Our practice utilizes a full range of Osteopathic modalities.
Osteopathic physicians perform treatments by gently easing and adjusting the flow and rhythm of fluids, lightly manipulating with just the right amount of pressure the muscles, tissues, bones and joints of the body to return it to its natural state of optimal function.
What is Osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a complete system of healthcare performed by a fully licensed physician that has completed four years of college, four years of curriculum at an Osteopathic Medical School, and two to five more years of postdoctoral residency training. This licensing is for a D.O. Degree, Doctor in Osteopathy, equivalent to the M.D., Medical Doctor, degree.
All Osteopathic physicians have some training in Osteopathic Manipulation, but the majority pursue residencies in all forms of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics as well as family practice. For those physicians interested in pursuing a practice that is focused on Traditional Osteopathy, or Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, these physicians study specifically in the specialty of Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment for at least 3,000 more hours, or complete a specific residency, and become board certified in Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment and Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine.
The Principles of Osteopathy:
Structure and Function are reciprocally and dynamically interrelated. From a single cell to a complete organ system, all of anatomy is alive and in constant motion, with each system moving appropriately for it’s particular function. All motion operates in complex, multisystem harmony in a healthy mechanism. The heart beats, the blood and lymph circulate, the cerebrospinal fluid is generated and circulates throughout the nervous system as part of the trophic flow and breathing and digestion happen automatically. Disease is the effect of change that is not in harmony with the organism and/or the environment. The architecture of all organisms and the natural world exist as they do because they have developed specific functions. Function determines form, and form determines function. Health emerges when function and form are harmoniously expressed.
Another fundamental principle of Life and Osteopathy is that there is Unity of Function. This means that the complete Circulatory System, the Neuroendocrine System, the Musculoskeletal and Connective tissue fascial matrix, and the other organ systems, all organize the body into a unified whole. The connective tissue, or fascia, is a prime example of Unity of Function, as it surrounds every muscle, organ, nerve and blood vessel. It supports and lubricate, as the lymphatic fluids move between multiple layers. Fascia condenses into tendons and ligaments, has six distinguishable layers, all with different anatomic names as it folds upon itself. Trauma, distortion and scarring in the fascia will inhibit function throughout the entire organism, and this diagnosis is a very important part of Osteopathic treatment. A specific example would be neck or rib somatic strain patterns that compress exiting nerves and create carpal tunnel symptoms that are in fact distant from the location of the pain, and need to be treated as part of the functional whole. Resolution of dysfunction or disease includes treating any involved regions, and not just the carpal tunnel region of the wrist.
Dr. Still had a tenet that “The rule of the artery is supreme.” This meant that the freeflow of blood and lymphatics into tissue allows the microclimate of the tissue to normalize function by allowing nutrition into all related functional anatomy, and allowing waste products to be removed. Just as a physician may clean and suture the wound, it is truly the patient that does the healing.
A third fundamental principle of Life and Osteopathy is the Inherent Wisdom and Restorative Forces that are present within our structure and physiology. These forces are accessible to a trained Osteopathic Physician. These forces have evolved over millennia as human beings have responded to their environments, both internally and externally. Dr. Still would describe this as the triune nature of human beings, as integrated body, mind and spirit.
All conditions, traumas, and diagnoses can be treated with Osteopathy. It is often used concurrently with more conventional (allopathic) treatments. For example, a child with ear infections might be advised to decrease dairy intake, and be given antibiotics if the infection is serious, all while receiving regular osteopathic manipulative treatment until the anatomical and physiologic dysfunction that has created the fluid backup in the Eustachian tubes has been resolved. This form of treatment has the purpose of resolving the cause of the condition, not just the symptoms. This is also true for the varied forms of chronic pain, chronic physiological conditions, including reflux, hypertension, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, jaw pain and malalignment, lower back and neck pain, post-concussion syndrome, shoulder impingement, carpal tunnel syndrome and many other common dis-ease processes. Please see FAQ’s for a more complete list of conditions and diagnoses that Osteopathy can improve and often, resolve.
What is the difference between a DO and an MD?
Osteopathic physicians are more likely to include the entire history of a patient as part of their evaluation and treatment. This would include not just physical symptoms and conditions, but also environmental influences, lifestyle and nutrition, history of trauma, and emotional and mental health issues.
Osteopathic physicians, while trained in the use of pharmaceuticals and surgery, are also trained in the self-regulating and self-healing properties inherent in human anatomy and physiology. They emphasize that the human organism includes body, mind and spirit and is a unified whole. They also recognize that Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment is gentle and safe for all ages and all conditions, often as the primary healing modality. Like Dr. Andrew Taylor Still M.D., the founder of Osteopathic Medicine, Hippocrates also focused on the whole patient rather than just a specific disease process. Dr. Still called the new system Osteopathy, because it was based on anatomy, and bones were foundational, and easily identified and studied.
