Jennifer Weiss, Osteopathic Physician

golden sunbeam

The Biodynamic Model

A Third Model Emerges

The Biodynamic Model was developed by James Jealous, D.O. and is rarely taught in Osteopathic Medical Schools. It must be learned through continuing medical education courses or through working with a mentoring physician. The primary therapeutic force in the Biodynamic Model is the Health of the patient or Primary Respiration. Rather than applying an external force, both hands are engaged in an attentive waiting and listening and the motion present in the lesion field is accessed through synchronization with the inhalation phase of Primary Respiration.  While these concepts, and the treatments, are subtle and always gentle, the results tend to be profound.

Three Tenets in the Biodynamic Model

  • The treatment must be a movement towards treating the Whole.
  • The Health of the patient is greater than the wisdom of the physician.
  • The embryonic forces of growth and development are present in the adult and are working as forces of regeneration and healing.

The Treatment Starts After the Neutral

Neutral is a key term in the biodynamic model. It comes from the idea of a car gear shift being in neutral. From this state the car can move in into any gear and in any direction. The same is true of anatomy and physiology and the biodynamic treatment: from a state of neutral the body is free to shift and heal. The state of neutral is a state of rest. While it can be local, for example, in a single joint, reaching a state of neutral that pervades the autonomic nervous system is important in activating innate healing forces. Further, if the neutral is achieved in all body tissues, the results can be transformative. Osteopathic treatments using the Biodynamic Model involve reaching a neutral. The deeper the neutral the more effective the treatment, but not all treatments can achieve a neutral in the whole. Busy lives, stressed nervous systems, acutely painful conditions and other factors can get in the way. None the less, it is the job of the osteopathic doctor to keep reaching for a neutral in the whole.

Finding the Whole – Seeking Health

After the neutral, the biodynamic osteopath works to let go of pre-conceived ideas about structural symmetry and disease. Trying to see the whole of the organism and its environment, focusing on where there are therapeutic processes already occurring, and augmenting health occupy the physicians hands and minds.

“We … begin with the feeling of Dynamic Stillness, which is omnipresent. Thus we start with perceiving the whole, which cannot be described. During the entire therapeutic process the Osteopath gives up the need to know exactly what happens. The Osteopath does not see any dysfunctions, {or} … problems….. The Osteopath stays with this Dynamic Stillness and even though transmutations and changes will take place in the patient as a whole, there is no augmentation, no interface with the motion. The Osteopath connects with this dynamic stillness.”

Efficacy of the Biodynamic Model

After more than 10 years of using this model in practice, I’ve come to rely on it. The results are profound side effects are extremely rare, and when they do occur they are short-lived. Sometimes conditions resolve within just a few treatments, other times patients need to return for a longer period of time. And of course there are conditions that don’t heal but even in these cases the biodynamic model offers almost everyone comfort, relief, and an easing of suffering.

One of the sweet results of using the body’s innate forces and natural laws in healing is that patients are likely to recognize their own healing capacity – sometimes this is more pronounced than what they sense as a change from the treatment. Patients often report that they “just got better” and therefore no longer need sessions. By allowing the body to heal itself the patient gains independence as well as health. With this type of somatic education the patient is not dependent on the doctor. It can be helpful to have a treatment periodically to “remember” these indwelling forces, but the goal is to reach freedom and wellbeing.

Everything in Osteopathy is true
—James Jealous

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease
—Thomas Edison

Harmony only dwells where obstructions do not exist
—A.T. Still

The breath of life in the cerebrospinal fluid Tide is the fundamental principal in the primary respiratory mechanism. ~ W.G Sutherland

Along in 1874, after years of independent thinking, there came to Dr. Still the concept of Osteopathy ~ Dr. Asa Willard in the Cranial Bowl

What is harmony but Health?  It takes harmony of every nerve, vein and artery in every part of the body. ~ A.T. Still

All diseases are mere effects, the cause being a partial or complete failure of the nerves to properly conduct the fluids of life. ~ A.T. Still

The hearing of spirit is not limited… the whole being listens.  There is a direct grasp of what is right before you, that can never be heard with the ear, or understood with the mind. ~ Thomas Merton

The fundamental principle advocated in cranial technique, viz: allowing the physiological function within to manifest its unerring potency, rather than the application of blind force from without. William G. Sutherland, D.O.

Here you lay aside the long words, and use your mind in deep and silent earnestness; drink deep from the eternal fountain of reason, penetrate the forests of that law whose beauties are life and death. ~ A.T. Still

Do not try to force anything within the cranial mechanism. ~A.T. Still

It is as if the whole body, functioning as a unit, is responding to a force similar to that moving the tides of the ocean. ~ Rollin Becker

Spirit in osteopathy turns out to be scientific, practical, and very useful in a medical medel that Osteopathic Physicianscan readily abide by. ~ From interface; Mechanisms of Spirit in Osteopathy by A.T. Still

And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air. ~ William Wordsworth

It is the stillness of the Tide, not the stormy waves that bounce upon the shore that is the potency, the power. ~ W.G Sutherland

Normal doesn’t simply mean a readjustment of the bones to normal position. ~ A.T. Stills

Freedom is experienced in the infinite number of pauses.  ~Rollo May

It is the stillness of the tide not the stormy waves that bounce upon the shore that is the potency, the power. ~ W.G. Sutherland

I believe that all the remedies necessary to health are within the human body. ~ A.T. Stills

Man should study and use the drugs compounded in his own body. ~A.T. Stills

The greatest mistake in the treatment of disease is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. ~ Plato

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