I recently did a weekend course in this modality. Over the past 15 years I've probably had around three ortho-bionomy treatments, that low number due to there not being many trained practitioners and the one that I knew lived over 4 hours away so I had treatments when we managed to catch up or be in the same town. This practitioner completed her teacher training and asked if I'd attend her inaugural training weekend. It was a great deal, the course cost included accommodation and food and a stay by the beach.
The training weekend was super interesting and I was also excited to see the results of practicing on the other participants as we learned the different positions for the different areas of the body. There was a lot to cover as the course was intended to run over three days, but since most of the participants had worked, the teacher agreed to compress it down into two days.
The methods might not be new to those in the bodywork field. It could be that ortho-bionomy is just a marketing driven repackage of strain and counter-strain theory, though the osteopathic doctor that developed ortho-bionomy claims that his method went through 4 phases of development away from the original strain and counter-strain theory. He apparently wanted a system that was easy to teach to a lot of people. In any case, I found the workshop very interesting and think the method will be helpful.
Ortho-bionomy may be of particular interest to people with EDS symptoms since it uses compression with most of the manoeuvres.
There were two remedial massage therapists attending and the rest of the students were total beginners in the bodywork area like me. I got to practice on the feet of one of the massage therapists. She is a sporty type and had bilateral ankle injuries from a water-skiing accident. She managed to hit a tree stump just below the water surface with one ankle and as she was falling off her skis, she smashed the other ankle with her ski. She complained that she walked like a clown since her injuries, put her heel down then the front of her foot would slap down on the ground. I spent a total of about 3 minutes on her worst ankle and after resting on the table for a few minutes afterwards, she got up and was surprised by the amount of movement she had in her ankle, she could roll it naturally as she walked. That was really impressive and she was strongly encouraged by that result.
One of the other greenhorns I worked on when we were learning the thoracic spine went into a breathing pattern like a psychological sigh as I was fumbling my way around her back. Felt clumsy because I wasn't sure I was hitting the right assessment points. Her feedback was that she was OK and that she could feel something moving, but she wasn't too concerned and to keep going. Later she was the one used by the teacher to demonstrate how to work with the neck, and she went into that same breathing pattern though more intense until the point that she started crying. Later work revealed that she'd been holding trauma from an invasive and life changing surgery that she'd had and releasing her back and neck helped to move the grief she'd been holding in her body.
Another lady had a very bad scoliosis and has a lot of pain from it. She'd been seeing the other massage therapist for years to help with pain relief and she had paid for her massage therapist to attend. When we were introducing ourselves, she thanked her massage therapist for all the care she'd gotten over the years, but hoped that her massage therapist would find the course info helpful because she'd gotten a lot of pain relief from the ortho-bionomy treatments in a short time, with less discomfort and hoped her massage therapist would find the method useful. That massage therapist was a hoot and had us laughing and giggling lots, she was very glad to learn the system and add it to her practice.
I've since been practicing both on myself and my sister, but really need to get more practice so that I can be a smooth and fluid in application as the teacher was. I still need to refer to notes as I work. My sister reports that she feels warm and tingly during the treatment and has found her neck and shoulders to be much more comfortable and relaxed. I've also been back for a 3 hour study/practice session since the course and intend to do more if they become available. It's a nice, comfortable relaxing modality to practice.
So, here's some info about the system.
Arthur Lincoln Pauls (1929-1997) was both an osteopathic doctor and a judo practitioner/instructor who tried to understand osteopathy treatments from the perspective of movement that he'd come to understand through his practice and instruction of judo. He found that osteopathy was initially helping the injuries sustained, but the same areas would either be re-injured or return to previous holding patterns soon after.
He then came across the work of another osteopathic doctor, Lawrence Jones, in his paper on Spontaneous Release by Positioning (1964). Jones had a patient who had intractable back pain and who could only find relief from that pain if he laid in a certain position. After trying a number of treatment approaches, Jones was at a loss as to how to help this patient and decided to place him in the position that he was most comfortable and hold him there in a supported manner. This apparently facilitated a release of strained and braced muscles and soft tissues relieving the patients pain. From that experience Jones further developed positional release techniques for other areas of the body and this work ultimately lead to the development of the theories and practices around strain and counter-strain in body work.