History of Osteopathy:
Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., the founder of Osteopathy, was born in 1828 in Virginia. His father was a physician, minister and frontiersman, and Dr. Still learned at an early age of the devastation of the diseases of the time, including meningitis, smallpox and cholera. He lost three of his own children to viral meningitis in 1874 and lamented the lack of useful knowledge inherent in the treatment at the time. He studied deeply with the healing system of the Shawnee, a local Native American tribe, and developed a great reverence for the wisdom of nature. He saw the overuse of addictive drugs, bloodletting and amputation on the frontier and from the civil war. He began studying anatomy and physiology to a profound degree, and was able to effect cures in patients by supporting more normal physiology by using gentle manipulation of their anatomy into more normal functioning. He was the first to identify the human immune system. Dr. Still welcomed women and minorities into his osteopathic medical school in 1892. As his reputation grew, boarding houses spring up in Kirksville, Missouri, and train routes were redirected to accommodate the great numbers of patients traveling from afar to see him and his students. The Osteopathic degree has always been a full medical license in the United States.
“The human body has the innate knowledge and ability to heal itself.”
Osteopathic physicians incorporate a variety of gentle hands-on methods to address tension, distortions or stress in the function of systems and structures of the body.
What is Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine?
All forms of Medicine are both a Science and an Art. This is especially true with Osteopathic Medicine, as the many years of medical school training incorporate an understanding of functional anatomy, normal physiological function as they relate to specific disease processes. Osteopathic Physicians also learn nutritional paradigms, lifestyle and stress reduction education, along with specific exercises and stretching programs as part of the patient’s responsibility for resolution of their particular condition, and as a more holistic approach to healing.
All of this informs the very specific art of palpatory skill that all Osteopathic Physicians receive some training in, and for those physicians who specialize in an Osteopathic Manipulative practice, spend thousands of extra hours refining their skills. This allows them to recognize which parts of the physiology and anatomy are imbalanced and maligned, which fascial planes are restricted in motion and also recognize the vascular and nervous system flow.
The fascia is a single membranous envelope that extends over the entire body, surrounding every organ, blood vessel, nerve, bone and muscle. It changes thickness to become tendons and ligaments and is completely unified in function. Anatomists break it down into parts for identification, but it functions as a whole. Strain patterns in the fascial planes from trauma and disease create restrictions that are compressed or twisted along the fascial planes. This impacts multiple regions throughout the body and is referred to as fascial drag. As Dr. Still noted, “This connecting substance must be free at all parts to receive and discharge all fluids, and use them in the sustaining animal life, and eject all impurities (cellular waste products), that health may not be impaired by dead and poisonous fluids.”
The fluid drive from the cellular and intracellular level (between the cells in the tissue) moves into the vascular flow level through the arteries and veins, and then through the central and peripheral nervous systems (trophic flow) including the motion of the cerebrospinal fluid. All of these fluid drives, fascial interrelationships and bony patterns are interrelated, and when in balanced harmony, allow the organism to function in a balanced and healthy manner. These interrelationships resolve disease processes through inherent, natural healing mechanisms. Fluid exchange is essential to health, and ‘the Fluid Body’ is palpable in motion patterns as a single unit of function constantly exchanging and renewing each cell.
This inclusive concept is called Unity of Function in Osteopathy. The nervous system distributes impulses throughout the organism to maintain a state of dynamic, balanced tension that keeps us erect and functional, and allows us to use our senses, and therefore have action and cognition. The organ systems and circularity systems allow nutrition and respiration to build the organism, and metabolic waste products to be eliminated to allow further growth and maintenance.
All of life is expressed through this structural framework, which is informed and adapts to it’s environment as an interrelated whole. Human physiology and functional anatomy will compensate for any trauma, injury or imbalance as much as is possible so that the person can continue to function within the framework of those compensations. These compensations are evident in subtle palpation of structure and motion patterns. Osteopathic treatments allow the maximal resolution of these compensations, so that the integrated whole of the patient can return to a more functional normal and then continue to improve.
Osteopathic physicians perform treatments with gentle physical contact that allows them to diagnose the subtle anatomic and mechanical position of bones, ligaments, tendons, fascial planes, and organ positions. They are also able to palpate the motion patterns within the fluid fields of the arterial, venous, cerebral spinal fluid, lymphatic systems, as well as the intercellular and intracellular systems of the body. Normalizing the balance and restoring the functional physical mechanics, as well as the integrated fluid drive throughout the body assists in the removal of trauma patterns and disease processes.
Treatments assist the physiology to return to autonomic balance within the nervous system, so that the sympathetic overtone of flight or fight, so common in today’s world, can begin to return to a more parasympathetic balance of relaxation, digestion, environmental and interpersonal connection.
