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      Web reprint by permission from
    Natural Triad (formally Natural Awakenings)
    July, 2004, page 14 and 15


    Bowen Therapy - A road out of Pain
    By Kent McKeithan, Bowen practitioner, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

    "It was the most horrible pain I could have imagined. They had to [literally] carry me to the hospital because I couldn’t walk." Four years ago, Doris Clark, long-time educator, mother of two (now-grown) and an active grandmother, was going about her life in her usual enthusiastic way. There’d been a lot of stress in her life lately – her mom dying after a long bout with cancer and health challenges to her husband, but she was more than coping when, apparently out of the blue, the pain struck.

    "It began as a little twinge, then it would shoot across my back from one side to the other. It grew worse during the day, and began to travel down my leg, until finally I was just bent over." That’s when she was taken to a hospital in Winston-Salem where she was diagnosed as having a pinched nerve at the fourth lumbar vertebra.

    "I spent seven days in the hospital. I had a full range of X-rays, an MRI and a CAT scan. They administered shock treatment to my legs, then I went for a full series of physical therapy sessions. Nothing was working." She went to a hospital’s pain center, still with no relief.

    She says the entire sequence was repeated -- MRI, CAT scan, another round of physical therapy sessions—and a bone scan was added. "In the end [her physician] told me, "There’s nothing more we can do. Your condition is inoperable. You’re just going to have to learn to live with your pain." There was the clear implication that there were only three alternatives: bed rest with medication, physical therapy or surgery, a fourth being live with the pain.

    Effective Treatment
    There was a time of shock and resignation, but as the pain continued in unrelenting intensity over time, Clark’s life began to shut down.

    "With my husband’s stroke, he could no longer work with me, so we’d had to let our vegetable garden go. Then,

      as my pain got worse, I quit working with our flowers and shrubbery. I couldn’t even go to the mall and shop. I was really just existing."

    Time passed, and one day she remembered an article she’d read in the Winston-Salem Journal about some kind of new therapy for pain. In fact, she’d clipped it out and saved it. She finally found it and decided to take a chance on this new Bowen Therapy.

    Her first session yielded some immediate relief (the first, she reports, in four years), but the pain returned. Warned that this indeed might occur, she returned for the second session, concerned but hopeful. Progress from the second session was deeper and more permanent:

    "I had a wonderful week! I went out and pulled weeds and trimmed the monkey grass. I haven’t been able to do that in four years. I love spring,"

    Recovery
    Two weeks elapsed before her third session because she contracted a viral infection. Reporting that she continued her exercises except during the most intense infection time, she also continued to walk, as instructed. When she did return, she reported, "When the pain gets bad, it only goes to a 6 or 7 [on a scale of 1–10], instead of a 7–14! I can go to the mall and shop for an hour- and-a-half. I’d like there to be no pain, but I’m very pleased with my progress." Clark has experienced two further sessions, and is actively participating in her own full recovery. "I am thrilled with the way this is going! Often, Bowen Therapy yields complete results in three to four sessions. In Clark’s case, the injury/dysfunction was both severe and of long-standing duration, a combination which can require more extensive treatment. Her courage and willingness to participate with appropriate stretching, exercise and walking has already shortened her recovery period. Bowen Therapy? Doris Clark is sharing her experience with the medical system in comparison with that of Bowen Therapy, which is a treatment modality developed by Tom Bowen of Australia in

    [continued below]

    Page 14, July, 2004    

    Kent McKeithan, Bowen Therapy the middle 1950’s. During his lifetime, Bowen brought profound pain relief and permanent healing to many thousands of people. Since his death, through the work of those who’ve followed in his footsteps, millions worldwide have permanently overcome dysfunctions ranging from Tempromandibular Joint Syndrome, through the pain of Degenerative Disc Disease, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, to Tennis Elbow and, and Plantar Fasciitis, to name a few.
     
    What Is It?
    Bowen Therapy, taught in this country under the names Bowtech©, Neurostructural Integration Technique© (NST) and Neural Touch©, is a powerful system of intervention in dysfunctional musculo-skeletal patterns. These dysfunctional patterns may be acute or long-held; they may be physical trauma induced or the result of emotional wounding held in the body.
     
    What Happens In The Body?
    Operating through the network of fascial tissue that infuses the body, the technique itself shifts fascial tissue from a gel (relatively hard, less pliable) state, to a sol (optimally pliable state). Evidence is that this takes effect at the golgi tendon level, such that fibers, which have been chronically activated, or “switched on,” are deactivated; and vice-versa for those that are switched “off.” The result is not a reversal from “on” to “off,” but a return to tonus, a relaxed state of preparedness to act. Appropriately applied throughout the body by the practitioner, the technique not only provides release at the myo-fibril level, but cumulatively at the whole body level. This means that all of the compensatory relationships that have sprung up in the body in reaction to the trauma are corrected in the proper order, fiber-by-fiber.

     

    How Does A Session Proceed?
    The technique is administered beginning with the client lying prone. The practitioner addresses the client’s body with manipulations called “moves.” These moves, gentle rollover motions, are like a plucking or strumming motion and may be perceived by one client as a tweak or a pinch, as a rubbing motion by another, or barely noticeable by others. The moves are inserted at key points that have been found to provide communication with specific body areas, encouraging the body, in all its minute parts, to return to the relationships whose designs or patterns are held in the chromosomes.

    What Happens Next?
    This release and return begins immediately, and continues to take place over a period of days, during which time the client may undergo a range of responses including simple, quick release, a return of some portion of the pain of the original physical trauma, emotional upset, nausea, headaches, lethargy, or extreme high energy. While from the client’s point of view a quick healing is obviously the ideal result, the practitioner has limited control over this aspect of the healing and must support the client while the process is occurring. A list of recommended actions is provided to the client on leaving the office; phone support is available, and occasionally extra treatments are arranged.

    A client will usually notice some results immediately. For some, one session is sufficient; and in most cases, clients will find resolution of the presenting complaint within three weekly sessions. As in Clark’s case, complex dysfunction of long duration may require longer treatment.

    McKeithan Pain Treatment Center.welcomes your appointment, or your call for more information. McKeithan Pain Treatment Center is located at  1169 Edgebrook Dr, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27106. Phone 336-761-0501
    www.McKeithanPTC.com


    Web reprint by permission from NaturalTriad.com     July 2004     Page 15

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