“Life is a Substance, a Universal Substance, unlimited. It fills each of the atoms and all the spaces of the Universe. Life is the Wisdom, the Potency and the movement of the “Whole”. The Life of man is itself a man, and the body is the empire that he controls…Why then not use this Potency that can and wants to be used…?”  Andrew Taylor Still[1]

Andrew Taylor Still in 1914

How did I get into Osteopathy? I would say like when things “fall from the heavens”…

I was working as a kinesiologist, posturologist and yoga teacher (and graduated in Motor Sciences) and one day a colleague told me that the UNC (National Union of Kinesiologists) promoted the first information course on osteopathy in Pescara… and that we couldn’t miss it.

And then we left for Pescara. It was the early 80s. I was 30 years old.

We were pioneers. In Italy Osteopathy was absolutely unknown and in France it was taking its first steps.

The first years of the course were enlightening and stimulating for me. There was a lot to learn: studying anatomy, physiology, embryology, learning techniques…etc…etc.

And I didn’t take notes during the training courses. My way of learning was to put into practice what I was taught, to be able to make the “new” resonate with what I already did/knew, how to associate and integrate new information. It was a great job of head, heart and body. But it helped me to or get “everything” and have “everything” in my hands, hands that have never forgotten anything.

Osteopathy also made me evolve as a human being. Osteopathy for me is a personal life path before being a professional life path. I saw in the Osteopathic “design”, thanks also to my yoga training and practice, a “project” that had a great resonance in my body. As a child I had many back problems, I was often paralyzed. They would have liked to insert a metal plate… (and luckily my parents couldn’t afford the Swiss clinic where they performed this surgery). Over the years, through Osteopathy, I have solved all my physical problems.

One of my most beloved teachers and mentors, Renè Briend[2], helped me a lot: there was a moment when I was experiencing a great depressive and existential crisis. Briend came to Savona to teach the first Biodynamic Osteopathy.

I suspected and perceived that Biodynamic Osteopathy could be very profound, and did not have to do with the usual osteopathic manipulations. Briend treated the center of my back, where there is the fulcrum of coordination, the resonance of perfect integration between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. All emotional knots were untied. And from that day I went through a 180o transformation.

And I said to myself: “I have to continue because this is my path… this is what I want for myself and about myself.”

Some “colleagues” on the course told Briend that at the very most I could be a “beach Osteopath” since I was also working on TV as a showgirl at the time… and he told them that I instead had the right qualities of sensitivity, perception and visualization to be a good Osteopath…I just needed to continue to deepen my knowledge of anatomy and physiology with discipline. And so, I did and still do.

Over the years, in the treatment of patients and in teaching, Osteopathy for me has become a progressive MANUAL KNOWLEDGE that stimulates the “BIO-ATTITUDE” (bio, from the Greek, βίος “that lives”) in individuals, that is, the propensity for LIFE and HEALTH (health, Latin salus–ūtis “salvation, safety, integrity, health”).

Believing in LIFE: being alive and not believing in life is a contradiction!

I believe in Life.

Every time I eat an avocado with gusto, I firmly believe that that seed will become a plant because I help it. I take that stone, cut it crosswise at the base and tip, insert some toothpicks to open the “door” when the sprouts appear after I have immersed it in water. When I plant the sprouted stones in the earth, I believe that a plant will grow from each of them. They will always develop from the bottom upwards and from the center towards the periphery, in every direction. As it happens to us too.

This is BIODYNAMICS (bio, from the Greek βίος “that lives” and dynamics, from the Greek δυναµικός, dynamikos, der.    Of δύναµις, dynamis, “strength”), that is, the Dynamics of Life, due to the Vital Forces that are nourished, impregnated, animated, permanently, by the Cosmic Vital Wave (six times every ten minutes) and, through Sound and Water, propagate Life and promote it day after day.

The Infinite Presence of Life permeates us, imbues our vital forces continuously, fluctuating from the Cosmos and from everywhere in a Spiral of Power that goes beyond any human disposition.

In reality, the definition is not simple, it would be like defining a tree… It is recognizing the vital process of creation that is happening in this moment, here and now! However, the term BIODYNAMICS well describes the influence of the immediate environment in the healing process of people.

