In this issue:
Ortho-Bionomy®: An Introduction
Finding Balance Between Work and Home Life
Colon Hydrotherapy: Pros and Cons
Heart Disease: Not Just for Men Anymore!
Reiki: Universal Energy for Health
Roseroot: A Multipurpose Herb

Ortho-Bionomy®: An Introduction
by Bill Parravano

After suffering an injury or the physical manifestation of some other problem, we can often look back and see all the signs the body was trying to give, telling us to slow down, take a break, and rest a little bit. Whatever the reason for it, our disregard of our body’s needs eventually took its toll. The result was pain and tension in the body.

Listening to the body is something many people aren’t used to doing; however, Ortho-Bionomy can help us learn how. Ortho-Bionomy is a form of body work that helps those who practice it regain comfort and well-being—and it actually goes beyond body work. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health are all interconnected, and comfort is larger in scope than just physical ease. Ortho-Bionomy is an avenue to remind the body how to heal itself, and this healing requires awareness of all facets of well-being.

Ortho-Bionomy re-educates the body to understand itself better. Ortho-Bionomy’s main goal is to address the body only in a position of comfort. The whole concept of Ortho-Bionomy is based on this one key point: that the body naturally moves away from pain and toward comfort. An Ortho-Bionomy practitioner facilitates this process when the nervous system has lost touch with what is going on in the body.

In an Ortho-Bionomy session, the practitioner asks the client a number of questions about the presenting issue, whether it’s pain, tension, or some other kind of discomfort.

Together, the practitioner and the client pinpoint the source of the discomfort, and then the practitioner helps the client adopt a variety of positions and adapt to other physical movements, always keeping comfort foremost. The practitioner never forces the body; instead, he or she helps the client find the positions and movements that feel most natural.

Ortho-Bionomy also empowers clients with the knowledge of their own bodies. We are trained by society to give up our power to various “professionals” and therefore not to trust our own inner voices as to what makes sense. Through Ortho-Bionomy’s careful and supportive movements, the body’s own self-corrective reflexes are engaged, and it easily lets go of the tension it is holding.

Key to this letting go is moving with the body, not against it. If a client has pain in the shoulder, for example, the Ortho-Bionomy practitioner would first help the client understand the shoulder’s interconnected relationship to the rest of the body, and would then help move the shoulder away from the pain until the body’s reflexes took over to provide healing. An Ortho-Bionomy practitioner wouldn’t push against the shoulder or rub the painful spot; instead, he or she would let the body’s inherent wisdom kick in to provide healing. The Ortho-Bionomy practitioner works with the body’s own tendencies, not in opposition to them, and this practice is based on the philosophy that the body knows best what will be most helpful to it.

A Brief History and Introduction to the Philosophy of Ortho-Bionomy

Ortho-Bionomy was founded by osteopath Arthur Lincoln Pauls, who believed in the osteopathic principle that the body’s structure governs its functioning. Pauls was uncomfortable with the forceful movements of osteopathy, though, which he feared could cause patients harm. He was also a Judo instructor, and he appreciated Judo’s emphasis on using existing force rather than opposing it. As a student in England, Pauls read an article called “Spontaneous Release Through Positioning” by American osteopath Lawrence Jones, which helped inspire Ortho-Bionomy’s inclusion of comfortable positioning as one of its major principles.

During the development of Ortho-Bionomy, Pauls identified eight phases that the body goes through to release tension:

1. In phase one (a phase that all people regularly find themselves in, regardless of familiarity with Ortho-Bionomy), we unconsciously search for comfort, such as while we are sleeping.
   
   
2. In phase two, also common to everyone, we consciously search for comfort. We move into phase two if we adjust an awkward sitting posture or take off uncomfortable shoes, for example.
   
   
3. In phase three, principles of osteopathy developed by Lawrence Jones are introduced, and a client holds a comfortable position for 90 seconds or longer. These 90 seconds allow the body’s own self-corrective reflexes to take over. This phase is not actually considered Ortho-Bionomy.
   
   
4. This phase is where Ortho-Bionomy starts. In phase four, a practitioner helps a client move from bodily positions to larger physical movements—all still within a comfortable range of motion. This is where Judo is combined with osteopathy to reduce the time it takes for a release to happen, from 90 seconds or longer to 30 seconds or shorter. In this phase, the movements can be compared to a photograph—they are individual, like “stills.”
   
   
5. In phase five, the practitioner introduces smaller, subtler physical movements dynamically to help the client become aware of the tension patterns of his or her body. If phase four is like a photograph, then phase five is like a movie.
   
   
6. In phase six, the practitioner helps the client see how the body’s physical state manifests itself in the bio-energetic field, or aura, and how to recognize shifts in energy and use them to promote healing.
   
   
7. In phase seven, the practitioner can use distance work to help the client, with an acknowledgement that universal love, support, and acceptance exist outside the confines of time and space.
   
   
8. In phase eight, a person recognizes all the preceding phases and strives to live out the principles of Ortho-Bionomy in all aspects of life.

