Julia Farquhar Osteopathy

04/30/2026

Let's not beat ourselves up about missed workouts. Today is a new day, and we can always start again.

After 20 years of practicing medicine, here is what I know.

Patients do not lose progress to missed workouts. They lose it to the story they tell about missed workouts.

Research published in Health Psychology examined how people respond to behavior lapses. A single missed day rarely changes long-term outcomes. But interpreting that miss as failure often triggers what psychologists call the abstinence violation effect, where one slip cascades into many.

Your muscles do not own a calendar. They respond to the next time you show up.

A garden does not die from a missed watering. It dies from neglect. The same is true for your health.

If you missed yesterday, you have not undone last month. You have simply arrived at today.

What is one small movement you can give yourself within the next hour? A walk, a stretch, a breath taken with intention. Start there.

The body is more forgiving than the mind. Let it teach you something.

04/29/2026

Here to be a helper.

The journey of healing chronic pain and illness can be lonely.

But it's lifechanging beyond imagination

There are tools, there are perspectives, there are processes

And there are people to help you along the way.

Be open to thinking differently. To listening with your heart as well as your intellect.

You have a higher self and its like a light in the darkness.

A source of wisdom and inspiration.

A Still Small Voice

Learn to hear it.

Learn more about coaching and training with me at www.drshillercoaching.com

04/22/2026

I love this. Think of "tending" to your health as you tend to your garden. The weeds are calling in mine!

Stop believing health only happens in a gym. Some of the healthiest people I've ever treated never set foot in one.

Research consistently shows that lifestyle activities like gardening count as moderate physical activity. The repeated bending, lifting, digging, and walking involved in tending a garden builds strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness without ever feeling like exercise.

But gardening does more than move your body. It puts your hands in the soil, which research suggests may positively influence mood and immune function. It gets you outside in sunlight, which supports vitamin D, circadian rhythm, and mental health. It connects you to a living, growing thing that depends on your care.

A meta-analysis published in IJERPH in 2022 confirmed that time in nature significantly reduces anxiety and depression. Gardening combines all of these benefits into one activity.

In my practice, I've met 90-year-olds who credit their garden for everything: their mobility, their purpose, their reason to get up in the morning. They don't call it exercise. They call it tending.

You don't need acres. A patio with pots counts. A windowsill with herbs counts. A single tomato plant on a balcony counts.

Growing something is an act of hope. It tells your body you expect to be here for the harvest.

Your muscles, your mood, and your microbes all thrive when your hands are in the dirt.

What are you growing this season?

04/20/2026

Happy World Osteopathic Healthcare Week from the Osteopathic International Alliance (OIA)! The OIA strives to highlight the important contribution of osteopathic healthcare professionals in the delivery of safe and effective care.

How can you be sure that you are in good osteopathic hands?

Clear standards and scope of practice are essential in osteopathic care. They:
-underpin regulation, accreditation and recognition;
-define professional boundaries, ensuring patient safety;
-facilitate standardization of education internationally;
-outlines the knowledge, skills and professional attributes of professional practice; and
-establish greater legitimacy of osteopathic practice within healthcare

04/19/2026

I'm a card-carrying worrier. I'm sharing this with you in case you are too.

It's 11:40pm. You were almost asleep.

Then a thought drifted in about tomorrow. Within two minutes your chest is tight and you're mentally rehearsing three worst-case scenarios about something that hasn't happened yet.

You tell yourself to stop. Think positive. Breathe. But the harder you try, the louder it gets.

That's not a coincidence. A neuroscientist at Brown University has spent twenty years studying what's happening in the brain during these moments. And his finding turns the conventional advice upside down.

Anxiety runs on the same brain circuit as any other habit. Trigger, behavior, reward. The trigger is discomfort. The behavior is worry. And the reward, this is the part nobody sees, is that worry gives your brain something to do with feelings that feel even worse. Helplessness. Fear. Grief. Worry creates an illusion of control. That tiny drop in distress registers as relief. And the brain encodes relief as a reward.

Every time the loop completes, the habit gets stronger. Eventually it runs on autopilot.

So what breaks it? Not willpower. Brain imaging showed that when people tried harder to control their thoughts, the anxiety circuit actually got more active. Effort fed the loop.

What quieted it was curiosity. When people stopped fighting the feeling and simply got curious about what anxiety actually felt like in their body, the circuit went quiet.

The practice takes ten seconds. Notice the worry. Don't fight it. Ask one question: what does this feel like in my body right now? Stay with it. It changes.