We live under the sea of Primary Respiration. I would like to recall W.G. Sutherland’s Primary Breathing metaphor: “A house under the sea with all the doors and windows open and the tide moving through with ease, bringing form, function and healing.”

Life is a substance, the spiritual substance of the Breath of Life.
It is invisible, it is universal and unlimited, therefore it is without end.
It has been present for billions of years. It fills all the atoms and all the spaces.
It is wisdom.
And it has power and potency. It is the movement of everything.
Life embodies the movement of all things.
Life in man is Life in our life.
And yet this Life is also immobile with a vibrant and
dynamic immobility, an embodied immobility, which potentially contains everything
It embodies the movement of every single thing!
This Life has the Power to keep us healthy, because this Life is Health.

Osteopathy: some basic information

The etymology of osteopathy: from ancient Greek, ὀστέον, ostéon, “bone” and πάθος, páthos, πάσχειν “paschein”, literally “to suffer” or “to get excited”.

The practice of Osteopathy includes the perception of movements and rhythms of bones, muscles, joints, fascia, organs and viscera.

The seven most important principles of Osteopathy are:

  1. the body is a unit
  2. structure and function are mutually inter-related
  3. the body has self-regulation mechanisms (homeostasis)
  4. when normal adaptability is disrupted, or when environmental changes exceed the body’s ability to repair itself, dysfunction may result
  5. the movement of body fluids is essential to maintaining health
  6. the autonomic nervous system plays a crucial part in controlling the body’s fluids
  7. there are somatic components of the disease that are not only manifestations of the disease, but also factors that contribute to the maintenance of the disease state.

We owe the greatest illuminations on Osteopathy (and also on craniosacral therapy) to William Garner Sutherland (Portage County WI, 1873 – Pacific Grove CA, 1954, USA). Sutherland was a journalist who abandoned his profession at 25 to become a student at the first Osteopathy school, Kirksville, Missouri. Sutherland was a student of Andrew Taylor Still, the father of Osteopathy.

During his studies, he had the intuition that led him to discover the principles and structure of the Craniosacral Mechanism: he saw a disassembled skull (in anatomical terms exploded) and, concentrating his attention on the temporal bones, he came to consider them as the gills of the fish, which open and close favoring the brain’s breathing. From this moment Sutherland began an intense experimentation activity, which he conducted first on himself and then on his patients: he built a sort of hat starting from an American football ball, to which he added screws, springs and straps of all kinds, and he used it to study the individual cranial bones and their movements. One day, he firmly held all the bones of the skull and realized that the sacrum was moving a lot: this confirmed that the movements clearly perceived on the skull had a close correlation with the sacrum. Over the next seven years, Sutherland studied and experimented with new approaches and methods in the Osteopathic field.

William Gardner Sutherland and “his hat”

Sutherland, having detected the rhythmic harmony between the cranial bones and the sacrum (subjected to the wave produced by the fluctuating cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is reflected throughout the body), observed that this movement includes a phase of expansion and flattening of the system (called flexion) and another of contraction and lengthening (called extension), just as happens with breathing; both phases are driven by a sort of inherent fluctuation of the liquor.

Sutherland dedicated the rest of his life to experimenting and exploring: he defined as part of a “Primary Respiratory Mechanism” the movements of the bones and meninges, animated by what he called the Breath of Life with reference to the biblical image of the divine breath that creates life (Genesis 2.7-9; 3.1-7: “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being”). This impulse gives rise to slow biological rhythms, which interact with and govern the main systems of our organism.

The concept of the primary respiratory system expands biomechanics by introducing a force, called the Power of the Breath of Life, which animates the entire body and individual cells, acting as a vital resonance from conception (or rather from the first cell division), to leave the human body much later than clinical death.

The Phases of Cell Divisions

Potency is expressed through different deep and slow rhythms, the oldest of our being.

Sutherland’s discoveries allow us to compare his concept of the breath of life to the subtle energy that ancient traditional Chinese medicine calls Chi or Qi, the Japanese call Ki and the Indians Prana: it is interesting to note how the first term is translated precisely as ” breath”, in full harmony with Sutherland’s thoughts.

