The natural healing force in each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.
~ Hippocrates
The physician is only nature’s assistant.
~ Galen
To find the health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease.
~ Andrew Taylor Still, founder of osteopathy
Within that cerebrospinal fluid there is an invisible element that I refer to as the “Breath of Life.” I want you to visualize this Breath of Life as a fluid within this fluid, something that does not mix, something that has potency as the thing that makes it move. Is it necessary to know what makes the fluid move? Visualize a potency, an intelligent potency, that is more intelligent than your own human mentality.
~ William Garner Sutherland, founder of osteopathy in the cranial field, student of Andrew Taylor Still
In reality, our anatomicophysiological body has not divided itself into the many parts we know as physicians… This no-name body, which we use in our walkabout on earth, is working on a simple one-on-one relationship both within itself and with its environment… Life in the body and its manifested motion and movement is working as a unified whole mechanism to manifest health, to resist and combat disease, and to correct or adapt to trauma.
~ Rollin Becker, cranial osteopath, student of William Garner Sutherland
A successful response from the cerebrospinal fluid… is an intensified interchange between all the fluids of the body… It is definitely evident that the reaction is systemic and includes the whole body even within the bones.
~ Anne L. Wales, cranial osteopath, student of William Garner Sutherland
We learn to sense the Whole… Patients are very much aware that a different attention is present. They comment on it. It’s not intellectual or intuitive. It’s aboriginal, instinctual… The moment is filled with the effort to be present with the Health in the patient and the story as it unfolds to its own answer… We learn our skills by apprenticeship to something that has no name but it teaches us a great deal.
~ James Jealous, cranial osteopath, student of DOs Anne Wales, Ruby Day, Rollin Becker, and Robert Fulford
Sutherland stressed that the human system is ordered by a mysterious Presence that he called the Breath of Life. In the last ten years of his clinical practice he became especially attuned to its presence and action within the human system. This also coincided with a shift in his use of language from a predominantly biomechanical orientation to a more fully biodynamic one. He wrote of the Breath of Life and its unerring potency and shifted from analysis and mechanical technique to an orientation to the inherent forces that facilitate healing. He realized that it is the Breath of Life and the intelligent forces it generates that make the healing decisions and carry those decisions out.
~ Franklyn Sills, student of osteopathy, influenced by DOs Sutherland, Becker, and Randolph Stone and by Buddhism, founder of craniosacral biodynamics
Over time, I have come to understand that the Breath of Life is a divine presence only appreciated in a state of stillness and unknowing. It appears everywhere all at once and is sensed as a Presence that is numinous, non-linear and radiant. It arises out of a profound Stillness that lies at the heart of all form and is the fulcrum from which all form arises. Unlike the Tide it generates, it has no rhythm, yet is at the heart of all rhythms. It cannot be manipulated or used by the practitioner in any way. One can only humbly witness its creative action within and between human systems. Clinical work in its presence is about stillness, resonance and co-operation. This is a humbling and joyful process to witness.
~ Franklyn Sills, student of osteopathy, influenced by DOs Sutherland, Becker, and Randolph Stone and by Buddhism, founder of craniosacral biodynamics