➡ In this conversation, Dr. Cowan talks with his friend Chris, a traditional osteopath. They discuss their long-standing friendship, their shared experiences, and their views on health and medicine. Chris explains the concept of osteopathy, a natural medicine practice that uses hands-on techniques to promote health and cure diseases. They also touch on the history of osteopathy and its origins in the late 1800s, a time when there was a split in consciousness in the world between germ theory and natural healing methods.
➡ A man dedicated years to studying the human body, understanding every bone, vein, artery, and nerve. He developed a deep understanding of how the body functions and how diseases affect it. This knowledge led him to osteopathy, a type of alternative medicine that emphasizes physical manipulation of muscle tissue and bones. His work gained popularity, even among famous figures like Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt, and spread globally. Osteopathy focuses on the present state of the body, identifying and addressing issues without necessarily needing to know their cause.
➡ The text discusses the practice of osteopathy, a type of alternative medicine that emphasizes physical manipulation of muscle tissue and bones. It highlights the importance of the practitioner’s focus and attention during treatment, suggesting that a relaxed, unfocused state can lead to better perception and healing. The text also compares this practice to being in nature, where quiet observation can reveal more than active disturbance. Lastly, it emphasizes the importance of understanding and following natural principles in osteopathy, rather than simply mimicking techniques.
➡ Osteopathy is a practice that focuses on improving the body’s vitality, or life force, by identifying and removing restrictions in the body’s natural motions. This process helps to restore health and well-being. The concept of vitality is complex and often misunderstood, but it’s essentially about the appropriate and integrated motion of our organs and functions. When these motions are unrestricted and working together, we feel more alive and vital.
➡ The speaker discusses the importance of American culture and its influence, the unique characteristics of different lands and how they might impact people’s health, and the practice of osteopathy. They also express gratitude for the support received during the COVID-19 pandemic and encourage people to stay true to their beliefs.

Okay, thanks. Welcome, everybody. Another edition of conversations with Dr. Cowan and friends. And for those who’ve listened to a number of them, you’ll probably know that most of the people I interview, I guess you would say, are not technically friends. They’re people that I know. Some I’ve never even met, but people who have. Who have. Are doing something or making something or have ideas that I want to help share. So. But today actually is a friend. And I was trying to think, Chris, when we first met, and it’s got to be decades, right? It was decades.

I actually remember it. I invited you to give a lecture. Oh, right. At the turo. The Integrative Medicine Club at my medical school. All right, right, right. So how many years ago was that? Oh, I don’t know. 16, 17. 16, yeah. So that’s. That’s what we met, we became friends. Chris eventually worked in my office in San Francisco, like, I would say, rented a room. We don’t have to go into that for a while, so my patients had access. And Chris. I’ll let him tell. I let people. I don’t like Chris to tell, like, so and so went to this medical school because I couldn’t really care less or.

So I let people tell about themselves. But I. I do tell. But Chris is a traditional osteopath, basically. I think that’s the way to say it. But I. I do like to tell, like, stories of. Of things that have stood out from our interaction over the years. So I have three that I thought of, and I think they. Two. Two of them came when. Right before we left San Francisco. So I think probably the office had closed and we were going to leave, and you were probably going to leave soon after that. And you came over to our house, which we were, like, selling.

So we were in sort of the back part for lunch or something. And so. And by that time, I think we had already had conversations about viruses. You always say, have to say viruses or viral theory. And I remember you. You listening and hearing it and all that. And you said something which I’ve repeated many times, which you said. It may not be a quote, but, you know, Tom, the understanding virus is not a science issue. It’s a psychological issue. And that somehow really struck me because I’ve remembered that, and I remember it when, you know, I’ve had, I don’t know how many hundreds, thousands of conversations since then with all kinds of people about viruses.

And I always remember that because it’s important for me to remember that we’re not talking science here. The Science of this is like third grade stuff. You know, any fool can understand the virus, the science part. And so the real issue is the psychological or emotional or trauma based or whatever you want to call it. That’s where the action is. So that was, that was one thing that I remember. And the second thing that you said, I don’t remember when you said this. You kept asking me in the beginning, because you were one of the first person people that I really talked about, you know, this whole virus thing.

You kept asking me using the same words, which again is really stuck with me. She said, tom, what are they looking at? I don’t know if you remember that. And it’s a great question because it’s. No matter what you’re trying to, you know, understand or debunk or something, it’s really important to understand, to not to think of the, you know, the people who are like virologists or whatever they are, as they’re looking at something and we need to understand. And I didn’t sort of get virology until I could answer the question, what are they looking at? And then when you know what they’re looking at and why, they come to those certain conclusions which are usually reasonable but illogical.

