Bodies feel better with Bowenwork

Mary Anne Malek, Certified Bowenwork Practitioner

Bowenwork is a holistic soft-tissue technique that relaxes and returns the body to a healing state. A Bowenwork practitioner applies light pressure through a minimal number of precisely located moves or touches over tendons, muscles and nerve bundles. In response the body resets its various systems, bringing the person into balance and promoting healing and well-being.

Each person responds differently to a Bowenwork session.

Everyone responds to Bowenwork according to what his or her body needs in order to heal. Often a person’s body begins to respond almost immediately. In most cases, after only a few, gentle moves over muscle and other soft tissue, healing can begin on the physical, chemical, emotional, mental and energetic levels.

Bowenwork practitioners routinely see hundreds of conditions respond positively to Bowenwork. In addition to the many musculoskeletal conditions that improve, problems related to respiration, digestion, reproduction, vitality, energy and even mood often respond as well.

Is Bowenwork right for you?

Bowenwork’s gentle, non-invasive nature is the key to its success, and attracts many people to it, whether they are interested in exploring Bowenwork as practitioners, to help with their own chronic or acute conditions, or to support the health of family and friends.

• Bowenwork is gentle and safe Anyone, from newborns to the aged and infirm, can safely receive a session, even if they cannot receive other types of body therapies.
• Bowenwork’s gentle application makes it very easy on the practitioner and presents little risk of developing repetitive strain injuries and “absorbing” the effects of a client’s emotional and health issues, two situations that often contribute to burnout.
• Bowenwork can be performed in many settings. No special equipment, lotions or oils are needed, and it is generally performed through lightweight clothing rather than on bare skin.

How Bowenwork started?

Thomas Bowen of Geelong, Australia was a self-trained osteopath who developed Bowenwork® over a period of several decades, working at first primarily with injured laborers and athletes. Bowen’s approach was to reset the tension in certain muscles and muscle groups by using a unique type of stretch-and-roll-through move, with specific pauses between sets of moves to give the body time to begin its response.

In the last years of his life, Bowen allowed several practitioners to observe him. He recognized only six of them as understanding his work. One of the six, Oswald (Ossie) Rentsch, developed notes to preserve and accurately represent Mr. Bowen’s work, and promised to make his work known around the world. Bowenwork is Rentsch’s interpretation of Bowen’s work.

Rentsch met the challenge of presenting Mr. Bowen’s work in a structured, teachable format with highly effective, easy-to-learn sets of procedures that address a wide range of conditions throughout the body. Today, Bowenwork (also know as Bowtech®) is taught in over 30 countries under the auspices of the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia (BTAA).

About Tom Bowen, Father of Bowenwork

Tom Bowen began developing Bowenwork in the 1950s, and continued to practice in Australia until his passing in 1982. According to a 1974 survey of alternative health practitioners performed by the Victoria government, Bowen was performing over 13,000 Bowenwork sessions per year. In over 85% of his cases, the problems for which his patients sought relief were resolved. Bowen also held free clinics for children, people with disabilities, and community service workers throughout his career.

While no one knows for certain how Tom Bowen discovered the precise locations and sequences of his “moves”, we do know that Bowenwork’s use of light pressure follows the Arndt-Schulze law, “which states that the body responds more deeply and positively to low-pressure stimuli than it does to painful strong stimuli. Tom Bowen discovered and employed this principle long before the Arndt-Schulze law had been formulated.

About the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia

The Bowen Thrapy Academy of Australia has been dedicated to the teaching of Bowenwork® since 1987.

The pioneering work of the Academy, both in Australia and overseas, has seen the spread of Bowenwork to over 30 countries worldwide.

In 1976, Ossie and Elaine Rentsch began utilizing Mr. Bowen’s methods in their clinic in Hamilton, Victoria. They held their first Bowenwork (also know as Bowtech®) seminar in Perth, Australia in 1986, and founded the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia (BTAA) the following year. By 1990 Ossie and Elaine Retsch were teaching full time throughout Australia. Now there are over 90 authorized instructors throughout the world.

To date, BTAA has taught well over 20,000 students worldwide. Many of these students reamin active in their practice, and many have been in practice over 20 years.

The academy continually works to refine and expand the teaching curriculum to include the latest research and best practices in order to maintain high standards for instructors and practitioner  traning. In addition, BTAA holds bi-annual, international conferenced that feature well-known speakers from the medical community and the community of BTAA instructors and practitioners.