BowenTherapy,Chronic Fatigue and GBS

I had a rather serious form of Miller Fischer, and was ill for about 16 months, the last 10 with very serious chronic fatigue and nerve pain. I started using a cross trainer to keep my muscles toned from the first early months (although I had to almost strap myself onto the thing to keep from falling off in the beginning!), but nothing else I tried seemed to have any effect. Just when I was feeling real despair, almost a year after the first symptoms, a friend convinced me to try Bowen Therapy. Bowen Therapy, developed by Australian Tom Bowen and described as ‘a holistic and multidimensional approach to pain relief and healing’ works through ’specific soft tissue or fascial release and integration techniques, stimulating specific receptors that enable the body itself to correct dysfunctions and restore homeostasis (balance) on a holistic level’.

Sounds good, but…is it weird? Yes, a little…..the therapist makes a series of specific, rolling movements of the muscles and then….leaves the room. One of the tenets of Bowen Therapy is that the body is allowed time to respond, tissues to re-hydrate and its own healing process to commence. Hence the holistic aspect of this unique therapy……..but, it is unusual, and in the beginning it took quite some suspension of disbelief to convince oneself this was actually going to work.

The first few sessions left me even more fatigued, which the therapist assured me was normal, but thereafter I experienced really rapid improvement. I was able to cut down substantially, and then stop entirely, taking Gabapentin for the nerve pain, after only six sessions. The chronic fatigue disappeared almost entirely and I felt really very well, first about 75% of my former self, and now, I would say, without additional sessions for several months now, at about 90%. If this is as good as it gets, I’ll take it. I can work, enjoy life, consider new beginnings, explore life’s wonderful options….in short, I have recovered, and I consider the Bowen Therapy to have been a really key part of this. Please do read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowen_Technique, and consider trying it, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It was 75% covered by my health insurer here in the Netherlands, don’t know about elsewhere.

Good luck, everyone!