Conference Review
From across the Atlantic, osteopathy in the United Kingdom seems idyllic, philosophically pure, and unspoiled by allopathic interference. First-hand, I was not disappointed when I attended the Sutherland Cranial College's seminar and workshop, The Intelligent Body, April 16 & 17, 2005, directed by Jeremy Gilbey, DO, MSCC. I was not only pleased to learn about scientific information that supports traditional osteopathic philosophy, but also about advancing ideas percolating through the minds of this osteopathic community. The urge to progressively develop osteopathic philosophy is alive and surging in the U. K., something we see less of in the United States. On the first day, the seminar featured Stephen Levin, MD and James Oschman, PhD who lectured respectively on tensegrity and the living matrix. Then, on day two at the workshop, faculty of the Sutherland Cranial College of Osteopathy challenged the osteopathic students to clinically integrate these ideas through palpatory exercises.
Dr. Levin punctuated his presentation with good humor to emphasize that the concepts of tensegrity apply to the human body. He said that intervertebral discs don't hold you apart, they hold you together. Levin has independently studied tensegrity for all of thirty years, inventing the field of bio-tensegrity. He has concluded that the spine is not a stack of blocks bearing up against gravity. Rather, each vertebra, including the sacrum is suspended by triangulating fibers of connective tissue.
One could compare the sacrum to the hub of a bicycle wheel with the ligaments acting like the spokes. The pelvis serves as the outer rim of the wheel. There are only straight-line tensioning forces that angulate with each other to support the system. Compressive elements (bones) are discontinuous (like the hub), while tensional elements (muscles, ligaments, fascia) are continuous. Muscles create a tone in the system operating fluid filled compartments in the body that end in joints. Joints, in general, are in tension, not compression. Changing the tension across a joint is to make the joint move. The joint is a frictionless plane which as Levin discovered cannot be compressed when synovial fluid is in place and ligaments are intact. This phenomenon does not follow Newtonian laws of physics. Due to tensegrity, the shoulder floats in muscle. There is very little connecting the shoulder to the axial skeleton. The scapula can be visualized as a sesamoid bone.
Close packing changes spherical components in living systems to icosahedrons (20 equilateral triangles), the next best shape to a sphere that maximizes volume to surface area. Beneath the icosahedron are more basic octahedrons (eight triangular surfaces) and tetrahedrons (four triangles) into which icosahedrons can devolve. Foam offers a plausible model for the shape of connective tissue. In foam, spherical bubbles are compressed in standard ways: close packing produces 120 degree angles where any two adjacent films meet; three films meet to form an edge; four edges meet at a single point. Just such arrangements are seen not only in connective tissue but more dramatically in the structure of the honeycomb of the beehive and of the eye of the fly.
Microscopically, tensegrity is seen in the cytoskeleton, where microtubules serve as the discontinuous compression elements and microfilaments and intermediate filaments serve as the continuous tension elements. Mechanotransduction occurs across the cell membrane thanks to integrins, proteins imbedded within the membrane that are connected to both the extracellular matrix and the cytoskeleton. This means that all the cells and extracellular matrix exhibit a continuous mechanical function right down to the genetic material in the nucleus. Vibratory information activates enzymes and DNA. The icosahedron naturally oscillates between left and right-handed forms with a larger-volume, higher-energy, cubic octahedron as the intermediary. A veritable pumping action results as icosahedrons oscillate. Any energy put into the system (mechanical, electrical, ionic flows) activates this oscillation of life. Thus, functioning on both a metabolic and structural level is inseparable.
Icosahedrons exhibit the phenomenon of "stacking." Symmetrical placement of one icosahedron on top of another in long series is the basis for the formation of helices. Hydroxyapatite is a helix. DNA is a double helix. Collagen is a triple helix. Systems of helices form non-Newtonian pumps in which squeezing it increases the pressure. Examples of these are the heart, alveoli, bladder, bowel, uterus, and kidney.
