The Road to Damascus

Hi Folks, Nothing at all to do with Bowen Therapy, however I though I would just mention that I have just hit 40 years old! EEK!

To celebrate this rather surprising revalation I decided to go to Syria and visit Damascus and many of the other spectacular archeological sites that this rather fantastic and welcoming country has to offer. I cannot recommend this place more highly as a holiday destination.

Interesting that while other parts of the middle east and north Africa were going mad, this rather progressive moderate Arab country was carrying on business as usual offering first class customer service, great food and a truly wonderful experience.

Archaeologically it is easily equal to the valley of the Kings and the the Pyramids of Egypt, but with the added bonus of being relatively unknown by western tourists - hence not too busy or hectic.

I can thoroughly recommend Nawafir Travel who I used for the 7 day tour; one of the largest Syrian based tour operators that offer considerably better value for money than our English counterparts for identical packages. www.nawafir-tours.com

They also provided an excellent freelance tour guide for a little extra who was worth his weight in gold called Fahed Omki. It is such a rarity these days to find superb customer service coupled with phenomenal local and historical knowledge.

It won't be long I hope before I go back.

TTFN

Austin

Dissection at Imperial College

Greetings all and welcome to my first post of the year.

It has been 3 years since the first ground breaking layered dissection at St.Georges Hospital Medical School (see post Jan 2008).

This year, another first, once again held by Julian baker - Director of the European College of Bowen Studies, under the watchful eye of Professor Kerry Davis - Head of Human Anatomy Imperial College London.

Our purpose this time was extending the discovery of the upper body by doing another layered dissection, but this time including the head, neck and jaw.

Once again I found the traditional anatomical illustrative references somewhat misleading, as they discount so much of what is intrinsically connected i.e. fascial tissue. The shear diversity of fascial tissues and layers is a study in itself, particularly around the head,cheek and jaw areas.

Ultimately we could have spent days if not weeks on this one area of the body as it is so complex.

What I took away from this dissection was how important the Facial and Neck muscles are for our ability to breathe. How even something like jaw ache or an ear infection could quite easily interfere with our breathing pattern and posture at quite a significant level, and if left unchecked could create a vicious circle of problems.

I must point out as before that it is only due to the incredible generosity of the individuals, and their families, who have given their consent for their forms to be used in the furthering of medical science that such educative dissections are possible. It has been once again an honour to have taken part, at what I have learned will be applied over the coming months in my Bowen Therapy Practice.

Finally a big thank you to Amanda Hermitage who organised this event, and also to Julian Baker whose never ending commitment to the furthering of our understanding of just how and why Bowen Technique works on the Human Body.

TTFN

Austin

Sports Injuries

Another great weekend of learning with the rather marvelous Paula Esson - famous in the Bowen world for her work with the Leeds Rhinos Rugby team, who then went on to win the world championship. A professional sportswoman herself from the age of 15, Paula brings immense practical experience as well as her Sports injury rehabilitation expertise.

One of the key inroads that she seems to be making in recent years is with a successful multi-disciplinary approach to therapy and recovery, as well as structured preventative methods moving forward. The example of many professional sports stars who's injury rates plummet once under the watchful eye of Paula and her team of highly skilled therapists - preventing injuries happening in the first place being a preferred way, as opposed to a damage control approach.

Needless to say I learnt lots, and will be introducing some of these new skill sets into clinic practice.

TTFN

Outside the Comfort Zone

Greeting All. Have just come back from two days of mind blowing training by the ever astounding Chris Astill-Smith of 'Metabollics'. What this guy doesn't know about Human Biochemistry probably isn't worth knowing. His approach is to apply this incredible knowledge into useful and practical application within the medical world. He classifies himself as a 'Functional Biochemist' and uses his expertise in Applied Kineisiology and structural manipulation to further to add to his amazing ability to track down the sources of the various ailments the body suffers from - sometimes this may be biochemical or nutritional, other times it may be neurological or mechanical. Needless to say he gets results. The teaching courses he delivers are still in my opinion some of the best delivered in our industry. It is never the same old stuff, and each time I am well outside my comfort zone, which pushes my learning ability.

