Choice Health & Wellbeing International Trade Journal – October November 201…
Choice Health & Wellbeing
International Trade Journal – October November 2011
The Bowen Technique – Overcoming a rough beginning by Janie Godfrey
5 ½ year old Archie has had all sorts of problems in his young life and the impact of one crisis after another have left their marks. His lengthy case history illustrates the multiple ‘battlefronts’ that this little lad and his parents had to contend with.
He started life with a traumatic birth: after on and off contractions over a period of about 2 weeks, his mother was given an epidural and a drug to establish contractions. Archie was delivered by forceps and arrived with a very flat head on the left hand side, which is still there but not very visible as his hair is thick.
At 3 months, he had a lengthy sickness and diarrhoea bug and thereafter seemed to catch every bug going around and was ill at least once a week.
When he was 10 months old, Archie’s temperature “soared through the roof” and his parents dashed to the doctors and he was given Ibuprofen and Calpol and the temperature began to drop so they were advised to take him home. He slept in his parents’ room that night and in the morning they found him white as a sheet with goose bumps all over and his little hands and feet looked black. Of course they took him immediately to the doctor’s office and, while waiting to be seen, he stopped breathing. Emergency treatment of an anti-meningitis injection, a paracetamol suppository and oxygen brought him round and they went to hospital in an ambulance. By the time they got there, Archie seemed to have completely recovered and demanded some breakfast! This was good news, indeed, but about 4 hours later his condition deteriorated again. He remained in hospital for a week and eventually returned to normal and the whole episode was put down to some viral infection. He had two other hospital stays due to shortness of breath and a temperature. He also continued to have a spell of vomiting at least once a week and could not take food with lumps in it until he was about 3 years old.
At 2 ½ , he was saying very little other than ‘Ma’ and ‘Da’. The health visitor referred him to a speech therapist with a 9-month waiting list! At 3, he went to pre-school still in nappies and later in the year the appointment with the speech therapist came through. It was not an encouraging or positive meeting and the therapist almost immediately diagnosed him as autistic due to lack of eye contact. A second appointment one month later with this therapist was cancelled due to the therapist being ill, so Archie’s parents felt they had no other option but to go privately.
Thankfully, Archie came on leaps and bounds, although he was still getting dreadful coughs and temperatures and was prone to vomiting. He had three bouts of tonsillitis within 3 months and an ENT specialist immediately said his tonsils needed to be removed. After the operation, the doctor said he had never seen such big tonsils in a child of his age. Thankfully, the constant sickness stopped and his mother could finally introduce lumps in his food and his colds and temperatures lessened to the same as any other child.
Archie didn’t talk until about age 4 ½ . He has had lots of speech therapy and attended a pre-school for children with learning difficulties and is now at a mainstream school under special educational needs.
He was brought for Bowen treatment on the recommendation of one of his mother’s friends whose little boy had responded very well to Bowen for somewhat similar speech and attention problems. Archie complained a lot of “headaches” but tests of his sight and hearing didn’t show any problems. So, his mother believed what Archie called “headaches” were really his way of expressing that he is in a situation out of his routine or comfort or that he was not understanding what was being asked of him. While his speech had become clearer, his understanding was not great and he could not ask questions like others his age. His concentration has always been minimal unless it is a subject he is particularly interested in.
Archie was very open to having Bowen treatment and cooperated very well and looked as if he was enjoying receiving the treatment. His mother emailed me to say that when they left, Archie was asleep in seconds in the car and slept like a log all night and had to be awakened at 8am – unheard of, as he’s usually up around 6am!
Over the next 5 Bowen treatments, one week apart, Archie progressed very well. From week one, he never complained of any “headaches” again. He stayed through all of the music class (usually a “headache” stimulator) without a problem. He weathered having a substitute teacher in PE, something that would have made him anxious, but didn’t this time. He had a few wobbles because he felt he’d been laughed at in the playground so had a bit of a confidence crisis, but no “headaches” resulting from it. A big sign of his progress came after the fourth Bowen, when he went to the park to play and his mother saw him running and kicking the ball and catching it with much more coordination, confidence and ability – a really marked difference.
After six Bowen treatments, all one week apart, his mother reported such a change in Archie that she felt he didn’t need any further treatment – certainly not for the immediate future. His developmental progress was moving along well and his confidence was being established and growing.
So, how to explain why the simple and gentle little Bowen moves can make such a difference to such symptoms?
It would seem that the Bowen treatment is stimulating and accelerating an ability that the brain has to rewire itself to compensate for damaged areas. While no studies have been undertaken specifically on the effects of Bowen Technique treatment on the damaged brain, there are two papers that point to why Bowen seems to be so helpful in these cases, and, while Archie does not have cerebral palsy (the condition studied in the papers) the effect has been similar. The first paper, by Nelson and Ellenberg (1982) noted:
“A diagnosis of cerebral palsy was made for 229 one-year-old children enrolled in a large longitudinal study. Of these children, 118 were free of motor handicap at the age of 7 years. Mild early cerebral palsy, and the monoparetic, ataxic/dyskinetic, and diplegic forms of the disorder, resolved with high frequency.”
Another study (Eyre 2004), which reported on a two-year research programme, asked, “Can the brain be ‘re-wired’ to help children overcome disability?” Funded by the charity Action Medical Research, its findings show, remarkably, that where brain damage has occurred either before birth or at birth, the infant brain has a natural capacity to transfer vital functions away from the damaged area. The researchers were convinced that it is critical to act as early as possible, before the brain’s plasticity diminishes. However, they concluded that the need now is to discover how this ‘re-wiring’ process can be actively encouraged in order to give brain damaged or cerebral palsy children the chance to recover lost movement control as soon as possible.” Researchers believe the development that occurs from in-utero to early childhood is a most critical development period in humans and this is when the brain can reorganise itself to overcome damage and compensate for injured parts.
Again, while Archie had not been formally diagnosed with specific brain damage, it was clear that he was having some troubles with brain function in coordination, concentration and speech with a consequent impact on his confidence. Given his response – and many other children too – to Bowen treatment, it might well be that the Bowen Technique should be a prime therapy candidate for this further investigation into how it may stimulate the brain to ‘re-wire’ itself.
With heartfelt thanks to Archie and his family for permission to use his story here and three cheers for his continued well-being and progress.
© Janie Godfrey
Janie Godfrey is a Bowen Technique practitioner in Frome, Somerset and has been in practice since 1999.