What is the Bowen Method?
The Bowen Method is a practice of healing the body through gentle touch. The moves are performed on specific parts of the body (mostly muscles or tendons). They are designed to engage the central nervous system by using movements with varying tension and pressure to stimulate a response in your nervous system. The immediate responses are most often a decrease in tension and tightness in the body. “I feel like putty” I’ve been told many times as the session progresses. The Bowen Method moves also help to improve circulation and lymphatic flow while also decreasing inflammation, stress and pain. This is all done with gentle, slow and painless movements.
Bowen Addresses Every System in the Body:
- Joints
- Musculoskeletal
- Circulation
- Internal Organ Systems
- Proprioception (muscle memory)
- Fascial Rehydration
- Lymphatic System
This begins with gentle moves over specific areas of the body. These moves initiate neurological impulses from muscles and tendons which starts a connection to the brain. The brain then sends signals throughout the body that initiate a healing response. This most often starts with relaxing tension which helps calm inflammation in a healthy way rather than just coping with compensations as result of poor posture or unresolved past injuries. And that begins the healing process. Once this occurs, the body continues the healing responses.
This healing can aid the body to recover from injuries or illness. For example, sporting collisions, twisted joints or stresses from over-exertion all cause reactions throughout the body. This is a rippling effect and if not addressed over time will lead to compensation in other parts of the body. Certainly for faster and more complete healing to occur, the initial restrictions and imbalances must be found and released. The Bowen Method does that.
Another tightness that we can hold may be as a result of a traumatic experience. We experience the ‘fight or flight’ response when faced with situations such as shock, trauma, illness, injury and everyday stress. It is the body’s defense mechanism. Unfortunately, in many cases after the fright passes, the tension is still held in our bodies. The Bowen Method removes the nervous system from the tension-filled ‘fight or flight’ response to a more relaxed posture. Therefore Bowen enables the body to restore a balanced state of the nervous system.
