What is Bowen Therapy?

Bowen Therapy is a remedial body technique that is gentle and relaxing. It helps the body’s own healing resources to achieve balance and harmony, which can result in lasting relief from pain and discomfort.

The Bowen Technique is a holistic treatment that works on the soft connective tissue of the body. Bowen Therapy can be used to treat musculoskeletal or related neurological problems including acute sports injuries and chronic or organic conditions. It is a gentle and relaxing therapy, which does not use forceful manipulation. This makes Bowen Therapy safe for people of all ages.

Using minimal touch, a practitioner makes gentle, precise, Bowen moves over tendons, muscles, and nerve bundles. These Bowen moves help to bring the body into balance, thereby promoting healing and a sense of well-being. The moves, in response, elicit deep, healing responses from the body on many different levels – physical, chemical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual. People of all ages respond to Bowenwork according to what their bodies need in order to heal.

Bowen Therapy is a non-invasive effective physical therapy that is designed to offer pain relief via gentle muscle release technique. It is based on the principle that the body can heal itself, and is focused on gentle stimulation of specific areas of the body, particularly the area around the spine as well as the fascia. The fascia is the connective tissue that occurs throughout the body – and together with the muscles and tendons is linked with the body’s nervous system.

Bowen Therapy aims to activate the nervous system and allow it to begin to respond to the pain and correct it. Pain and disease are considered an imbalance under the therapy. Though it resembles massage, Bowen Therapy is far gentler and does not involve the same amount of stimulation. It is, in fact, more closely related to Eastern traditions that recognise that the body possesses a life force or ‘chi’ that needs to be kept in balance to maintain continued health.

Bowen Therapy was developed in the 1950’s by an Australian, Tom Bowen. Bowen’s methods were recorded and studied by Oswald Rentsch in the 1970’s and through his efforts and those of his wife Elaine, Bowtech® The Original Bowen Technique is now practiced around the world with 26,000 accredited practitioners.