Principles of Bowen

The key element of Bowen is that it addresses the body as a unit without treating specific diseases or illnesses. We do however have moves that work on certain areas such as the shoulders and pelvis etc. The technique is expressed in its intention to treat the whole system.

The Breaks in Between

Our brain processes millions of pieces of information every second – details of what needs to be done, when and where. Yet we can only consciously process a certain amount of data at a time. By putting in the breaks in between each set of moves, we are giving the brain and body a chance to absorb the information; and where possible or necessary start to act on it.

How does it work?

So how exactly does the Bowen Technique actually work? This is a difficult question to answer as there have been many theories put forward over the years at various times to explain how Bowen does what it does. But to be quite honest most of these are only theories. The best explanation is probably the simplest – The brain puts out about 6 million electrical signals a second into the body, and they all in turn come back in the form of coded information which then has to be interpreted, and once again fed back into the loop. If you imagine thousands of telephones ringing in front of you at the same time, all giving bits of information that you have to act on, this will give you some idea of the task involved.

In the case of pain, the central nervous system delivers messages to the part of the brain that will in turn create pain relief by triggering endorphins (which is a bit like the body’s version of aspirin). Another part of the brain will then prompt the process of repair. In the case of long term pain, the signals can get very mixed up and even start sending messages that don’t get listened to, or which get interpreted wrongly.

If you think of a looping figure of eight carrying information backwards and forwards – when we make a Bowen move this creates like a ‘blip’ in the loop, something akin to a radar reading. The brain has to find out what the appropriate response is. In order to do this the brain will generally switch part of the body off, and triggering the bit dealing with relaxation known as the Para-sympathetic nervous system. The brain then increases the blood supply to the tissues to the area that has been worked so as to gain more detailed data. This action can quite often been seen during a treatment when the area of the skin that has received a set of moves remains red for sometime, this is also a great indicator to the therapist of where the brain is focussing its attention. There then follows a kind of negotiation between the body and brain over the next few days following the treatment on how to fix the problem and if there are other parts of the body that need addressing first before problem X can be resolved. With recent injuries one or two treatments is all that is needed. However with long term problems that have developed over years in can take several treatments over an extended period to remove ‘all the layers of the onion’ before getting to the core of the issue.