Pauls studied with Jones for a period to learn his positional release techniques as he felt that they held the pieces of the puzzle that he was looking for to connect body work to the perspective of movement from his understanding of judo. Pauls went through 4 phases of developing and refining his system that he originally called Phased Release Techniques, but later named Ortho-bionomy. His definition of the term is 'the correct application of the principles of life'. apart from the amount of time the different supports are held to get a release, I haven't yet found other differences between the work of Pauls and Jones, though at this point I think that one of them is adding compression into the joint - perhaps the differences will become clearer as I learn more, or maybe someone here knows more about it than me.
The principles relied on to arrive at the final system:
Martial Arts Principles:
- Judo means 'gentle way'.
- Developing balance and a strong base - with this in mind he places some attention on the psoas muscle.
- Understanding and internally integrating principles of movement.
- Following force and not opposing it or working against resistance.
- Following or joining another person's energy while maintaining one's own balance and space.
- Maximal efficiency with minimal effort.
- Observation of oneself in relationship.
Osteopathic Influences:
- From the development of Osteopathy by Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917) - the ideas that the body could self-correct, health is dependent on structural integrity and that disease processes are affected by obstructions and imbalances.
- Lawrence Jones Spontaneous Release by Positioning, Strain and Counter Strain and Positional Release.
Osteopathic Principles - From the tenets of Osteopathic Medicine:
- The body is a unit; the person is a unit of body, mind, and spirit.
- The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing and health maintenance.
- Structure and function are reciprocally related.
- Rational treatment is based upon an understanding of the basic principles of body unity, self-regulation, and the interrelationship of structure and function.
Arthur Lincoln Pauls system relies on positioning the body for shorter periods of time than in Jones system, adds compression into the proximal joint or tissues to help shorten the muscles and tissues under strain, maintains continuous monitoring of pain points to feel them soften, pulse, twitch or rebound while watching the other reflexes in the body - breathing patterns, skin colour, pulse etc. In addition, the positions developed are also comfortable and easy for the practitioner to implement so that the client does not experience the stress or strain of the practitioner which can reduce the relaxation and comfort of the client.
Ortho-Bionomy Principles:
- Exaggeration of preferred position. Follow and exaggerate the misalignment that the body is already holding with support. For example, if a shoulder is hunched up, exaggerate the hunch, hold it there and put some compression into the joint. Often in misalignments different body areas stop communicating with each other proprioceptively. Exaggerating the misalignment gives feedback to the nervous system and triggers proprioceptive reflexes and allows the body to release and self correct. Reminder - ride the horse in the direction it's already going.
- Less is more. Do less to allow the body to do more by allowing the nervous system to engage dormant self corrective reflexes. Doing too much can overwhelm the nervous system and give it too much information to work with and it can default to holding on to restrictions and pain.
- Softening and caving the tissues around a tender point. This is another way to figure out preferred position, or the position of comfort for the client that will be exaggerated by assessing the injured or misaligned area for tender points and then positioning the body or tissues around that point to soften it and allow it to release while it is supported.
- No pain or strain to release pain or strain. Working in the direction of comfort and ease allows the client to relax and produce a parasympathetic response, the nervous system gets the message that it is out of danger and the tissues can relax and release. Though isometrics are sometimes used when the support is removed from the area in question.
- No attachment to outcome. The practitioner isn't fixing or healing the client. The practitioner is just supporting the clients body to awaken it's own proprioceptive and corrective responses. Don't over work an area if no change is detected. It might take a while for the body to respond to the positional release and compression, more information or force can just make the nervous system double down and hold the existing strain/pain pattern. With that in mind, the position is held for a max of 10-60 seconds and repeated no more than twice before moving on to the next point. Sometimes the resistant point releases after other points are released so they can be left and reassessed when other work is finished.