There are a variety of treatment modalities used in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. They range from very subtle and gentle, or if needed, applying specific minimally invasive forces to specific anatomical structures to increase function in that area. All treatments are done as a response to a diagnostic finding, and often can begin spontaneously from within the patient as their physiology recognizes what needs to change in order to resolve the imbalance in the structure.
The names of these treatment modalities include: Cranial Osteopathy, Myofascial Release, Muscle Energy, Balanced Membranous Tension, Biodynamics, Visceral Manipulation, Balanced Ligamentous and Articular Techniques and others. All of these approaches were created in the Osteopathic field over the past one hundred years and have been adapted to a significantly lesser degree in other forms of treatment including physical therapy and massage. All of the Osteopathic modalities are part of the decades-long training that Dr. Stanley incorporates into her practice.
One of the more profound aspects of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine occurs when it is part of the therapeutic support of neonates, infants and children. Labor and delivery are naturally, physiologically, very compressive. This serves the function of stimulating the central nervous system and the cardiorespiratory to begin to function outside of the uterus in a new environment without a functioning placenta, and breathing air for the first time, functioning independently of their mother. In the natural birth process, fluid is squeezed out of the lungs, and the birth generated compression allows for the first breath to expand the lungs, the brain and central nervous system to function, and for the circulatory system to function outside of the womb. In this moment, the heart, lung, liver, kidneys and gastrointestinal system immediately begin to function for the first time outside of the uterus. When labor is too slow, too fast or otherwise compromised, this may produce structural imbalances, physiologic irritabilities and a variety of symptoms. These can vary from subtle and those that will resolve spontaneously, to severe with diagnoses of infantile colic, impaired sucking and swallow, ear infections, urinary tract infections, developmental delays, seizures, cerebral palsy, digestive difficulties, constipation, asthma, allergies, torticollis, reflux, bronchitis and many others. The occiput, the back of the cranium, is in four parts at birth in order to transition through the birth canal and solidified into a single bone later in childhood. These boney parts, which have cranial nerves traveling through them, can affect many diagnoses related to the birth process, when they are compressed at birth. Caesarean section, although often necessary for survival of the neonate and mother, can compound physiologic difficulties related to birth, even though it is less structurally stressful. The birth process is meant to be physiologically supportive, although often dramatic. Osteopathic manipulative treatment of both mother and neonate will support the resolution of birth trauma, labor and delivery complexities, and complications of the birth process. Birth is the miraculous expression of life moving forward, and Osteopathy can support its’ extraordinary expression.
Using light touch, practitioners assess the quality of the patients’ Cranial Rhythm and compare it to what they consider to be a normal rhythm, they can then judge the state of the patient’s body and how well it is functioning.
What is Cranial Osteopathy?
The continuing evolution of the science and art of medicine is a vital part of the continuation of healing. In Osteopathy, the principles were expanded by the work of William G. Sutherland D.O. He graduated from the American School of Osteopathy in 1900. As a senior medical student, he noticed the disarticulated temporal bones of the cranium and had an inspirational moment when realizing that the cranial bones could be capable of respiratory motion. He studied, researched and experimented with the clinical relevance of these ideas for thirty years, and released his research to his peers with his announcement of “Osteopathy in the Cranial Field”. He applied fundamental Osteopathic Principles to the cranium and central nervous system.
Dr. Sutherland was from Wisconsin and was an investigative reporter prior to attending Osteopathic medical school. This background was an important part of his persistent inquiry into physiologic principles. Over time, his work has been a part of the training of hundreds of physicians throughout the world, allowed healing for thousands of patients, and has been proven physiologically with computerized tomography that was not available at the time he initially discovered them.
At the core of Dr. Sutherland’s concept of the cranial mechanism lies the concept of Primary Respiration. The definition of the Primary Respiratory Mechanism (PRM) is an understanding that this system is:
Dr. Sutherland understood that the cranial concepts are not theoretical alone, and in the hands of a trained Osteopath, allow connection to Primary Respiration to allow a therapeutic response and healing because of the Inherent Intelligence within.
The Primary Respiratory Mechanism has five interrelated components as described by Dr. Sutherland:
“As I sit with my hands upon the patient, I learn how trauma has established itself in the whole person. Then as needed, I move into bone, membrane, fluid or potency.”
The structural and physiologic dysfunctions that have created symptoms can be resolved by aligning the adult (or childhood) anatomy with this ever present embryologic field.
Biodynamic Osteopathy and Inherent Intelligence:
“Osteopathy embraces the interplay of structural organizing dynamics and metabolic activities that give rise to form and function. It recognizes the inherent wisdom and intelligence within every cell. It seeks to recover what has been lost; to find the innate self-corrective principles that guide us, maintain us, and restore us. It taps that within us that is all powerful. Osteopathy is the artful study and practical application of anatomy and physiology.” James Jealous, D.O.
