New Science demonstrates how Bowen Therapy works!

I am constantly looking for new and better ways of describing how and why Bowen Therapy works.  Clients call it “odd”, “strange”, they don’t know why it works, they just know it works.  Often, a client will say to someone who is in pain, “Just go see Penny, I don’t know what she does-it barely feels like anything- but she is able to fix a lot of stuff.” Thankfully, I have worked on enough people that the word has spread and more clients keep coming- albeit usually out of desperation!

So, once again I am going to refer to my two favorite hands-on bodyworkers: French Hand surgeon Dr. Guimberteau and Anatomist Thomas W. Myers, Author of my favorite book Anatomy Trains.

My background is in Materials Science & Engineering, so when Mr. Myers started talking about the soft tissues in the body being mostly collagen (and elastin) and that this is piezoelectric substance- my brain fired.  You see adding mechanical pressure to these materials produces an immediate electrical charge.  Same with quartz crystals, for instance. So yahoo- what does this have to do with the reason the light touch of Bowen Therapy creates such profound changes in the body? When we touch lightly on the fascia (that surrounds our muscles, tendons, and ligaments) , that is piezoelectric in nature, it sends off electrical signals to the brain and the brain instantaneously responds with a host of signals that changes/corrects the environment of the muscle, tendon, or ligament that we just touched.  Changes in tension or density-tensegrity-for instance are made. The muscle that was too tight clamping down on that nerve or pulling that bone off center is now brought back to balance- bye bye pain and dysfunction!

This is about as simple as I can get on this subject- I hope it helps you to at least begin to understand that this is how the body works, and this is why Bowen Therapy is so Billiant!

I will leave you with this paragraph from Mr. Myers in his brilliant book Anatomy Trains: “Guimberteau’s work brings together the tensegrity concepts on both a macroscopic and microscopic level.  It shows how the entire organismic system is built around the pressure balloons common to both cranial osteropathy and visceral manipulation.  It suggests a mechanism whereby even light touch on the skin could reach deeply into the body’s structure.  It demonstrates how economical use of materials can result in a dynamically self-adjusting mechanism.”

And this is how ‘I fix stuff’ 🙂

Penny Michaels, Bowen Therapist