There are some videos to be found on youtube on the subject and here are a couple of examples to give an idea of how the principles are applied and practiced:
I will update as I learn more and get more practice under my belt. I don't have being a practitioner in mind, just that it's nice to know how to help family and friends who are in discomfort and figure it's worthwhile learning for that.
The training weekend was super interesting and I was also excited to see the results of practicing on the other participants as we learned the different positions for the different areas of the body. There was a lot to cover as the course was intended to run over three days, but since most of the participants had worked, the teacher agreed to compress it down into two days.
The methods might not be new to those in the bodywork field. It could be that ortho-bionomy is just a marketing driven repackage of strain and counter-strain theory, though the osteopathic doctor that developed ortho-bionomy claims that his method went through 4 phases of development away from the original strain and counter-strain theory. He apparently wanted a system that was easy to teach to a lot of people. In any case, I found the workshop very interesting and think the method will be helpful.
Ortho-bionomy may be of particular interest to people with EDS symptoms since it uses compression with most of the manoeuvres.
There were two remedial massage therapists attending and the rest of the students were total beginners in the bodywork area like me. I got to practice on the feet of one of the massage therapists. She is a sporty type and had bilateral ankle injuries from a water-skiing accident. She managed to hit a tree stump just below the water surface with one ankle and as she was falling off her skis, she smashed the other ankle with her ski. She complained that she walked like a clown since her injuries, put her heel down then the front of her foot would slap down on the ground. I spent a total of about 3 minutes on her worst ankle and after resting on the table for a few minutes afterwards, she got up and was surprised by the amount of movement she had in her ankle, she could roll it naturally as she walked. That was really impressive and she was strongly encouraged by that result.
One of the other greenhorns I worked on when we were learning the thoracic spine went into a breathing pattern like a psychological sigh as I was fumbling my way around her back. Felt clumsy because I wasn't sure I was hitting the right assessment points. Her feedback was that she was OK and that she could feel something moving, but she wasn't too concerned and to keep going. Later she was the one used by the teacher to demonstrate how to work with the neck, and she went into that same breathing pattern though more intense until the point that she started crying. Later work revealed that she'd been holding trauma from an invasive and life changing surgery that she'd had and releasing her back and neck helped to move the grief she'd been holding in her body.
Another lady had a very bad scoliosis and has a lot of pain from it. She'd been seeing the other massage therapist for years to help with pain relief and she had paid for her massage therapist to attend. When we were introducing ourselves, she thanked her massage therapist for all the care she'd gotten over the years, but hoped that her massage therapist would find the course info helpful because she'd gotten a lot of pain relief from the ortho-bionomy treatments in a short time, with less discomfort and hoped her massage therapist would find the method useful. That massage therapist was a hoot and had us laughing and giggling lots, she was very glad to learn the system and add it to her practice.
I've since been practicing both on myself and my sister, but really need to get more practice so that I can be a smooth and fluid in application as the teacher was. I still need to refer to notes as I work. My sister reports that she feels warm and tingly during the treatment and has found her neck and shoulders to be much more comfortable and relaxed. I've also been back for a 3 hour study/practice session since the course and intend to do more if they become available. It's a nice, comfortable relaxing modality to practice.
So, here's some info about the system.
Arthur Lincoln Pauls (1929-1997) was both an osteopathic doctor and a judo practitioner/instructor who tried to understand osteopathy treatments from the perspective of movement that he'd come to understand through his practice and instruction of judo. He found that osteopathy was initially helping the injuries sustained, but the same areas would either be re-injured or return to previous holding patterns soon after.
He then came across the work of another osteopathic doctor, Lawrence Jones, in his paper on Spontaneous Release by Positioning (1964). Jones had a patient who had intractable back pain and who could only find relief from that pain if he laid in a certain position. After trying a number of treatment approaches, Jones was at a loss as to how to help this patient and decided to place him in the position that he was most comfortable and hold him there in a supported manner. This apparently facilitated a release of strained and braced muscles and soft tissues relieving the patients pain. From that experience Jones further developed positional release techniques for other areas of the body and this work ultimately lead to the development of the theories and practices around strain and counter-strain in body work.
