What is the Tide?

Posted on May 26, 2026 by

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Author: R. Paul Lee, DO, FAAO, FCA, DABMA
May 26, 2026 – Copyright, All Rights Reserved.

The Tide of primary respiration is an expression of the Potency of the Breath of Life, according to William Garner Sutherland, DO.[1] It is a palpable oscillation of fluid from a spiritual force. It is essential to life and health. It connects the quantum field to material physiology, a link that the founder of Osteopathy, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still sought when he said, “The mind is asked to find the connection between the physical and the spiritual.”[2]

Moreover, this slow oscillation in the body’s fluids, distinct from breathing and the pulse, has Intelligence. Sutherland spelled it with a capital I to signify its special place in the osteopathic lexicon, based in spirit. We can utilize this ultimate Intelligence by using the Tide to learn about the Tide.

Primary Response Testing (PRT), a method for querying the Tide, reveals significant features of the Tide. One simply makes a silent statement while palpating the Tide to see if there is fluctuation (a YES response) or no oscillation (a NO response). The value and validity of this method is evident in the fascinating information this procedure unveils. One needs to learn from a qualified teacher the parameters of the method to assure validity. The following is an illumination of the Tide through PRT:

QUANTUM

  1. Consciousness is the means and Love is the motive for creation.
  2. Dr. Still said that the celestial (Consciousness) contains “knowledge and wisdom” and the terrestrial (Love) contains “motion and power”.
  3. The Breath of Life (BOL) is information that resides in the quantum field.
  4. The quantum field is potentiality, infinite vibrations of virtual waveforms.

POTENTIALITY TO ACUTALITY

  1. The BOL expresses Potency and Intelligence in physical reality.
  2. Intelligence is the product of Consciousness (being).
  3. Potency is the product of Love (doing).
  4. Intelligence is delivered by waves of light from BOL through the pineal to the CSF.
  5. Neuromelanin in the pineal, a near superconductor delivers light to CSF.
  6. Intelligence is ‘function’, patterns of energy that assemble and maintain form.

INTELLIGENCE IN PERINEURAL PATHWAYS

  1. The CSF delivers Intelligence to the interstitium via perineural pathways, syncytia of Schwann cells covering peripheral nerves to their terminus.
  2. A slowly oscillating negative charge exists in the CSF of the perineural pathway.[3]
  3. Repair of a severed nerve requires an intact perineural pathway not an axon.[4]
  4. Perineural pathways convey Intelligence as structured water in the CSF.
  5. CSF in a perineural sheathe conveys information from the BOL as patterns of hydrogen bonds imprinted by light, what Dr Still called ‘nerve force’.

POTENCY AND INTELLIGENCE

  1. CSF in CNS and PNS oscillates at the rate of the long Tide (½ to 1 ½ cycles/min).
  2. Interstitial fluid oscillates at the rate of the mid Tide (6-14 cycles per minute).
  3. The two cycles are resonant, the mid Tide nesting within the long Tide, the latter serving as a carrier wave.
  4. Intelligence in the CSF is quantum and Potency in the interstitium is material.

WHAT IS POTENCY

  1. Intention establishes Potency through conditioning space, which manifests as oscillations of pH, electrical conductance and temperature.[5]
  2. These oscillations of Potency attract water, oscillating it.
  3. Potency is delivered by the BOL to interstitial fluid as particles of light (photons).
  4. Potency functions by moving charge (matter) to create and maintain form.
  5. Oscillating at the rate of the mid Tide, negatively charged exclusion zone water or Potency manifests in arterial blood as the Traube-Hering wave.
  6. The pulsing electromagnetic field of myocardial contractions creates a harmonic of the long Tide, which manifests as the mid Tide in the vasculature.
  7. The vasculature conveys Potency as pulsating negative charge to the interstitium, required by its form and function.

INTERSTITIUM

  1. The extracellular matrix (ECM) is the final common medium of Potency and Intelligence as well as nerve and vascular input that create and maintain tissue.
  2. Parenchymal cells do not intrinsically evince vitality but accept it from the ECM.
  3. Calcium ion waves in the ECM are emissaries of BOL, information having been delivered in sequence by light and patterns of charge of structured water.
  4. Calcium ions collect cyclically at the capillary fenestrations as oscillating negative charge arrives from the blood to the interstitium.[6]
  5. Calcium waves depolymerize the proteoglycans of the ECM to decrease the intensity of the negative charge thereby liberating bound water to flow.[7]
  6. Flowing water is a sol state while bound water is a gel state. Oscillation between these states in the ECM represents the palpable Tide in the tissues.
  7. Calcium waves carry nutrients in the free-flowing water from the capillary to the next most negatively charged region, the parenchymal cell membrane.
  8. Calcium ions bind with integrins changing the conformation of this special cell membrane receptor.
  9. Integrins transfer the information conveyed by the calcium wave to the interior of the cell. This is called mechanotransduction.
  10. Actin filaments in the cytoskeleton contract expelling water into the ECM.
  11. This fluid enters the terminal lymphatic vessels to be trapped by the one-way valves of the fenestrations between the endothelial cells of the vessel wall.
  12. The next bolus of expelled water moves the first bolus upstream in the lymph channel creating a slow pulsatile movement of lymph towards the lymph node.
  13. Inside the cell, the contracting actin changes the configuration of the cytoskeletal fibers with attached enzymes, approximating and activating them.
  14. Metabolic processes are thus cyclically generated by the calcium waves.
  15. Glycolysis and glycogen synthesis alternate.[8],[9]
  16. DNA activation occurs cyclically.

Many aspects of the Tide are elucidated by PRT, supported by a few scientific references. Creating this list of truths through PRT cognitively contributes to osteopathic philosophy and practice with quantum to biochemical information that resonates with writings from Drs Still and Sutherland. This list traces the transmission of information (Life) from the quantum field to initiate material phenomena: fluctuation of fluid and involvement of nerve, blood and ECM function in metabolism.

[1] Sutherland, Teachings in the Science of Osteopathy, 1990, 14.
[2] Still, The Philosophy and Mechanical Principles of Osteopathy, 1892, 249.
[3] Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric, 1985, 237.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Tiller, Conscious Acts of Creation, 2001, 26-27.
[6] Nordenstrom, Biologically Closed Electric Circuits, 1986
[7] Lee, Interface: Mechanisms of Spirit in Osteopathy, 2005, 219.
[8] Al-Habori, Microcompartmentation, metabolic channeling and carbohydrate metabolism. J Biochem Cell Biol, 27(2):123-132, 1995.
[9] Pienta and Coffey. Cellular harmonic information transfer through a tissue tensegrity-matrix system. Med Hypothesis, 34:88-95, 1991.

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