Biodynamic Osteopathy and the Ocean
Your body is an ocean.
Spirit in Medicine Series: Part 1
The type of Osteopathy I practice is called Biodynamic or Functional Osteopathy. In this practice, Doctors of Osteopathy commonly use the ocean as an analogy. Since everything in nature has the same basic patterns - contraction/expansion, hot/cold, light/dark, etc. - the movement of the ocean transfers literally and figuratively to osteopathy, especially describing the concepts of energy moving and working in our bodies. Since most of us understand how the ocean works, and the modern English vocabulary simply doesn’t have the words to describe shifts in energy, the ocean analogy facilitates our understanding about the concepts, patterns, and ideas of healing.
The Foundation:
In Biodynamic Osteopathy, we say that everything in our world represents the ocean. The basic movement of the ocean has three parts: the white cap waves on the water’s surface, the waves that crash on the shore, and the underlying tide. There is a potency to the ocean too. The potency is subject to the contraction/expansion, potential and kinetic energy, that ultimately dictates the rising and the falling of the tides. The tide’s rhythms are predictable and dictated by something greater, more mysterious, such as the moon.
The How:
In Osteopathy, we treat the body on three levels: the tissue, the fluid, and the potency. White caps on the ocean’s surface are synonymous with the physical body such as bones, muscles, and ligaments (for example, when vertebra are out of place, or muscles tighten, etc.). The waves that crash on the shore are synonymous with the fluid of the body (Osteopathy in the Cranial Field, Cranial Sacral Therapy). Finally, the tide is synonymous with an inherent potency of energy we all harbor. When the fluids in the body connect with the potency of the tide in the ocean of existence, often called Oneness, profound healing occurs. Re-connection with the inherent tide reconnects us with the rhythm of Earth and nature at the cellular, DNA, and even quantum, levels.
In conclusion, you experience some level of this oceanic phenomenon every time you receive a treatment, also known as an Osteopathic adjustment. The re-connection, the re-calibration, and the transmutation of the waves and/or tides within your body are subtle in the moment yet profound throughout the rest of the day.
“The purpose of the Osteopathic physician is to find the health; anyone can find the disease.”
—Dr. Still
Dr. Still, the founder of Osteopathy, once said: “The purpose of the Osteopathic physician is to find the health; anyone can find the disease.” When asked to describe what health looks like to me, I say, it’s the connection between the tides of our body and the ocean.
“It’s (health is) the connection between the tides of our body and the ocean.”
—Dr. Charlie