Pauls studied with Jones for a period to learn his positional release techniques as he felt that they held the pieces of the puzzle that he was looking for to connect body work to the perspective of movement from his understanding of judo. Pauls went through 4 phases of developing and refining his system that he originally called Phased Release Techniques, but later named Ortho-bionomy. His definition of the term is 'the correct application of the principles of life'. apart from the amount of time the different supports are held to get a release, I haven't yet found other differences between the work of Pauls and Jones, though at this point I think that one of them is adding compression into the joint - perhaps the differences will become clearer as I learn more, or maybe someone here knows more about it than me.
The principles relied on to arrive at the final system:
Martial Arts Principles:
- Judo means 'gentle way'.
- Developing balance and a strong base - with this in mind he places some attention on the psoas muscle.
- Understanding and internally integrating principles of movement.
- Following force and not opposing it or working against resistance.
- Following or joining another person's energy while maintaining one's own balance and space.
- Maximal efficiency with minimal effort.
- Observation of oneself in relationship.
Osteopathic Influences:
- From the development of Osteopathy by Andrew Taylor Still (1828-1917) - the ideas that the body could self-correct, health is dependent on structural integrity and that disease processes are affected by obstructions and imbalances.
- Lawrence Jones Spontaneous Release by Positioning, Strain and Counter Strain and Positional Release.
Osteopathic Principles - From the tenets of Osteopathic Medicine:
- The body is a unit; the person is a unit of body, mind, and spirit.
- The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing and health maintenance.
- Structure and function are reciprocally related.
- Rational treatment is based upon an understanding of the basic principles of body unity, self-regulation, and the interrelationship of structure and function.
Arthur Lincoln Pauls system relies on positioning the body for shorter periods of time than in Jones system, adds compression into the proximal joint or tissues to help shorten the muscles and tissues under strain, maintains continuous monitoring of pain points to feel them soften, pulse, twitch or rebound while watching the other reflexes in the body - breathing patterns, skin colour, pulse etc. In addition, the positions developed are also comfortable and easy for the practitioner to implement so that the client does not experience the stress or strain of the practitioner which can reduce the relaxation and comfort of the client.
Ortho-Bionomy Principles:
- Exaggeration of preferred position. Follow and exaggerate the misalignment that the body is already holding with support. For example, if a shoulder is hunched up, exaggerate the hunch, hold it there and put some compression into the joint. Often in misalignments different body areas stop communicating with each other proprioceptively. Exaggerating the misalignment gives feedback to the nervous system and triggers proprioceptive reflexes and allows the body to release and self correct. Reminder - ride the horse in the direction it's already going.
- Less is more. Do less to allow the body to do more by allowing the nervous system to engage dormant self corrective reflexes. Doing too much can overwhelm the nervous system and give it too much information to work with and it can default to holding on to restrictions and pain.
- Softening and caving the tissues around a tender point. This is another way to figure out preferred position, or the position of comfort for the client that will be exaggerated by assessing the injured or misaligned area for tender points and then positioning the body or tissues around that point to soften it and allow it to release while it is supported.
- No pain or strain to release pain or strain. Working in the direction of comfort and ease allows the client to relax and produce a parasympathetic response, the nervous system gets the message that it is out of danger and the tissues can relax and release. Though isometrics are sometimes used when the support is removed from the area in question.
- No attachment to outcome. The practitioner isn't fixing or healing the client. The practitioner is just supporting the clients body to awaken it's own proprioceptive and corrective responses. Don't over work an area if no change is detected. It might take a while for the body to respond to the positional release and compression, more information or force can just make the nervous system double down and hold the existing strain/pain pattern. With that in mind, the position is held for a max of 10-60 seconds and repeated no more than twice before moving on to the next point. Sometimes the resistant point releases after other points are released so they can be left and reassessed when other work is finished.
There are some videos to be found on youtube on the subject and here are a couple of examples to give an idea of how the principles are applied and practiced:
I will update as I learn more and get more practice under my belt. I don't have being a practitioner in mind, just that it's nice to know how to help family and friends who are in discomfort and figure it's worthwhile learning for that.
