What is osteopathy?
To help you get familiar with our profession, we`d like to answer an important question: What is osteopathy?
We would like to give you a brief introduction to its origin, essence and methods of treatment.
Everything in the body moves: from muscles to blood vessels, from organs to bones.
Adequate mobility of our body`s tissues is necessary for functioning optimally and without complaints.
Osteopathy was established in the early 1900s by Andrew Taylor Still, an American physician.
Osteopathy is a manual form of medicine in which the mobility and function of various tissues in the body are examined. It is a treatment approach based on principles from anatomy, physiology, embryology, and neurology.
Osteopaths strive to ensure an optimal functioning of the body`s self-healing ability.
For teaching purposes, osteopaths often make a distinction between the different types of tissues that can be treated:
- Parietal tissues (mobility of muscles and joints)
- Visceral tissues (mobility of organs, around their own axes and in relation to other organs/tissues)
- Craniosacral tissues (mobility of the brain, brain membranes, dura, spinal cord, ...).
Below you can watch a video from the Dutch Association for Osteopathy (NVO) that shows what an osteopath actually does. The video explains some of the core principles on which osteopathy is based.
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