If, if that’s possible. They like, they’re basically logical fallacies, but on a certain framework they seem reasonable. Once you understand that, then you could say, you could say you’re fluent in virology or fluent in whatever the subject is. And until you, until I didn’t know what they were looking at, I didn’t feel like I got it. So I, I was very grateful for those two things that you brought up. The third was Chris, I believe it’s your oldest child, Leo. You guys have a special bond. Yeah, Leo, I tend to get along with the children who, like people think, have issues.

And I didn’t particularly have issues as I did have issues like I didn’t talk, you know, and stuff. But, but, but Leo and I had a special bond. So I, I, I hope. I don’t even know how old he is now. I haven’t seen him for a while. Yeah. So anyway, say hi to Leo. So those are the three things. So anyways, with that. Chris, welcome. If you could just tell people a little bit who you are. And one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast conversation is Chris sent me. I don’t think you’ve been so public as like, not like me, for instance, but you, you did a, a public talk or something on vitality and you sent it to Me.

And it was fabulous stuff. And I thought, well, we should let other people know about that. Now, that doesn’t have to be the only thing we talk about, but it would be a great place to start if you could just, like, introduce yourself so people have a sense of who you are. And the other thing, I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Chris has an office in two places, one of which was the Palisade. So you have some familiarity with that, too. Yeah, all right, that’s enough of me. So, Chris, welcome. Just. Thank you. And back at you.

You’ve. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this, but, yeah, you’ve been a big part of my journey into health, including, you know, on a professional level and personal level in ways that. That probably, you know, to some extent, but in ways you don’t, and which won’t come across in words properly, but. Yeah, but, man, you’ve been a friend and mentor and a kind of light, so thanks for all that. Actually. So what happened was just briefly. So I. I’m a traditional osteopath, as you know. So the degree after my name is Dr. Stands for Dr.

Of Osteopathy. And by the way, Chris, I may rudely interrupt you at times, but it’s because. So, for instance, I’m not sure that everybody knows what a traditional osteopath is. Yeah, totally. So a traditional osteopath is somebody who practices something called osteopathy. We got to start to start building the blocks. Yeah, people get very mixed up about this stuff. So osteopathy is a. Is a treatment style. It’s a. It’s a natural medicine, so to speak, that was discovered and elucidated in the 1800s in America. And it’s a. It’s a science of how to use the hands to treat the body to cure disease and promote health.

So that’s originally what osteopathy was and still is, technically speaking. And. And we can get into all the whole nature of how osteopathy came about, because it’s very interesting. Yeah, it is. It’s one of the only American natural healing methods that I know about. I mean, I’m sure they’re herbalists. You know, there. There’s stuff out there, and no doubt the native people had all kinds of things. And osteopathy, incidentally, was in connection with some of those native traditions, but it’s the only one I know about officially. You know, Chris, I’m going to just stop you there for a minute, because it Just struck me, I think it’s sort of late 1800s.

Right. So the official start date of osteopathy was 1874. Yeah, it’s so, it’s fascinating. That’s the time there was like in some way similar to now, there was like a split in consciousness in the world. So most of the people were going down the germ theory and evolution and, and atomism and you know, eventually relativity and nuclear physics and the sort of make believe world. And then there was also, and there was a bunch of people and I think osteopathy and chiropractic who actually were into like life and healing with, you know, with hands and spirit and trying to understand what vitality is and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And, and what’s interesting. So, so the, the guy who originated osteopathy was named Andrew Taylor Still. S T I L L so people call him A T Still or the, they called him the old doctor. So he’s, he’s just. You would love this guy. He, he’s right up your alley and just a crazy American character who was deeply, he, he tried to penetrate the illusions, let’s put it that way. Yeah. And I mean there was no germ theory for these guys or that stuff. Well, I can tell you about what he thought of it.

So, so he, he put together, he, he dedicated decades of his life to unfolding the science which had to do with being able to perceive with his hands what’s happening in a human body. It’s, it’s, it’s so basic, it’s so not esoteric. Yes, there’s a body, it gets sick. Let’s figure out what this body is doing. Not, not from a, not only from a. Let’s you know, read the textbook on it. But like what can we know? What can we actually perceive of what is happening? Yeah. So he, so he studied anatomy just 24 hours a day for years.

