My Insights as a Bowen Practitioner

• Proper, permanent healing takes time and patience. Improvements, especially in chronic cases, are often subtle and happen slowly over the course of the sessions. Before each session we go over how things are going and recheck assessments as needed to see what progress is being made. In many cases, clients realize they have indeed made much more improvement than they had thought when compared to the initial signs and symptoms from the session prior. With that said, there are also times in more acute cases where 1 session is all that is needed to solve an issue.

• During the healing process there may be another part of the body that shows discomfort or stiffness while the initial issue feels better. This is a push/pull scenario, as one fascial restriction releases and resets, it often can’t do so without other parts of the body being initially affected. Think of your fascial network as a full body onesie (which it is). Imagine tugging on the hip area of the fabric, think of that as the Fascia releasing. Now you can imagine that tug does not happen solely in that isolated area. There will be fabric being pulled from other areas on the onesie as well. These may be areas that feel a bit off while the fabric at the hip readjusts.

• During times of great stress, or even long durations of minimal negative stress, the brain and body lacks the amount of energy needed to create a healthy and complete healing response.  Think of your daily energy levels as a bank; you have a set budget per day. If you are depleting the account by constantly, usually subconsciously, using the energy towards dealing with stresses, there will be little left to be given to anything else. This is why ultimately if stress is not dealt with and controlled in a healthy way, a body will most likely enter a diseased state. It simply does not have the resources to cope and therefore is stuck in the famous “flight or flight” response, or emergency mode. If this is the case, the first call to action is working solely to reset the nervous system back into the “rest and digest” mode. This is the only state where the body can create a permanent healing process.  There are moves that can be done to target an intense relaxation of the nervous system during the sessions, but it’s important to note that outside of the Bowen office it is also important for the client to start learning about and creating healthier habits to handle stress. Very often when we start with this approach many aches and pains just go away on their own!

• Bowen therapy can be difficult for clients to explain to others due to the individualized plans that are made for them and the broad range of ailments it can help with. It is hard to explain to someone with plantar fasciitis who is interested in Bowen therapy with your story of how it helped with your migraines and anxiety. Ultimately all body parts via the fascial network are all connected to each other. Every injury, illness, or stress can cause a ripple effect throughout the body and there can be compensations being built up for years. When we focus on the body as a whole rather than different parts, we can see how those different parts are affecting the whole. It needs to be considered both ways to see the bigger picture and piece together what is affecting what. Therefore, there needs to be work done on areas that may seem very far off from the parts feeling the discomfort. Think back to the connectedness of the onesie example.