Glossary

Homeostasis or a steady state

Waves, tide, rhythms, landscapes, stillness, silence, fire, transmutation, 

Kundalini, prana

A.T. Still's term for the energy of life, and what he thought was behind the mechanism for healing. This was a wisdom of the body that was a handmaiden of the Creator.

What cranial osteopathy later termed potency.

Still and Sutherland apparently thought that science would find and see what they were experiencing.

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Sutherland's term for an intelligent potency beyond human intelligence, and is more subtle than breathing. He also speaks of it as the fluid within the fluid, and the potency within the tide. He does say we may learn more about this breath of life by observing nature, yet does not call it nature.

Sutherland speaks of A.T Still’s discovery of osteopathy’s principle’s as religious in an untitled talk in early 1944.

That energy that invigorates the mechanism, the mechanism that we work with.

Gravity fed - posture and it’s subsequent limitations, physiologic, scarring, 

A reality that is socially accepted as fact. The agreed on, right answer.

Includes the negation of concepts based on proclivity, i.e. science and metaphysics.

Conditional epistemology's, i.e. only believing something that's been verified in a certain way, a double blind study for example.

The body is designed to respond to the demands put on it.

This is a generalized form of Wolff’s law, which says that bone adapts to the pressures and tensions that exerted on it. 

The habitation of the body. The way or degree to which someone is aware of their body, posture, movement and felt sense. The awareness a person has as they inhabit their body in various situations both objective and subjective. Objectively these are revealed through posture, facial expression and gesture. Reciprocally these may be used as doorways to the feelings and subconscious preferences that generate them.

Outgrowth, expression, creation, synergy

Synchronization of various biorhythms within the body, the body's response to environmental and social factors. The menstrual cycle for example.

Adaptations and maladaptations that disturb and leech the constitutional health.

Less entropy amplifies health more than tonification.

Osteopathic lesion or lesion field, that is separation from health and the field that is generated and maintained in response to this separation. These are entropic by nature.

Connective tissue in the broadest sense. Bone, blood, lymph, interstitium, and more.

Firm, Soft, inherent

Bone is a firm fulcrum. 

Fluids and membranes are soft fulcrums. 

Inherent fulcrums are junctions balancing form and function. Sutherlands fulcrum at the inion and falx cerebelli is an inherent fulcrum.

Since then even subtler fluid systems have been discovered, meningeal lymphatics, Interstitium as fluid networks

The posturing that occurs in response to internal or external tensions being maintained in the field of gravity. Often more of an effect than a cause.

Direct of indirect restraint on a function, process, movement

Often a protective constraint.

Inhibition is a potent biomarker that acts as a focal point where the range of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious exert influence.

Integration is sense making, it’s digesting something as well as we can. Of course we can re-integrate our experiences and our stories about them.

Creating a new level of integration that is more suitable for where we are and how we want to be. The rich lessons a given experience potentially offers are made accessible through integration.

Muscle energy technique 

The zone where slack in the is taken up, but before end range in joint movement

See therapeutic zone

The therapeutic interaction

Connection, relationship 

Blending, merging, melding

An expanding concept of self perception that began with physiology and has expanded to include aspects of Gendlin’s felt sense, awareness of aspects of one’s autonomic state, and somato emotional distinctions and differentiations.

The inherent energy of the body, constitutional energy, the inherent energy that the body emerges from.

A separation from health, the lesion field is the distinct field of compensation that takes on a form or adaptive existence distinct form the original constitutional health.

Theory and practice Yogi Berra

The application of a set theories and models through techniques. 

In Barral’s visceral manipulation a subtle inherent movement often moving along the axis of embryologic development sometimes distinguished as the fascial envelope rather than the parenchyma

The delineation of landmarks and gross physical structures by hand.

Recognition that our senses have a range of operation. They do not offer the complete spectrum of light or sound for example.

Realizing that our senses and perceptions may be developed, expanded and refined. Musicians ear, visual artists eye sommelier's scent/taste, perfumers scent, manual therapists touch. Studies have shown seeing without recognition, perception of color via touch.

Point of view. A lot of therapy is problem solving. Changing the vantage point is often instrumental in getting things to work better.

An objective manifestation of a subjective belief

Sensory currents coalescing = pleasure

Sensory currents dispersed = pain

Swaying that occurs as a person maintains balance over their center of gravity.

Proprioception and vision, less vestibular.

The fluid within the fluid

Note: Biogen & Potency of the tide

Life energy generally related to air and breath. Light and food.

Modern inclusions

The breath of life, you being breathed as distinct from you breathing.

Interface of prana - life energy as expressed on earth in this solar system. 

An energetic exchange of breath, air and ether and its transmutations in the body.

The perception of body position and the force and speed exerted on the body to elicit a change in position.

Proprioception through a tool, the positioning, and shape of something felt through  an implement.

Conscious integration of environmental or relational feedback.

Dural tension and movement distributed through the meninges. 

the ability to respond

The bandwidth / range of possibility available to respond to inputs, ROM, speed of change, emotional charge, capacity

Keeping the head oriented

The seat of sensation. The crossroad or intersection of sensory stimuli.

The central aspect of the person that receives, assesses, and processes sensory input. Receiving, assessing and processing may be made more conscious, leading to a broader sensory vocabulary including more skillful appreciation and utilization of our senses.

Body

A therapist that utilizes a variety of skills to balance functional expression. Skills that access and modulate neural tone, vascular pressures, and fascial patterns for example.

A person that explores the body’s inner designs, distinctions, and relationships for example an anatomist.

A temporary stillness in a rhythm or motility that indicates reintegration

Candace Pert thought of the body as the subconscious mind.

I think the body reflects the subconscious mind. We are born with some preferences and proclivities, others of course are picked up as the body generates  felt sense as we move through the experiences of a particular life.

Seeing the relationships of various systems. Comes out of ecological perspectives.

The relationships of flora, fauna, and wildlife. 

Words are often added in extension to describe the relationship of various systems within the body, i.e. psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology. 

Manual therapeutics work in the relational field of systems. Lymph to blood, fluid flows and pressures to hormones, viscero somatic, somato visceral, and somato emotional.

1.) The tendency to objectify what you're working with as an anatomic part, rather than a point of contact within the whole. 

2.) The inability to move perception beyond simplistic objectification.

3.) The anatomical image held in the minds eye gathered from an image or cadaver. Rather than feeling, perceiving what's going on under their fingers. Sutherland called them “Thinking fingers”

Specific applications within a method.

As tactics are to strategy.

Around 80% is the optimal level of stimulation for integration. Too much information is overwhelming.

Physically noticed when form or accuracy breaks down.

Emotionally felt as disassociation and other separation strategies.

Mentally seen when focus is lost, and the ability to follow or connect information breaks down.

The ceiling or limit of function. Beyond the therapeutic zone.

In helping people who are experiencing pain the threshold is met when exacerbated symptoms outweigh pain reduction or improved function.

Though it is common for the benefits from certain treatments to be noticed days after the session.

Basic breathing, though reverse breathing would also be under this umbrella, 

Breaths bridge into state management and consciousness, Breathing solutions will generally have short term effects, long term practice will likely yield longer results.

Note: the borrowing against the constitutional health, tapping ones later years for energetic boons earlier in life. (Pranayama)

The inherent movement behind the rhythms of cerebral spinal fluid flow.

Therapeutically touch is used to perceive and interact with the person we’re touching