Like he would carry around bones in his pocket so that he could with his hands know every contour in every surface of the bone. And he wanted to know where every vein and every artery and every nerve passed. So he, he developed in his mind’s eye this kind of elaborate landscape of what’s happening in a human body. And, and the, and then, and then he could detect when, when dysfunction came into that landscape that he had learned about. So he could, he could tell when, when disease happened and exactly what that meant in the body. So, oh, this artery got pinched or this nerve got obstructed or this.

Wow. Yeah. Rotated. It’s so that’s. Osteopathy is, is the. Is the direct perception of what’s happening in health and in a disease state. Very interesting stuff. And he, he eventually started. He was getting so many miracle stories. I mean, it’s just in the osteopathic literature, it’s just countless stories of treatment results he was getting sometimes by very simple things. And he. He got the attention of very popular people. You know, Mark Twain was a big fan of osteopathy. Teddy Roosevelt was a big fan of osteopathy. Ellen Keller. Yeah. So this was not some kind of fringe thing.

Ultimately it became a. A kind of a big deal and ultimately got exported to the world and is a big deal around the world and in Western Europe, especially Russia, Argentina, all over Australia. But anyway, back to what you originally were talking about, that kind of split is what happened was in the early 1900s, there became kind of academies of osteopathy, like official institutions. And you know, what happens when that happens, you know, before we. We get into that. So in other words, he was saying that I can feel this person in health, and the anatomy and the, The.

Maybe I’ll. I’ll. I’ll extrapolate here. The flow of energy through this, through this living system feels right and normal. And the person, you ask them how they feel, and they say they feel fine. And then I feel that this vein is constricted, the nerve is pinched or the bone is out of alignment, or the flow of the spinal fluid isn’t right. That’s what the problem is. And then I can maneuver it somehow until I feel that the nerve isn’t pinched, and then the person feels better and they do better. Yeah, that’s. Well put. That’s. That’s pretty accurate, I would say.

He talked about the idea of perfection. So that was his big realization that God, that the God of nature has done his work perfectly in creating the human body. And that’s a. That’s worth many podcasts, what that actually means. Yeah, right. But not like bumping atom somehow happened to create something that, that, you know, that. Not that whole story. So in his philosophy, he kind of. He realized that there are three features of a. Of a human life, and he. He called them body or matter, essentially mind and motion or spirit. So there’s kind of like these three.

Three parts. And you. You’re talking about energy. Energy is a word that in osteopathy we shy away from not. Because I can see that. I can imagine that. Yeah. But it’s. It’s just. It’s a little non descriptive and, and it’s, there’s a whole aspect of osteopathy that is desperate to be taken seriously in a professional level. So you know, so I worked in a hospital for years and you know, you wouldn’t tell the attending who consulted us on their trauma patient that energy was this way or that way on the patient, that, that just wouldn’t fly at all.

So. But we do talk about motion. So there’s, and we use, we have descriptive words to, to describe how the body moves internally involuntarily. The, the, the kind of what we call the primary respiratory mechanism. What that means is the way that the body is pulsating. Yeah. Cues are breathing constantly. Whether you, whether a person knows it and feel it or not, it’s happening. Right. They can train to feel that with their hands. And so, but I, I’m just, I’m really making an effort to take osteopathy out of the esoteric zone because it can go to infinitely esoteric if you want it.

But at its core it’s just saying that in every disease state it had, there has to be something. Something happens, something happens in the body. It’s like if a perfect body came in, you wouldn’t say that they’re in a disease state. Yeah, something is going on. Well, is it inflammation, swelling, lack of venous return? Whatever it is, is it in the psychic field, Is it in the fluid field? Doesn’t matter what we talk about. Something’s happening. And the question in osteopathy is do we have that feeling internally as a practitioner, but also with our hands to know what is, what is the health state of the person? And then you can feel to great detail actually what is off.

I mean sometimes it’s so obvious that a patient will come in and the, the strain pattern will be so strong, it feels like I’ll be knocked off my chair. It’s, it’s so obvious and, and it’s, and a lot of my colleagues experience this too. It’s like a patient will come in, whatever. Maybe they have, have had ankle pain for 10 years, maybe they’ve had back pain since kid or chronic headaches or they haven’t had their period in 10 years or whatever. And they’ve been through all this medical workup and they’ve seen all kinds of holistic practitioners and body workers and everything.

