The Thesis

What is Osteopathy?

     Osteopathy is not a collection of techniques but rather philosophy a way of looking at the body, a way of understanding how it moves, lives and adapts and then helping it enhance the quality of that movement, life and adaptation. 

"Osteopathy is a manual science that uses specific anatomy, physiology and bio-mechanics to discover how a problem came about and uses manual techniques to help a body regain balance and auto-regulation."  ~Daryl Hochman~

The process and its progress...

One of the requirements of the CCO is to complete a research project of the students choice. Mine is to see if global osteopathic treatment will change the posture of an athlete, namely horseback riders. Understanding how a body moves in "non-normal" positions challenges and improves my ability to understand what my patients are going through.  

The thesis requires a protocol which is a blue print of what you plan to do, how, why and a brief overview of what has already been studied on the topic. An osteopathic student in this stage is referred to as a Protocol Writer. I am planning on presenting mine in June 2017 to be critiqued.

From here on a student is referred to as a Thesis Writer. The next stage is to collect the data. Depending on the student and project this can be quite time consuming. This is a great opportunity for people to get treated and to participate. Students rarely see the results of the change until after all the data is collected and analyzed. The plan is to do this during the late summer and fall of 2017. 

After that the actual thesis is written, including the results from the data collection, the student's experiences and what they learned. There are many editing stages in this process, more literature review and writing. 

Lastly a student gets to present their project to a jury. This jury will have members from the international community as well as members of the school. Students present their material, their findings, the effects on their understanding and the value of the project. The date for this is always in November coinciding with a celebration of completion. Often done in conjunction with the Founder's Day weekend at the Toronto Campus of the Canadian College of Osteopathy. My goal is November of 2018.  

Well its completed…

Hard to believe it but two long years have finally drawn to a close. The thesis is researched, data collected, compiled, calculated, written, edited, printed, defended, and accepted. One last copy to print off and mail away for the CCO school library.

Now the time has finally come to call myself an Osteopathic Manual Practitioner.