Your First Visit

Allow up to an hour for your first visit, which will begin with a consultation – your osteopath will ask in detail all about your symptoms and how they began, and also about your general health and your medical history.

This will be followed by our examination – looking not only at the area where your pain is, but also at your whole posture, alignment, and the way you move, because often symptoms in one place can be caused elsewhere in the body without you being aware of it.

At this stage it is usually preferable for you to remove some outer clothing  – although this is not essential, it enables the osteopath to assess your spine more fully, and later allows your treatment to be more effective. Our priority is that you feel totally comfortable – gowns and shorts are provided, or you may prefer to bring your own sports clothes or loose fitting garments to change in to (strappy vest tops and/or pyjama/running type shorts are ideal). You are welcome to bring someone with you into the treatment room if you wish.

Osteopaths are trained to have highly sensitive hands, so our palpation (touch) of your muscles, bones and joints plays an important role in finding the areas of your body that might be causing issues. We also use conventional medical screening methods, so we can safely identify those rare occasions when our treatment would not be suitable and then refer you to another medical practitioner if necessary.

When the consultation is complete a full explanation as to the cause of your symptoms and how we can help them will be given before starting treatment.