Bowen Therapy for Lower Back Pain

As a Bowen Therapist I encounter people with Lower Back Pain often and it’s a complaint I can confidently say has great success with Bowen Therapy. 

So often I see people either bent over, limping or looking quite twisted.

They either can’t sit or can’t stand and sometimes even lying down is impossible without severe pain – the situation is usually quite grim.

There can be pain running down one or both legs, tingling in the legs and feet or patches of pain in the upper or lower legs, hips or the buttocks.

The symptoms of back pain can vary greatly due to each persons individual make up and situation. We all have quite a unique body with our own personal history but Bowen Therapy uses this history to bring the body back into balance.

Bowen Therapy is marvellous for back-pain of any kind.

It usually improves within the first few days

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• Firstly thing to do is to assess the posture, check for any restriction in movement and ask for pain levels, I also will ask where the pain is and ask for a short history.
• Then the Bowen Therapy begins in earnest starting with a complete balance of the body by releasing muscles, ligaments and fascia all the way up the spine. This initial process has a wonderful action in that just by taking pressure off the attachments to the spine the pain has often been relieved if not gone completely before even finishing this first stage.
• Then if necessary and depending on the area of the pain – the next areas of the body are targeted. This will be either the Ileopsoas muscle to relieve the thigh and mid to lower back pain and that twisted look or the
• Pelvis to realign the hips even more and work on the leg pain or the
• Hamstrings gives much needed relief to many lower back problems especially for people who sit a lot e.g. truck drivers and office workers.

(note, I never do all these on the first treatment) 

The Bowen Exercises I then give keep the body in a state of maintenance until I see them again.

These are to be done daily and to be honest I didn’t think they could do much when I had just started doing Bowen Therapy, but after putting my back out myself and having had a Bowen Session – I was at work …and the pain came back horribly, so in desperation I lay done on the floor in the hallway and did the Pelvic Exercises…..6 times with each leg, slowly and deliberately with very little range of movement in my hip due to the pain…….I got up carefully and the pain had gone!

From that day on I was a convert for the importance of Bowen Exercises.

This first treatment makes way for the follow ups usually necessary to hold the body in it’s correct place.

As my teacher said “The first Bowen Therapy is like laying the slab of concrete to build the house on, we have to make sure the slab is nice and solid before building onto it. If the house is built on wet cement the house will fall over.” …or words to that effect. So Bowen Therapy is very much a “less is best” form of therapy.

The person will sometimes have short periods of pain followed by large windows of no or less pain as the body commences to rebalance itself using and bring itself back to a comfortable and useable state once again.

This can start taking effect immediately – or sometimes takes a bit longer.

If there’s no noticeable change with 3 sessions over 3 weeks – I will refer you to someone else to help you.