Center for Health and Wellness

Bowen Therapy
by Michael J. Nixon-Livy

History and development
In the late 1950's an Australian osteopath Tom Bowen, discovered unusual relationships existed between certain health complaints and particular patterns of muscular dysfunction his patients presented with. The observation led to many years of intense clinical research, which ultimately resulted in the development of a unique system of myofascial stimulation, which brought about long term corrections to the unusual patterns of muscular dysfunction and the corresponding health complaints in his patients as well.

Tom Bowen referred to his work simply as soft tissue therapy. He continued to develop and refine this work right up until his death in 1982. He started his career by working with junior football clubs in Victoria, Australia, as a masseur and treated the general public at home after hours. Bowen quickly discovered that he had what can only be described as an extreme hypersensitivity of the fingers and hands, which apparently enabled him to feel nerve transmission and consequently find blockages in the nervous and muscular systems. In fact often times during experiments when working on somebody, if he performed a move, as he called them, which was wrong, then he would receive a burning sensation in the fingers so hot that it would necessitate him quickly leaving the room to cool his fingers under cold water. Add to this unique ability to touch, a disconcerting eye for variation in surface tension on his client's body, you have a man with a rare and powerful experimental methodology for probing the body. It is indeed fortunate that these unique abilities were further enhanced by Bowen's genuine compassion and love for his fellow man and a strong drive to help whoever he could and whenever he could, as this enabled him to create a system which is now usable by many others.

Bowen became famous throughout his career for being able to cure the incurable, and find solutions when none seemed possible. He treated everybody the same, from street drunkards to the well known and powerful. When investigated in 1975 by Australian Government for potentially practicing osteopathy without a license it was revealed that he was treating approximately some 13,000 people per year, with amazing success. Rather than closing his business down, the investigation only served to make him and his methods more well known and famous, a mantle ironically he tried to avoid.

His work did not just stop with humans however, as he also achieved great notoriety for his wonderful success with animals. In particular he was well known around the Melbourne racehorse industry, as his work so often helped a racehorse to victory.

Throughout his career there were only five people with whom he spent significant amounts of time at his clinic, to show them his technique and the secrets behind using it. Interestingly the five individuals were shown the technique as it existed at various times throughout his highly developmental style career. Consequently after his death different interpretations of his work have sprung up from the students, representing one phase or another in his career.

I personally worked with various people to develop the Neurostructural Integration Technique. The advantage of NST is that it is quicker and smoother in its application than earlier forms, and also consistently achieves results in more difficult cases. It is now practiced in many countries around the world including Britain, Italy, Spain, the United States, and Australia.

Like so many artists and geniuses whose work continues to grow and prosper well after their death, Bowen's work in all its forms is becoming generally known around the world as Bowen Therapy and continues to grow and popularity amongst a wide variety of therapist groups. Massage therapist, sports medicine therapists, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, osteopaths, doctors, chiropractors, dentists, hypnotherapists, kinesiologists, naturopaths, and psychologists, to name the most popular groups.