What is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a hands-on therapy that treats pain arising from the musculo-skeletal system i.e. muscles, joints, tendons, discs ligaments etc.

To become registered, osteopaths have to undergo a 4/5 year degree course.  This degree course teaches core medical sciences – anatomy, pathology, neurology etc.  Adding the theory to a highly refined palpatory awareness or sense of touch with biomechanics of the body, your osteopath will be able to diagnose what is causing your pain.

Osteopathy can be separated into two types of treatment: STRUCTURAL and CRANIAL osteopathy.  At not just backs… we use both modalities sometimes in isolation but a lot of the time combined.  Everyone is individual so responds to these treatments in different ways.

You will see from this website how varied our work is and how preventative it can be.  We are not just interested in your presenting problem but why you have sustained that injury and how we can try and reduce future problems.

What is Structural Osteopathy?

Structural Osteopathy is the more physical of the two modalities.  The osteopath will use different techniques to improve the function of your joints.  They include soft tissue massage, articulation and specific manipulation (you may hear a click or pop from your joint).  All these combined techniques are applied with consideration to your body and should feel quite soothing to the sore area.

What is Cranial Osteopathy?

This is a very gentle hands-on treatment.  It is so gentle the patient may wonder what we are doing.  The osteopath will use different contacts on the body, primarily the head and lower back or sacrum.  The osteopath will be monitoring three main areas when working with this approach – bone, cerebro-spinal fluid (csf) movement and fascial tension.  This approach works at a deeper level to the structural approach even though it is more gentle.

In adults we mainly concentrate on the fluid and fascial movement.  The cerebro-spinal fluid keeps the brain and nervous system healthy.  This drives the whole cranial mechanism.  Fascia is like a stocking that covers our entire body.  The fascia covers and penetrates muscles, wraps around organs, gives shape to our tissues.  It can be likened to cling film.  If the fascia becomes tight e.g. after injuries or operations then the tissues they cover, tend not to function as well.  This may not be noticeable at the time, but after several years may cause constrictions in the area and trigger problems.  This is why cranial work helps a lot of chronic pain sufferers.  We try to stop the repetition of the pain.  Like with cling film if you gently unwind it you can straighten it out.  If you are too hard handed then it tightens even more and becomes knotted and stringy.  Cranial treatment will therefore gently unwind and relax the fascia to allow the tissue it surrounds to function properly.

Please contact us for more information - our details are on the Appointments page