And, and they just, they’re at the end of their rope and within a few seconds it’s like this, the strain, the body is screaming so loud it’s almost Like, I can’t even have my hands on them. And, and it’s. It’s not because an osteopath is special or anything. It’s just we learn a. A style of perception where we can detect those things within our own nervous system. Can you describe what it is that you’re perceiving? Yeah. So on a. Again, it would always depend who I’m speaking with, because if the. If this. The construction worker comes in, I would.

I would only talk about bones and joints. Essentially, that’s how I would describe whatever I felt. And I wouldn’t be lying. It’s just like that’s the piece of it that would probably. Probably be relatable. So on that level, you know what one way to think about, like, there’s so many different levels of physiology. Like, like, you know, obviously there’s fluids, there’s connective tissues and muscles and bones and each have a different parent palpatory feel. So, for example, in. In the. The fascial field, like, it feels like a slippery film. So. And. And you want it to be irregular.

You want the fascia to be adaptable and slippery. And. But in a. When it gets in a pathologic state, it gets twisted and held there. So it’s kind of like if you’re holding a sheet, you know, if. Like a bed sheet and somebody was holding the other two corners and you were holding one corner. And if they, if they pulled one corner, you could kind of feel it on your side, you know. Yeah. You kind of pull. So. So it’s a perfect example. It’s like somebody who’s doing that, you know, folding a sheet with another person, they know what normal feels like.

What? Like normal tension in a sheet should feel like, balanced and whatever. Yeah. And if somebody pulls a corner. Oh, so it’s. In a way, it’s that simple. Would you say it doesn’t matter so much what caused the sheet to be pulled? Funny. So this is very interesting point. It doesn’t. For osteopathy, one thing that’s so refreshing about it is that it doesn’t matter. Yeah, it doesn’t matter because. Because the. The only osteopathy happens now. It happens. I mean, everything happens now. The only thing you can work with is what’s happening. Yeah. So the body is not lying about what’s happening.

It’s showing the history plain as day. And so all we can do is. Is interact with what’s happening with this. With that movie that’s playing out in the body. Yeah. But I mean, you know, sometimes like in, in you know, psychotherapy settings. You know, I know it’s, it’s useful sometimes for a person to intellectually get context for their tr. For their injuries or trauma and that’s valid but in osteopathy it’s, it’s not. So it’s more mechanical in that way. Right. It reminds me a little bit of it’s. And it’s interesting we’re not quite talking about vitality but, but when I worked with Jamin McMillan in the Fourfold Path, he used to describe it as, you know, person comes in depressed and I’ve said this probably many times and you can talk to them till you’re blue in the face, but when they, they come in depressed and they look like this, you know, and, and a person, if you look, if you do this all day, you eventually feel sad or down.

So he said what I’m going to do is get them to, you know, be upright and, and in their body and then suddenly you feel differently. Doesn’t matter what your mother said to you or you know, I mean there’s some. That does matter to a certain extent, but it is, it’s. What’s happening now is your body is messed up. Yeah, sounds a lot like that. Side note. Yeah. Depression is an interesting phenomenon where, and, and you actually helped me about this quite a bit when you turned me on to structured water and, and, and what structuring is of water to me is not, is not a easy thing to describe because I think can mean a lot of things, but certainly I think osteopathic treatment, I, I think on one level we can be, it can be said that the goal is to kind of structure water to, to, to make the fluid system that, into that gel, that hyper aware electric, adaptable, buoyant gel biologic water.

And, and, and the miracle of osteopathy and, and all healing. It’s, it’s not special to osteopathy but the fact that such simple contact with the hands and, and how we engage the mechanical system and how we use our attention can cause the patient’s body to self heal. Yeah, like that’s the, that’s the thing, that’s why I can do this all day. It seems so from the outside it’s, it’s the most boring thing to ever watch an osteopathic treatment because just you don’t see much. But to me it’s this unbelievably it’s a, it’s addictive. It’s so fascinating to see that hu, the human body self Heal in the moment and like, and track the whole thing as it goes there, there, there, there and then bang.

And it, and it becomes the leg, whatever, becomes that gel fluid again. And it’s, and the whole thing is integration for osteoarth. You’ve had the experience that if your attention isn’t there, it doesn’t work like as well. The whole thing is about, is about where, I’ll call it where we place our consciousness. Yeah, places their consciousness because. And, and that’s true for all of life. Right. I mean all life is a matter of where we put our consciousness. Yeah. So osteopathy is a great laboratory, literally a clinical laboratory in which to practice that and, and, and, and watch it do work, you know, because again, these things can vagy and stuff.

