Bowen Therapy After Care

Bowen Therapy After Care. What to do after a Bowen Therapy session

Bowen Therapy continues to work after you have left the table. So what you do next is also important. Here are some things to consider for your Bowen Therapy after care.

You can enhance the effects of your Bowen Therapy session with the following advice:

Stay well hydrated. Drinking good quality water little and often will assist the healing work of Bowen Therapy and can assist in flushing out toxins.

Keep moving. Do not sit for long periods of time, get up and about and move around. I recommend moving every 30 minutes until bed time. Resting in bed and lying down is fine.

Let the Bowen do its work. Try to allow at least a week before another session or any other therapies or physical manipulation.

Go gently. Avoid strenuous movement and exercise for at least a couple of days after your treatment. Gentle, short walks are recommended.

Allow rest time. Some people may experience mild symptoms after their session as their body realigns and healing takes place.

Avoid extreme temperatures. Wait for 48 hours before applying hot or cold to your body. Hot showers, baths, saunas, heat packs or heat rubs and ice packs can interfere with the healing process. Magnets can also disrupt the process, so avoid bed underlays and body magnets.

Avoid crossing legs, knees, ankles or feet and carrying things unevenly for a few days. Retain good posture and alignment.

Please make a note of any differences in your pain, sleep, stress and emotions after your session to discuss at your next appointment.

I hope these Bowen Therapy after care tips help you get the most out of your Bowen session!

Want to try out Bowen? I am an Advanced Bowen Therapist with over 23 years experience helping people with pain and stress relief. I consult in Rockhampton and the Gold Coast. Get in touch to book. I would love to help you.

What to do when pain medication doesn’t work for you?


What do you do when pain medication doesn’t work for you? When you can’t get any relief? I know how this feels because it happened to me and I have to look for alternative solutions.

Those of us who have been in pain or those who are currently battling pain conditions know the personal and emotional costs.

I’m not anti-pharmaceutical or anti-pain medications. There are some great pain and life-saving medications. If they are working for you – thank goodness for them! It’s just that prescribed pain medications did not work for me in the past and so I had to ascertain the cause of my pain and then work to eliminate it at the source.

For the vast majority of people I come into contact in a clinic situation, pain medications are also not working for them and so many have been left in painful limbo. Sometimes those medications may have worked well initially but because the cause of the pain was not addressed, they lost their potency and good effect. Sometimes the side effects outweigh the benefits. 

While pain meds are invaluable to handle pain in acute or emergency situations, for long-term chronic pain they can sometimes be temporary ‘band-aid’ solutions that may come with side effects and decreases in efficiency.

So if you do not want to be reliant on prescription medications forever, again it becomes important to deal with WHY you are getting pain and HOW you are going to fix it for the long term.

Of course everybody is different, medications and treatments that have worked for others with similar conditions cannot always be guaranteed to work for you. Different genetics, raised in diverse environments, having been exposed to unique combinations of chemicals and toxins, eating differently, having various personalities, emotional states and abilities to handle stress and disease etc. Likewise the therapies and techniques that worked for me and for my clients cannot be guaranteed but at least they are safe to try and will support your health in other ways.

The reality is that no one can give you a guarantee because people are wonderful, complex beings who can be massively unpredictable. Sometimes the only way to know whether something will work for you is to try, and if that doesn’t work try something else. Keep taking positive action and don’t get angry if your doctor, therapist, medication or supplement doesn’t work straight away for you. More time might be needed, maybe some fine-tuning or perhaps it’s not the right answer for you just now.

I know it can be hard (sometimes excruciatingly hard) but be grateful that you are learning along the way and it is important to keep moving forward. Take responsibility and realise that you have to do something different if you want different and positive results. If you become complacent and keep doing what you have always done, then chances are that you will keep getting the same results and the same pain!

When I was diagnosed with MS and orthodox medicine had no cure and no hope for me, I had to be determined (some called it stubborn) and try out things for myself and persist, keep going even when there was no hope. If I’d given up and prepared for my demise like my neurologist had advised me all those years ago, I would never have recovered, got married, had children and had a wonderful career helping people.

So if you are currently in a similar situation, my heart goes out to you but please whatever you do, don’t give up.

