Osteopathy
with Robin Breger, D.O. (MP)
A gentle, hands-on approach to healing.
Manual treatments designed to accommodate your unique body and unique needs.
Services
Private practice in Ottawa, ON.
By appointment only.
“To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease.“
Andrew Taylor Still, founder of Osteopathy
What is osteopathy?
Osteopathy is holistic approach to health-care that aims to restore function to all of the body’s systems by optimizing the tissues’ alignment and mobility.
What can it help?
Osteopathy can be used as a complementary treatment for a wide variety of issues, including pain, muscle tension, postural problems, headaches, digestive issues and more.
What happens during a treatment?
Osteopathic treatment involves gentle manipulations of various body parts in a variety of positions, including standing, sitting and lying down on a table.
Robin Breger, D.O. (MP)
Robin received her osteopathic training at the Collège d’Études Ostéopathies in Montreal, Canada, and has been practicing osteopathy since 2007. Her husband’s work as a foreign service officer has given her the privilege of practicing in many different settings around the world. She has extensive experience working with a large variety of clients, including athletes, dancers, military personnel, infants, children, teenagers, pregnant women, elderly people, trauma victims and people living with chronic pain/illness.
How can I help you?
Osteopathy can treat…
Bones
Osteopathic practitioners can assess the alignment and positioning of bones and joints. Corrections are made using different kinds of manipulation, such as HVLA (“cracking”) techniques or more gentile mobilizations. Osteoapths will also work with bone tissue using subtle techniques.
Muscles
Osteopathic practitioners use techniques to relax tension in muscles by normalizing the signals coming from the nervous system. They may also assign strengthening exercises for particular muscles or muscle groups to correct poor posture or encourage more adapted muscular habits.
Fascia (connective tissues)
The founder of Osteopathy, A.T. Still, emphazised the fascia as playing a major role in the maintenance of health. Osteopathic practitioners have many techniques to normalize the tension balance and alignment of ligaments, membranes and other connective tissues.
Viscera (organs)
The sub-discipline of visceral osteopathy has techniques to normalize the positioning, mobility and nervous/circulatory input of the body’s major organs. Osteopaths will work with viscera to improve their function but also to improve the body’s overall overall posture and mechnical equilibirum.
The central nervous (craniosacral) system
Craniosacral osteoapthy treats the main structures associated with the central nervous craniosacral system: the skull and spine as well as the membranes, fluids and nervous tissue that they protect. Osteopaths tend to address the central nervous system in almost every treatment, and will sometimes even spend an entire session on it.
My Approach & Philosophy
Healing is my vocation, and osteopathy is my chosen profession. I love practicing this manual healing approach that is grounded in the extensive study of human anatomy, as well as basic knowledge of many other aspects of human health (radiology, psychology, embryology etc.).
Over the years I’ve seen mind-boggling results in my practice: a woman permanently relieved from recurring pain following a car accident 12 years earlier that no amount of massage, physiotherapy had been able to alleviate; a breastfeeding baby whose latching problems were fixed in one session; a man suffering from complex PTSD who was able to relax and feel normal in a way he was unable to do in any other context, including on the massage table or with his psychotherapist; a teenager whose persistent and debilitating menstrual cramps disappeared after two treatments; a woman whose 20-yr history of migraine headaches ended after one session.
These cases never fail to astound me, although in my day-to-day practice I witness a whole spectrum of results, ranging from the seemingly miraculous to none at all, with most people falling somewhere in between. But after 20+ years practicing manual therapy I've come to believe that humanity has barely even begun to explore the potential of manual healing technologies, osteopathy included. I consider my treatment room to be somewhat of a laboratory: we try, we see how it goes. I do my best to serve my clients’ needs using the tools I have and to carefully monitor the effects of my treatments. I love that I am always learning.