Amber MacPhail

Bowen Therapy

Homeopathy and Bowen Therapy are both deeply acting therapies. They move you towards health and alignment with your truest self. This can require us to move forward in a new way, letting go of old patterns and habits we don’t need anymore.

It is normal for things to feel worse before feeling better.
Your body may have tens of years’ worth of unprocessed wear and tear, emotions, toxins and/or injury stored. Because you’re the one healing yourself in these sessions, it’s necessary for you to be kind and patient with yourself during this “unraveling process.”

People often require 3-5+ sessions of Bowen Therapy to feel completely well.
Some need fewer sessions, some need more. We are all very individual, with our own unique paths.

Over the years of our lives, we accumulate ‘layers.’
Both Bowen Therapy and Homeopathy push the body into a deep, ‘unlayering’ process to achieve health. When a medical event happens with us during our lives (such as an injury, illness or a shock), our body focuses its energy into adapting somehow, to overcome or survive the event. Depending on the way this event is handled (it may be cured, suppressed or adapted to), we form a ‘layer,’ a significant process in our health history that can be stored deep within our bodies.

How do we know this?
When you present with a set of symptoms and receive Bowen Therapy as treatment, often a ‘layer’ will lift—especially if the symptoms are properly addressed and resolved with treatment.
Underneath the lifted ‘layer,’ is another ‘layer.’ The body is strongly in healing mode when we reach this next ‘layer,’ and if the body has enough resources, it will bring up anything unprocessed that has been stored (eg. emotions, trauma, injury, disease, toxins). Most people will recognize these old symptoms from their past.
At this point, the body will prioritize the older ‘layer’ of symptoms to be properly addressed and resolved—for good!
Symptoms and ‘layers’ tend to resolve in reverse of occurrence. The most recent will be resolved first and the oldest last. Each resolved ‘layer’ brings the person closer to health.
Issues that haven’t been completely resolved in the past will predictably arise around day 6 or 7 post-treatment. They present themselves to be dealt with in a curative manner, either by the body itself or with the help of Bowen Therapy in the next session.

Allow yourself time for this big healing process to unfold.
This is deep, curative work. Trust the process. Expect your life to change. Your body is now in healing mode.

Energy is directed very purposely.
This often means feeling:

• Tired: there is often less energy available to go about your day with when it’s being directed inwards for tissue repair, detoxification and other healing processes.
• Sensitive: this could look like sensitivity to emotions, environments or temperature. A common feeling as a big transition is underway.
• Sore: flow is restored to tissues and organs, and waste is being flushed (eg. muscles and lactic acid).
• Mild sickness: also known as a “detox process.” Or, in old school naturopathic terms, a “Healing Crisis.”

If you are feeling severely unwell (eg. severe fatigue, fever, pain, personal concern), please email us and we can support you naturally and instruct you to get urgent medical care if necessary. Feel free to seek medical attention from other sources at any time.

Detox process? Healing Crisis?
If you’re lucky enough, you may experience a “Healing Crisis.” Any curative therapy can bring this on and Bowen Therapy seems to be especially good at it.
This is when the body decides it’s strong enough to dump a bunch of toxins, all at once.
The cells push out accumulated toxins into the body’s circulation, to be excreted once and for all. Toxins can be environmental, chemical, pharmaceutical, parasitic, infectious, emotional and more.

Although this sounds freaky, it’s a healing process. And a very efficient one.
You are much better off after. This process is also great for future prevention.
Commonly, people will feel:

• Tired
• Nauseous
• Emotional
• Flu-like: stiff, achy and feverish

Sweating, increased urination, diarrhea, vomiting and coughing are all ways we excrete toxins quickly from the body. Thank you, body!

One of the worst things we can do is suppress this process (in ways like taking medications to prevent the flush).
Toxins the body is purposely trying to exert will become trapped in the body, once again.

Do take pain medication and other pharmaceutical medication prescribed, as needed.

How can we help you through this?
1. Drink more water: help the body to flush itself.
2. If you don’t feel like eating, don’t: safely done, fasting can be very therapeutic. Please ask for advice and support on this.
3. Take minerals and vitamin C: antioxidant and toxin binding, supports cell binding—this support will be covered in your appointment.
4. Take a binder: a supplement (such as charcoal or clay) can help being and remove toxins. This support will be covered in your appointment.

If you have any doubts or concerns, please feel free to get in contact via email. We commonly use hydrotherapy, supplements, herbs, lymphatic work and Bowen to ease this process.

How to get the most from your session

Bowen Therapy continues to work for 5 days after the treatment.
Best ways to support yourself during this time:

• Drink water: flush out toxins and hydrate tissues.
• Walk: aid the realignment of bones and joints.
• Wait: for things to continue changing.
• Rest: you’re in healing mode now, make the most of it.
• Emotions: let yourself feel everything. Even better, identify where in the body you feel this emotional sensation and what kind of feeling it is (eg. empty feeling in stomach, pressure in the chest, tightness in the jaw).

How to interrupt or end your Bowen treatment:

• Injure yourself.
• Over-stretch muscles: we will talk about the jaw in your appointment.
• Exercise intensely.
• Hot tub, sauna or ice bath: shocks the body with temperature
• Receive other manual therapy: Bowen delivers intricate signals your body responds to. So, to avoid interrupting this, it’s best to wait a week before receiving massage, chiropractic, physiology and acupuncture.
• Sit for long periods of time.
• Fall back into old habits: Bowen Therapy creates new neural pathways and synapses in the brain and spine—healthier ones. In order to leave the old pathways and synapses behind, we must look forward. We will make conscious efforts not to expect the pain and dysfunction to return.