The fluctuation of the liquid, cerebrospinal fluid or CSF, follows a system of rhythms of 2-3 cycles every minute, and other longer ones, of six cycles every ten minutes, the “Long Tide”. These cycles are related to the health of the patient.

These tides are, in order:

  • cranial-rhythmic impulse (rhythm of 6-12 seconds per cycle);
  • medium tide (rate of 20-30 seconds per cycle, with approximately two- three cycles per minute);
  • long tide (rate of 100 seconds per cycle, approximately one cycle every minute and a half);
  • dynamic stillness (stillness, a state of apparent dynamic immobility).

The natural fulcrums are areas of the body located along the midline (the body axis that emerges and determines our development from the embryo), while the fulcrums of inertia are the areas of the body in which natural movement is hindered by a trauma, inflammation, injury, and express a movement altered in its rhythm and shape. The aim of osteopathic treatment is to harmonize natural rhythms, allowing the fulcrums of inertia to dissipate their traumatic and distorted kinetics and restoring the functioning of the natural fulcrums.

“Palpation through the hands uses all the senses, the mind and the heart to come into contact with the Breath of Life. The universal principle of the manifestation of life finds its echo and personal expression in our body as in any other form of life. This principle of “original movement” or origin (from which the world began) can be described in various ways: as the “all” that contains stillness and movement, in Yin and Yang, in Heaven and Earth, in religious and philosophical models, such as “cosmic frequency” for the electroweak theory, for quantum physics, for science”.

Sutherland made numerous changes in his conceptualization of the Primary Respiratory Mechanism, mainly starting from 1942 and, later, in 1948 when he developed a physiological and therapeutic model based on clinical anatomy, the direct perception of natural laws, the therapeutic powers of the Tide (mid tide and long tide) and the Dynamic Immobility of the Breath of Life, the involuntary self-correction and self-healing forces in the body. This approach is first of all a phenomenon of self-regulation, associated with the Original Potency, the Intention and the Potency of the Breath of Life.

The Form of the human body is intrinsically linked to Life; it is a manifestation of the Consciousness of the Breath of Life which imbues the fluids and gives them activity. It is the precursor of function and structure. Didn’t Leonardo Da Vinci define human anatomy as “divine geometry”? The embryologists themselves, in particular E. Blechschmidt (M. D. – 1904/1992) and R. F. Gasser (Ph. D. 1935), in their work “Biokinetics and Biodynamics of Human Differentiation”, are aware of the Presence of cosmic and universal forces at internal fluids. These forces, which create the Form of the human body, are not controlled by the genetic field, but by Primary Respiration and its different levels of expression and manifestation, which generate and support the processes of Life.

The Breath of Life is universal and its Presence is a manifestation of a Higher Consciousness. We are designed to “Know” the Breath of Life. It is the emanation of a divine essence. Let’s not look for it… it is there, in us and all around us.

“Liquid light
The space between the anatomy
The continuity of the Breath of Life in the fluids Every drop knows the Tide
It is the silences between the notes that create the symphony”.

W.G. Sutherland

 

My experience as an osteopath

The Osteopath should be a “Companion” who welcomes the Patient into his hands, investigates him respectfully and gently, discovering the path along which the body can proceed towards Health and finding a profoundly Omnipresent Memory and letting it guide with total Cooperation and Intentions that surpass our ideals, even the most noble.

Osteopathy has the task of “creating” space where it has been reduced, or has become non-existent or is in dysfunction, so that Life enters the matter in the best possible way.

The first principle of Osteopathy establishes that since we are INDIVISIBLE UNITS we must be treated as such. It requires that the treatment begins in a Neutral state, which is a condition of being and not a simple attitude: the Osteopath and the patient must find themselves in mutual resonance and empathy.

The second principle promotes the interrelationship between Form, Function and Structure and requires the re-harmonization of the different tensions.

The third principle underlines that it is necessary to allow the innate forces to express themselves and exercise their therapeutic power and can only be implemented through synchronization with the Inherent Power, of Long Tide, of Dynamic Immobility (Stillness).

