What is Bowen

The Bowen technique, also known as Bowenwork, is a very light bodywork consisting in a series of carefully devised inputs. It was spread by the Australian chemist Thomas Ambrose Bowen in the 1950s. According to the 1975 Victorian government enquiry on alternative health care methods, Tom Bowen performed about 13000 treatments per year, seeing each patient on an average of 2 to 3 sessions, with a success rate higher than 80%. Thanks to his and his students’ work (above all the documenting of the whole set of Bowen procedures by Oswald Rentsch and the creation of the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia by Oswald and Elaine Rentsch), the Bowen technique is nowadays taught and practiced worldwide.

Bowen is performed by inducing an oscillation on specific body spots, in preset routines, through light and precise movements performed with thumb and fingers. The ‘Bowen spots’ are partly the same ones targeted by acupuncture, and mostly the points where nerves, blood vessels and lymphatic ducts join in a bundle. Why are they particularly apt to trigger a therapeutic response? We don’t know yet. It seems reasonable to hypothesise that nerves, blood vessels and lymphatic ducts converge where something important goes on concerning the exchange of information spread through the body; therefore, if we need to spread a therapeutic message in order to get a systemic response, those spots are likely to be the best to address our message to. The Bowen sets of moves, or ‘Bowen procedures’, are more than 100 and can be performed individually or in short series, according to the symptoms presented by the person undergoing our treatment.

A Bowen session can last from 10 to 60 minutes. When a further session is needed, it is scheduled 5 to 10 days after the previous one. The processing of the Bowen inputs by the body is stronger during the first week after each session, and, slowing down after that, it can keep going on up until a month. Then the body is likely to retain the new balance it has reached, especially if the four top tips to keep the ECM healthy are observed and unless a new trauma intervenes. Bowen has no contraindications and can be applied on anyone under any circumstances, including pregnant women, newborns and animals.

The Weber-Fechner law (formulated in 1860 and never confuted, therefore still accurate according to contemporary science) states that the perception of a stimulus by a human being is the logarithm of the stimulus. Therefore the stimulus perception gets stronger (in its absolute value) as the stimulus gets lighter: the body answers very light stimuli with a strong self reorganisation. This law explains why Bowen can rebalance the body, and why is it effective only when applied with a light touch.

Bowen’s application modality and results - first of all a parasympathetic fase starting from the very beginning of a session, and, as we gather from preliminary observation, a significant reduction of oxidative stress - point very clearly in one same direction: Bowen can rebalance the ECM.
Moreover, we can reasonably assume (although we lack of a sufficiently wide spectrum of studies to scientifically describe this phenomenon) that Bowen can do more than just help the ECM to shift to a more liquid fase. It seems to be able to address specific body areas in order to help them to restore their original well-being, as if the oscillation of those specific spots in those precise routines was a kind of Morse code able to speak to the body in its own language, both at a local and at a systemic level, thus retuning it and each of its parts.

H3AL® is a set of protocols that extend and stabilize Bowen’s effects (as we observe, for example, with respect to cognitive abilities and to the improved cerebral activity of a damaged brain) and make them last for an unlimited period of time.
A simplified (but still very effective) version of those protocols can be taught in a three day workshop to anybody older than 12 years.

If further information is needed, feel free to ask for a free Skype meeting with Dr. Toniato.