Bowenwork by Nancy

12/02/2025

Fascia, the gift that keeps everything together!

11/27/2025

Russell Sturgess, creator of Fascial Kinetics, shares how Bowen Therapy began as a simple yet profound way of helping people heal. Rooted in intuition and gu...

11/27/2025

I love working with the vagus nerve during Bowenwork.

At the Bowen Wellness Summit, Bowen master and author John Wilks explores one of the most important nerves in the body — the vagus nerve.https://www.naturalt...

11/27/2025

Wishing you a blessed 🙌 😇 and happy holiday.

11/26/2025

I love ❤️ Bowenwork!

CRPS - How do we restore trust in a body that feels betrayed by its own nerves?

Some conditions require a different kind of listening. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, once called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, is one of the most misunderstood and overwhelming experiences a nervous system can endure. It is often described as a burning fire beneath the skin, a storm of sensation that feels far too big for the body that holds it. For many clients, even the lightest touch can feel electric or unbearable, and yet the deepest ache beneath it all is a longing to be understood.

Scientifically, CRPS is a disorder of the nervous, immune, vascular, and fascial systems. After an injury or surgery, the sympathetic nervous system can become stuck in a loop of overactivation. The tissues become hypersensitive, the blood vessels constrict, circulation changes, and the fascia stiffens as if trying to protect the limb. The brain begins to misread sensory input, amplifying pain signals and shrinking its own map of the affected area. What should have healed becomes a region of confusion, overreaction, and profound loneliness within the nervous system.

This is why bodyworkers matter more than we realize. Touch, when offered with precision, patience, and deep reverence, becomes a way to reintroduce safety where the body has only known alarm. We are not trying to “fix” CRPS. We are offering a bridge back to the body’s own ability to recalibrate.

In the early phases, we begin with presence rather than pressure. Slow diaphragmatic breathwork helps quiet sympathetic firing. Gentle craniosacral holds help soften the brainstem vigilance that feeds the condition. Light myofascial traction, performed outside the area of pain, invites the nervous system to feel movement without fear. We work with rhythm, not force. We work with the brain, not the muscle. Every touch asks the question, “What feels safe right now?” rather than “How much can I change today?”

Over time, the goal is to help the brain rewrite its sensory map. Fascial cupping in non-painful regions, gentle passive movement, mirrored touch, and even visualization can help restore proprioception. When the tissues begin to trust again, circulation improves, the fascia softens, and the inflammatory chemistry gradually quiets. Clients often describe a moment when the limb no longer feels like an enemy, but a part of them returning home.

Emotionally, CRPS carries a weight rarely spoken out loud. Chronic pain isolates. It reshapes a person’s relationship with movement, with touch, with hope. As bodyworkers, we are not only working with tissue; we are working with the grief of a life that changed unexpectedly. This is why we move slowly, we honor boundaries, and we celebrate every small gain. Even a few seconds of warmth returning to an area, or a moment when touch feels tolerable, can be a profound turning point.

There is no single technique that heals CRPS, but there is one universal principle: the nervous system will change in the presence of safety. Our hands, our breath, our pacing, and our groundedness become the cues the client’s body has forgotten how to receive. When we regulate ourselves, the client’s nervous system often follows. When we soften, the tissue beneath our hands slowly remembers how to soften, too.

This work asks us to become artisans of slowness, of attunement, of compassion. And in that space, something beautiful happens—the burning quiets. The body breathes. The nervous system widens its window of tolerance, and the person inside the pain feels seen rather than feared.

CRPS is complex, but the human being living with it is still whole. As Body Artisans, our gift is not to force change, but to help the body remember the possibility of ease, sensation, connection, and belonging. Even in the fire, healing is still possible. The tissues are listening. The fascia is listening. And for perhaps the first time in a long time, someone is listening with them.

This post is dedicated to Mims. ❣️

11/23/2025

We’re only just beginning to understand how much the body feels through fascia.

