How does it work?
The simple answer. Who cares it just does. Thousands of skeptical people and animals have received the full benefit of the work without any understanding of the theories behind it. If you asked doctors how their drugs worked on the atomic level they couldn’t tell you either nor would that knowledge change there affects.
The complicated answers. There are many theories about how Bowenwork® moves and procedures work and the truth may be as elusive as the answer to the question of whether light is a wave or a particle. What follows are some of the theories beginning with the one that resonated with Tom Bowen. (Pardon the pun)
Mechanisms of action
Harmonic Resonance: Like the plucking of a stringed instrument at different locations that sets up different harmonic tones. These signals traveling along nerve and fascial planes give the brain essential tuning fork information used to recalibrate tone, hydration, position, drainage, replenishment, chemical densities and formulations and energetic variables. The nervous systems link to the endocrine system provides rationale for the organic effects of the work. Some Bowen therapists (me included) prefer to work with no music in the background, like Tom Bowen, because of the possibility of competing harmonics that could be at play.
The Arndt-Schulz law of Physiology. "Weak stimuli increases physiologic activity, moderate stimuli inhibits activity, and very strong stimuli abolishes activity." Bowen uses weak stimuli therefore increasing activity. It is the “less is more” approach with Bowen being considered “the homeopathy of manual therapy”. It is the Bowen practitioners purpose to perform the minimum amount of intervention that is required to activate a healing response thus engaging rather than dominating the wholistic body.
Piezoelectric current is an electrical charge that occurs when a contraction of a muscle happens. Because collagen fibers (which make up a large portions of connective tissues) have positive and negative poles they respond by orientating themselves directionally. This is important in the development of scare tissue that needs to functions in a mobile environment. Bowen moves create a strong piezoelectric response because of their lateral challenge to connective tissue. This signal is received in the brain and modulates connective tissue environments.
Fascial connectivity and communication: The fascial packaging as expounded by Thomas Myers in his book Anatomy Trains at both the deep and superficial levels is not only the highway of fluids and cell maintenance materials but an integrated network of communication about tone and compensations that governs the tensegrity of our human structures. Tension or injury information in one area is transmitted along lines of tension and compression that distorts the whole. The fastest communication system in the body is through fascia, far faster than the nervous system and 100 times faster in its line of fiber alignment. Bowen moves travel along these pathways with the information that is generated by the unique Bowen move to reestablish homeostasis.
Soliton Effect: Like a tsunami wave or a tide wave called a soliton that does not lose momentum as it travels long distances the Bowen move progresses along fascial pathways. What is considered a core Bowen move, called “hitting the lats” on the outer quadriceps tendon travels to the muscles of the scalp via the Superficial Front Line of fascia giving fundamental information to the brain along the way.
Proprioceptors – The nerves system sensors that correlate location in space and timing of activity. The drunk test is failed when you can’t touch your nose because your proprioceptors are impaired. Bowenwork™ moves often have profound effects on repositioning joints where proprioceptive activity plays a key role. When the brain checks its correct pattern against its current environment it will reset structural position and sequencing of muscular movement to increase mobility and fluidity thus reducing pain.
The brain connection: All Bowen moves are considered to be touching the brain, perhaps accessing part of the 90% scientists tell us we don’t use. It is the brain that integrates the nervous with the endocrine with the fascial with the muscular with the etc. It is here (and the spinal cord) that the original blueprint of health has its core directory. Both the Somatic and the autonomic nervous systems and particularly the parasympathetic branch react to the suggestions of Bowen moves and procedures.
With activation the brain not only becomes more efficient but it remembers the new pattern and will use it when needed. For instance, concussions (Mild Traumatic Brain Injury) respond wonderfully to Bowenwork™. In a 10 year study in San Francisco with football and basketball players subsequent concussions responded much quicker without additional work.
Parasympathetic: Although there are many positive results from Bowen moves when the body is running in a sympathetic track i.e. athletes during competitions or as triage in accident cases, the typical work activates and is enhanced by a parasympathetic environment. Bowen moves shift the brain into an alpha wave state relaxing the body and sending it forward to investigate its response to the painless and unique move. The initial moves used in most sessions are the same ones used to take a person out of shock. I have personal seen this happen in a hospital emergency room.
Embryological studies: demonstrate a possible source of the “original blueprint of health” that is often referred to as what Bowen moves access. At about day fifteen of embryo development a “primitive streak” forms which is the midline around which the whole body organizes itself. Differentiated from genetic information it represents the cellular memory of distribution and order. This primal midline then folds onto itself becoming the brain, spinal cord, the autonomic nervous system and the neural crest. Often upon receiving the first two moves in the low back people will access memories of tissue injury through out the body. The link has been opened for core information to resonate with current conditions.
Stretch reflexors, muscle spindles, golgi tendon organs and joint receptors are the mechanisms that report to the brain information used to establish resting length, active tone and coordination of the agonist – antagonist, synergist and fixator relationships. It is a common local response for muscles to relax and reset when receiving Bowenwork™ moves. The lateral challenge and move down-regulates theses sensors and in concert with the two minute minimum wait period between moves integrates a new resting length to hypertonic muscles and resets atrophic ones as a catalyst for strengthening. The moves also reset recruitment parameters for the kinesthetic chain. This return to function of muscles plays a part in the lymphatic drainage capabilities of the work but may not be the only mechanism that produces such dramatic effects in cases of lymphodema.
Organic reflexes: It is recognized in virtually all bodywork approaches from Chapman’s reflexes thru shiatsu and in allopathic models that there are referred symptoms and reflex loops to the organs of the body. Whether these sites are perceived as blockages, excesses, gateways or roadblocks is the business of the wholistic body when it sorts itself out. Bowenwork™ procedures initiate a detoxification process that includes the organs of the body and promotes long term organ health. How does it do that? Components of the previous theories may be at play but at this time I find it best to refer to the simple answer, “who cares it just does”.
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