What are Holonomics?
Holonomics is the term used to describe an approach to health based upon mathematics, osteopathy, biophysics, and medicine.
Holonomics of motion
Our bodies are a flow, not a machine. We turn over ninety percent of our molecules every year, and we turn over virtually all of our molecules every five years. What persists in our tissues are not the molecules, but their motion patterns. These patterns distort as we age, but there are biomechanical and fluid components of this condensation that can be reversed or helped. As the chief integration system, the nervous system becomes "noisy" with accumulated life stresses and insults. Because Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT) reorders these processes and increases the potential of the tissue to do work and move it is potentiating to the tissue. In the body, kinetic energy is not just motion, but is expressed in chemical bonds. Kinetic energy is holding patterns. Potential energy increases, as kinetic energy in the system is reduced. Tissue fluidity and flexibility reflects higher potential energy available.
Motion Patterns
Complex as biological systems are, there are underlying patterns of flow that are important in health. The tissue patterns involved in health are called "fractals" and they are both beautiful and simple to understand. Fractals repeat patterns at different scales of size in the tissue. The branching of these fractal patterns repeats as the tissue motions repeat.
Rhythms of motion
Patterns of motions that repeat in the organism are called "rhythms". These rhythms must be in harmony to be efficient and fluid. Like swaying branches of a tree, the extremities move in mirrored spirals about central axis of our spines, so disturbances in these oscillations can have profound consequences on the overall capacity for movement. As these capacities are lost, the body becomes limited and flow suffers. Keeping motions harmonious is paramount.
How is this related to Osteopathy?
All current medical literature points to the fact that the body works as one harmonious system, rather than as a collective grouping of separate parts. Osteopathy is a comprehensive medical model that considers all aspects of health to enhance the medical approach that makes it possible to truly recover full health. This is done without leaving residual distortions in the functions and/or structures of the body. It is based on the concept that in the early stages, many distortions of physiology are reversible with treatment. Early departure from health is detectable in tissues by palpatory examination (feeling the tissue and how it works). Not only is this distortion detectable, but it is often reversible.
When disease is present–as with infections, severe injuries, or chronic illnesses–osteopathy can assist the body's recovery directly. The nervous system, which controls the body and its responses to disease, can be helped by appropriate use of manipulation, nutrition, and activities that help reintegrate the body.
Reversing patterns of dysfunction
Because dysfunction is a major factor in stress adaptation and aging, as problems accumulate, the integration state of the body is reduced. This manifests as clogs in the circulation and texture of the tissues involved. Some osteopathic techniques can rebalance these reflexes and improve their adaptive flexibility. Biophysicists would say that by increasing the freedom in the system, we have literally increased its potential energy state.
Since dysfunction either represents accumulated stress or recent stressors, diseases or injuries, reversal of the dysfunction component potentiates the healing response when properly and judiciously applied. This helps improve the system's overall state of health.
Osteopathic principles
Osteopaths hold the following principles as central to their practice of medicine:
- You are a person which is the unification of body, mind, and spirit.
- Your body, when properly treated and maintained, is capable of self-regulation, self-maintenance, and self-healing.
- If all of the parts of your body are functioning optimally you will maintain the highest possible level of health. Because Osteopaths have an appreciation for the interrelationship between these basic principles they can provide you with the most holistic and comprehensive medical care available.
Their appreciation of the relationship between structure and function–as well as the use on OMT–allow them to diagnose and effectively treat conditions that elude non-osteopathic clinicians. They treat you, the whole person, not just a disease or it's symptoms.