The role of an Osteopath is to be a fulcrum for Health to manifest itself in the patient. The Osteopath does not look for lesions but synchronizes with Health. He has a privileged relationship with Health and the healing processes that emanate from it. Healing is the emergence of the Origin /the Source, which is contained in the imprint of the perfection of the embryo.

Thanks to the manual quality of sensorial and instinctual perception, the Osteopath accesses a total collaboration with the forces of the Long Tide (original potency of the Breath of Life and inherent potency of the Vital Force). These therapeutic forces operate and interact in the present moment with specificity and intelligence on the entire physiology of the patient, the physical, fluidic and energetic body. Thanks to the synchronization with the Tide, new therapeutic horizons present themselves with their great mystery and their deeper resources.

The Osteopath accepts the specificity of cells and works with their universality, because all living cells have two things in common:

  • a philosophy – they are universal and obey the same law;
  • a purpose – they are specific and obey functional laws that are specific to them (cells of the liver, heart, biceps, nervous system…etc).

We are not made of screws, bolts and washers. We are not restricted to pages of “joint mechanics” with axes fixed by “puppeteers” and angled mobilizations. Our Body is included in a PERFECT GRID that expands and enlarges by breathing with us. Our ANATOMY is LIVING and BREATHING. Every molecule, every electron, every fiber of tissue, every drop of fluid responds directly to the Breath of Life. The effects of the Breath of Life on the electromagnetic field, the fluids, the tissues respond collectively in a synchronous and simultaneous way, as it is a conscious unit that anticipates the “nourishing” effect of the next inhalation of the Universal Primary Breathing of the Breath of Life. At the end of the exhalation, the entire consciousness of the individual, including the bones, moves towards the fulcrum of the Breath of Life. The Breath of Life brings form into existence. The memory of this pattern fills with each breath and changes, varying with genetics and psychic influences, but the basis always remains immutable.

RATHER THAN PANTING FOR LIFE, BREATHE IT IN!!!!!

The HANDS

For me, Osteopathy is also the ART of conscious and “differential” manual touch. HANDS are unique ANTENNAS, capable of picking up, “seeing”,hearing, grasping, communicating. Wise and “sentient” HANDS perceive all levels of movement and their relative belongings (whether organs, viscera, muscles, tendons, nerves…). The HANDS must be able to select each of them and ensure that the dysfunctional structure retraces the perfect itinerary so as to rediscover the Agreement with the Original Program.

HANDS are a tool programmed to adapt to all surfaces, they are intelligent and accommodating. They are capable of perceiving even what is more subtle between one tissue and another, the degree of sliding of all the overlapping or interconnected connective bands, the different planes, the dispositions of each organ and each degree of elasticity, mobility, continuity relationship or dyskinesia (involuntary movements of the muscles, which are hyperkinetic in some cases and hypokinetic in others).

To “get our hands” on a human being and receive information we need to “see” him as in a film… from the origins onwards, like the footage of the blossoming of a flower reviewed in speed. Let’s try to imagine its evolution… from embryonic plate to tadpole… from egg cell to sperm which, like an arrow, gives direction.

It all starts here. From the meeting between sperm and egg. During each sexual intercourse, between 200 and 500 million sperm enter the vagina with ejaculation. Already along the vagina, a first harsh selection awaits them, which eliminates a good part of it. The ‘lucky’ ones who manage to continue the journey reach the uterine cervix, where they encounter the cervical mucus. Going back up, they arrive in the uterus, after which they continue their journey towards the tubal ampulla, which is the part closest to the ovary in which the egg cell was produced. At this point, thanks to a particular chemical reaction, only one of the approximately 200 surviving sperm manages to slip into the egg cell and fertilize it…

As Bios-requires®: it is Life that commands and Life is this: each of us comes from the integrity of the spermatozoon which was chosen by the egg because it was the right one… the egg must be positioned along its largest diameter… and there the spark of Life is triggered… and that alignment continues and insists, it exists, it always continues to be there!

The memory of perfection that the embryo has

When my hands touch a body they feel a universe. I just have to make sure that the “planets” follow their routes in the orbits assigned to them. The first attitude with which I approach a patient is welcoming and listening.

