What is osteopathy?

Osteopathy is an approach to primary healthcare that utilises manual medicine as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of many diseases and injuries to the body. Osteopathy is complementary to mainstream medicine, working alongside it while emphasising certain increasingly accepted principles of holistic healthcare that sometimes receive too little attention during brief visits to the doctor. The principles of osteopathy can be summarised as follows.

The body has the ability to heal itself

This is what we mean by “Health Within”. The role of the osteopath is not only to identify and remove symptoms, but to help the body’s natural healing mechanisms to resolve the cause of the problem. Unlike symptomatic treatment, treating the original causes reduces the likelihood of the problem returning.

The body is a single unit

Medical science often imagines the body as consisting of separate parts and sub systems. Breaking it down in this way can make things easier to understand, but in reality the body is one system. All the parts are connected, and changes to one will affect them all.

Not only is your physical body a whole, but it is also one with your mind and your emotions

Thoughts and feelings are affected by your physical health, and vice versa. Osteopathy seeks to find a state of balance and harmony between your body and your mind, in which you can respond to the various stresses of life while remaining healthy.

Treating the whole person

Because "osteo" means bone, many people understandably assume that osteopaths focus on the bones. In fact, osteopathy is founded on treating the body as a whole. So osteopaths treat not only bones and muscles but also imbalances in fluids and other tissues, and osteopathic treatment aims to improve overall health. Patients often report improvement not only in the symptoms that brought them in, but also in their general sense of well being, energy levels and sleep patterns.

How we practice osteopathy at Health Within

Some osteopaths use "cracking" techniques, however at Health Within Osteopathy we specialise in cranial osteopathy which uses gentler methods.