“A Frontier Mind and A Scholar’s Cause: Still and Littlejohn”

Why did A.T. Still reject the medicine of his time and create a radical new approach to health?

And who was John Martin Littlejohn — the brilliant Scottish scholar whose convictions would carry osteopathy into the academic world?

In this episode of ICO Why We Exist, Robert Cartwright traces Still’s frontier upbringing, profound personal losses, and deep trust in nature that led to the discovery of osteopathy, before introducing Littlejohn: a man of rigorous principle and intellect whose early life set the stage for osteopathy’s evolution.

This is a podcast with Dr Maria Coffman about her book titled "Booby Traps" with Pindy Cummins and Marika Javbrett from the Institute of Classical Osteopathy.

We're very pleased that Maria is a guest for an ICO webinar where she goes through more of the physiology in her book on Weds February 12th at 7.30pm UK time, here is the booking link for ICO members; https://www.tickettailor.com/events/instituteofclassicalosteopathy/1522336

and here is the link for non members;

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/instituteofclassicalosteopathy/1510044

This fascinating and important book examines what happens to your insides with a bra strapped to your outside? Booby Traps, A Book of Bras, Breasts, and Bands weaves a never-before-seen look at underthings. Follow an osteopathic physician as she guides an adventure from the history of modern bra-wearing to how to choose the best bra for the job. Surprise! Nature is often best. Browse tips for choosing the best bra for the occasion (you wouldn't wear your prom shoes to run a marathon) and healthy ideas for alternative, bra-free first layers. Discover how to reduce restrictive clothing and still feel polished in public.

Dr. Coffman shares her decades of experience observing everyday women and everyday bras. Through a skilled and intuitive lens, she describes the effects of restrictive bands on a woman's bones, heart, lungs, breathing, mental state, and even pressure on the pelvic floor.

Along the way, explore interactive instructions to help you determine what fits and why using healthy parameters of breathing, heart function, physical mobility, and energy flow. Finish with self-care exercises to improve your whole health including your breasts. Booby Traps, A Book of Bras, Breasts, and Bands illuminates the undercover world of clothing to help you choose your best health.

For more information about the Institute of Classical Osteopathy please visit our website at www.classical-osteopathy.org

Hi, this episode describes why passive treatment or input is still relevant for people who are described as suffering from chronic pain with central sensitisation. It is based on a research article I wrote and was published in the Institute of Classical Osteopathy 2018 Yearbook, in which you can find other excellent articles.

Hi, this isn't a new podcast, I recorded this with Chris Campbell probably about a year ago and it is on the ICO YouTube channel. However, there was some recent conversation about current osteopathic standards of education verses the earlier education, and this webinar is a window into the standards of the day, see what you think. It also discusses the early arguments about general treatment verses specific treatment, when general treatment wasn't specific and when it was. This then leads into JM Littlejohn's approach to treating someone with what was called "neurasthenia" which is akin to ME or CFS.

A short video cast about the upcoming conference

Today Diego and I sat with Alex while he talked about seasonal colds and flu and their relevance to health, what to do when one arrives and how we can stay healthy through winter. Nature Cure and Natural Hygiene looks at symptoms and relates them to what our bodies are trying to achieve at that point in time, it aims to help support these processes as they are natural cleaning and healing processes. These natural healing processes and principles are part of osteopathy as what AT Still called “the bodies own medicine chest” and not a different healing art so it is important we study and understand them as events that naturally occur during our patients recovery process.

Hello all, this is an interview with long-term ICO lecturer Hendrik Vlek. Hendrik is an incredible osteopath with a fantastic knowledge and specialises in the lymphatic system. Today I did a short interview with him talking about the lymphatic system and the workshop he is running on 2nd and 3rd December 2023 at the Littlejohn Centre in Dublin. We are really looking forward to it, for booking details please go to www.classical-osteopathy.org

I hope you enjoy this podcast from my colleague Alice Williams who is also one of these super bright people, she has an uncanny ability to ask the most probing of questions to see where you are with your understanding so she can help you find the next step on this fantastic journey of osteopathic learning, which ultimately allows us to help more people more often. This is the approach Alice has taken with this article, she has understood that their view is governed by where they are standing and can see this view is the medical view which was likely to be in place during their upbringing and developed further during their undergraduate and post-graduate education. This is why they are where they are, but it is not the osteopathic view.

Old and new research, has this been good for osteopathic education? I contrast and compare the work of Denslow and Korr to the later work by Fryer et al and see the effect on undergrad education. Many thanks to Mervyn Waldman and Alain Abehsera.

The sequelae from the papers by Fryer et al, over the last 25 odd years, have been instrumental in removing traditional osteopathic concepts from undergraduate education. The use of these concepts has been observed to work in the clinic and has helped millions of patients around the world over the last 120-plus years, often leading patients away, as they vote with their feet, from mainstream medical care to an osteopathic system of care.

