Review

Rollin Becker Memorial Lecture and Workshop 2021

How can we say that Cranial Osteopathy works?

given by Dr Mandy Banton at Sutherland Cranial College

PhOst | Review 1 · How can we say that Cranial Osteopathy works?

I’ve often bemoaned the fact that there is so little research to back up our professional claims, and wondered how cranial osteopathy can fit into double blind trials, so I was intrigued when Mandy spoke about ‘interrogating’ Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and using an alternative research method.

Mandy pointed out that the EBM focus, therefore the direction of research, is on ‘external evidence’, rather than on ‘patient values and expectations’. Her own interest in ‘patient values and expectations’, has led her to an alternative study design that uses ‘Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis’ (IPA) to explore the patient’s ‘lived experience’.

To explain her reasons for choosing this research design, Mandy took us on a tour of philosophical methods for studying the ‘unknown’ and the ’unknowable’, suitable for subjects like cranial osteopathy. Rather than use methods that claim to separate mind and body or researcher and subject into measurable objective data, Mandy’s chosen research design, IPA, included her own reflective responses as well as the patient and practitioner’s. With this research design, she could then explore ‘theories of knowing’ eg. How does a patient know that the osteopath’s hands know what’s going on in the body?

This led her to pose questions about ‘the meaningful osteopathic relationship’. She calls this ‘Hermeneutic Osteopathy’, in other words, making sense of the experience, for the patient, for the practitioner and for the researcher. This seems to be the mechanism by which cranial osteopathy works and it is important to understand this, in order to explain the risks and benefits.

In the workshop we were led into a practical experience of the theories and philosophies underpinning Mandy’s lecture and PhD thesis: in the practicals we explored Being, Knowing, Sense-making (Hermeneutics, a new word for me), and Disclosure. Disclosure was experienced after each practical, where we spoke, listened or witnessed the exchange in a group of 3 people. Mandy had primed us to use the skills of ‘taking a step back’, which she calls ‘Epoche’, and to report with ‘fidelity’, both of which she herself used when carrying out her subject interviews.

For me, a cranial osteopathy workshop that guides me to ‘step back’ and ‘feel myself feeling, know myself knowing – dropping down into honestly knowing’, whilst sharing my experiences with likeminded colleagues, is nourishment indeed.

I have gratitude for all osteopathic research and particularly that Mandy shared hers with us, leading us, in the workshop, to a direct experience of her process and to our own experience of that ‘meaningful relationship’ between practitioner and patient.

Review by Dianna Harvey

A recording of Mandy’s lecture is available to purchase for £20 from the Sutherland Cranial College of Osteopathy website.