The blue print for our bodies started out perfect, the body tends towards health – that’s osteopathic philosophy.
The choices we make, working off the dining room table (well maybe that wasn’t a choice), buying the beautiful car with the dodgy seats, or lying by the pool on the plastic sun-lounger for 7 days solid – they all accumulate a proverbeal straw on your back.
But things happen. Accidents, surgery, falls, injuries, trauma and well, life.
And then there are the psychological events of chronic stress, responses to trauma, and anxiety that add their load.
Even the things that we enjoy can play their part. Whether that’s pulling an overgrown shrub in the garden, running without conditioning or writing the epic novel you knew was in you.
The practitioners job is to discover how these aspects of your history relate to the aches and pains you report today. Without a good history, we’re in the dark, so I take at least 30 minutes at your first session to talk these things through, finding your perspective on the problem, face-to-face. Patients often know more about a problem than they are given the opportunity to express.
My other important job, is to find the traces of these markers in your body, gentling testing and cajoling the body into movement, big and small. And with careful manipulation and gentle articulation, ease out the tension from the tissues, on the surface and at the various layers beneath. The body listens, it’s intelligent – and responds. And that’s it. A conversation between you, me and your body. In respect and in constant flux.
Yes, occasionally I have the option to utilise the famous clicking techniques, but only if appropriate and only if you want that, no surprises.
A specialist in Physical Wellbeing is a detective of sorts, seeking out aspects of a story, finding the evidence and offering a hands-on therapy that allows the body to regulate and heal itself: Andrew Taylor Still, the father of osteopathy said that To find health is the objective… anyone can find disease”
When a problem has gone past the level at which the body can summon the resources required to unravel the problem itself, this is where the doctors come in. I will confer with, and refer when necessary, to the most suitable clinician, GP, consultant etc., to manage tests and or investigations into more serious problems.
