17/07/2025
Osteopathy, intuitive healing, and newborns
To summarise some of the perspective of what I’m sensing and looking for in newborns….the health, that’s about it, and the perspective of it that helped shape my thinking was that from Bryan Freeman’s work in embryology which translated and extended upon pioneering work by Eric Bleschmidt, a German who did 1000’s of embryological studies of the developing baby at various stages of development.
From this, and a deeper view of the physics of the forces involved in development, an ontogenetic biodynamic view of human development was put forward. Mr Freeman I believe was actually kicked out of his university as a lecturer in Australia initially for proposing this and changing teaching from textbook.
Years later he is a senior PhD lecturer and the go-to dude…the way it happens!
But what really stuck with me is little things like how the heart is actually an alternating of two rivers of flow, creating a pulse as each “river” crosses the other and one flows and then the other. Pretty cool, because then afterwards, around the area of this “beat” forms the cardiac cells and the heart chambers!
Next thing was the heel pad in the foot, literally it absorbs force and disperses it as a cushion/trampoline. In the embryo, the alternating flow from the capillaries of the small arteries and veins forms a physical distribution of blood flow that actually creates the structural characteristics of the heel pad as we know it as an adult! We are born to jump!
The interesting thing, that Freeman points out is that these forces, eg just proximity to nutrients, or the level of flow of blood, or the pressure etc in the area, actually dictate which genetics are activated for development. As in the genetics code the “what to build” but for example the type of cell that develops on implantation of the egg, grows quicker on one side. That’s the side closer to the wall of the uterus, because, you guessed it, it’s closer to blood flow! The cells on the other side, grow slower, have a different shape, and different genetic expression because of this! Pretty cool hey.
So when your baby is really squished into mummy’s belly, dropped early into a cramped pelvis, or mums been unwell and tight diaphragm from coughing, or anything else that affects health, I always consider these forces and the impact of them on the whole developing baby.
I also consider things like intergenerational trauma, psyche of the whole family, and ecological factors and the spiritual state of all involved. Anything that goes in has an affect!
Treatment is a sensous experience of understanding these forces with my hands, and matching the feeling of the baby to normal health, and then corresponding that with mums history and the birth to get a good idea of what made what in that way. Little things, like face and upper neck impact on the temporomandibular joint can make a big impact down the line on the problems that may arise such as balance, posture, ear drainage/need for grommets, and space for the developing teeth and future dental issues arising. Baby is growing, and there is an intelligent process with millions of years of experience at play to connect with and assist:)
That’s a bub in a nutshell.
Cheers
Hayden