I alone cannot cure anything in a patient if he does not want to be treated. It’s not up to me to “heal” the patient, it’s not my role. It is up to the patient to “adjust” the part, or the whole, of a system in such a way that the vital currents can respond and irrigate the affected parts.

This is my duty, and not my power! I take care of bringing to the surface, of recalling to memory the awareness of design perfection, the Perfect Origin, from which every human being comes. And this original imprint remains even after a traumatic event.

A person on the massage bed is like a tome to be read and summarized. It sounds complicated but it is simply complex. It sounds like a cacophony. I just have to listen to the instruments and chords one by one and allow them to be in unison and find Harmony, which is already Perfection.

I find a “tangle” and allow Spaces between nodes.
I create cracks, entrances.
I expand breaches. “I defelt”.
And the Primary Breath does the rest.
I can only guarantee that you laugh well and everywhere.

My mission is to put myself at the complete service of Life in its imperatives. I don’t decide. I accompany the patient to go through all the caudine forks of being, of living, of reproducing, of doing, of nourishment again.

My task is to make anatomy adhere to natural, cosmic laws, and to primary breathing, with patience and presence.

Where there is a hitch, an impasse along a nerve, for example the sciatic nerve, I have to go and say: “it doesn’t work here”. I have to know the entire anatomy of a nerve, understand whether the impasse is at the beginning or the end of the nerve…feel if there is sciatica of fluidic or neurological origin, if the nerve is inflamed, compressed or pinched somewhere or if it is the fluid that does not rise upwards.

Then the still point moment happens, when everything is suspended…”suspension of attention, of resetting“, where tensions are resolved because we are in the three-dimensional Neutral, evocative of structure, function and form.

After the stillpoint (texture, tone and time) we arrive at an extreme expansion where the body and the cells expand… at a certain point the patient seems to have disappeared… there is only a sort of “cloud” made up of all the cells that are reviewing all their programs.

Sometimes the patient may seems to have fallen asleep, or be in a sort of hypnotic state, while having the feeling of drifting or floating: a state of homeostasis ( i.e the natural tendency to achieve relative stability) of body fluids which indicates a condition of tranquility and safety (the Neutral). Neutral is a state of equilibrium. It is the point at which the patient, in contact with his “wholeness” (tissue, fluid, inherent power…), is free to change by responding to Primary Breathing. It constitutes the access route to the treatment process, and allows the Intention and Potency of the Breath of Life to act. The personal “will”, both of the patient and the operator, disappears to give way to a “Higher Will” which allows change to re-emerge.

“Finding one’s own Neutral state requires respect, a deep appreciation of one’s suffering, the acceptance of the non-result and an abandonment of oneself to the Love of the Breath of Life”. J.Jealous[3]

Today patients call me to tell me: “Doctor, I’m out of the center! Can you putting me back on track?”. Even today, as always, I am at the service of the MEDIAN LINE[4] and I still turn the rope so that the others can jump. Or better yet: I make myself available so that those who turn to me can find in their Centering the Quality of movement to Breathe their life better, having fun, jumping over obstacles and overcoming tiredness.

A few days ago, one of my patients, in his second session, told me something that I find very beautiful. He went from “she” to “you”. And he later declared that he did it because of the confidence I had gained with his body to the point of “guessing” every critical point of his. He also stated: “It feels like you know what you’re doing! You have a mastery of finding the right points and you don’t let go until they’ve changed. You go all the way by knowing how to go from one side to the other and sew everything together. One gets up from the bed at the end and feels like he’s flying because all the weights he felt before have disappeared!”

And when the patient is in a state of stillness I feel moved away, as if I were no longer needed. My work is done!