But what’s cool about this practice is that it, it’s non negotiable. It’s, there’s nothing up for theory or hypothesis. It’s like you feel it working or you don’t. And. Yeah. And so we train. It’s so funny, it’s so funny to, to watch a new student learn how to palpate. It’s so fun because, you know, and unfortunately our allopathic colleagues, they don’t typically learn how to palpate, so they’ll come into a patient’s room and kind of poke them like, like their roadkill, you know, they kind of back up, you know, it’s this kind of. Yeah, but in, in osteopathy we learn how to make contact with the hand and, and a student, a new student, you, you can put your hand on top of theirs and feel the deadness.

You can, you can feel how there’s nothing transmitted. I mean, it just feels like, it feels like you could have gotten a cadaver hand and put it there and put your hand on top. That’s what it feels like originally, but it doesn’t take much. A few months and suddenly that their hand is alive too. And, and, and then in the process of learning how to palpate, one realizes this very interesting fact that, that if we focus, if we focus hard, we don’t perceive well. So if we concentrate too much, we don’t perceive well. And if we’re thinking too much, we don’t perceive well.

So, so the, the trick to, to perception is to get more unfocused essentially to, to, to, to let go the, that control, that sense of control over our intellect and let it go. And, and, and you can see it happen because the person, if they’re contacting the patient, they’ll Be rigid everywhere. And then you have to tell them, relax here, relax here. Stop, you know, stop boring a hole in that patient with your attention. It’s not working. Then we get here and here, and pretty soon the. The student just kind of. Maybe they don’t care anymore or they’re frustrated or they just forget to even think about it.

And then all of a sudden there comes the motion. And, ah. And. And if my hand or the teacher’s hand is on top of that student’s hand, they say, oh, there you feel. Yeah. And the patient will. And the student will, like, light up because it’s such a startling thing to feel the vital motions jump into their body like that. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s like being out in, in the woods. You know, if somebody’s like, comes into a clearing with, you know, with like, pots and pans on their backpack, banging around, yelling to their friend, you know, they’re not going to see much wildlife, you know, but.

But maybe if you sit under the tree silent for an hour, you know, the whole world will start to come alive for that person. It’s just a. It’s just a matter of physics, essentially, or, Or a natural principle. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I’ve told so many stories like that. It reminds me of. I mean, it reminds me of even like, you know, sort of Zen philosophy or if, if you come in with concepts, you don’t. You don’t get anything. And yeah, there’s. And even. It reminds me even of like, the native people used to talk about listening to trees and, you know, that the white people would come and they’d go up to a tree, usually with a.

With a saw or a. Or a. An ax, and say, I don’t hear anything. And I remember hearing and thinking, what do you expect? They speak English or something, you know, like. And besides, I wouldn’t talk to you either if you had it. I mean, it’s, it’s. I know this from dealing with animals. You have to care for them for years, then they start talking to you. It’s beautiful. Yeah. And for an osteopathy, you know, it’s not like you can take the Dalai Lama and, and bring them into an osteopathic clinic and expect them to get results.

You know, it’s not, it’s not just being able to go into a certain state. What’s cool in osteopathy, you have to bring it together with the very practical, you know, the rigorous study that’s been done to the anatomy in one’s mind. And have the experience. And so. So osteopathy is very grounded in that way. It’s not. You’re not just going into a treatment and kind of like blissing out or something. You have to hold. You have to hold the thing and know it and do that other thing. And so it’s this. It’s this simultaneous. It’s a real balancing act.

And it takes a long time to. To catch it, to catch that, to be able to do both at once. And. And I think that’s probably why, you know, it stays outside of the kind of mainstream. Like. Yeah. In some ways it sounds like becoming human or become. Andrew, get out of your conceptions of. Of what you think the world is. And it’s one of my favorite stories is my pumpkin story of if you could. If you tell an animal that there’s a hit, a danger that they can’t see or smell or sense, they’re toast. Right.

Because you can’t live like that. That’s how most of us are living. And this sort of fear state. And what you’re saying is you have to get back to reality. Yeah. And. And. And you would love this about Andrew still, that he. He has, like, three important works that he left behind. The. Maybe the most important is what’s called his autobiography, autobiography of A.T. still. And. And it stands alone, actually, as a piece of literature, in my opinion. The other is not so much. But. But, but you can read all those books and hardly ever does he talk about techniques or hardly ever does he talk about, you know, even manual therapy.

