Your first appointment will…
- Leave you feeling revived.
- Involve both conversation and hands-on treatment.
- Last about one hour.
- Cost $137 for adults 16 and over and $97 for children, with subsequent sessions costing $105 and $85 respectively.
You can expect . . .
A warm welcome
At The English Osteopaths, we pride ourselves on the healthy, welcoming and respectful atmosphere of our clinic. One of our receptionists will welcome you and offer you a cup of tea. She will ask you to fill out just the first page of our intake form. The rest of the form we will fill out when we meet with you.
Prompt attention
When it’s time for your appointment, your therapist will come out to the waiting room to greet you. We do our best to be on time, so if you have to wait at all, it shouldn’t be for more than about five minutes.
Conversation before treatment
Osteopathic therapists work almost like detectives. We gather as much information – as many clues – as possible to help us understand what might be at the root of your problem. Only then do we begin working. When we meet you, we will therefore ask questions to help us understand your health, your injury or illness, and what kind of treatment would serve you best. Although you may be used to completing a long intake form before seeing anyone, we prefer to ask you the questions directly. We want to be able to get the details straight from you. If you are interested in seeing them in advance, this is a list of the questions we will ask.
Hands-on work
After we talk about your situation, we will have you do some gentle movements and we will use our hands to feel for restrictions.
Osteopathic therapists have been trained to have “listening hands”. We have such an acute and accurate sense of touch that we can understand a lot about your health just by feeling the rhythms of your body through our hands.
Treatment tailored to your needs
After we’ve seen how you move and felt what’s not working as it should be, we will tell you what we’ve found and what treatment we recommend. The art of osteopathic therapy is that there are a range of different techniques available to practitioners, and each uses his or her hands in slightly different ways. The treatment is never the same for any two people. Our training and experience allows each of us to determine what kind of hands-on work your body will respond to best. What we suggest for you will be specifically suited for your needs. If you are comfortable with what we’re recommending, we will continue with the treatment for the time left in this first appointment. If you’d like to see what other patients have said about our treatments, please see our testimonials.
A plan for ongoing treatment
After the treatment, we’ll sit down with you again to discuss how it felt to you. We will outline how we can help you over time. We will discuss how many sessions we think you will need and introduce you to any take-home exercises we think you should consider doing.On average, we will see you four to six times over a period of two to three months. This allows us to address both the obvious and the hidden causes that have stopped you from being well. If you have a chronic condition, we may need to see you up to ten to twenty times. We may even recommend ongoing treatments in special cases (some clients choose to come in for check up treatments because they feel so much better for it). All our therapists are trained to understand the way the body heals. We will be able to give you a time frame for recovery and come up with a plan that suits you.
An hour’s visit
All of this will take about an hour and subsequent treatments will take about 45 minutes. The actual duration of your appointment will depend on the complexity of your case. Some people take a little more or a little less time. Osteopathic therapy is different from other therapies: more is not necessarily better.
A referral if necessary
We are trained to use a variety of techniques that can help you recover from a wide range of injuries and illnesses. We also understand the limits of our capabilities. Complete recovery is not always possible, much as we wish it were. You can rely on us to be honest with you about the possibilities and limitations of what we can do with your particular condition. If we are unable to help you, we can refer you to other excellent doctors and health care practitioners.
The English Osteopaths believe that if you give yourself the right environment in which to thrive, you will. Make an appointment to see us, and we’ll help you find that environment.
