrong.
The Certainty I Was Given
In 2004 I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I was told, plainly and honestly, by a good doctor doing his job well: “We don’t know what causes it, There is no cure. You just need to take your meds and llve with it”.
That wasn’t a lie. It was the most accurate thing medicine could tell me at the time. But it was delivered, and received, as a certainty — a fixed fact about my future rather than a snapshot of what was known in that moment. I built years of my life around that certainty before I ever thought to question it.
Why Certainty Is the Absurd One
Change is genuinely annoying. Nobody enjoys uncertainty, ambiguity, having to keep asking questions rather than settling into an answer. I understand completely why a fixed verdict feels more comfortable than an open one.
But when you actually look at bodies — at how they behave over years, not moments — certainty is the stranger of the two. Conditions shift. Root causes get found or missed. What was true about a body five years ago is not always true about the same body today. Change, uncomfortable as it is, turns out to be the more honest description of what’s actually happening. Certainty is the convenient desire for ease.
I didn’t reverse my Crohn’s by rejecting the doctor who gave me that verdict — he was right, given what he knew. I reversed it by refusing to treat his certainty as more permanent than it actually was.
What I’d Say to You
If you’ve been carrying a verdict for a while — about your body, your health, your future — it might be worth asking whether you’re still holding it as a certainty, or whether it was only ever a snapshot that time may have already moved past.
Comfort quiets things down for a while. Results mean you stop needing to quiet them down at all. Sometimes the first step toward results is simply admitting that the certainty you’ve been carrying was never as solid as it felt.
About Arthur
Arthur John Rosen is a Registered Therapeutic Reflexologist and Craniosacral Therapist practising at Lifetime Health in Bedford Park, Johannesburg. A former Chartered Accountant, he retrained twice in his sixties after his own health journey — detailed in his book How to Be Free of IBD — changed the course of his career and his life.
Read the full story in How to Be Free of IBD.
Arthur John is a rebel against chronic disease.
Arthur John Rosen
Be flexible like a reed, not rigid like a cedar.
Lifetime Health, Bedford Park, Johannesburg
📞 082 456 0155
✉️ arthur@lifetimehealth.co.za
🌐 www.lifetimehealth.co.za
I’m honoured that you read this. Whatever you’re working towards, I’m rooting for you, but more importantly, make sure you’re rooting for yourself!
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I share my journey and what I have watched become possible. I am not a medical doctor and nothing I write or say is medical advice.
The experiences shared here are offered to illustrate what is possible — not as a guaranteed blueprint or medical prescription for your specific condition. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult your healthcare team before making any major changes to your treatment.