What is osteopathy?

Everything in the body moves: from muscles to blood vessels, from organs to bones. Adequate mobility of our body tissues is necessary for functioning vital and without complaints.

Osteopathy was established in the early 1900s by Andrew Taylor Still, an American physician.

Osteopathy is a manual therapy in which the mobility and functioning of various tissues in the body are examined. It is a treatment method based on principles from anatomy, physiology, embryology, and neurology.

Osteopaths strive to optimize the body's self-healing capacity. Didactically, in the field of osteopathy, a common distinction is often made between the various 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 is a video from the Dutch Association for Osteopathy (NVO) about what an osteopath actually does. The video well describes some principles on which the philosophy of Osteopathy is based: