What is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a hands-on form of manual medicine. Its purpose is to restore movement in the entire body, to allow optimal functioning of all its parts. Life is motion and each body part requires certain mobility to be healthy. Osteopathy respects the body as a whole which means understanding the complexity of how all parts of the body interrelate with each other through their anatomical connections. This includes joints, muscles, ligaments, bones, organs, nerves, circulation and connective tissue systems. As no part of our body exists in isolation, our body will compensate if one its parts is restricted. This adaptation will eventually lead to inflammation, stiffness, pain and other health conditions.

Osteopathic treatment utilises a large variety of different techniques ranging from subtle cranial therapy through to joint mobilisations, which assist the body in healing itself.

A little history of osteopathy

Osteopathy was founded by an American physician, Andrew Taylor Still, in the late 1800s. Since then, Osteopathy has spread first within the USA and England, and later worldwide. After the American Civil War and following the death of three of his children from spinal meningitis in 1864, Dr. Still concluded that the orthodox medical practices of his day were frequently ineffective, and sometimes harmful. To put this into its historic context - some of the medicines commonly given to patients during these early days of modern medicine included arsenic, castor oil, whiskey and opium. His research and clinical observations led him to believe that the musculoskeletal system played a vital role in health and disease. Dr. Still believed that by correcting problems in the body's structure, through the use of manual techniques now known as osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM), the body's ability to function and to heal itself could be greatly improved. He also promoted the idea of preventive medicine and endorsed the philosophy that physicians should focus on treating the whole patient, rather than just the disease.