Bowen Therapy – A First Step Towards Good Health

Dec 12, 2023 348 Views

What is Bowen Therapy?

Bowen therapy is an intervention into structure ( because structure governs function ) that typically delivers a rapid reduction in pain. This allows a better range of motion and increased energy levels , logically a very good starting point in going forward. But all this does not mean that our patient is suddenly healthy.

The cultivation and maintenance of good health is a responsibility that nature decrees … “ must be attended by each and every individual “. Being free of pain or symptoms is no doubt a desirable outcome of good therapeutic work, and it may be the first step back to good health, but in no way does it constitute good health.

We alone must “figure out“ how best to manage our own unique set of choices and disciplines. It must be built around the structural, nutritional, spiritual and emotional requirements that our organism depends upon for health and longevity.

Keep in mind, that no technique or health professional, no matter how good they are, can be a replacement for poor lifestyle choices.

Structure Governs Function

Patterns of muscular imbalance pull our bony skeletal system out of balance causing pressure on the nerves and intervertebral discs. This results in the stagnation of the vascular, visceral, endocrine, energy and fluid systems of the body, creating further consequential muscular imbalance with more chronic and degenerative outcomes.

To our good fortune, the human body is a highly integrated organism capable of self-adjustment and auto-regulation.

It’s vigilant and unrelenting ability to continue to adjust and adjust itself until it can do so no longer (and life itself expires) is a testimony to perhaps its most defining feature of all … “adaption”.

What Causes Muscles To Go Out Of Balance?

Do we wake up one day and discover that we are unhealthy or in chronic pain? Or is being unhealthy or in pain, something that builds over time?

Barring perhaps congenital diseases or genetic diseases and unfortunate accidents, with serious consequences, I am convinced that the very vast majority of poor health, pain and suffering is created by the individual themselves. By having made poor lifestyle choices and decisions, that have become habitual and thereby started to have a negative impact on the organism itself.

As an extension to this outcome, the choices and habits have become a comfortable and seemingly normal part of their life. Frequently, they have no idea as to the intrinsic complications that accompanies these uninformed choices. So choice, whether informed or uninformed, is going to have a consequence that ultimately governs the “Quality of life” we experience and ultimately our lifespan.

Bowen Therapy – A First Step Towards Good Health

Bowen’s main aim is to remove pain, and correct dysfunctional physiological conditions and psychosomatic stresses. It does this by eliminating irregular muscular tensional patterns that have manifested in the body due to poor postural habits, injury and poor lifestyle habits.

Correcting the tensional relationships between nerves, muscles and bones is paramount and indeed one of the main guiding principles. The basic principle is that “Muscles move bones” primarily and not the other way around.

Emphasis is placed squarely on ensuring that the muscular system is balanced bilaterally, both at macro and micro levels.

Our structure if left unbalanced, will oblige our organism to move into recompensation, or as I like to put it “Survival Mode” our most basic instinct. It does so, so that we can go about our daily lives. It requires a lot of energy and ever-increasing amounts of it to maintain us in recompensation for as long as possible. That is until our body no longer can, and the inevitable may happen, pain, injury, an accident or even death.

Thus Bowen therapy balances our structure and influences innumerable other systems to take us out of recommendation. This gives balance and therefore all our energy can be shifted to healing and attaining better health, happiness, and vitality. To be free of pain and be able to move is the first step towards good health and vitality.

The Dalai Lama’s quote has had significant relevance for me as a health practitioner …

“ He lives as if he is never going to die, and dies having never really lived ”