For decades, anatomy teaching centred vision, touch, muscle, and bone. But the more we study fascia, the clearer it becomes: this connective tissue is doing far more than holding us together.

Fascia is densely packed with sensory nerve endings. It’s constantly gathering information about tension, movement, safety, and internal state.

And when we work with fascia through approaches like Bowen Therapy, we’re not just “working on tissue” - we’re influencing one of the body’s most sensitive communication networks.

This shift in understanding is reshaping manual therapy, movement work, pain science, and how we support self-regulation.

It’s also why so many practitioners describe Bowen Therapy as a quietly powerful way to help the body reset from the inside out.

If you’re exploring new ways to work with the body - or considering training in Bowen - fascia research is a game-changer. This is where the future of hands-on therapy is heading.

11/23/2025

The Fascia Speaks

As bodyworkers, we touch a system far more intelligent and responsive than most people realize. It is a living memory field, a sensory fabric that holds the echoes of every emotional contraction, every bracing pattern, and every unspoken moment the nervous system didn’t know how to resolve.

We explore these imprints every day. We feel the places where the tissue thickened in response to a moment of fear, the areas where breath stopped during heartbreak, or the subtle density of someone carrying a responsibility too heavy for their age. These are not just restrictions. They are records.

Science is beginning to describe what practitioners have long sensed with their hands. Fascia is densely woven with interoceptors, proprioceptors, mechanoreceptors, and nociceptors, creating one of the most information-rich sensory networks in the body. These receptors do not just relay physical sensations; they respond to emotional states, autonomic shifts, and subtle changes in internal chemistry. When someone is afraid, lonely, overworked, grieving, or carrying unresolved tension, fascia receives that information before the conscious mind can interpret it.

Over time, these repeated emotional signals alter the collagen matrix itself. The ground substance thickens. Elasticity decreases. Glide diminishes. The tissue becomes a physical representation of an emotional history. What began as a moment of bracing becomes a pattern. Eventually, the pattern becomes posture, and posture becomes identity. This is how fascia stores emotional imprints that influence how a person walks, rests, reacts, and protects themselves. What clients feel as stiffness is often the residue of old vigilance. What they call tightness is often the body’s attempt to hold a story that never had a chance to be expressed.

When we work with fascia, we are not simply lengthening tissue or improving mobility. We are entering the emotional architecture of a person’s life. Gentle compression rehydrates the ground substance and makes the dense places permeable again. Slow stretching reorganizes collagen fibers that have been shaped by years of guarding. Pacinian and Ruffini receptors detect the warmth of our touch and signal safety along the vagus nerve. Interoceptors begin to update the brain’s perception of the body, allowing long-muted emotional signals to come into conscious awareness. As the layers soften, the nervous system begins to trust, and trust is the first doorway to release.

This is why clients often experience tears, trembling, laughter, heat, or a sudden memory during a session. The fascia is not only releasing; it is reorganizing the information it once held tightly. Electrical coherence returns. Circulation improves. Sensory accuracy sharpens. The body stops running old protective commands and starts rewriting its operating system. What once felt like a lifelong pattern begins to dissolve in the warmth of contact and presence.

Fascia is a sensory intelligence that interprets experience. The mind does not lead this process. It follows it. The mind interprets what the fascia feels and explains it long after the body has already changed. When we help clients reconnect to their fascial landscape, we are guiding them back to the body’s original language, the language beneath thought, beneath story, beneath habit—the language of emotional truth.

We, the ones who listen in silence, can hear what the fascia has carried through lineage, memory, and time.

11/23/2025

The body remembers everything it survives. Every tightening, every holding, every moment when an emotion was too much to feel fully is woven into the tissues in ways that are subtle but unmistakable under a practitioner’s hands. Once we understand the three autonomic states, we begin to see how they manifest within the fascia, posture, organ tone, and movement. The body becomes a map of the nervous system’s history.

