What is Osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a gentle form of manual therapy, using massage and articulations as a way to influence the neuro-musculoskeletal system. It is founded on the importance of anatomy and for your body to deal efficiently with the forces going through it on a daily basis.
Osteopathy sees structure and function as intimately related. If the structure is good (well aligned and moving normally) then the body will function the way it is designed to and symptoms will resolve. An osteopath looks at the root cause of the problem and treats it to give long lasting relief. This also means that the body is seen as one unit that needs to be treated as a whole, and Osteopathic treatment will seek to harmonise this whole.
Another Osteopathic principle is that “the body has its own medicine chest“, meaning that the body naturally knows what to do and how to be healthy. The role of the Osteopath is to trust this natural drive and to allow the body to do so by removing the barriers to recovery.
Looking at the nerve and blood supply to any area is therefore going to be key. This is what the body needs to be healthy, and Osteopathy is beautifully effective in freeing the blood flow and normalise the nerve supply to all areas in the body, contributing to long term health and pain relief.
History
Osteopathy was discovered in 1874 by an American doctor, surgeon and inventor, Andrew Taylor Still. When he lost three of his children to meningitis, and saw that himself, his father and his brother, all doctors, could not save his children, he started looking for a more effective ways of treating patients. He was fascinated by the ability of the body to naturally go towards health, to see that fractures would heal and common colds would go away. He also started to notice correlations between structural dysfunction within his patients body and certain pathologies. He studied anatomy and physiology and started to notice that normal anatomy was necessary for the physiology to be normal. From this realisation, he came up with the principles of Osteopathy and founded the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville. One of his students was John Martin Littlejohn, who founded the first Osteopathic school in Europe, the British School of Osteopathy, in 1915.
Osteopathy is a gentle form of manual therapy, using massage and articulations as a way to influence the neuro-musculoskeletal system. It is founded on the importance of anatomy and for your body to deal efficiently with the forces going through it on a daily basis.
Osteopathy sees structure and function as intimately related. If the structure is good (well aligned and moving normally) then the body will function the way it is designed to and symptoms will resolve. An osteopath looks at the root cause of the problem and treats it to give long lasting relief. This also means that the body is seen as one unit that needs to be treated as a whole, and Osteopathic treatment will seek to harmonise this whole.
Another Osteopathic principle is that “the body has its own medicine chest“, meaning that the body naturally knows what to do and how to be healthy. The role of the Osteopath is to trust this natural drive and to allow the body to do so by removing the barriers to recovery.
Looking at the nerve and blood supply to any area is therefore going to be key. This is what the body needs to be healthy, and Osteopathy is beautifully effective in freeing the blood flow and normalise the nerve supply to all areas in the body, contributing to long term health and pain relief.
History
Osteopathy was discovered in 1874 by an American doctor, surgeon and inventor, Andrew Taylor Still. When he lost three of his children to meningitis, and saw that himself, his father and his brother, all doctors, could not save his children, he started looking for a more effective ways of treating patients. He was fascinated by the ability of the body to naturally go towards health, to see that fractures would heal and common colds would go away. He also started to notice correlations between structural dysfunction within his patients body and certain pathologies. He studied anatomy and physiology and started to notice that normal anatomy was necessary for the physiology to be normal. From this realisation, he came up with the principles of Osteopathy and founded the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville. One of his students was John Martin Littlejohn, who founded the first Osteopathic school in Europe, the British School of Osteopathy, in 1915.