I wrote a full article with the neuroscience, a clinical trial that tested this approach, and a printable worksheet with the full technique.

Read it below 👇️

Share this with someone who lies awake running scenarios she's already run a hundred times.

04/18/2026

One of the biggest myths in modern health is that movement only counts if it happens in a gym.

It did not work that way for the women who lived the longest.

When researchers studied the world’s longest-lived populations, they did not find women structuring life around intense workouts.

They found something far more constant:
movement built into daily life.

Walking to get places.
Carrying what needed carrying.
Gardening by hand.
Climbing hills and stairs.
Squatting, lifting, reaching, bending.
Using the body, all day long.

Not as exercise.
As life.

That is one of the clearest lessons from the Blue Zones.

The women who aged best were not relying on one hard workout to make up for a day of sitting.

Their days kept asking something of their bodies.
And over time, that matters.

Because the movements modern life erased were often the exact ones that helped preserve strength, balance, endurance, and resilience:

carrying
walking
lifting
climbing
standing
squatting
working with the hands

That does not mean the gym is irrelevant.
It means daily life used to do more of the work for us.

Today, most women do not live that way.

We drive instead of walk.
We sit instead of squat.
We outsource physical effort.
We spend hours indoors, in chairs, barely asking the body to do what it was built to do.

So for modern women, the gym can be one of the best ways to replace what daily life no longer provides.

Strength training matters.
Walking matters.
Mobility matters.
Muscle matters.

Especially after 50.

The mistake is thinking this is an either-or choice.

It is not daily movement or exercise.

The women who age the slowest teach a better lesson:

Move often. Strengthen intentionally. Keep using your body.

That is the real takeaway.

Yes, lift weights if you can.
That is one of the smartest things many women can do for longevity now.

But do not let that become the only time your body lives like a body.

Carry your groceries.
Take the stairs.
Garden.
Walk more.
Stand more.
Use your legs.
Use your hands.
Build more physical effort back into ordinary life.

Because healthy aging is not only about workouts.

It is about refusing to let your body become optional in your own life.

And one of the clearest patterns in long-lived women is this:
they kept using their bodies all day long.

That is the part modern life erased.

And that is the part many women need to rebuild.

Follow along for more practical, natural steps to slow biological aging and live a longer, fuller life.

04/18/2026

I have done this incorrectly many, many times. Off to try it again!

04/16/2026

You wouldn't skip brushing your teeth.
You wouldn't go a week without showering and call it fine.

But you'll go years without ever taking your hip through its full range of motion. And then blame your birthday when you can't put on your socks.

Mobility isn't medicine. It's hygiene.

Most people treat stiffness like an antibiotic. They stretch hard for a month, feel better, and stop. Six months later the wall is back. The tissues shorten. The nervous system reinstates the safety brake. The rust returns.

But here's the good news. Maintenance is cheaper than acquisition. The science of reversibility tells us it takes far less effort to keep a range of motion than it took to earn it. If you use the range, you keep it.

I just finished a 30-day hip mobility Live Lab on myself. My morning stiffness went from a 6 out of 10 to a 2. My chair stand test improved by 16.7 percent in one month. The hip I assumed was rusted shut for two decades is moving again.

The simple fix is small. Pick one micro-dose a day. One minute in a Figure-4 stretch. Ten speed stands. Two minutes of pigeon pose. That's it.

I wrote a full article with the science, the maintenance protocol, and a Forever Tracker to keep you honest.

Read it below 👇️

Share this with someone who blames their birthday for their stiff hips.

04/16/2026

Good news: I offer visceral manipulation (and many other types of treatment). Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to learn more.

🌟 Struggling with Chronic Back Pain? You’re not alone. 🌟

Many live with stubborn pain despite countless treatments. Visceral Manipulation—a gentle therapy focuses on helping restore organ mobility and the body’s natural balance.

Discover how it made a world of difference. This article highlights relief not only for back pain but also IBS symptoms.

💡 Learn more about this life-changing approach:
👉https://www.iahe.com/storage/docs/articles/I-Struggled-With-Back-Pain-for-Years.pdf | barralinstitute.com Searchable Article Database

04/10/2026

Client QotD: "Are you going to retire before I die?"
My reply: "Are you planning to die soon?"
(I have it on good authority from a number of clients that I'm never allowed to retire, so there's that.)

04/08/2026

I "attended" a great online session about working with individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (and their caregivers, and providers) today. Thanks to the folks at the for giving me lots of food for thought.

03/31/2026

On this , I want to let you know that *everyone* is welcome on my treatment table and in my clinic.