Overview:
Drs. Becker, Fulford and Wales were each extraordinary osteopaths who served as inspirational guides to generations of practitioners. This collection of stories captures some of the precious and practical wisdom they imparted over the years.

Many of the stories tell about lives profoundly changed by the teaching they received while others reveal small pearls of wisdom that were gained. Some of the stories arise from a chance, one-time meeting with one of these teachers, while others are from people who knew them very well. Most of the stories come from experiences that occurred in exchanges shared one-on-one.

While the essence of osteopathy is taught hand-to-hand, there is also a long and deep tradition of osteopathic wisdom being imparted through the words and deeds of the teachers and elders of their day. There is so much to learn from their actions, thoughts, and beliefs. This book of stories brings Drs. Becker, Fulford and Wales to life. It is a book you may wish to keep nearby to read over and over again for inspiration and guidance.

From Osteopathy in the Cranial Field:
Not too many years ago a standard textbook of anatomy described the sacroiliac joint as immovable. The articulations of the cranium have long been subject to the same misapprehension, their description having come from the cadaver rather than the living subject.

It remained for Dr. Sutherland to prove by years of experimental research on himself and his patients, that there is definite, if slight, motion between the cranial bones. Although disparaged even by his own profession he clung to his theories and showed them to be right by an overwhelming weight of clinical evidence.

Belatedly rallying to his support, a group of his colleagues felt impelled to correlate all the information available on the subject in textbook form. This is the third edition.

The editor, Dr. Harold I. Magoun, received his A.B. from Harvard University and his D.O. from Kirksville. He spent two years in the Medical Corps of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, was decorated for care of the wounded under fire and also received the Purple Heart Medal. He has been prominent in professional circles, is the author of many articles in the professional literature and has done much postgraduate study and teaching during his years of practice. He served as Executive Vice President of the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation from its inception to 1972. Though semi-retired to Belen, New Mexico, he still writes, teaches, and serves as Trustee for the Foundation.

From Teachings in the Science of Osteopathy: William Garner Sutherland had the opportunity to study with Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of the science of osteopathy. In his teaching, Dr. Still always emphasized the design for motion in the articulations of the bones.

One day in 1898, during Sutherland’s senior year at the American School of Osteopathy, he viewed a specially prepared and mounted skull. At that moment, Sutherland experienced a flash of insight which saw the articulation of the sphenosquamous suture as a design for motion that implied a respiratory mechanism, “like the gills of a fish.” Given the statements in anatomical texts that the sutures of the cranium ossify in the adult, he had much skepticism and reservation about his own insight for years. During his in-depth studies in the following years, Dr. Sutherland had to confront the fact of a mobility that has no muscular agencies to account for the motion.

Belatedly rallying to his support, a group of his colleagues felt impelled to correlate all the information available on the subject in textbook form. This is the third edition.

This kind of study of the mechanics of articular mechanisms in the living human body led him to recognize powers within his patients which could resolve problems and heal strains. Based on what he learned from his patients, Dr. Sutherland developed many ways of practicing osteopathy. He considered that he was utilizing a profound science which just kept unfolding its truths. Dr. Sutherland often said in his lectures that if you understand the mechanism, the treatment is simple.

About the Editor

Anne L. Wales, D.O., began her studies at the American School of Osteopathy before transferring to the Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery. Following her graduation in 1926, she served an internship at the Lakeside Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. She then proceeded to practice in Rhode Island for fifty years before retiring to live in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

In 1943, she and her husband, Chester Handy, D.O., first heard Dr. Sutherland lecture at the meeting of the Eastern States Osteopathic Association in New York City. The following year they attended the course that Dr. Sutherland presented in New York. Based on their experience at that course, they were moved to learn to practice osteopathy as Dr. Sutherland had practiced it and as he taught it. As part of their study, they began attending the meetings of the Lippincott Study Group in Moorestown New Jersey. From 1945 to 1956, the New England Cranial Study Group met at their office in Providence.

From the time of their first course, Drs. Wales and Handy dedicated their professional lives to the study, practice, and teaching of Dr. Sutherland’s work. Over the years they were active in Dr. Sutherland’s teaching program and in the work of the Osteopathic Cranial Association. Dr. Handy was one of the incorporators of the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, Inc. In recent years, Dr. Wales has continued meeting with study groups in New England and teaching in both formal and informal settings.

