I very often describe to my patients of trying to get the body back to “normal” or as close to “normal” as possible. Defining the “normal” is very difficult, because it is mainly something that is viewed and felt over thousands of treatments. The Founder of Osteopathy, Dr. AT Still stated this during one of his lectures… “You will find that it is only when by knowledge, by sight, by sense of touch, you have become so familiar with that which is normal, will you be able to recognize and normalize that which is abnormal.”
During training at the Canadian Academy of Osteopathy, much of your early feel and viewing of bodies is on more healthy individuals. I understand that defining the term “healthy” is very difficult, but for this blog we will define it has people who are not in pain, and are without a known pathology. Watching the movement of these bodies, you realise slight variations from one side to the other, and while feeling the spine and moving the limbs, there is little restriction. Getting a great understanding of how those bodies look and feel, gives me a great advantage in sensing how an unhealthy body is different.
The abnormal body part, or lesioned area of the body, is very often away from the area of pain. This is where a misunderstanding often occurs between the patient and the practitioner, and trust is required during the treatment. Often times the patient just wants to be touched in the area of pain, but this exact treatment plan will many times just cause and increased amount of pain, and offer no relief. There are many examples where left shoulder pain is caused by a lesioning in the area of the right neck, which is responding to a bend to the left in the lower spine. Not being able to recognise that the shoulder is moving “normal”, can very often lead to the whole treatment doing exercises on the shoulder, and getting no results.
Overall, the ability to recognize the abnormal in the body is the most important part of Osteopathy. The main quote from Dr. Still is “Find it, Fix it, Leave it alone.” Fixing it and leaving it alone cannot be done without finding it.