Psychosomatic Osteopathy – Understanding complex complaints. Acting with osteopathic differentiation.
With SPEC/SPECD, palpation, multimodal co-regulation, and proactivity.
The PSO training series with Prof. Torsten Liem
Practice-oriented advanced training for osteopaths worldwide · 6 modules
Psychosomatic Osteopathy was developed by Torsten Liem. This training series is aimed at osteopaths from all countries and various training institutions who wish to expand their clinical perspectives and practical treatment options.
How do you proceed when symptoms recur, multiple body regions are involved, or when tension and stressful everyday situations emerge during the consultation? Which findings do you pursue further? Where do you apply manual treatment? And how do you involve your patients’ perception in your decision-making?
In the PSO training series, you will expand your osteopathic examination and treatment options to include specific palpatory, manual, and multimodal approaches. With SPEC/SPECD, you learn to integrate physical findings, physiological reactions, your patients’ experiences, and their life context. From this, you develop your approach: Where do you start? Which approaches do you combine? How do you dose and adapt the treatment?
Your anatomical knowledge, your palpation, and your existing treatment techniques form the foundation. In manageable learning steps, you practice new procedures and increasingly integrate them. Findings, resources, and patient reactions help you recognize the connections relevant to the individual and tailor your treatment accordingly.
Osteopaths from various countries share their experiences in PSO courses and other advanced training with Torsten Liem. The following feedback reflects their personal impressions.
SPEC/SPECD structure examination and treatment. You consider soma, physiology, experience, and context in relation to one another. In doing so, you include the body systems and organs relevant to the individual case—for example, the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. You take into account neurodynamic connections, endocrine and immunological influences, as well as the interactions and developmental dynamics of the systems involved. Which dysfunction patterns and resources are decisive for your next treatment decision? You practice weighting the findings and deriving your next steps from them.
Palpation and multimodal co-regulation intertwine. The approaches can involve all sensory modalities and combine manual treatment with, for example, breathing, movement, interoceptive and proprioceptive perception, attention, cognition, and emotion. Neurophysiological connections help you categorize these applications professionally. You practice selecting and coordinating the appropriate access points. What you perceive through palpation, what you observe, and what your patients report back influence the combination and dosage. In this way, different treatment options become an individually tailored approach.
Proactivity begins during treatment. Patients can communicate their perceptions, participate in directing attention, and actively take up appropriate breathing or movement impulses. Together, you clarify which experiences and options for action can be continued in everyday life. The focus is on the goals and possibilities of the respective person.
This is how you learn to connect the individual elements within a specific osteopathic treatment.
Developed from years of clinical experience. Taught for your daily practice.
In PSO, Torsten Liem combines his many years of work with patients with extensive academic training, postgraduate courses, and his own research. This includes exploring the possibilities and limits of existing osteopathic approaches as well as the development and refinement of clinical models and treatment options. These experiences flow into the training: based on specific findings, case studies, and practical exercises, you learn to expand your treatment options, combine appropriate approaches, and dose them individually.
A common system for examination and treatment. PSO combines established osteopathic principles and models with eight additional, interlinked sub-frameworks within SPEC/SPECD. Their interaction helps you categorize findings, set priorities, and select, combine, and dose appropriate treatment approaches.
Capturing the relevant connections of the individual. You learn to consider affected body systems and organs in their interaction—for example, the musculoskeletal, nervous, cardiovascular, and lymphatic systems. Their developmental dynamics are included, as are the patients’ experiences, life circumstances, and resources. The individual situation determines which perspectives guide your treatment.
Applying additional approaches in practice. You expand your approach to include the specific palpatory, manual, and multimodal approaches of PSO. In doing so, you practice coordinating the therapeutic relationship, stabilization, integration, and transfer to everyday life.
Learning complexity in manageable steps. Over six modules, you practice individual procedures and their connection within a treatment. You also learn to adapt contact, intensity, pace, and the combination of impulses used to patient reactions.