In sympathetic activation, the fascia behaves differently. It pulls upward and inward, becoming denser, warmer, and more reactive to touch. You can feel it in the diaphragm that won’t descend, the psoas that refuses to soften, the jaw that stays rigid no matter how gently you cradle the head. The organs tighten as well. The stomach feels guarded, the liver feels congested, and the intestines lose their rhythm. These are not random patterns. They are the body preparing to move, fight, or flee. Over time, this creates postures that resemble bracing, characterized by lifted ribs, a forward head, gripping hips, or a chest that fails to open fully. The emotional patterns are equally clear. Clients often report irritability, restlessness, heightened sensitivity, or a feeling of being constantly “on alert.” The tissue mirrors the story.

In dorsal vagal shutdown, the patterns shift in an entirely different way. Fascia becomes cool, heavy, and slow to respond. It loses its elastic quality and begins to feel more like clay than silk. The organs can feel sluggish or almost silent. The breath moves minimally. The body may sink into the table as if gravity suddenly intensified. These are survival patterns, too. They emerge when the body has endured more than it can process. Posturally, this state creates collapse—rounded shoulders, a folded chest, a withdrawn abdomen, or a neck that tucks inward. The emotional presentation often includes numbness, exhaustion, disconnection, or a sense of being far away from oneself. Again, the tissue mirrors the story.

And then there is ventral vagal engagement, the state where healing begins. In this state, fascia becomes supple and responsive, gliding under your hands instead of resisting or collapsing. The organs start to move with the breath. The diaphragm opens. The ribcage expands—the tissue warms. The face brightens. Clients often describe a sense of clarity, groundedness, or a feeling of coming home to themselves. The posture reflects it, too. Shoulders ease back into their natural alignment. The spine lengthens. The pelvis finds neutral. The whole system becomes more coherent, more alive, more available for emotional integration.

When we understand how these states shape fascia, posture, organ tone, and emotional expression, the work becomes clearer. You begin to sense when a client is guarding emotionally because their physical tissue is guarding. You notice when a dorsal body is not ready for deep work because the system is still protecting itself. You learn to wait, soften, and co-regulate until ventral safety rises. Emotional release stops being a surprise. It becomes a physiological shift you recognize as soon as it begins.

This is the heart of somatic work. The nervous system writes its memories into the body, and with the right touch, pacing, and presence, those memories begin to unravel. Fascia melts. Breath returns. Organs move. Tears rise. Tremors release. The body prioritizes safety over survival.

11/23/2025

Most bodyworkers have heard clients say things like “I don’t know why I’m crying,” “I feel like something just released,” or “I suddenly feel lighter.” For years, we trusted our hands more than the textbooks and held space for what rose to the surface. Now, Polyvagal Theory gives us the science that explains what we have felt beneath our palms all along.

Created by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges, the Polyvagal Theory describes how the vagus nerve perceives the world through sensations, tone, posture, breath, and touch. It shows us that emotional expression is not random; it is the language of the autonomic nervous system, shifting between states of protection and connection. The body releases emotions not because it is dramatic or fragile, but because it has finally found a moment when it feels safe enough to let its survival patterns soften.

When a client enters your space, their nervous system is already speaking. A body in sympathetic activation feels taut, warm, guarded, quick to brace. These clients often require a gentle, calming contact that signals to their system that it no longer needs to run or fight. A body in dorsal vagal shutdown has a different pulse altogether. It may feel heavy, distant, or unreachable. These clients respond to warmth, presence, and gentle, patient pacing that invites them back into their bodies without overwhelming them. And when a client is in ventral vagal engagement, the system opens. Breath deepens, tissues receive, and deeper work becomes possible. Their body is ready to reorganize the old patterns it no longer needs.