In a sense. He says. He very specifically says he does. He is not trying to train parrots. He doesn’t want people to try and do what he did. And by the way, no one actually really knows what he did. Yeah, he’s like. He was taking people off the street, you know, putting them up against doors and adjusting their ribs. And then they were like their chronic disease, their alcoholism was over or their. I mean, he was just doing miracle things. Yeah. So no one really knew. I mean, what was this guy up to? But he said, don’t do what I did.

He said, but you have to follow the principles. There are. Nature has principles, and they’re as definite as the same physical principles that. That carry the planets in orbit to such exact measure. It’s the same principles. It’s the same principles that produce a body with such attention to detail. And it’s our job to know that. So that’s why anybody can. And dip into osteopathy. It’s. It’s not a thing where, you know, you have to learn these techniques and then you’re an osteopath or something. It depends on what your nervous system can perceive. Yeah, that’s. And then we do the thing that works for us.

So in that way, too, it’s like, it’s not an easy thing to wrap one’s head around because it stays so alive and it’s so dynamic in that way that it doesn’t. It doesn’t boil down to something easy to be able to describe to somebody. Right. So. But it’s. But because it’s so alive, it. It just will. It will. It will live. It’s going to. And it. Got it. Yeah. Let’s. Let’s talk for a few minutes because I know you gave this talk on what is vitality and why it’s so essentially misunderstood and what. And what you are an osteopath could do to help somebody’s vitality or however you want to go with that idea.

Yeah. So. Well, vitality. Vitality is a word that I’ve started using because I. It’s vague. I mean, what is it? Yeah, I mean, why is it. What is it that. Those are hard things. I don’t. In a way, I don’t really care. But. But we. But it is something and it. And we can catch it. We can catch a piece of it by perceiving it. That’s all. That’s about as much as I know about that. And. And as far as a definition, I would use Emerson’s language. He. He says the currents of the universal being. I.

That’s as good a definition as I can come up with. Current. Because current refers to motion. So there’s some. There are forces, some subtle and some not so subtle, that run through us and they have intelligence. And that’s one of the things we learn to perceive in. In a human body in osteopathic training is. Are those motions. And so. So in other words, there. There are. I mean, in some cases it’s obvious, like the heart has a healthy motion. It has a healthy motion pattern and it should be. It’s hard to. Yeah, I get it. Gets into the words.

But robust. Now when you feel that, if you feel it robust, you could say this person at least with regard to their heart function is. Has a strong vital vitality. Something like that. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is something like that. And. And the, the opposite of the movement of those motions or those forces is pathology is. Is something that’s not integrated. It’s a. Something that’s Restricted or. Or what we would call a strain pattern. Yes. So. And that can be all kinds of different things. It can be. A bone can be rotated, you know, in a funny way.

And for all types of different reasons, too, I’m sure the reasons, absolutely. So, so, so. So the. From my point of view and from all of our points of view, I mean, what we’re doing is trying to remove those restrictions for all our patients. Right? That’s what we’re doing. Yeah. And. And what’s. And what still tried to get us to understand is that when the restrictions are gone, health comes. So we don’t have to add anything else from the outside. It’s just the vitality is so strong in. In the world and in the body that. And it is.

Is there to such a degree of perfection that it will just come in and produce health pretty much instantly. So. So our job is kind of like detectives to. To find out what that is like. And, and for the heart, I. I mean, I don’t treat the heart directly too much, but it’s a very interesting organ, as you know, and I know it’s dear to you, but it. It has very interesting motions and. And a personality that other organs don’t have. Yeah, it always matches directly with the personality of the patient in terms of the personality of its motion, whether it’s restricted or distant or cramped or squeezed or elevated.

So that’s fascinating in that way. No other organ that I’ve seen has that. That’s why when you do a heart transplant, you know, you never liked salsa dancing in. The person who you get the heart from was a salsa dancer. Next thing you know, you like salsa dancing, right? But, yeah, so. But yeah, there are ways to. To do things to. You know, sometimes we use the aorta to do it or. Or the pericardium. Actually, that’s what I treat the most. Diaphragm. And. And there’s ways to kind of allow those toward the. The pathologic torsions. Because, yeah, the heart makes torsions, but.