Actively involving yourself and your patients. You train your own perception and presence and learn to use patient feedback for your approach. Proactivity means involving patients in the treatment and jointly developing suitable options for action for their everyday lives.
An athlete presents with reduced performance and sleep bruxism. In the course of the case, findings in the hip and psoas, pressure pain in the abdomen, changed habits, and a stressful separation become relevant. The case report shows how treatment considerations are expanded as a result and how manual approaches are combined with multimodal bifocal integration. It illustrates an individual approach.
Foundation 1 and 2 provide the basics. The subsequent modules deepen their application in various clinical challenges. Content such as sensory perception, movement, breathing, autonomic regulation, and emotional experience are repeatedly connected. In manageable learning steps, you develop an individually tailored approach from this.
You can find out if individual modules can be booked separately and what prior knowledge you need in the respective course description. For questions, the organizer mentioned there will help you; general questions about PSO training can be directed to the Liem Institute.
How do you connect what you perceive under your hands with breathing, tension, and your patients’ feedback?
Foundation 1 introduces you to the practical connection of palpation, therapeutic relationship, and multimodal co-regulation. You deal with neurovegetative states in the patient and osteopath and practice involving your own presence as well as the patients’ attention. Regional and global references expand your palpatory examination.
What you will learn practically:
Approaches and techniques: “Three Hands” principle and embodied presence; osteopathic Safe Place; bilateral stimulation, including Butterfly Hug; 15-step bifocal integration; sensory-based 11-factor palpation; focused attention; PSO approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of the cerebellum.
How do you involve breathing and internal body sensation in a way that specifically complements your manual approach?
Foundation 2 combines breathing techniques, interoception, and advanced co-regulations with osteopathic treatment. You explore how patients perceive their bodies from the inside and what significance this has for working with SPEC/SPECD. The functions of the insula, reflexes, and the autonomic nervous system provide professional references for the practical approaches.
What you will learn practically:
Approaches and techniques: Breathing techniques; myofascial vibration; interoception and submodalities; specific osteopathic vagus stimulation; reflexes; advanced co-regulations; celiac ganglion technique; PSO approaches to the treatment of the posterior, middle, and anterior insula as well as their classification in the context of immunoception.
How do you handle it when feelings arise during palpation or when the body experience changes significantly?
You examine the connection between emotion, behavior, interoception, and proprioception in osteopathic contact. Medical history and palpation are brought together with the patients’ perception. Building on this, you practice approaches to emotional regulation and their verbal guidance. Cortical and subcortical networks as well as factors influencing emotional reactions help you categorize the approach.
What you will learn practically:
Approaches and techniques: 6-Step Emotional Regulation Reset; Osteopathic Emotional Regulation Technique (OER); co-regulations; treatment of disturbed proprioceptive and interoceptive components; conscious non-judgmental perception; acceptance and psychoeducation in emotion regulation.
What changes in your osteopathic approach when strong stress reactions or signs of dissociation occur?
This module combines the classification of traumatic stress reactions with specific osteopathic procedures. You deal with symptom presentations, risk factors, and contraindications and practice the approaches taught in the PSO concept. This also involves perceiving strong reactions and tailoring the further approach to the patients’ current situation.
What you will learn practically:
Approaches and techniques: Osteopathic bilateral stimulation (OBS), also for particularly strong trauma reactions; multimodal bifocal integration in trauma; integration of dissociated parts. Further content: Stress and life cycles, brain asymmetry and brain waves, mitochondria, and biomarkers in PTSD.
How do you expand your approach when pain persists, touch becomes sensitive, or patients increasingly avoid movement?
You learn to categorize pain findings in a differentiated way and build an individually tailored treatment from them. In doing so, you combine palpatory and manual approaches with body awareness, sensory stimuli, movement, and the active participation of your patients. SPEC/SPECD support you in integrating physical findings, physiological reactions, experience, and life context.
