Nicolas Acquié, osteopath D.O. in Montréal
I’m an osteopath D.O. (graduate in osteopathy). I earned my diploma at the Institut Toulousain d’Ostéopathie (France) in 2013. I then kept training with other osteopaths. I see myself as a family osteopath. I work with adults, athletes, pregnant women, infants and seniors. I also teach at the IEOQ, the Institut d’Enseignement de l’Ostéopathie du Québec. Today, you’ll find me at my practice in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, in Montréal.
Member of Ostéopathie Québec
My path, between Europe and Montréal
After graduating in 2013, I very quickly understood that this diploma was only a starting point.
Inspired by the tradition of compagnonnage (the French tradition of learning a trade from master craftsmen), I chose to create my own “osteopathic compagnonnage”: seven years of training with “old” osteopaths with varied approaches, in France, Ireland and Québec.
Villefranche-de-Rouergue
It all starts in the southwest of France (rugby country), in Villefranche-de-Rouergue (my town), where I saw the first people who came to me, a general clientele, but also my first amateur, semi-professional and professional athletes.
There, the country doctor wasn’t just a health professional: he was a presence in people’s lives. He saw families, knew the shopkeepers, asked how people were doing in passing. People trusted him because he belonged to the same world as his patients.
I’m not a doctor. But that stance has always guided the way I practise. Seeing people, yes. But also checking in on them when the situation calls for it, seeing families come back, watching the children we first saw as babies grow up.
Toulouse
Then Toulouse, the city of my six years of training, of my first lessons… of my first sessions, especially in sport, with the basketball players of the Toulouse Basket Club (its website, in French) and at the Pôle Espoir de Judo, where I looked after future professional judokas.
Bayeux
Three weeks filling in at a practice in Normandy, a stone’s throw from the D-Day beaches. Early mornings, late evenings, a varied clientele: that’s where the pace of a real practice took hold, and where everything took off! Hard to forget that true start to my career, when world history is within sight of the practice.
Thionville
Thionville, this time. From the northwest to the northeast of France. A different setting, a different atmosphere. But the same appetite for learning.
For eighteen months, I worked in a well-established family practice, known in the region for its clientele of babies and young children, even though my own sessions covered a much wider range of people (adults, athletes, older people…). A steady pace, week after week, session after session, that let me really settle into the day-to-day of the job and let the movements become second nature. Practice makes perfect, as they say.
Galway
Before settling down in Montréal, there was a detour through Ireland. Four months on the Emerald Isle, to polish my English, and above all to discover how osteopathy was lived and practised there, in a different professional culture, with its own codes and its own approach. A short interlude, but a rich one. Sláinte! (pronounced “slawn-cha”: “to your health”, in Irish).
Montréal
After Ireland, next stop Montréal (at last!). Three years at a clinic in the Plateau-Mont-Royal to understand how health was experienced here, how osteopathy was perceived, how it was offered. Those three years let me colour the vision I had built during my years in Europe, calibrate it, and attune it to the Québec context.
Once I’d explored every side of the question, I knew it was time. Time to stop practising within someone else’s framework. Time to create my own haven, to live my osteopathy there and offer it, with my own vision of people.
In 2020, as the lockdown ended, the decision was made. In June 2020, I opened my own practice, at 910 rue Bélanger Est, in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie. A space that reflects who I am. In the neighbourhood where I live!
Since then, every day starts with a smile and the urge to investigate: understanding what’s going on, putting words to it, and giving each person the keys to help themselves better.
What’s more, living and working in the same neighbourhood creates a healthy pressure. My goal is to do everything I can to find, together with you, what’s causing your discomfort.
Trained in Toulouse, and still training
The Institut Toulousain d’Ostéopathie, where I trained, is a higher education institution approved by the French Ministry of Health since 2007 (ministerial order, in French). It was in particular its partnership with the Comité régional olympique et sportif (CROS, the regional Olympic and sports committee) that drew me to this school: passionate about sport from the start, I was able to work there with high-level athletes (mainly judo and basketball).
My training, marked by my diploma in 2013, will never end! I keep training regularly, in osteopathy as in everything that has to do with the person as a whole, sleep for example.
Diploma
Osteopath D.O., graduated from the Institut Toulousain d’Ostéopathie (France) in 2013
Association
Member of Ostéopathie Québec
Teaching
IEOQ and M—TT
The areas I keep refining
Teaching and working with athletes
Alongside opening the practice, I reconnected with my first passion: sport. Basketball, more specifically, when I joined the Institut Dynastie, where I worked with young international basketball players (incredibly talented!).
Then came teaching, at the Institut d’Enseignement de l’Ostéopathie du Québec (IEOQ), to pass on this profession I love to the next generation of osteopaths.
Teaching holds me to constant rigour: you can only teach well what you understand in depth. It’s a way to keep moving, to question myself, and to pass on a living osteopathy, rooted in tradition and informed by the latest scientific evidence.
And then other projects followed, because for me, osteopathy doesn’t stop at the practice door!
Among my most memorable experiences are working with the XV de Montréal, with basketball players and with runners.
IEOQ
Institut d’Enseignement de l’Ostéopathie du Québec, where I teach.
XV de Montréal
A Montréal rugby club, where I’m lucky enough to work with the players.
Hoop Canada Empire
A development program for young international basketball players, whom I work with.
M—TT
A training institute for yoga and Pilates teachers, where I teach.
Sàntat
A company I founded, which gives workplace talks that explain health topics in plain language.
Osteopathy training
I organize training courses for osteopaths, with osteopaths from abroad and from Canada.
“Movement is life, and life is movement.”
Attributed to Andrew Taylor Still, founder of osteopathy
My approach to osteopathy, on video
Shall we meet at the practice?
When the time is right for you, book online on GOrendezvous, or by text at 514-663-3826.