But the pathologic torsions are disintegrated. They stand out. Yeah. This. The interesting thing when. With vitality is that when. In my experience, when the restrictions are gone and the vitality is moving, well, it loses. We lose distinction. It becomes kind of one. One thing is operating together. So. So that’s an interesting fact, you know, so. So it. It becomes kind of one. One drop essentially, instead of. Instead of something where you can even perceive the differences in things. So. So the. The whole body takes on one expression at Once. And we know instead. Instead of 15 different organs all doing their own thing.

Exactly. And that’s why one of the ways we know pathology is like, I can feel something here. Why would I. What’s standing out? Yeah, that’s what pathology to me is. It’s. It’s something that’s standing out of the whole. Yeah. So it’s noticeable in that way. Yeah. In other words, the liver is because of a. A influence from say, the outside or may. Could be even the. Be from the inside. It’s. It’s normal. Motion is restricted. You know, it’s interesting, there’s a guy named Dewey. It’s a little bit off the subject, but guy. I have read Dewey Larson, who proves that there’s no such thing as an atom or a nucleus of an atom.

And he wrote a book called Nothing But Motion. And essentially attempting to demonstrate that the manifest world, or what we call matter, is just various kinds of motion. That’s similar. I think it’s beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And vitality is when the motion is appropriate for that like organ or function and then integrated into the whole, then you feel vital or alive. Right, right. And, and vitality. I mean, most people would say they feel vitality if they feel like, oh, I can go out to dinner at night and then. And then stay later and have a few drinks at the bars.

I’m feeling pretty good. Or, you know, if they’re sick, they feel like they maybe they don’t have so much vitality. So, so that’s. Those are kind of how we typically feel those things. But, but there’s a whole. The whole subtle world of what those motions are to create. Those situations are kind of the behind the scenes of it. And, and it’s, it’s. It’s a foolproof point of view in my experience, that, that whenever there is a disease state, when a patient’s complaining of something, we can reliably know that there’s some lack of those vital motions somewhere in the body or in their field somewhere.

Yeah. Because literally that’s what that means. That’s right. It’s the same phenomenon. And, and, and what I like about talking about vitality is that. And everybody kind of knows this. I think even if they say they wouldn’t know it, they kind of know it. Whether they ex. Whether they have a relationship with it in a religious perspective or in a relationship perspective, interpersonal or somewhere in nature. You know, people like to hike. They feel something. So, so what is that something? Well, it’s. To me, it’s. It’s all the same. It’s, it’s vitality jumps up into the hands and the body of a person who has a feature called stillness.

And stillness just means that their mind isn’t constantly gobbling up all of their conscious energy. It’s a pretty, it’s a pretty fail safe formula. And so, so if the, if the mind is producing so many thoughts that it’s using all our consciousness to keep track of those thoughts, then we don’t have the consciousness to feel subtleties. And, and the vital world is, is the world of subtlety. So that’s what, that’s probably why it escapes our culture so much, you know? Yeah. It’s like, and you made a good point in this talk that, you know, if you go to the doctor with a normal, you know, doctor, and I mean, you know, even in my training as a medical doctor and you, and you don’t know what’s the matter, you just say, I don’t feel good.

And you say, what do you think about my vitality? Like, you know, it’s like, yeah, that’s not gonna go over well. Like we, we have no clue what, that’s what that means. No clue. Yeah. And I love doctors. I, you know, if I’m in an emergency situation, I, I’d like to have doctors around. Yeah. Knife sticking out of your back. That’s what I say too. But yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting one. And, and yeah, people. The other thing I want, I, I want to get the word out about is that American culture has known about this like there.

We can’t throw American culture under the rug. Yeah. It’s hallmarky and it’s materialistic and it’s crazy and it’s destructive and all these. And creative and influential and everything else. But man, they had, they had some really interesting thing. People and who, who figured it out, I would say, or at least who, who are barking up the right tree. Yeah. So I, I want to make a stand, make a play for, for what? For what our culture can bring that discussion. Yeah. Because anytime I, I say, oh, I, you know, I practice osteopathy, people will say, oh, is that like Chinese, is that like Chinese, Chinese medicine? I, I was like, there’s probably some crossover.

Yeah. Right. But it’s not from that. In other words, it’s a. Maybe. I wonder if it’s not actually the culture but the actual land. Man, I’m so glad you said that. Land, Land is such an interesting topic because I think land, excuse me, I think land produces the people and the culture. I, I’m a firm believer in that. And, and land has again, has so many characteristics. It produces, it has so much personality on the level of vitality. And, and that’s why the Pacific Palisades had really strong feel. I don’t know what happened there, if what the natives did there or what was how many hundreds or whatever thousands of years ago.

