What is Osteopathy?

Restoring your ability to heal

If given the chance, the human body is designed to be self-regulating and self-healing, and will strive for health. Over time your body can lose its ability to self-heal due to imbalances or blockages such as injury, strain, emotional stress, poor posture, aging, childbirth, surgery, misalignment, trauma or illness. An osteopath finds and treats underlying causes of pain or discomfort and restores your body’s ability to heal itself through soft tissue manipulation to:

• Increase range of motion
• Reduce pain and inflamation
• Improve circulatory flow

An osteopath considers how your whole body functions when he/she treats you. As a result even though treatment focuses on several isolated areas, you will often feel the beneficial effects throughout your body.

This unique understanding of the relationship between disease and dysfunction is osteopathy’s main contribution to the medical sciences.

A Healthy Spine

It is made up of 24 separate bones called vertebra that connect your head to your pelvis. The vertebrae are separated by spongy disks and cartilage, and are supported by ligaments, straps of muscles and tendons.

Within its framework the spine also holds the communication pathways of the nervous system. These pathways regulate the circulation of many fluids that supply life giving compounds, and expel waste and toxins from your body. Your organs, glands and blood vessels therefore, depend on the proper functioning of your nerves and spine to maintain health and vitality.

Your spine is not much thicker than a broomstick, and maintains the delicate balance of support and structure for the whole body. Sometimes, however, you can injure your spine through slips, wrenches, sprains or accidents. Problems such as these interfere with circulation of fluids. That’s when you need the help of an osteopath. The focus of osteopathic assessment and treatment is to restore alignment, health and circulation within the spine and the rest of your body.