News from the Bowen College community
Bowen College is committed to patient-centered, pain-free care. Read news from our community.
Subscribe to the Bowen College blog to read the latest updates for holistic, patient-centered care
Pain’s Relevance to Autonomic Nervous System Deregulation
As covered previously, the autonomic nervous system is comprised of both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. In chronic stress, the sympathetic system, through several hormonal and neural pathways, maintains a state of chronic stress. While...
The Importance of Maintaining Tissue Mobility in Cases of Neck Pain
We’ve seen over the last several posts that the standard explanations for pain related to whip last, tending to identify it with lesions and their effects, is increasingly challenged in the research literature. Few insightful studies demonstrate successful...
Is Whip Lash Pain Caused by Muscle Damage?
In the last couple posts we’ve seen how mechanical and structural explanations for persistent whip lash pain don’t stand up as well as does subjective and emotional explanations. It turns out than even muscular explanations are not as compelling as many might assume...
Solid Matter Is Not Fixed, But Mobility Is?
I will never forget the patient I saw in Stouffville, Ontario, who was told by her chiropractor that the pain and lack of motion in her neck had to do with the osteophytes that had amassed on her cervical spine. After two series of 30 treatments, she came to see me...
Perceived Pain and Degree of Sensitivity
In my most recent posts I considered the brain science on pain and how it indicates that a patient’s perception and experience of pain cannot necessarily be reduced to assessment of specific lesion events or their presumed effects. Let’s get into this a little more...
The Broken Link in the Pain Connection
In my last post we looked at the brain science on pain. Among the facts we observed was that there were two distinct pathways associated with pain. I have a couple more thoughts to add on the brain science front before we turn to a consideration of what this means for...
How Does Our Brain Register Pain?
The pathways for pain transmission are complex. Generally, nociceptive information (pain-info) reports external and internal representation of the body’s physiological condition through two different components: The sensory-discriminative component, transmitted...
What is Pain Anyway?
In the current series of posts I’ll be discussing the treatment of pain and how this creates difficulties for effective assessment, using the SOAP method for doctors’ diagnosis. It seems though that before becoming fully immersed in these discussions, it would be...
Treating Pain with BowenFirst™
I have successfully treated patients using BowenFirst™ for frozen shoulders, sciatica, migraines, low back pain, whiplash, TMJ and fibromyalgia, as well as for generalized aches and pains with their various reasons and likely “explanation” as in osteoarthritis years...
How I Treat Pain
In my last post I discussed the difficulties pain posed for effective assessment, given its subjective character, and how addressing pain first was the prime directive in my practice. Perhaps the most effective way of addressing the multifactorial,...
Assessment and the Subjective Experience of Pain
Continuing with our discussion of the role of assessment in the doctor’s SOAP interview, I want to return to a topic discussed before: the character of pain. Pain is a good example of the conundrum doctors’ face with regard to “assessment.” The experience of pain is...
My Story with MS: Final Thoughts
The last month or so I’ve been telling you about my journey with MS. When I compare my results, and those of patients who have done well managing their MS, with those who have had a harder time, I see one important difference. Those who did not do well kept getting...
My Story with MS: Its Emotional Resolution
I ended my last post commenting on how my treatment for MS helped change my perspective on my marriage. It allowed me to emotionally separate from my husband and to realize that he was likely going through a process that was truly his own and which had nothing to do...
My Story with MS: Treatment
In previous recent posts I’ve discussed my experience with MS. I’ve reviewed my experience of emotional deprivation in my marriage as a key touchstone in my own journey. Last post I reviewed the symptoms that led to my diagnosis. I chose homeopathic treatment as I had...
My Story with MS: The Symptom Picture
In my last post I shared some of the emotional background to my onset of MS. The history, the symptoms and the neurological exam results (ie. Hyper-excitable reflexes, inability to walk foot to heel in a straight-line, hyper-sensitivity to heat) all led to my...
My Story with MS: An Important Insight
I began to wonder whether I had asked too much of life, whether I should just accept my situation: learn to live without love. Of course, in the beginning, I was happily convinced that my marriage met all that was required in a proper match, but now nothing alleviated...
My Story with MS: The Onset
When I first got MS, I was 21. A sudden bout of optic neuritis sent me to an ophthalmologist, thinking I had cut my eye with my contact lenses. My eye was blinded and the pain did not allow me to easily open it; when I did, I saw double. The ophthalmologist reassured...
The Biology of Emotions –Psychoneuroimmunology
In 1975, scientists Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen demonstrated classic conditioning of the immune function in their experiments with rats at the University of Rochester. In the process the coined the term "psychoneuroimmunology." (Ader & Cohen, 1975...
Bowen allows for a safe and rapid healing process
Bowen "moves" initiate and stimulate energy flow. That energy flow translates into a safe, rapid self-healing process which typically provides long term relief from pain and discomfort, for a wide range of conditions. BowenFirst™, allows the body and mind to...
The Necessity of a Guide
We started our first steps toward me telling you about my healing journey with MS. As preliminary to that, it was necessary to remind you of a couple important things. Including that each person’s journey will be individual. There are no cookie cutter solutions....
Healing is a Journey Informed by Fear and Love
Over the next several posts, I want to tell you the story of my personal journey and life-changing encounters with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). First, a disclaimer: I hope that I have made it clear that just as there is no such thing as the “right” life journey for...
Coping Skills and Helpful Attitudes for Dealing with Stress
In the last post, I introduced the notion that stress didn’t act upon our immune and nervous systems in an entirely unmediated way. The flip side of the mind-body connection is that effective use of the mind can benefit the well-being of the body. Skills to cope with...
Coping with Stress as a Variable
In previous posts it has been well established that the immune system is susceptible to the cascade of effects produced by stress, but what makes one person’s immune system more susceptible? Can stress have statistically measurable and quantifiable consequences for an...
How Does Stress Become Illness?
Numerous studies show that stressors can have profound emotional and physical health consequences. Stressful events trigger cognitive and affective responses, which in turn induce sympathetic nervous system and endocrine changes that ultimately impair immune function....