The practice of Osteopathy became more integrative and intrinsic over time. This was true for the writings and work of both Dr. Still and Dr. Sutherland. Dr. Sutherland described “the inherent therapeutic process” and to “allow physiologic function within to manifest its own unerring potency rather than to apply a blind force from without”. Dr. Jealous incorporated these ideas and experiences with the environmental field theory of an embryologist named Dr. Blechschmidt, relating to cellular movement of the embryonic cells as they moved in development to become the structures of the adult organism. He called these patterns of movement in the metabolic field of the embryo ‘Biodynamics’.
Dr. Jealous recognized that these movement patterns were identical to the movement patterns observed in Osteopathic treatment by Dr. Sutherland. This means that the ‘generative’ forces of the developing embryo are identical to the ‘regenerative’ forces that occur in functional physiology, and in the inherent repair of disease and dysfunction. The notochord, which was the developing early midline of our brain, spinal cord and central nervous system, remains as an invisible functional midline that persists throughout life, guiding and actively organizing our physiology.
Dr. Jealous also recognized, as do many ancient healing systems, that the dynamic relationship with the natural world and our environment are vital components of true Health. In this sense, the entire Universe is inherently intelligent. All of these forces are a harmonious, interrelated whole, of which we are active participants. In this understanding, Primary Respiration is not restricted to the human body, but is also part of a symphony of interrelated Life.
The motion patterns of the fluids in the developing embryo reflect the interrelationship of the fluids of the maternal environment with the fluid matrix of the embryo. Even complex forms arise directly from fluid dynamics, as a hydraulic experiment of fluid injected into fluid created forms matching progressive embryologic forms, has demonstrated. For example, the development of the cerebral cortex mirrors the circular movement of fluid moving within fluid, and then after the form has solidified, the same motion pattern persists as the physiologic nutritional function of the cerebral spinal fluid as it circulates throughout the central nervous system. The same dynamics are happening simultaneously within the entire organism and all fluid forms of blood, lymph, intra and intercellular fluids, as well as bone, fascial components, muscle and organs which are suspended in these dynamic fluids.
When relating and interacting with the forces that organize and maintain a living organism, Osteopaths that incorporate a biodynamic orientation do not restrict themselves to physical boundaries, as the environment to the horizon and beyond are inseparable. Quantum physics has been demonstrating this for a century.
Biodynamics intrinsically relates to the whole, rather than to simply focus on a specific disease or dysfunction. As the physician listens and palpates from their own physiologic midline, the healing motion present in the center of dysfunction of the patient can be engaged and allowed to emerge as health. This is very different than the biomechanical approach to illness. Health is always present within and predates form as the field matrix in which form develops. Through our listening fingers, we connect with the inherent Health in the patient. Through the Dynamic Stillness of that potentiality, we allow the patient to reestablish their relationship to Primary Respiration, the Whole, the Midline and the Horizon, and then healing emerges spontaneously.
Classical Homeopathy is a treatment that uses very small amounts of mineral, plant and animal-based substances to treat a broad spectrum of illnesses and conditions, both acute and chronic.
What is Classical Homeopathy?
Classical Homeopathy is a treatment that uses very small amounts of mineral, plant and animal-based substances to treat a broad spectrum of illnesses and conditions, both acute and chronic. A classical homeopathic remedy is a single substance that is determined to be the correct substance to assist the patient to begin a deep healing response. The remedy is chosen after a number of interviews, and usually Osteopathic treatment, to determine the exact match that will be the most beneficial to the patient.
In homeopathic theory and practice, ‘like cures like’, much like a vaccination allows the body to mount an appropriate immune response to a serious illness, but with minimal side effects. Homeopathy can be useful for treating everything from allergies to chronic auto-immune conditions, or to help acute trauma to resolve much more rapidly.
At the turn of the 20th century, homeopathy was practiced in over sixty countries, and continues to be practiced all over the world. There were 100 homeopathic hospitals, 22 homeopathic medical schools and 15,000 homeopathic physicians in the United States in the early 1900’s.
The advent of antibiotics decreased the interest in more holistic treatment protocols, but there has been renewed interest in this country for the past thirty years, as some of the difficulties with conventional, or allopathic treatment, have become apparent. This includes severe resistance to antibiotic treatment, creating ‘superbugs’, as well as the difficulty that allopathic care has when treating chronic conditions, or in genuinely assisting the patient to move toward health.
We welcome you and your family! Dr. Stanley expertise encompasses all ages and stages of life, from birth and throughout adulthood, including providing care and support for children and expectant mothers.