This podcast is about how Fryer et al have attempted to reproduce Denslow and Korr’s experiments from the 1940s, I have compared and contrasted their laudable attempts at reproducing these experiments by taking a deep dive into both the Denslow and Korr research and the Fryer et al research, the findings are surprising. I have been working on and sitting on this for a couple of years now. With the help of Mervyn Waldman and Alain Abehsera, we knocked my 10,000-plus words of notes down to a more journal-like length of 2-3000 words. However, we had to leave out so much of the detail as it is a long and complex subject covering lots of papers, and doing that just didn’t do it justice. So, I have decided to publish it here on the Classical Osteopathy Podcast which over time more people will listen to than would have read it in a journal.

This is an interview where Alex, Diego and I discuss vitality, that inner force that we, as osteopaths harness to help patients through the recovery process.   As ever Alex and Diego make some really interesting points about helping patients recover and how the body needs to be allowed to go through these cleaning processes as part of recovery. For further information about classical osteopathy please visit www.classical-osteopathy.org.

Near the end of a fun, productive weekend in Dublin, Diego and myself interview Paul Mazzucco. Paul came across classical osteopathy after John Wernham went to Italy, he recognised the genius of it and wanted to bring it to Italy, now he and his colleagues have been running classical osteopathy courses in Italy since 2006. For further information about classical osteopathy in Italy visit the AIOC website www.osteopatiaclassica.it or for the UK ICO visit www.classical-osteopathy.org.

Marika is a really interesting osteopath, a Swedish national, she initially started her training in the UK but then decided to go back to Sweden to train in Gothenburg. Marika graduated in 1998 and already had a keen interest in classical osteopathy; studied with John Wernham in Maidstone for a further 2 years. She was the vice-president of the Swedish Osteopathic Association and was president of the EFO for 4 years while playing a key role in raising osteopathic education standards across many countries in Europe as chair of the CEN Swedish Technical Committee. During this time she somehow also found time to complete an MSc at Dresden. Marika has also lectured at the Kirksville and is a force to be reckoned with!

Hello, this podcast answers most of the questions we get asked by potential students who are interested in becoming better osteopaths by studying with the Institute of Classical Osteopathy and doing our PGDCO course.

A little while ago I uploaded a podcast that was some thoughts about Still's phrase "find it fix it and leave it alone", this was a short piece of audio Chris Campbell very kindly sent me afterwards and I thought those who enjoyed the first podcast about this would also enjoy this.

This is a fascinating interview with osteopath and naturopath Alex Johnson. Alex graduated from the BSO (now UCO) and went then went to study classical osteopathy at the Maidstone College started by John Wernham. Alex has a passion for nature cure and natural hygiene, which is and always has been part of osteopathy, and we discuss how the "bodies own medicine chest" as AT Still would call it will always do its best with the resources it has available in the environment it is in and how we can use these innate forces to assist patients in overcoming or improving some health problems. This is a long episode and well worth listening to especially as Alex and his family live the life he extolls to his patients.

Hendrik is a Swiss national living and working in Switzerland, he is dedicated to the development of osteopathy, is incredibly knowledgable and inspiring. In this interview we end up discussing how Hendrik, during his osteopathy treatments assists people in overcoming some of the deep seated psychological or emotional problems as well as their other chronic problems, he is a brilliant osteopath and well worth listening to. This was our second take for this interview as we were having sound problems with Zoom which to some degree persisted through this interview so my apologies for any sound issues you hear. We also have some wonderful videos on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_AW-4bhiw&t=10s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB9xEM1RwVY&t=8s

This episode is an interview with Alice Williams. Alice is the foundation director at ICO and one of her roles, which she is very passionate about, is to take osteopaths who enrol on our courses on the journey of discovery to understand that their view depends upon where they are looking. This allows the osteopath to move from allopathic to osteopathic thinking which is quite a difficult paradigm shift for people as it is the default position we are programmed with at subconscious level. This is the starting place which is critical for helping osteopaths develop their osteopathic thinking. Andrew Taylor Still went through this shift in his thinking, moving from a medical perspective to osteopathic thinking when he discovered osteopathy.

Alice is super bright and interesting to listen to.

This is a review of the classical osteopathic approach to supraspinatus tendinopathy and impingement, the aim is to identify that there can commonly be a postural component causing alteration in scapular mechanics leading to supraspinatus impingement and tendinopathy. Also to illustrate that to improve scapula mechanics, a whole body approach may be needed to improve whole body mechanics.

This podcast covers what John Stedman Denslow DO called the "early years" research whilst he worked with Irvin Korr PhD and discusses why it was so important then and still is now. Some research just doesn't go out of date, this fits that category. This is one of the podcasts that I enjoyed recording the most.