Episode 7 - To Find Health: The Osteopathic Imperative

In 1899, the founder of Osteopathy, Andrew Taylor Still declared, “To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease.” What a radical outlook! This apparently simple statement from Still defines the difference a DO makes. The recognition of health as a reference point and the origin of healing is what makes Osteopathy distinct from all other healing arts and sciences. Osteopathy did not invent health, we just identified it as a perceptual field and learned how to reliably access it for the benefit of our patients. In this episode we will be exploring the biologic field of health in greater detail based upon the Osteopathic experience.

The most common definition of health is to characterize it in the opposite, “health is the absence of disease.” From an Osteopathic perspective, health is NOT merely the absence of disease. Health has no opposite. It is unequivocally complete and present as long as a person is alive. 

We define the concept of health as “a distinctive biologic matrix within a living being that interfaces with every aspect of structure, with all of the physiologic processes, and with the totality of all psychological states (both conscious and unconscious). It is the milieu, the growth medium, and the nutritional source of the therapeutic processes.”

It is health that organizes and manages your response to whatever diseases or dysfunctions challenge you. Without health there is no creative compensation and adaptation, for what has been challenged by aging, disease, dysfunction, or injury, and life ceases.

Andrew Taylor Still created a paradigm shift in health care. This radical departure from the use of disease as the exclusive orientation or treatment was the single most important expression of Osteopathic philosophy as it emerged as an enhancement to nineteenth-century American health care. Osteopathy distinguishes itself no less today as an approach based on trust in the ability of the human body to heal itself and self-regulate, given the proper conditions.

Join us and explore . . . “To Find Health—The Osteopathic Imperative” 

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