Definition
Osteopathy cannot be easily defined nor its potential easily realised.

Principles
Its principles are clear.
There is no alternative Medicine – only Medicine. True Medicine is the art and science of healing.

Healing
Healing is anything that promotes or restores ‘health’ and the organism’s own ability to maintain this state.
Health is not merely the absence of disease but a state of harmony and balance both within the organism, between its various aspects and in its relationship to its environment and societal context.

Wholeness
Health is a state of the whole being and when there is a movement away from it the whole being must be involved in the restoration of this state of health. The whole includes various aspects of the ‘self’ including the psyche, soul and spirit as well as the soma. Any one aspect influences and is influenced by the others.
‘Nothing can be meaningfully considered in isolation’ (BOA)

Manual medicine
Osteopathy is a branch of healing that does not use drugs but rather employs manual methods to appeal to the organism’s innate self regulatory mechanisms in restoring function, integration, homeostasis and health. Mobility and motility is an important expression of health in the body and Osteopathy helps restore both.

Disease
Disease is an expression of an effort to restore health. Disease is not a permanent, negative or unchanging state.

Self Regulation
There is an innate ‘intelligence’ and potency- a ‘vital force’- within the organism that endows the body with a great inner potential for healing and change and a tendency towards health. The powers (or as Sutherland described them, the ‘forces’) within the body to overcome disease are considerable and not to be underestimated. Osteopathy ‘re-empowers’ the body to maintain the state of health.

Structure and function
These cannot be divorced one from the other. Structure determines function and function determines form.

Rule of artery and expression of vitality
The free circulation of blood, fluids and energy is both an expression of the health and vitality of the organism as well as a crucial factor in the maintenance of its health.

Individuality
Just as each individual is unique, so is the expression of their vital energy, fluids and inner forces making up the ‘pattern’ or web of life that can be palpated and ‘engaged’ in treatment. As each patient and each Osteopath are unique and as this pattern changes with time in both patient and Osteopath, each treatment is unique and can never be repeated. There is therefore no ‘typical’ or predictable experience of Osteopathy for either the Osteopath or the patient. Each patient practitioner interaction and relationship is in itself unique. Osteopathic treatment is not a one-way process and as the patient heals, the practitioner is also changed by the interaction.

Scope of practice
Osteopathy is applicable to patients of any age from newborns to the elderly and to the treatment of all systems of the body. Its limits are unknown and what ‘constitutes’ Osteopathy is indefinable.
The focus of Osteopathy is not on the technique nor on the ‘labelled’ condition but rather on the health, expression and function of the whole.
Osteopathic diagnosis is not only based upon ‘critical reasoning’ but also on intuition, perception skills and palpation – it is based upon listening to both what the patient has to say as well as to what their tissues have to say.