 “Be still and you will know yourself”

W.G. Sutherland

“Universal space of the absolute The will is absent
The power disappears
No point of reference for the ego
Sensation of emptiness in which nothing is perceived except this space
Access to transparency Dissolution of the lesion fulcrums”

Jim Jealous DO

 “Unconditional Love means giving others the Divine Love that is within us, without expecting a reward, a result, a recognition.
We, the servants, remain in Neutral. We act as Conductors of the flow of Divine Love”

Robert C. Fulford [5]

The action of the Osteopath becomes precious especially in cases of:

  • TMJ syndrome (Temporomandibular Joint, pathology resulting from the malfunction of the connection between the maxilla and mandible),
  • ear infections,
  • sinusitis,
  • tinnitus,
  • craniofacial misalignments,
  • migraines,
  • digestive problems,
  • gastroesophageal refluxes,
  • abdominal spasms,
  • respiratory difficulties,
  • recurrent bronchitis,
  • tendency in getting sick, especially in children,
  • nervous tension,
  • stress,
  • panic,
  • insomnia,
  • trauma from sports, from accidents
  • post-surgery,
  • dyskinesis (uncoordinated or irregular movements),
  • postural problems,
  • amenorrhea, dysmennorea, menstrual pain,
  • lumbago,
  • sciatica,
  • cruralgia (pain extending from the hips to the buttocks and from the groin to the front thigh),
  • herniated and protruding discs, scoliosis,
  • all joint and osteo-membranous dysfunctions.

 “Osteopathy is kept intact by artistry, scientific thinking and a loving legacy”

(editing by Lorena Monguzzi)

[1] Andrew Taylor Still (Lee County, 6 agosto 1828 – 12 dicembre 1917, Kansas, USA) was an American doctor, founder of Osteopathy and Osteopathic Medicine. He was a founder of Baker University, the oldest four-year university in Kansas, and of the American School of Osteopathy (now A.T. Still University), the first Osteopathic school in the world.

[2] Renè Briend (1946-2022) was co-director of the European Academy of Biokinetic and Biodynamic Teaching of Osteopathy.

[3] Jim Jealous DO, 1943-20121, was the founder and the promoter of Biodynamic Osteopathy.

[4] The MIDLINE is our origin and our roots. It represents one of the basic principles of Biodynamic Osteopathy. It is the concept of the functional midline, around which the body and health are organized. The midline is the primary expression of function in the embryo. A series of structures arises from the midline. First, the primitive streak that appears in the ectoderm, starting from the caudal pole of the embryonic disc. Subsequently, the notochord develops from the endoderm, again growing from the caudal to the cranial side. After a few days the neural sulcus forms along the midline, rising from the tail to the head. During the fourth week of development the neural tube closes at the end, and the movement of fluids is no longer circulation. The midline pattern refers to the development of the human embryo. In the first weeks of the development of our “embryo” a series of transformations takes place which take different names depending on the function performed and the process underway.

The history of the midline begins from the “primitive sulcus”, a folding of the embryonic bilaminar disc. In the second week of our development, in fact, we are made of two “balloons”: one made up of the ectoderm that lines a sac full of rapidly growing amniotic fluid and another cavity, the yolk sac, whose cells form the endoderm. Between these two “balloons” a groove, called primitive, is formed which gives rise to a space that allows the insertion of other cells, which make up the mesoderm.

The primitive sulcus thus becomes the axial process from which the notochord will derive, a structure that will give the imprint to our spinal column and the nervous system. This midline structure remains in the adult, and is found in the roof of the third ventricle. It is a “pivot” point for all neural movements. During the inhalation phase, the Primary Respiration (Breath of Life), i.e. the inspiratory phase, the entire central nervous system converges in a spiral towards the lamina terminalis. During the expiratory phase all tissues move away from the latter. The repair and growth processes, the continuous cellular renewal, the subtle communications between tissues and organs are nothing but the recapitulation of what happened when we were still microscopic beings in our mother’s belly. Our process of differentiation, when we were embryos, is not “other” than what we are now: our embryo lives in us and the forces that shaped us are part of those same forces that keep us alive, healthy and healthy. equilibrium. Jim Jealous (1997) described the midline as arising from the Stillness (Stillpoint), generated by the Breath of Life. The functional midline remains present throughout life, and our structure and physiological movement remain oriented towards it. The Breath of Life enters the body from the coccyx and rises along the midline, radiating “like a fountain of life” (Sills 1999).

[5] Robert C.Fulford DO, 1905-1997, was a pioneer in the introduction of alternative and energy medicine in the context of Osteopathy