History of Bowen Therapy
The late Thomas Ambrose Bowen, of Geelong, in Victoria, Australia, was born on the 18th of April 1916 and passed away on the 27th of October 1982 aged 66. He was the originator of what is now known as ‘Bowen Therapy’. Tom, as he was known to many, was a humble man who over many years developed the therapy he practised in Geelong for several decades.
It was during his employment at the Geelong Cement Works that Tom started helping out workers with bad backs and other ailments.
Tom became involved with the Stonehaven Football club, massaging the junior leagues. Here he started to develop his bodywork skills, learning massage from the other football club trainers by observing them work. Tom further developed his own methods of treating people with muscular skeletal problems.
In the early 1960s, Tom felt it was time to make his therapy a full time occupation. After convincing Jessie his wife, who was not a risk taker, he resigned from the Geelong Cement Works and went full time with his therapy. Rene Horwood who had sold her business by this time, worked with Tom as his assistant, guiding him into the business world.
He built up a very busy practice using his own style of Osteopathic work, which we now call ‘Bowen Therapy’. His practice was so busy that in the Webb Report of 1975 (a government report into natural health practices) it was found that he was treating some 13,000 patients per year. This number of patients were treated during just four and a half days a week.
Fortnightly, Saturday mornings were reserved for treating the disabled, especially children, free of charge. Tom performed a lot of work for little or no financial reward. In later years he had assistance with these clinics from some of his “boys”, especially Kevin Ryan, and Romney Smeeton. These clinics were very popular. Kevin and Romney kept them running for 12 years after Tom’s death until it became impossible to continue them.
Tom considered that he only taught six people his technique, first allowing them to observe him working before giving them the opportunity to actually make the moves on his patients under his close supervision. All of these men spent considerable time learning from Tom, as each one was allocated a half or full day per week to come and observe and then assist at the clinic over a period of some years. These men Tom affectionately called “his boys” are the only people whom he entrusted to show his therapy to others.
They were Keith Davis, Nigel Love (deceased), Kevin Neave, Oswald Rentsch, Kevin Ryan, and Romney Smeeton. These men spent time with Tom at different stages of his career, but all were qualified professionals, and in professional practice whilst learning from him. Keith Davis, Nigel Love, Romney Smeeton and Kevin Neave were Chiropractors, Kevin Ryan was an Osteopath and Oswald Rentsch a Massage Therapist. Because of the different times of learning and types of training backgrounds, each of them have different perceptions of Tom’s work, which is noticeable in their techniques today.
Brian Smart began working on bodies in 1975 as a football trainer, progressing into ambulance work as a volunteer in 1976. He then went full time as an Advance Life Support Ambulance Officer. Qualifying in 1990 in remedial massage, Brian established his first clinic, and later went on to study trigger point therapy and various stretching techniques.
In 1992 he qualified as a Bowen Therapist with ‘Bowtech’, and it was during this time that his initial interest in trigger points moved him into the eastern health philosophies of acupuncture and acupressure. Through this research, Smart became aware of the co-relationship of these other techniques and that of Bowen Therapy. This information coupled with what was already known about the role of fascia became the starting point of his research.
Not satisfied at the time with his initial Bowen training Smart continued in his quest to find answers to the ‘why’s and how’s still out there in Bowen Therapy and has subsequently completed some units of a Bachelor of Health Science in Acupuncture, hoping that this ancient healing philosophy would provide the keys to previously locked doors.
In 1997 Brian Smart began teaching his version of the Bowen technique and established the ‘Kelda Lea Bowen Therapy School’ which later changed names in 2002 to ‘Smart Bowen® Therapy’.