It had a really strong feel. Yeah. Strong feel. I think had a lot to do with keeping Los Angeles from going into chaos, which it is anyway. But, and, and you know, land, land has, one can have a palpatory feel of land the same way that one can have a palpatory feel of bodies. Yeah. So I went to, I went to Moab not too long ago, which is south southeastern Utah. Moab is an incredible place and with this soft, red sand. Yeah. And I, I always just mess around. I, I put my hand on the, on the ground to, to just feel what’s going on.

And. Oh my goodness, it, it had the same, let’s call it like the same rate, the, as far as those, the motions, the same rate and rhythm as a human body. Wow. I couldn’t believe it. It was. And that’s why I felt like I was in a womb there. Yeah, it was incredible. Now a place like Zion is like opposite, I mean, Zion, the land in Zion, which is southwestern Utah, is screaming. I mean, it’s a very difficult place to even be for a few minutes as high pitch screaming. It’s not conducive for life there. But I, but anyway, that’s just to say I, I totally agree with you and, and the American landscape.

I didn’t know until I started living in Utah, started traveling in Wyoming, Montana. There is deep, rich, rich sense of land there that’s producing things that no doubt are, are part of the whole planet landscape. So. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder even how much that has to do with people’s health, that if you spent your life in a place like Zion, you would probably pick up those rhythms and that may not be so good for you. So it’s another way that the outside world or your inner world impinges on the vitality, this, you know, perfection that is really our birthright.

All right, well, we could probably go on for hours here, Chris, but maybe I, I think it would be. I think you’re starting to do a little bit more public stuff and so maybe tell people how to get in touch with you and where to find you and. Oh, so I, I have a website, ChristopherBrowndo.com okay. It’s probably where it’s at. Yeah. So that. That’s the. The main place that people should find you. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s some videos and you’ll. You’ll be writing some stuff and. Yeah, I have. You have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of stuff coming and.

All right. At some point we gotta discuss. So we didn’t get into germ theory and osteopathy, but we’ll have to do that another time. But you’ll enjoy it. Yeah. My guess is he was not a big fan of the germ theory. Yeah. So. All right. Any final words, Chris? Tom, I just. I just gotta say a public thank you for holding the line during COVID I mean, literally. So. So I. I’ve been reading just all kinds of stuff. I’m always reading stuff. And those. Those moments, those podcasts that you had during COVID were some of the most.

What do I say? Courageous expressions of health and vitality that I’ve seen. Word. I don’t care if it’s. Whatever it may be that was. Those were really something, and I felt them. I mean, it. It really impacted me. And I know. I know it affected a lot of people because when in the darkest hours, what felt like the really darkest hours, you. You held the line. I don’t know who else was holding the line like that. Yeah. With the. With the heart. That. That. It. That it was. Man, I’ll never forget that feeling that. That feeling of like a kind of a call to arms, that.

That this is. We’re gonna. We’re gonna stand. Yeah. Yeah. I just. Yeah, I just got to say that publicly. I, you know, I’ve often said that, you know, people, they. They use that word, courageous. And. And I, My. Of course, I always try to turn everything into a joke. A guy. I don’t know if, you know. Mark Cardamoni. Mike. Sorry, Mike. Anyways, he said something in response to a thing which I remarked was the best compliment I’ve ever received in my life. This guy was a comedy writer for, like, commercials and stuff, like big time commercials.

He said, well, the thing about Tom is he thinks like a comic, so that’s good. But my. My response about the courageous is, well, you know, one time I. I decided, well, I was going to say something that I didn’t really believe, so I decided to try it. You know, I didn’t really believe it, but I. And I got so confused, you know. Yeah. When you try to do that, like, I don’t really believe what I’m saying, but I’m just going to say it because, like, it’s supposed to be good to say this. Next thing you know, like, I can’t remember where I’m at.

And so I said the hell with it, but I think otherwise, I sound like a total idiot. So. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s. It’s. It’s not correct. It’s just like. Well, there. That’s what I thought. So what do you expect? What am I supposed to say, right? Fair enough. But, I mean, how many of us. Don’t. Don’t do it. Yeah, whatever. All right, Chris, great to see you again. And we’ll keep in touch, and we’ll do another one and get into more things. Oh, man. So good. All right. Best everybody, especially Leo. Yeah. All right. Okay.

Bye.
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