Dynamical diseases are non-linear, such as asthma, anaphylaxis, IBS, hives, migraines. Ingber says they are related to mechanotransduction. They don't show pathology once healed.
Dr. Oschman focused on the living matrix (connective tissue matrix) in his exciting presentation. As a biophysicist and biologist, he has made a study of healing systems and the mechanisms by which they work. He published a groundbreaking book in 2000: Energy Medicine: the Scientific Basis, and more recently: Energy Medicine in Therapeutics and Human Performance. In his books as in this set of lectures he marries optimal health and healing with its underpinnings in science.
Oschman took the ball from Levin to show how the connective tissue matrix serves as a sensitive receptor and generator of biological information. He indicated that many phenomena exist within the matrix as organizing forces for the entire organism. Water organizes itself using octahedrons of hydrogen bonds around the proteins of the matrix. This "structured water" vibrates and transmits various influences such as flows of ions. Electrons and protons are the actors for life on the surfaces of the matrix proteins.
Bioluminescence, low level emission of photons as part of the metabolic processes, communicates biological information from cell to cell, integrating functions across wide regions of the organism. The connective tissues participate in this process emitting most of the light from the heart, forehead, and palms of the hands. The frequency of the emitted light determines the effect, not the amplitude or the force. Cell membranes are constructed in such a way that they inherently vibrate at a very high frequency. When they vibrate synchronously, they are said to create "quantum coherence." This communicates a tone of information that regulates the functions of the body, in general.
Mechanotransduction, a phenomenon of the fibrous part of the connective tissue matrix, participates in a vibratory communication from the matrix outside the cell into the cytoskeleton via the integrins and down into the nuclear genetic material, itself. And the reverse also occurs. Dr. Oschman declared that the DNA is the body's master tuning fork, establishing a tone for the optimal functioning of the proteins. This is called "systemic cooperation" in which all parts of the person operate together. The heart causes resonances throughout the entire organism. The heart is constructed out of a single muscle strand that forms a double helix.
As one palpates the skin, one connects with this microscopic meshwork of the living matrix, thus permitting the ability to feel at a distance and to influence healing within the system. Oschman referred to healing as systemic cooperation in which the healer deeply connects with the patient and all parts of the patient work together. "Entrainment" may also play a role. This phenomenon results from synchronous vibrations between the healer and the patient.
Dr. Oschman went so far as to say that the connective tissues exhibit primary consciousness. Before the nervous system was phylogenetically established, the connective tissues controlled the function of multi-celled organisms. The function of these integrating phenomena of the connective tissues is very rapid. The movement of electrons and protons along the protein surfaces is nearly instantaneous. Whole regions of this fibrous meshwork share electrons. The more electrons the healthier is the tissue. Shininess of connective tissue is evidence for a plentiful supply of electrons.
Compared to the living matrix, the nervous system is slow. Nerve impulses and synaptic transport of neurotransmitters like acetylcholine require more time than common response times of the human body. For instance, neurology cannot explain a baseball batters ability to hit a pitched baseball traveling at 90+ miles per hour. The matrix consciousness explains this intuitive ability. Ted Williams, one of the greats in baseball hitting history said he studied the pitcher and then just guessed. This intuitive guessing is similar to the phenomenon of "second sight" in which a soldier who lost his sight in battle in World War I was still able to negotiate around objects. Oschman declares that the living matrix is the ultimate transducer between our thoughts and our experiences.
The nervous system is a higher order of consciousness including consideration and contemplation. It developed from the hydra, one of the earlier multi-celled organisms. The hydra has tiny tentacles or cilia which transmit information to the nervous system. It uses this information to migrate by attaching cilia to an object and releasing its foot to stand on its head and then to replace its foot further along the way, subsequently releasing the cilia. This is definitely a slow process. All our special sense receptors: retina, cochlea, etc. have some form of hydra-like cilia to pass on information. These receptors connect to both the sensory and motor divisions of the central nervous system.