Patience and commitment are extremely important as usually the longer you’ve had a pain condition, the more time and effort it takes to turn it around. It’s a bit like the momentum of a runaway train. Once pain has become entrenched, it develops a momentum of its own which requires a lot of effort to firstly slow down the progression and then to gradually bring it to a stop.

It then takes another mighty effort to reverse the direction of that “pain train” and commence your healing journey. So be prepared to put in your best effort – this is the most important work you’ll ever do!

For more information on how I beat my pain, naturally, you can check out my book DRUG FREE PAIN RELIEF.

If you would like to see if I can assist you personally, book in for a free 15 minute consult to discuss your needs.

Never, ever give up! Beating a terminal diagnosis

At 21 I was diagnosed with MS and was told there was no cure.

I didn’t give up. I fought hard. I researched and discovered solutions that worked for me. 

I have been well for over 30 years. Now I help other people beat pain and stress and improve their health.

Have you had a diagnosis and it’s overwhelming? Get in touch and let me see if I can assist you. 

The Power of Vitamin C

At the age of 22 I was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) and told that I would not be alive for my 23rd birthday!

I healed from MS with my own research and some ‘alternate’ therapies and remedies. The doctors were struck dumb at my recovery!

One aspect of my strategy for recovery was Citamin C. Read on to discover why I believe in the power of Vitamin C!

I actively did my own research about how to heal myself from MS, I was determined that I was going to overcome my prognosis. Luckily my university degree was in journalism which had given me solid research skills. I could also speed read and had the ability to go through large amounts of information to find the ‘treasure’ or important points.

Early on in my research, I was lucky to come across two small but so valuable books Lady Cilento on Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies and The Cilento Way. Actually for all my library research, these books had belonged to my parents and were at home in my father’s office.

Lady Cilento was my earliest female inspiration. She was amongst the first female doctors in Australia and wrote many health and medical articles with her husband Sir Raphael ‘Ray’ Cilento from August 1929 for the then Brisbane Courier newspaper. So by the time I found Lady Cilento’s books she had been writing about health and vitamin supplements for more than 50 years! 

These two books gave me the nutritional information that undoubtedly helped turn my health around. People now tend to think that healthy eating and taking vitamins and minerals is some new age thinking but it is mind blowing to me that in fact Lady Cilento and her colleagues and inspirations, such as Dr Linus Pauling (won the Nobel Prize twice), Dr Irwin Stone (author of The Healing Factor), Dr Frederick R Klenner (world authority on the clinical use of vitamin C) and Dr Robert F Cathart (famous orthopaedic surgeon) were using vitamins very successfully in their research, surgeries and clinics for multiple health conditions so many years ago.

Around the same time my MS symptoms had started to decrease as my body was brought back into proper alignment and balance, I started taking mega-doses of vitamin C powder with bioflavonoids (including hesperidin and rutin) because it was indicated in Lady Cilento’s books as being useful in fighting viral, bacterial and arthritic type conditions. The bioflavonoids were important to assist in the fast assimilation by the body.

Unlike many other animals and living things, humans (like monkeys, guinea pigs and fruit bats) do not manufacture their own vitamin C. It cannot be stored in the body and so it has to be consumed regularly in order to survive.

Lady Cilento writes: “Vitamin C is non-toxic, has no side effects, does not build up in the body and any surplus to the body’s needs quickly passes out in the urine …This vitamin protects the body by aiding the adrenal glands to produce cortisone, maintains the strength of all the ‘cementing’ substance between cells, stimulates production of antibodies against germs and the number and effectiveness of the white blood cell.

The exact cause of MS is unknown (most likely there are multiple causes) but it is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. The MS Society (UK) advises that the immune system, which normally fights infections and protects the body, starts attacking and damaging the coating or myelin around the nerve fibres creating lesions or plagues which then disrupts crucial signals and smooth functioning between the brain and the rest of the body. Damage to the actual nerves can occur as well as myelin loss and this can create a variety of symptoms which tend to increase over time. To this day there is no definitive cure. 

So from my research, I knew that MS was neurological and was caused by problems in the myelin sheath and nerve conduction but since my doctors could not help me, I decided that I need to try to rebuild my myelin and strengthen my body through vitamin supplementation in addition to the important corrective bodywork.