The focus is on the four-stage osteopathic approach to pain and multimodal bifocal integration. You practice combining these with other procedures and adapting their sequence and dosage to findings, resilience, and patient reactions.
What you will learn practically:
Additional focus on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): After medical clarification, you practice the differentiated assessment of cervical, vestibulo-ocular, autonomic, and respiratory-circulatory patterns. You learn to select appropriate manual approaches and to take warning signs, progression, and resilience into account when dosing.
Further approaches and techniques: Sensory discrimination, motor imagery, and mirror work; mindfulness and reframing; acceptance- and value-oriented patient guidance; biofeedback and TENS. In TBI, myofascial techniques, BLT/BMT, MET, as well as cranial, dural, and venolymphatic approaches are added based on findings.
Which additional access points help you with assessment when concentration, balance, body awareness, or movement coordination are impaired?
You will get to know specific examinations and multimodal applications with which you can involve sensory and motor functions in your osteopathic work. For example, you examine eye movements, balance, coordination, and tone patterns and connect the findings with palpation, breathing, interoception, and autonomic reactions.
In Long Covid and Brain Fog, resilience, sleep, stress, and other physical connections are also taken into account. Medical findings and the individual situation determine the framework of your approach. SPEC/SPECD support you in weighting relevant connections and combining appropriate approaches step by step.
What you will learn practically:
Approaches and techniques: Myofascial mapping, tone pattern regulation, proprioceptive and vestibulo-ocular applications, as well as the MEDULLA 7-STEP-RESET, Pons Reset, and Midbrain Reset procedures taught in the PSO concept. In addition, multimodal bifocal integration, autonomic regulation, and venolymphatic approaches are placed in a clinical context.
Prof. Torsten Liem, M.Sc. Ost., M.Sc. Paed. Ost., B.Sc. Ost., D.O., D.P.O.
Developer of Psychosomatic Osteopathy
CEO of the Osteopathie Schule Deutschland (OSD)
Dean of Osteopathic Degree Programs at DIPLOMA University
Founder of the Liem Institute
Torsten Liem’s educational path includes academic studies and 392 postgraduate courses he completed himself. He had the opportunity to learn personally from influential teachers of osteopathy such as Robert Fulford, Anne Wales, John Wernham, Alan Becker, Lawrence Jones, Fred Mitchell, Robert C. Ward, Jim Jealous, and Viola Frymann.
In his book “Psychosomatic Osteopathy” and in this training series, he brings together physical findings, physiological connections, the patients’ experiences, and their life context. In the course, he teaches how to apply these perspectives in examination and in specific palpatory, manual, and multimodal approaches.
Current dates, locations, teaching languages, participation requirements, fees, and booking options can be found in the respective course offerings. Registration and organizational questions are handled by the organizer mentioned there. Please also refer to the respective description for information on scope, module sequence, and certification.
Are you looking for an offer in your country or do you have a general question about PSO training? Contact the Liem Institute.
The following information applies to the training series of the Osteopathie Schule Deutschland in cooperation with the Liem Institute. Binding participation conditions and registration can be found in the respective OSD announcement.
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Organizer in Germany | Osteopathie Schule Deutschland in cooperation with the Liem Institute |
| Prerequisites | Completed, at least four-year osteopathy training or osteopathy studies in the third year of study |
| Scope | 6 three-day modules |
| Qualification | Diploma |
| Individual modules | Can be booked on request. Please coordinate prior knowledge, conditions of participation, and individual module prices with the OSD. |
Would you like to better integrate complex findings and practically learn additional palpatory and multimodal approaches?
Start the PSO training series with Torsten Liem with Foundation 1.
Would you like to know which offering suits your prior knowledge or where you can participate in a PSO course?
The LIEM Institute cooperates with recognized educational institutions, research facilities, and networks worldwide – Prof. Torsten Liem has conducted numerous workshops and seminars for renowned institutions, inspiring and empowering participants on their transformative journey.
