Ortho-Bionomy®:  A bodywork modality for reminding the body its natural ability to find balance.

by Bruce Stark

As massage therapists and bodywork practitioners we are presented daily with clients who are experiencing pain or restricted function due to underlying imbalances caused by such issues as stress, injury, overuse, surgery and accidents.  Often the symptoms can persist or return unless there has been a change in the underlying structure.  Ortho-Bionomy is a form of bodywork and somatic education that focuses on addressing structural imbalances and facilitating their resolution through gentle movement and positioning, postural re-education and balancing of the neuro-lymphatic and energy systems of the body.

Developed by British osteopath Dr. Arthur Lincoln Pauls, Ortho-Bionomy is a holistic body of techniques, principles and philosophies that are based upon acknowledging that the body has an inherent wisdom that allows it to find and maintain balance.  The techniques are designed to assist the body to correct itself while feeling comfortable and moving with ease.  This self correction is a part of the body’s natural self-organization capacity. 

One avenue through which we communicate with this capacity is through the proprioceptive nervous system.  Among other things, proprioception is one of the primary ways in which the body gets feedback about its physical positions and the speed at which the body or its parts are moving.  By gently exaggerating the structural imbalances we are able to stimulate various responses from the nervous system, which allows the body to recognize inefficient patterning and to chose more supportive patterns and behaviours.

I have always wanted to find ways to help people experience balance and pain relief without causing any pain to them while still being easy on me as a practitioner.  Because I work with the interface between the physical body and its neurological perception of itself rather than trying to “fix” the body, my clients are able to more easily change their tension and holding patterns and they are able to maintain that change after they leave the session.  By addressing how to support the body’s willingness to change instead of trying to make the body respond in a predetermined way, these changes are longer lasting and more integrated within the client’s self-organization system.  Often I work with the client on a massage table, but I may also include working with them while seated, standing or walking--all the ways that we can support his or her new structural patterning.

One primary principle in Ortho-Bionomy is that we use comfort as feedback from the body that its patterns and preferences are being acknowledged.  When the body has an experience of pain or discomfort, a reflexive response is to either move in a way that recreates comfort or that will dissipate the feeling of pain.  We are constantly adjusting ourselves throughout the day, whether we are standing, sitting or lying down, in order to feel more at ease.  If something hurts, we immediately try to move away from the source of pain and may try to ease it by rubbing or holding the affected area.  By finding the patterns in which the body is holding we seek to match and amplify the body’s messages that indicate how it is trying to heal itself.  The movements and positions used in a session to amplify these patterns may be large or they could be quite subtle, all depending upon how the body is best able to respond to the work.  As practitioners we do the least that is necessary to allow the body to do its own correcting.

Practitioners of Ortho-Bionomy are highly skilled to notice structural and energetic patterns throughout the body and to facilitate their balanced interrelationships with the organism as a whole system.  The training programs are designed to increase the practitioner’s sensory capacity, heighten his or her palpation skills and assessment, provide the practitioner with a wide range of techniques and exercises that can be adapted for each individual client, and create a deeper understanding of the elements necessary for supporting our clients’ experiences of their own ability to change.  Ortho-Bionomy is a very effective stand-alone modality yet it can be integrated with any other bodywork or healing system.  In addition, anyone can learn to do this work for one’s clients or for one’s self.  And clients and practitioners alike are constantly amazed at how much change can occur by simply “following the wisdom of the body.”


Bruce Stark is a Registered Instructor and Senior Practitioner of Ortho-Bionomy.  He teaches and lectures extensively in the US, Australia and New Zealand and maintains a private practice in Sydney.