how Bowen works - Bowen is about the nervous system

The main thing that I aim to do as a Bowen Therapist, without always saying so directly, is to restore the function of your central nervous system.  Bowen is all about the nervous system !

I’m constantly fascinated by how the body works, and what’s really happening under the skin with Bowen. Perhaps it’s from my engineering background, or work in manufacturing where I was usually troubleshooting something. Understanding how something works is part of my DNA, I guess.

A previous post covered this in a simple way – here I’m diving a little deeper…

The central nervous system (CNS) is basically your body’s processing centre, comprising your brain and spinal cord. The brain handles thinking, memory, emotion, senses, movement, and speech. The spinal cord transmits messages between the brain and the rest of the body via the peripheral nervous system (PNS).

The body’s peripheral nervous system (PNS) is a network of nerves that branch out from your spine to the rest of the body – muscles, limbs, organs and skin.

The PNS transmits information between the CNS and the rest of the body. For example, when you touch a hot stove, the nerves in your skin (PNS) send a signal to your spinal cord and brain (CNS), which then sends a signal back to your muscles to move your hand away.

The brain and spinal cord are protected by three main layers: bone (skull and vertebrae), the meninges, and cerebrospinal fluid (a liquid cushion). The meninges have three layers – the pia mater (delicate layer closer to the spine), the arachnoid mater (web-like middle layer) and the dura mater.

The dura mater is the tough, outermost layer of the brain and spinal cord that protects, supports, and anchors the central nervous system.

The dura mater attaches at the base of the skull (occiput), in the neck, and the sacrum and coccyx/tailbone. This makes it an important intermediate tissue connecting the CNS to the body’s bony structure. (And why you see me doing so much work around the neck/jaw and coccyx/sacrum !)

The nervous system controls and coordinates all of the organs and structures of the human body.

Tightness in muscles is directly linked to the nervous system via the body’s stress response. Stress can trigger the nervous system to tense muscles as part of a “fight/flight” reaction, in preparation for a potential perceived threat. Muscle tension is the body’s way of guarding against injury and pain – be that chemical, physical or emotional. Chronic stress can lead to sustained tightness.

Modern-day stress is no longer the obvious, running for our life from a sabre-tooth tiger stress of our ancestor’s days. But, our bodies still react in the same ways.

Tension in muscles create pulling, stretching, or shortening forces on the dura mater.

Conversely, the dura mater can then also cause tension on other muscles, as the body tries to stabilise and correct the tension in the spine’s vertebrae.

In other words, a tight muscle somewhere causes compensatory patterns somewhere else. And these patterns often result in more compensatory patterns somewhere else again. The CNS is doing all it can to pull the body into a level of balance, through creating tension patterns. This, in turn, impacts the PNS’s ability for the nerves to communicate throughout the body.

All these pulls and stretches can cause a variety of symptoms throughout the body. It’s interesting that it’s the parts that are stretched long that hurt, not the short contracted parts that don’t hurt but need addressing…

These are mostly acknowledged as physical symptoms – pain somewhere in the body is usually the reason clients see me. But symptoms that can be experienced are beyond the physical – physiological (such as digestion, sleep, blood pressure) and emotional symptoms (more stress) are common – and improvements in these after treatment still surprise many clients !

When you lie on my table, it’s your nervous system that shows me where I need to work (not actually your symptoms – shhh !). It’s your nervous system that also shows when I’ve finished.

Those tension and compensatory patterns show up as your leg length appearing uneven, with one foot or both feet also feeling stiff. As I move your legs, or you turn your head, how your body reacts tells me where problems might be with those dural attachments. When I do Bowen moves on your body, I feel for tension in muscles as well, adding to the picture of the patterns in your body.

Those pulls and stretches on the dura mater are why I do so many moves around your neck and pelvis. And those compensatory tension patterns, are why those tough (and often surprising!?) moves are often nowhere near where you actually feel pain.

When I’ve released some muscles, your leg length and tension patterns tell me whether your CNS is happy, or where there are still patterns to release. That’s why I’m always checking your feet !

And I know when I’m finished my work because your leg length is even, feet are flexible, and muscles in your spine are supple again. Then your CNS takes over for a while, back in it’s calmer rest/digest state, to continue it’s innate ability to heal.

I know that many think what I do is magic… but, really, it’s science… Bowen is about the nervous system… and it’s why Bowen can help so many things going on in the body !