Osteopathy comes to HTWI

Maria Trylska came to talk to the Higher Teignmouth WI on Tuesday 11^th June and spoke to a packed room of WI members. Her talk was extremely interesting and informative.

Maria started her talk by describing her background and her desire to study Osteopathy.  She is a Londoner born to Polish parents and despite repeating her desire to become an Osteopath, found herself studying for a degree in Ecology at Norwich University and then becoming a teacher for twenty years.  She finally achieved her aim and became a mature student doing what she had always wanted to do – studying Osteopathy.

She then gave us a brief history of Osteopathy which is relatively recent addition to medical practice.  Andrew Taylor Still, an American born in 1828, introduced it on 22 June 1874.  He realised from studying animals that even when an injury had healed, the habits created by the injury persisted.  Andrew Taylor Still was looking for alternative ideas to conventional medicine and he set up a school with two main precepts – Know Your Anatomy and Hands On Healing.  From these ideas he invented Osteopathy in 1874.  Osteopathy came to England in 1898 and by 1993 it had achieved legal status.

The main principles of Osteopathy are:

The body is a unit – it will naturally compensate for injuries.

Structure and Function are reciprocally related – if there is less range of movement in one part of the structure, there will be an impact on other parts

The Body has self-regulatory mechanisms – given the right conditions, the body can repair itself. This leads to the maxim “Find it, fix it, leave it alone”

The practitioner takes the whole case history from the client, carries out posture analysis and then uses touch to assess for tenderness, temperature, assymetry and restricted movement.

The movement of fluids is essential to good health

 

Maria illustrated these principles using activities which members were encouraged to join in – stretching comparisons before and after; a wobbleblock; bags of objects to show how sensitive touch is and photos showing misalignment of posture.