What is Osteopathy and what can it treat?

What is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a hands-on manual therapy with the goal to create change in the body’s tissues, structure and function, enabling its self-healing and self-regulatory mechanisms to restore the body’s musculoskeletal system to a state of balance.

Optimal body mechanics is considered important in allowing the best performing health and healing. This is why I take the time to assess you head to toe, even if it’s just your toe you're coming in for! Osteopathy is an allied health regulated profession in the same government-accredited category as Physiotherapists and Chiropractors.

Osteopathic treatments are generally very gentle and commonly used osteopathic techniques include gentle joint mobilisation, joint manipulation, trigger point therapy, myo-fascial release, stretching soft tissue massage, exercise prescription and breathing techniques to facilitate healing. Osteopathy is considered a ‘holistic’ therapy because treatments can also include instructing the client in postural, mobility and movement, along with discovering and modifying the aggravating factors in one’s work, diet and life.

Osteopaths treat people with a wide variety of chronic and acute musculoskeletal disorders that result in pain and dysfunction. Using a unique system of diagnosis and treatment that emphasises the structural integrity of the body, the objective of treatment is to return you to full and pain free mobility and function. A treatment may also include exercise prescription, postural, nutritional and lifestyle advice to maximise your treatment and recovery.

Osteopaths are government registered allied health practitioners who complete university training in anatomy, physiology, pathology, general healthcare diagnosis, and osteopathic techniques.

What is the difference between Osteopathy, Chiropractic and Physiotherapy?

There are philosophical and practical differences between all three modalities, which may often be true but not absolutely always true in all cases.

Osteopaths and chiropractors are taught fundamental skills like joint manipulation/’cracking’ while physiotherapists need further specialised training in these techniques. Physiotherapists are generally known for using exercise prescription as a primary tool, with consequently less hands on time, while osteopaths and chiropractors tend to place less emphasis on exercises, and more on corrective adjustments to the bodies musculoskeletal system. In distinction to chiropractors and physiotherapists, osteopaths generally give the majority of a treatment to be a hands-on treatment, with or without exercise prescription, depending on the case.