Besides osteopathy and Judo, Ortho-Bionomy also borrows from homeopathy in its adherence to the idea that healing comes from within the body, not from outside it. (See “Homeopathy 101: An Introduction to the Basics—and the Controversy” in the February 2008 CoSozo Newsletter.) In this way, Ortho-Bionomy and the practices that have informed it conceptualize “healing” differently than much of modern Western medicine does.

What Is Healing?

It is essential to recognize that symptoms are signposts leading to the root problem—whether it is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. Ortho-Bionomy challenges the client to go beneath the superficial symptoms and discover the catalyst for the pain rather than just treat the pain on the surface.

No true and lasting healing is achieved by a quick fix. Ortho-Bionomy is a process that takes time and energy from both client and practitioner. Some people might balk at the investment required—at least eight one-hour sessions with a practitioner plus self-care work at home. It’s important to remember, though, that we have an unlimited amount of resources present in our lives. A shift must occur resulting in a re-allocation of our resources to achieve the desired outcome of better health.

The quality of our health is largely determined by our lifestyle. We perform maintenance on our cars, our houses, and our yards, yet we rarely do maintenance on ourselves. For many, health is only an issue when it is absent, and even then, too often the only action taken is nothing more than damage control. After years of abuse it is unreasonable to expect to resolve our health issues with one pill, one shot, one surgery, 30 minutes of exercise, or a couple of sessions of body work now and then.

Life is not meant for us to wait around until our bodies break down. We all can do things on a regular basis to maintain good health, and one of Ortho-Bionomy’s advantages is that it helps correct existing problems, and it can help clients learn how to take care of their bodies in order to prevent future ones.

Many of the clients I see in my own practice are women between the ages of 35 and 55—people whose lives tend to be about taking care of others, and who therefore often take care of themselves last. (The good news is that this population also tends to be the one most open to Ortho-Bionomy!) Not surprisingly, these clients often come to me with stress-related symptoms such as chronic or acute musculoskeletal pain, muscle tension, and poor posture. Often, they have years-old patterns of moving and being in their bodies that have contributed to their current discomfort. This is not surprising, as tension is one of the body’s defense mechanisms, and in times of stress or trauma or difficulty, the mind often disconnects from the body, and the body is left to carry the burden. In Ortho-Bionomy sessions, the client and practitioner take the time to synchronize the body and the mind and heal the whole person.

Remember—it is not effective to do damage control by putting “bandages” (pills, etc.) on our symptoms. These quick fixes only mask the true underlying issue. The body naturally knows how to heal itself. What it needs is time and to be reminded how.

Finding Our Self to Heal Ourselves

We are a physical manifestation of how we view ourselves. If we impose on the body and cause it pain, we are imposing on it physically as well as mentally, spiritually, psychologically, energetically, and emotionally. In the positions of comfort that Ortho-Bionomy sessions help clients find, the body lets go of its attempt to be something that it is not. Because of this comfort, there is no resistance to what is happening, so the work can affect the body very deeply and, relatively speaking, very quickly.

In addition to comfort, Ortho-Bionomy practitioners help clients find their bodies’ “neutral.” A body is in neutral when it is in no “gear” and is expending equal amounts of tension in all directions. Being comfortable and being neutral can be the same, though they aren’t necessarily. For example, for a client who has a problem with her hip as well as a history of sexual abuse, the body’s neutral may not be where she actually feels most comfortable. An Ortho-Bionomy practitioner will consider all aspects of a client’s life and experience in helping to determine what constitutes true and comprehensive comfort.

Ortho-Bionomy provides options to get in touch with our “real self.” The personas, masks, and layers we put on when we go out into the world, illusions that can lead to pain, can be dropped. What is left is a place of healing, comfort, serenity, and joy where no pain can touch us.

Ortho-Bionomy is not completely focused on finding out why the body is holding tension, however. By labeling an issue we create a paradigm around it, which can impose a limitation on the healing process. A session deals with what is going on in the body in that given moment, and we move forward from there. We can get caught up in the story of the pain, which has a history attached to it, and miss what is going on in the now.

Every moment the body is experiencing a nearly limitless number of stimuli, known collectively as stress. Our ability to adjust to this stress by finding the path of least resistance is essential to our health and well-being. This adjustment can occur only in the present moment. Ortho-Bionomy can help us find comfort in any circumstance by adjusting to the ever-changing neutral.

Feeling Good

When we start to feel good, it is only the beginning of the healing process, and the wonders of the body are just starting to unfold. This is when many clients feel they are done with the process and go back to their lives as before. If they would stick to the journey they’ve begun in their bodies and minds, though, they would find that an incredible adventure lies beyond the initial eight sessions with a practitioner. Many liken this adventure to the peeling of an onion; there is always another layer to uncover.

Ortho-Bionomy is an avenue for recognizing patterns within ourselves that do not support the ultimate goals we have in life. These patterns keep us from being fulfilled. I remember a quote from when I was growing up that had a very profound effect on me: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” (This is one of those sayings that has become so commonplace its origins have been lost, and it is usually ascribed to “Anonymous.”)

Ortho-Bionomy gives us an opportunity to change unproductive patterns if we wish. We always have this choice to shift or not to shift. The answer to whether or not we will lies within each one of us.