From Contributions of Thought: William Garner Sutherland came to study the osteopathy of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still in 1898 and found within that study a lifetime’s work. This volume of his collected writings, Contributions of Thought, represents that work, which Adah Sutherland described in the preface to the first edition as depicting the progress of an “original thinker.”

She went on to say: “With a steadfast sense of personal responsibility, Dr. Sutherland accepted Dr. Andrew Taylor Still’s” admonition that D.O. stands not only for Doctor of Osteopathy but for “dig on” as well. His writings convey that he did so, consistently I like to believe that the attentive reader will see revealed in these writings how Dr. Sutherland’s self-imposed “digging on” heightened his comprehension of osteopathic philosophy and its application in practice. It was through this constructive discipline that he was guided, to his own amazement, into the channel of cranial research. This perseverance culminated in his contribution of the cranial concept to the osteopathic profession “osteopathy in the cranial field”.

As the decades have passed since Dr. Sutherland’s death in 1954, the teaching of osteopathy in the cranial field has continued and expanded. In this context, these collected writings have increasing importance to the new generations of osteopaths as a source for understanding the cranial concept as it was originally presented by W.G. Sutherland. His original writings contain within them a key for those wanting to fully practice the osteopathy of Drs. Still and Sutherland. To think deeply, feel deeply, and know deeply with Dr. Sutherland as one studies his writings, leads one to the core of osteopathy.

The Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization established in 1953 by Dr. Sutherland and senior members of his teaching faculty. Dr. Sutherland conceived of the foundation as a way of providing a continuity for his teaching.

Dr. Sutherland was the first president of the foundation, and since his death in 1954, there have been just four subsequent presidents, which has provided for a continuity in the organization’s teaching program. The presidents who followed Dr. Sutherland were John Harakal, DO, FAAO., Michael P. Burruano, DO, FCA., Melicien Tettambel, DO, FAAO, and Daniel Moore, DO, FCA who has served since 2013.

The charter of the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation calls for the organization to dedicate itself to educational activities. It specifically states its objective as using its resources to establish the principles of osteopathy in the cranial field as conceived and developed by William Garner Sutherland, to disseminate a general knowledge of these principles and the therapeutic indication for this approach to treatment, to encourage and assist physicians in osteopathy, and to stimulate continued study and greater proficiency on the part of those practicing osteopathy in the cranial field.

In its endeavor to carry out these objectives, the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation supports research, produces publications, and offers both basic and continuing studies courses. As a not-for-profit educational foundation, it accepts charitable contributions to support its work of perpetuating and disseminating the teachings in the science of osteopathy as expanded by William Garner Sutherland, DO.

From Osteopathy in the Cranial Field (First Edition):
The editor, Dr. Harold I. Magoun, Sr. (1898-1981) received his A.B. from Harvard University and his D.O. from the Andrew Taylor Still College of Osteopathy and Surgery in 1924. He spent two years in the Medical Corps of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, was decorated for care of the wounded under fire, and also received the Purple Heart medal.

He was prominent in professional circles, authored many articles in the professional literature, and did much postgraduate study and teaching during his years of practice. In 1940 he was awarded the honorary degree of Master of Science in Osteopathy, and received the Fellowship of the American Academy of Osteopathy in 1962 and the A.T. Still Medallion of Honor in 1967. Dr. Magoun served on the Board of Trustees of the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine for many years, was president of the Cranial Academy for three years, and was one of the founders of the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, serving as executive vice-president from 1953-1973.

From The Stillness of Life: THE STILLNESS OF LIFE is the second volume of Dr. Rollin E. Becker’s work and serves as a companion to the previously published Life in Motion. While that first volume largely contains material Dr. Becker presented in public, this work consists mainly of his more personal communication.

Dr. Becker strongly believed that a philosophy, no matter how great it might sound, was of little use unless it had a practical expression. Given this belief, osteopathy was a perfect venue for Dr. Becker’s life work. Osteopathy’s philosophy is far-reaching, and its application to patient care is direct. Osteopathic understanding, as enunciated by its founder, Andrew Taylor Still, encompasses everything from the physical structure of the body to the universal forces that govern all nature. Similarly, the practice of osteopathy has within it the simple taking hold of a bone as well as being conscious of all the forces operating in the patient, including his or her highest spiritual nature.

