Beginning Bowen!

This weekend I had the great opportunity to do a post-graduate course in Bowen Therapy, which was absolutely fabulous!
What is Bowen? Bowen is a soft tissue manipulation therapy that involves adjusting the myofacial tissue planes which causes greater hydration and flexibility of the tissue. Fascia is the connective tissue that surrounds all the muscles and muscle fibers, nerves, organs, really everything in the body. Bowen is used for musculoskeletal issues as well as deeper problems and incorporates a whole-body approach (e.g if you have a sore neck you might have a problem with your ileo-caecal valve). It is a very gentle but suprisingly effective technique and I throughouly enjoyed the course and am alrady practicing on my own dogs.
Terra was the Bowen Queen for the weekend, taking everything we had to offer and proving how good she felt by running really well on saturday night (pity about the handler, maybe I should have had some Bowen!) The interesting one of the weekend though, was Secret. Secret was her normal hyperactive, difficult self throughout the course (which was held at my house), and we didnt really use her on Friday or Saturday. By Sunday, we needed more dogs to practice on so she was hoiked onto the table. The other people doing the course (one other lady who had already done her Equine qualification) and the instructor knew what type of dog she was by now, as she had jumped all over them and barked most of the weekend. We decided to do some lymphatic work on her, particularly concentrating on the TMJ (temporomandibular junction) and all her facial muscles. To my HUGE suprise she fell asleep on the table!! Thats pretty big for a nervous hyperactive dog like her..I will continue to experiement with her and see what effect it has. I am also going to try some other alternative therapies with her to try and balance her a little more, I think it must be quite exhusting to be 'on' all the time.
I gave Mike a brief treatment last night as well, to try and find out what it feels like and he certainly appeared to feel an effect, had a great nights sleep and feels great this morning! So, sounds promising and I'm looking forward to hopefully experiencing some of the 'magical' results that Bowen therapists seem to enjoy.