I have been practicing Osteopathic Manual Therapy for 13+ years. It is a gentle form of manual therapy that looks at the whole of the individual to restore form, foundation, and function. Osteopathy is a natural medicine, predicated in health sciences, and precision in palpation (touch). The objective is to restore mobility to each system in dysfunction/restriction within the human organism. Osteopathy looks for the cause of the dysfunction, not just the symptom or pain. Pain is an indicator that the body is out of balance. If there was an injury to a specific area of the body, the pain indicator is usually local to the area, which makes logical sense. Often, there is an unclear explanation for the area of pain because there wasn’t a specific incident that can be contributed to the pain that is being experienced.
It is important to start with a thorough health history because many of the physical and emotional traumas/incidents that have been experienced by an individual in their lifetime can remain stored at a cellular level of the body, and accumulatively, and over time can result in dis-ease within the tissues. I will often refer to the body as layers of an onion. Over time, the experiences we have, add another layer to the onion, and at some point the body is no longer able to compensate, and pain can result as an indicator that the body is out of balance. As mentioned, pain isn’t always a clear reflection as to what the body needs to return to a level of homeostasis (balance). It is through the Osteopathic approach, which helps to determine the area of blockage/restriction and unblock the mechanisms to allow the body to return to its optimum level of Health – the whole system: physical, physiological, and spiritual.
As an Osteopathic Manual Practitioner, the body is evaluated to determine the location of dysfunction and the treatment is designed to remove or eliminate the dysfunction, and return the body to its homeostatic state, so that the body can return to the self-healing, autocorrecting state that it was Divinely designed to do. I believe in the Inherent Nature that our bodies have for self healing. Sometimes the body needs some help to achieve its optimal level of Health.
How it Works
Palpation in osteopathy (hands on touch) can be very gentle, to the point of feeling like nothing is going on, therefore the question gets asked frequently as to what it is that is being done. The osteopathic program at the Canadian College of Osteopathy, at the time of my education, was a 5 year program, plus 2 years of research. This was to learn the science associated with osteopathy, and osteopathic palpation (touch) which involves ‘listening’ with ones hands to the tissues and fields of the body, and feel the minute changes to the tissue structures and help restore the tissues to balance and alignment.
It takes time to learn the precision and fine tuning of the sense of touch that allows a DO or DOMP to be able to feel restrictions in body tissues and help them to find a sense of balance or ‘release’ so that the normal functioning of the body can take place.
Some techniques used can also feel painful, it is up to the client to let the practitioner know that this is too painful and allow for the practitioner to alter their level of pressure or technique.
