Osteopathy, a hands-on therapy, focuses on identifying and rectifying the physical imbalances within our body. These imbalances often serve as triggers for a broad spectrum of symptoms, one of the least recognized of which relates to our emotional and mental well-being. Osteopathy: How Can It Help Your Mental Health? This question arises often and remains pertinent considering the growing mental health concerns in contemporary society.
Understanding Mental Health: A New Perspective Through Osteopathy
Mental health is a generic term that is defined by the World Health Organization as “a state of well-being in which every individual realises their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community”.
Human beings developed throughout their existence, a mechanism to deal with life-threatening situations. Popularly known as “Fight or Flight Response” this physiological response allowed us to reach modern times.
In today’s competitive society, our evolutionary responses are constantly triggered by different stressors like deadlines, leading to the same Fight or Flight mode. Once a survival mechanism, it now contributes to various illnesses. Osteopathy: How Can It Help Your Mental Health in such scenarios? This question opens the gate to Osteopathy’s approach to mental health conditions.
Osteopathy’s Approach to Mental Health Conditions
Anxiety, depression, and other Mental Health conditions, so often misdiagnosed and, therefore, mistreated, can slowly weaken our body. Insomnia, digestive disorders, tight muscles, shortness of breath, just to name a few, can easily follow a Mental Health imbalance since it boosts the levels of some stress-related hormones, such as Cortisol, and, at the same time, decreases the levels of others linked to well-being, joy, and pleasure, like serotonin and endorphins.
How Osteopathy Identifies and Addresses Autonomic Nervous System Imbalances
Proper Osteopathic treatment can identify the imbalance in the Autonomic Nervous System. In other words, it can check if you are stuck in the “Fight or Flight” mode. If so, an absolutely pain-free manual therapy can be used to promote its release. A set of home exercises will also be recommended to make the treatment even more effective.
At Empower Health we offer a multidisciplinary approach to fight (but never flight) this condition. Osteopathy, along with Naturopathic Medicine, Counselling, Acupuncture, and Breathwork/meditation can be helpful to take this extra weight out of your shoulders… and mind.