Understanding these states is not about labeling people; it is about listening to the stories their nervous systems are telling beneath the skin. Touch becomes more ethical, more attuned, and more transformative when we understand the state of the body and how to meet it. The Polyvagal Theory provides us with a language for what somatic practitioners have sensed for generations. It teaches us that emotional release is not a mysterious or mystical phenomenon. It is biological. It is the body stepping out of survival and into safety.

As bodyworkers, we do not force emotion out of the body. We create the conditions where the body feels safe enough to release what it has carried for far too long. The more we understand the vagus nerve, autonomic states, and Polyvagal Theory, the more skillfully we can support clients as they unwind, soften, tremble, breathe, and release. This is where art meets science, where intuition meets anatomy, and where the human body remembers itself through touch.

Tomorrow, I will dive deeper into Polyvagal Theory and how each autonomic state influences the emotional responses we observe on our tables. For now, know this. Emotions are not just thoughts; they are physiological and reside in the body.

11/23/2025

Bowenwork has a profound effect on the the fascia throughout the body.

How many of you remember studying receptors in massage school? If not, here's a crash course. (Mechanoreceptors will be a later post.)

When bodyworkers understand essential receptors, touch can become more intentional, attuned, and far more powerful. Three important sensory systems for hands-on work are proprioception, nociception, and interoception, all of which are richly represented within the fascial network.

Proprioceptors are the body’s sense of place. They tell us where we are in space, how we move, how deeply we bend, and how our joints align without ever having to look. Proprioceptors play a crucial role in creating graceful movement and maintaining stable posture, and they are intricately woven into the fascia. When fascia is stiff, dehydrated, or restricted, proprioception becomes foggy. Clients may feel clumsy, ungrounded, or disconnected from their bodies. When fascia slides freely, proprioception sharpens. Movement becomes fluid, and clients feel more at home in themselves.

Nociceptors are the body’s danger signals. They alert the system when something feels threatening, irritating, or potentially harmful. These receptors do not just convey pain; they convey context. They tell the brain when tissue is overstretched, inflamed, or overly tense. Many nociceptors are embedded in fascial tissues, which explains why fascial restriction can heighten sensitivity or contribute to chronic discomfort even without structural damage. When fascia softens and glides, nociceptors calm.

Interoceptors are the quiet storytellers of the internal world. They tell us how we feel on the inside. Hunger, fullness, breath, pressure, warmth, emotion, intuition, and the subtle sense of safety or threat all come from interoception. These receptors are found throughout the fascial layers, especially in the visceral fascia. Interoception is the doorway through which emotion becomes sensation and sensation becomes awareness. When fascial tension decreases, interoception becomes clearer. Clients often describe this as feeling more present, more connected, or more alive.

Recent research has shown that fascia is not just connective tissue. It is one of the most densely innervated sensory systems in the entire body. In fact, fascia contains more sensory nerve endings than muscles, far more than tendons, and even more diverse sensory fibers than joints.

Researchers like Schleip, Langevin, Stecco, and Wilke have shown that fascia is not a passive wrapping. It behaves like a sensory organ, sending constant information to the brain about tension, breath, pressure, emotion, and safety.

11/23/2025

For decades, bodyworkers have observed that emotions often surface during hands-on sessions. Clients cry without knowing why, shake, tremble, feel heat rising, or experience spontaneous memories.

These patterns are not imaginary, nor are they an“energy-only” phenomenon. Modern research now supports what somatic practitioners have known for generations: the body stores physiological consequences of emotion, and manual therapy can access the systems involved.

What rises in the session room is never random. It is the nervous system speaking in its oldest language. Tomorrow, we’ll explore this language through the lens of Polyvagal Theory.

11/22/2025

Your symptoms are signals — but they’re not the whole picture.

What feels like a local issue (tight calves, sore shoulders, stiff neck) may actually be part of a larger pattern your body has been managing quietly for years.

Bowen Therapy aims to address the deeper systems:
• fascia
• muscle tension
• joint alignment
• nervous system balance
• compensation patterns

Because lasting change can happen when the whole body gets the memo — not just one part.