Stephen Forde - Your Physical Therapist

 

I’ve been involved in physical therapy since the early 1990’s, over the years I’ve explored many styles and approaches. They all have something to offer, Like many, I started with general Body Massage, it gives practitioners basic knowledge of Physiology and Anatomy as well as essential massage techniques. Following that I moved onto Sports Massage, which  does pretty much what you’d expect for the audience that it’s aimed at. In addition it goes further into Physiology and Anatomy and delves into the mechanisms of injury and the healing process. Due to my involvement in Chinese Martial Arts I had an interest in Chinese Medicine and its ‘world view’, so I went on to study various aspects of Chinese Medicine, primarily  AnMo (Chinese Bodywork) which is a sophisticated modality based upon early Chinese Medicine. I also trained in Shiatsu, a Japanese manual therapy similar to An-Mo. Both the AnMo and Shiatsu styles I use (schools do vary) are more rooted in current western anatomy  rather than the complex energetic models used by modern Traditional Chinese Medicine. When I started to study Bowen, although I was unaware of its history at the time, its similarity to Shiatsu and AnMo  was obvious to me.

 

Bowen Technique is usually delivered on a massage table and is generally relatively light in touch, Shiatsu is normally performed on a padded floor mat, because of the greater leverage and weight transferral available on a mat Shiatsu tends to be slightly deeper in pressure and lends itself to including passive stretching in a treatment.

 

I’ve been fortunate to be able to meet and study with two great Australian (Bowen Therapy originated in Australia).  Bowen Therapists; Graham Pennington and Dr Romney Smeeton. Dr Smeeton was one of only six people to train directly with Tom Bowen (the techniques founder) Graham is a pioneer in using  Bowen in a targeted manner. Unfortunately over many hears due to the subtlety of Bowen Technique, many practitioners and teachers failed to grasp the fundamentals of Bowen and resorted using ‘by the numbers’ fixed protocols, in the hope that something would work. Graham and Romney have both helped to bring Bowen back to a targeted therapy.

 

Closer to home in the UK I’ve trained with Alastair McLoughlin, Alastair brings a level of refinement and freedom to Bowen Therapy, again removing the protocols enabling a trained therapist to respond freely to what they find through examination. It was Alastair that helped me realise that there is at least as much Art in Bowen as there is Science.

 

Moving from tradesman to craftsmen to artist is not an easy path and the boundaries are not clearly defined, but what we can be sure of is that you have to strive for artistry to achieve it.

 

Massage Certificate
Sports Massage Certificate
Advanced Massage certificaste
TCM Massage Certificate
Bwen Certificate
AOB Certificate
Thai Massage Certificate

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