Bowen Therapy: A New Approach

As a sufferer of both neck and back pain on occasion, a believer of chiropractic services, and a big supporter of massage therapy, if someone told me that I could relieve my pain by lying on a table and having my muscles gently manipulated like my spine is at my chiropractor’s office but with none of the cringe-inducing popping sounds, I would probably be skeptical but eager to try it out. Bowen Therapy—named for its founder Tom Bowen, an Australian who found he had a natural gift for finding rhythms and vibrations within the body’s muscles—is the quick, painless, and revolutionary cure long-time sufferers are looking for.

Bowen is safe for everyone (even animals!), from incredibly frail infants to extremely arthritic patients as well as the elderly, and every size, shape, and condition in between. Although Tom Bowen himself claimed an 88 percent success rate during his heyday from its introduction in the 1950s to his eventual retirement in the early 1980s, the feel-good rate is determined mostly by word of mouth because scientific data cannot be processed for this type of body work, although some experimental research has been done.

Some people feel great after only a few treatments and others continue to go every week for the benefits of being more relaxed and feeling more freedom and range of motion in their musculoskeletal system. During a one hour session, the Bowen therapist will find patterns within your muscles and move his or her fingers lightly across the skin to release the tension in that area. Once your muscles are free to relax, your body will be able to adjust according to the pattern the instructor is forming with your tendons. When this happens, the hope is that the body will be able to heal itself and find a balance from within to keep pain from cropping back up in any of your troublesome spots.

After each movement, the therapist or instructor performing the Bowen technique usually leaves the room or pauses for your muscles to realign, allowing ample space between movements, resulting in an hour session (even though each movement is very quick and one Bowen observer has said that it was like the therapist was flicking the patient’s skin). Therapists recommend drinking a lot of water the day of the treatment to get rid of toxins as well as abstaining from any heavy lifting or rigorous exercise that might otherwise strain the body further before or after treatment. Three sessions are recommended to train the body to balance itself and your Bowen therapist may recommend different exercises, stretches, or changing the way you move to do certain tasks in an effort to maximize the potential effects of the Bowen technique.

While reading testimonials from a variety of sources, Bowen seems to be the cure-all from every imaginable source of bodily pain and practitioners can be found all over the world. Besides the expected upper and lower extremity pains, people who have long-standing pain or short bouts from a recent injury including shin splints, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, ear infections, and sciatica to less obviously physical sources of pain like stress, panic attacks, and anxiety have been helped by Bowen Therapy.

Next time you find yourself in the kind of shooting pain that goes right down your back, causes your knee to buckle, or creates a lasting headache from numbing pain, consider Bowen Therapy as an alternative holistic treatment...after all, it doesn’t hurt to try.