Dr. Becker found this all-encompassing approach to osteopathy demonstrated in a living way in William G. Sutherland, D.O. Not long before they met, Dr. Becker had made a commitment to himself to learn more about osteopathy–the laws that govern nature and the practical application of them to help mankind. He became a dedicated student of Dr. Sutherland, and a close personal relationship developed between teacher and student during the last decade of Dr. Sutherland’s life. The items in this book date from 1949 to 1987. They show the development of Dr. Becker’s ideas over time and express his strong commitment to continual observation and reflection. The items cover a broad range of discussion on osteopathic subjects. On one end of the spectrum are thoughtful articulations of basic concepts as Dr. Becker instructs his son during the early stages of his son’s medical practice. On the other end are Dr. Becker’s attempts to put into words the indescribable energetic and spiritual aspects of his understanding.

ROLLIN E. BECKER (1910-1996) graduated from the American School of Osteopathy (later renamed the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine) in 1934, and following a few years in Oklahoma, he moved to Michigan, where he practiced for thirteen years.

In 1944, after about a decade in Michigan, he met William Garner Sutherland, D.O., and undertook a study of his work. In 1948, he first served on the teaching faculty at one of Dr. Sutherland’s courses. Dr. Becker moved to Texas in 1949, where he practiced until 1989. Throughout that time, he continued to serve Dr. Sutherland and his work. Dr. Becker was the president, from 1962 through 1979, of the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, an educational organization dedicated to perpetuating the teachings of W.G. Sutherland.

From Life In Motion:
For more than five decades, Rollin E. Becker, D.O. practiced an extraordinary yet fully practical approach to medicine. Following in the path of Drs. A.T. Still, the founder of osteopathy, and W.G. Sutherland, the originator of “cranial osteopathy,” Dr. Becker did not focus on simply relieving symptoms in his patients. Instead, he insisted on contacting the health within them and allowing their own resources to do the healing. Dr. Becker was always looking for health, and only health, in his patients. He agreed with Dr. Still that anyone can find disease in a person–the trick is finding the health beyond that disease.

The physician, Dr. Becker taught, does not “fix” anything in the patient but assists the patient’s body in the healing process–not passively, but as an active participator, helping to deliver health from within. Dr. Becker devoted his life, both as a practitioner and teacher, to learning from what he felt was the most authoritative source possible–the living forces within the living body.

When Dr. Becker first graduated from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1933, he practiced general medicine for a time in Oklahoma and Michigan. A few years after meeting Dr. Sutherland in 1944, he dedicated his practice, then in Dallas, Texas, to osteopathic manipulative treatment. In his patient care, he used almost exclusively the principles found within the cranial concept of Dr. Sutherland, which also contains the essence of Dr. Still’s teaching. However, he never limited himself to treating cranial problems or, for that matter, to treating musculoskeletal conditions. Throughout the course of his successful career, Dr. Becker treated thousands of patients suffering with everything from hypertension to pneumonia to Parkinson’s disease to whiplash, with the principles of osteopathy. Dr. Becker proved the truth of a statement made by his teacher, Dr. Sutherland: “Osteopathy is a science with possibilities as great as the magnitude of the heavens.”

Dr. Becker taught many hundreds of students over the course of forty years the approach to osteopathic manipulative treatment that gently prompts the patient’s body to heal itself. Life In Motion lays out this approach and Dr. Becker’s development of its profound philosophy and practical application. It serves as a thorough presentation of Dr. Becker’s work for the many students of osteopathy who never had the chance to learn directly from him as well as for those physicians who experienced Dr. Becker’s work firsthand. In fact, anyone practicing a healing art will find within these writings a deeper understanding of the nature of health and healing and the practitioner’s role in bringing this about.

Who Rollin Becker was and the meaning of his work can probably best be summed up by the words he would silently say to his patients before treating them: “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to watch you heal yourself.” Life In Motion gives the reader a glimpse into that opportunity.