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HOW TO FIND A BOWEN PRACTITIONER
To locate a practitioner or get some information
regarding their Bowen experience and find out if they have a license
of some kind, you can contact the North American co-ordinator, the
head office in Australia or an instructor (list available from co-ordinator
and head office).
Referral list of practitioners are available
from the country co-ordinator.
- Interested individuals can receive Bowen Hands, the
quarterly journal of the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia. It
is a good source of information that has an international listing
of practitioners. Contact the country co-ordinator or the main office
in Australia for subscriptions.
* The International Head Office
in Australia:
BOWTECH
PO BOX 733, Hamilton, Vic. 3300
E-mail: bowtech@h140.aone.net.au
Tel: (03) 5572 3000
Fax: (03) 55723144
Web site & Practitioner registry: www.bowtech.com
* North American Co-ordinator:
if you can't locate any practitioners on the above web site
Lynell Cavner
337 North Rush St. Prescott, AZ, 86301
E-mail: USBR@bowtech.com
Ph: (928) 778 8983 * Alternate Practitioner Listing: www.bowendirectory.com
*Web site in French/Site en Francais:
for now mainly a source of information for Quebec
but
in
the future
will be expanded to serve France and all other French
speaking countries. www.techniquebowen.com
HOW TO CHOOSE A BOWEN PRACTITIONER
Because of its effectiveness the Bowen Technique
has attracted a broad range of health practitioners. To this date
around 8000 people (2000 in the US) have taken seminars offered
by the Bowen Therapy Academy of Australia.
In North America, the first training was offered in 1989
in California and most practitioners tend to be mostly concentrated
on the west and east coasts although there are several Bowen nucleus
in between coasts in the US and Canada.
As a patient looking for a Bowen practitioner, one can ask
the practitioner:
- How long the has been practicing the technique.
- How many level 3 / refresher the practitioner has attended
and when was the last one attended.
- Is the practitioner certified (level 4 added to the
training program mid 1999 in the US)
- Did the practitioner attended an advanced training (available
in the US since 1998)
My experience as a Bowen Therapy instructor is that in average
it can take a student practitioner a minimum of 2 to 3 level 3 refreshers
to know well how to perform all the basic procedures. Like Zen calligraphy,
the Bowen technique looks very simple and it seems that there is
not much to it but it takes a lot of practice to capture its refinements
and many subtleties and at the same time it is very simple!
The finesse and the art of knowing
how to choose and combine the different procedures can take years
of practice. On the other hand new practitioners obtain frequently
outstanding results even before having completed their training.
I recently taught a level 3 refresher where a level 2 student
practitioner was able in one session to totally alleviate
a women who had been suffering chronically for 20 years from acute
lower back pain due to herniated disks. This woman had tried many
different forms of therapy and seen various kind of
practitioners for years. They all came to the conclusion that she
had to live with it. Some days her pain was so bad that she couldn't
get out of bed, walk or dress herself unassisted. I personally met
this women months after and she was still totally symptom free!!!
That one session changed her life. All this to say that as a patient
if no experienced long time practitioners are available in your
area, it is still worth trying a new practitioner, even a student
practitioner still in training as the Bowen Technique often achieve
what some of us refer to as "ordinary miracles".
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