Mega-doses of vitamin C were the corner stone of my personal attack on MS. 

In his book Food as Medicine, Dr Earl Mindell advises:

“Vitamin C, which is water-soluble, is essential for the formation of collagen, the substance that binds together the cells of connective tissue. Collagen is necessary for the production and growth of new cells and tissues: it also prevent viruses from penetrating the cell membrane … it is especially important in the healing process.”

And of course in an ideal unpolluted, uncontaminated world with ready access to fresh raw food, not genetically modified, organically grown so not exposed to pesticides and other toxic chemicals, we should get all our vitamin needs from our food. But for most people today if you are not able to grow your own food (and a variety of it) then you might like to consider high quality, food-based natural supplements (less expensive synthetic supplements are cheap for a reason and can just expose you to more chemicals and toxins).

My decision back then to use vitamin C supplementation to help repair and support my body is also supported by other doctors now such as Dr Carole Hungerford, who in her book Good Health in the 21st Century writes about how vitamin C assists in the production of neuropeptides (neurotransmitters) and in the repair and synthesis of collagen amongst many other important body functions and uses. 

During my research in 1985, I’d also found another interesting quote in The Cilento Way contending that “sodium ascorbate, or vitamin C, is the only antibiotic that will get rid of a virus.” 

Because I had no way of knowing definitively what had caused my MS (and my doctors did not know either), I decided that this strategy might also help with the possibility of a viral contribution, so another reason to use vitamin C.

Within four months of bodywork, eating fresh food, no white sugar, soft drink or artificial sweeteners, taking vitamin C plus gradually getting back into exercise, yoga and meditation, every MS symptom disappeared and I was able to return to full-time work.

Years have passed and my good health continues to this day. I still use those strategies to maintain my health. Now I am a health warrior committed to helping others find natural solutions for their pain and suffering.

If you would like to read the whole story, I go into detail about how I beat MS (multiple sclerosis) in my book, Drug Free Pain Relief.

Why We Need To Be Moving Regularly

We have all heard the saying, “move it or lose it” and it could not be more true!

Movement is a vital part of our overall health and wellness. As humans we are part of the animal kingdom and are made to move – in all directions, every day.

We were not designed to sit all day at a computer desk, be in a car driving around for hours or working a 12-hour shift in a mining truck etc. We are biped with long legs and arms for a reason – we are made to walk, run, jog, dance, stretch, climb and reach.

Our anatomy and physiology is such that if we don’t constantly move, our muscles and joints do physically become stiff and our fascia (connective tissue or membranes that surround line and separate our muscles, stabilises our bodies etc.) will actually start to fuse together and then limit our mobility.

Do you struggle with movement?

Seeing a structural therapist to correct your posture and body alignment should make movement, stretching and exercise easier for you.

If pain has kept you sedentary, then any movement is valuable. Even if you are chair bound there will still be parts of your body you can move. If you can’t move yourself, get someone to assist you.

Moving and stretching usually feels good, sometimes initially there is a little discomfort but never stretch into pain. Treat yourself with love and respect and most importantly don’t give up, your goal is to keep moving.

The benefits of movement

  • improves your cardiac health, gets your heart pumping and improves circulation
  • improves your breathing and lung function
  • strengthens your muscles and joints and helps with balance and preventing falls
  • improves flexibility, movement and will enable you to do everyday tasks more easily
  • helps maintain bone density
  • increased blood and lymphatic flow helps improve skin elasticity and healing
  • helps you feel better, relieves stress and you will feel a sense of accomplishment
  • you will look and feel younger with increased energy and stamina

It’s also important to protect yourself if you are getting help with your stretches and exercises – do not allow anyone to test or push you into pain. Numerous clients have come to clinic because they have over-stretched, hurt themselves in a too vigorous exercise routine or their pain has been inflamed in the process of being tested and diagnosed. You need to be honest with your health professionals and let them know when something is increasing your pain.

So the truth is that a movement program takes effort and commitment, however the benefits are immeasurable and the alternative is very scary. Getting started may not be easy but you just have to do it if you want to relieve your pain long term.

What do you do for movement? Do you need to be doing more?

If you need help to get your body moving better, please get in touch and book a Bowen Therapy session!