You may ask what a Bowen Therapist is doing learning about Biochemistry. Personally I think the better educated and the more I can learn about how the body heals, or indeed what makes it go wrong, the better I become as a practitioner.

TTFN

Interesting Times

Greeting All!
We have had to make some hard decisions of late. The end of April waived goodbye to both the Torquay and Ashburton clinics, with focus on the Totnes clinic for the time being. Thursday clinic will now be extended to 9pm which has proved extremely popular with workaholics. A second late evening may be on the cards if demand increases.
Our sights for the future are set on a new clinic, as part of a Doctors surgery in the bay area, and the possibility of having a satelite clinic in Exeter. Both of these will not be available until the end of July / early August.
I now host three radio shows on Riviera FM - two of them related to Health matters. Argentinian Tango being the third ( a little hobby of mine).
Due to the success of the Anatomy seminar I gave earlier in the year, I hope to be holding another one in Bristol sometime in the beginning of July.

TTFN

Bowen Conference 2010

Greetings all.
Hot on the heels of the seminar last month, (which was a great success and has led to being asked to deliver another up in Bristol) This years 2 day Bowen Conference featuring some excellent speakers - among others Robert Schliep (Professor Fascial Research at Ulm University), Tom Myers (Anatomy Trains), and the 'new kid on the block' and for my money the show stealer of the whole conference Dr Lorimer Moseley (Fellow at Oxford - Pain Research). My hat goes off to the main organiser of the conference ( although it involved so many others) our very own Jihan Adem of Totnes, Devon. It must have been a logistical nightmare getting speakers in from all over the world, coupled with the flight ban the week beforehand - well done Jihan!
It is interesting to note that Fascial research which officially only began life in 2007 (although Robert Schliep wrote his first papers on the subject in the late 80's) and at that time was on the cutting edge of medical discovery, has made significant headway in such a short time - to the extent that mainstream health magazines are starting to publish articles on the subject. This coming months Men's Health magazine for example is dedicating a double page spread to fascia, and Robert Shliep's work. Which for all those body builders and fitness folk out there will really put a cat among the pigeons.
Lorimer Moseley's talk on pain and how the human body percieves it was a real eye opener, and his delivery was erudite and detailed yet extremely interesting and enjoyable. One of the key things he put forward was that Pain is entirely subjective, this is not new in itself, as there have been various experiments using hypnosis and suggestion to indicate that the level of pain inflicted can be the same but the persons perception of how much pain is felt can vary significantly. However Dr Moseley's studies indicate something far more exciting. He has found that the brain decides how much pain is felt not simply based on priority or how bad/dangerous to survival the injury may be, but also based on the body's previous experience too. Although like many things this sort of thing seems obvious, but it has far reaching consequences. This is yet another piece of research that bolster the Placebo arguement. The word placebo is often used as a negative, as in its 'just in the mind' and yet as the ancient Greeks believed millenia ago the perception of all things is the mind! Hence this Pain research proves that indeed it really is all in the mind. This is backed up of course by harvard Medical School's recent discovery that every cell in our body has receptors for hormones, this means that in theory you really can have a 'happy cell' or a 'sad cell' depending on how you think or feel. Interesting times indeed!

TTFN

Water of Life!

A belated happy new year to you all for 2009.
Bowen Technique has gained considerable ground since I began almost 5 years ago. When I started most people on hearing of the therapy would say 'Bowen What?'. Now mainly due to Julian Baker's hard work at the European College, coupled with significant research projects both in the UK and USA, Tom Bowen's legacy is making its mark with the medical community and getting considerable press coverage.
With all this, I am continually reminded that a good percentage of patients I see would probably not have the problems they are presenting if they simply drank water 'little & often' every day.
In fact part of the process of the Bowen Technique treatment is that the patient need keep themselves correctly hydrated between sessions.
Somehow we seem to forget than we are, as humans, reckoned to be around 75% water, but we refrain from supplying it with a good source of the stuff - and NO, regardless of what anyone says, coffee does not count.
Get the basics right first, it then makes the chances of the rest getting better much quicker.

TTFN

Austin