There is another set of receptors in the retina, the Muller cells, which send information to the connective tissues. All fibroblasts connect physically with each other creating another meshwork of communication within the matrix. In this way we could explain the reaction times of baseball hitters and other quick and intuitive responses of the organism. We could also theorize that we are limited by observing with our nervous systems. Instantaneous events are elusive. According to Oschman, the unconscious exists in the matrix; intuition exists in the matrix. Einstein was quoted as saying: "Intuition is a sacred gift and the rational mind is its faithful servant. We have however created a society that worships the servant and has forgotten the gift."
The workshops on the second day were no less stimulating and groundbreaking. Jeremy Gilbey, the director of the weekend program led the first practical, "tensegrity diagnosis." The students were led through a screening test of structural functioning, something we all can do with our eyes closed, but this time it was as if we closed our eyes and used the matrix consciousness to establish where the patient's body was structurally imbalanced. We looked at the body with an eye for the preset tension that tensegrity espouses. We examined it relative to the many fluid compartments and their relationships to each other. We considered organs and their capsules as part of the overall structural picture. We used our whole body to let the information come to us in an allowing manner.
The second practical by Liz Hayden emphasized the connective tissue matrix as the focus for palpation. We palpated the quality and viscosity of the connective tissue matrix. We used the bottom of the feet as the contact point with our thumbs making the contact. Then switching from person to person gave us a good sense for the variability of different people. We observed while waiting the change from a more gel state of the connective tissue matrix to a more sol state. We considered the reasons for the varying quality of the tissue viscosity: toxins, allergies, drugs, etc. We visualized the macroscopic to microscopic connectivity of the matrix under our thumbs.
The third practical by Lis Davies and myself referred to the communication ability of the matrix. We reviewed the frequency spectrum and methods for treatment in this context used by Robert Fulford, DO. Lis played her violin to demonstrate dissonance coming into harmony as she tuned the instrument. In the practical we observed the patient's "base note." We then looked for harmonies and dissonances in the system. We looked for altered tensegrity as an influence on the quality of vibration. We explored whether the whole system would come into harmony with the base tone.
The fourth practical by Nicholas Handoll emphasized the individual in relation to the environment. Ordinarily we think of ourselves as space occupying moving through emptiness around us. Instead, we looked at the individual as space instead of matter. The space between the material elements and within the atoms of the matter is far greater than the matter itself. The energy residing there in the space is beyond comprehension. We succeeded in seeing the individual as a negative instead of a positive "photograph."
The final practical by Peter Cockhill emphasized the ever-present and unexplainable now. William Sutherland spoke of this concept as he mentioned Intelligence with a capital "I". In the practical we felt the parts all working together in "quantum jazz." All the parts are independent but harmonize to create a voice of the whole. In the now, the mega-organizing happens. We acknowledged the different time durations of different processes in the body. We synchronized with the now and let the question come: from where does potency originate, from within or from without?
With that we had come through an amazing process of looking at the body mechanically, spatially, energetically, and spiritually. We had developed awareness for matrix consciousness as it applies to physiology and healing. This was an enormous osteopathic journey led by explorers of far-seeing intent. I will enjoy revisiting this reality.
Due to be published shortly:
Interface: Mechanisms of Spirit in Osteopathy, by R. Paul Lee, DO, FAAO, published by Stillness Press, Portland, Oregon, summarizes Dr. A. T. Still's philosophy as fundamentally a spiritual philosophy. The artery and nerve deliver that which maintains the health of the body, a spiritual quality, along with the nutrients. The book then compares Dr. Still's ideas with other great thinkers of ancient and modern times emphasizing the approach of cranial osteopathy by his student, William Garner Sutherland, DO. The book then delves into the scientific literature to explain what it is that practitioners feel in the tissues when working with the primary respiratory mechanism. It issues a challenge to the osteopathic profession to look to its roots and discover its destiny.