Osteopathy is a primary health care system. It started in the late nineteenth century and is based on the fact that the body is an intrinsically self-healing, self-adjusting organism. They found that the structure of the body is intrinsically related to the function of the body.
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Osteopaths look at what has impaired or compressed the self-healing and self-regulating mechanism to have allowed disease to have developed in the first place and not resolved on its own.
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Osteopaths treat the person, not the condition. They work with structural imbalances that are present in the body to restore a state of physical balance. Patients have reported improvement in many areas of their health.
With palpatory skills (applied with informed, light touch) the osteopath can detect joint mobility and tissue tension and quality, sometimes deep within the body. Combined with visual observations and detailed knowledge of anatomy, the osteopath builds a “survey” of the patient’s body to establish how well that body is functioning.
Osteopaths often find that the site where the symptoms develop may not be the site of the dysfunction, which in itself may not be showing any symptoms.
Through their sense of palpation and knowledge, osteopaths endeavour to help patients not only obtain relief of symptoms as quickly as possible, but also address some of the underlying health problems to minimize reoccurrence. It may be reinforced by self-help measures such as guidance on diet and lifestyle. |
