Energy medicine: an osteopath's personal view.

Abstract

87 After nearly 10 years of struggling to understand the energy that drives the changes in healing I feel in my patients, I had an unexpected personal experience that drove me to investigate our understanding of reality, from the micro-world of quantum physics to the macro-world of Einstein’s theories of relativity. This study convinced me that our current, unquestioned model of reality is untenable for a complete understanding of human life. Instead, it seems to me that a new model of reality and existence is required, one that does not have humanity at its center, rather having what I can only call itself. My experience has opened new doors into a deeper understanding of patients, practitioners, treatment, health, and disease. I recall now what a surprise it was, becoming aware, without warning, of the presence of an invisible hand stretching out in front of me, pulling aside an invisible curtain. I realized at that moment that the curtain had always been there, right in front of my face, but I just had not been able to see it before. Peering behind the veil, I saw that everything that had hitherto appeared solid around me was no longer solid, but was, instead, a weak jelly. It felt as though we were all subject totally to the power of the waves and currents enveloping us, by which we are both supported and tossed, as if we were jellyfish. The whole of existence seemed to be subject to such an enormous energy of incredible power enveloping us that it made our edifices seem pathetic and insignificant in the face of an ultimate reality from which we are made and upon which we depend. I had been struggling since the early 1980s to explain some of the things I had been feeling in my patients. The body was alive but what made it so? The body repaired itself but how did it do it? How did it “know” what to do? Osteopaths have a highly trained sense of touch and are able to identify changes in tissue quality, motion, texture, temperature, and health, often deep within the body. I was feeling qualities in the tissues of my patients that I could not explain. The body was making changes and I could not understand how they were done. The drawing aside of the veil at last illuminated my search, making clearer a few more pieces of the puzzle. It is about this that I wish to write. Osteopathy is not a set of treatment maneuvers, but the application of a set of principles first conceived by the American physician Andrew T. Still, M.D., in the late 1800s. Three important principles are: