Calm & Peace of Mind Restored with Bowenwork!

What is your leading cause of stress and anxiety?

It’s not hard to come up with a list, just to get started. Now add a recent injury, migraine headache or chronic condition and your head starts to spin faster and faster.

What brings relief from your state of stress?

Ah, a good nights sleep, a long peaceful walk in the woods, time out for a delightful book or even a close friend to talk with…

How about Bowenwork for your stressors and resulting anxieties?

I had a client come in recently who had a lot on her mind regarding some upcoming events.  During the course of the intake she expressed a very deep need about her own self-care and ability to be “at choice” with others in loving and understanding ways.  Now she was stepping out and her anxiety over this was full and present.  Simply letting her talk and acknowledging her struggle let her begin to relax.  As she slowly released her emotional intensity, her mindful presence returned.  With this, the Bowenwork session began.

Over the next 45 minutes and a series of soft gentle “moves” on the fascia, her body relaxed fully and completely.  The tightly wound bands had now unraveled. When she finally got up from the table, she was smiling and literally glowing all over.  She told me how glad she was to have come to my office and what an absolute blessing the Bowenwork session had been.  She said her “Calm and Peace of Mind” were restored.

I see Bowenwork as a way to enter your own personal oasis.  Here you will find peace from life’s intensities and allow your body to shift into a place of healing and regeneration. Many clients say “Bowenwork is magic” and what I know to be true is how this unique gentle modality accesses your dynamic healing response.  I say it “comes in the back door” when the conscious mind if offline to reboot, redirect and revitalize the body’s amazing life force energies.  Better yet, when you can learn to witness the effects of Bowenwork in your body, then your own intimate connection assists your consciousness to pay attention in healthy and regenerative ways.

How do you unlock the “will” of the mind from running the show and overstepping its authority in the body?   When do you let your body move you and orchestrate your most divine and gracious self?

Bowenwork: Gentle Touch Impressive Results

Great Bowenwork Article! Read this now!

There are no easy answers to these questions and new perspective comes by way of a “whole food lifestyle.” This is also what’s called Paleo, also known as the Original Human Diet. Think “Adam & Eve” in nature’s garden before we began to grow our own foods. For me, our body is not designed to be challenged by a wide range of processed and over-processed foods. Our body is a natural evolving organism and deserves the best possible care.

Going from a mainstream diet to a Paleo is all about choosing the foods which best support your overall health and well being. Hey, I am a sucker like anyone else for something sweet, for that reward at the end of a hard days work. And yet, in switching which foods are in my kitchen, staying away from most processed, dairy and grains has been relatively painless, relatively being the key word. Once I found a way to get the “fats” my body craved and were good for me was an important key. Now I am off the roller coaster of my own blood sugar insanity, life seems simpler, more relaxed and on course again. Being Paleo is not a diet as you can literally eat as much as you want! Eating Paleo is a lifestyle change, resulting in long term health benefits.

Here are some great resource books to get you started: Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo is a veritable Paleo bible and on sale now at Costco for only 24.95. The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf will be a great asset too. Both Diane and Robb have blogs, which are worth carving some time out to digest.

What is my story in the grand scheme of a Paleo “whole food lifestyle?” For me the change came when I couldn’t take the pitfalls of a sleep issue any more. I was tired of being tired, waking un-refreshed morning after morning, bleary eyed and sometimes unable to focus, wanting the day to end before I got started.

A friend lent me a book called “The Abascal Way.” I had more than one person mention the program so I was motivated to take a look. My approach was simple: change my diet by changing what was in my fridge and cupboards. This really took about two months and then there were only healthy whole foods to choose from. What a concept! Change what’s around you and your choices are simple in supporting a wholesome healthy lifestyle.

Come join us at Harvest Party at the Nota Bene Cellars, Saturday, November 24th, 1:00 – 5:00 pm

Harvest crush and press pictures of juicy red wines and such from the 2012 vintage

No Admission Fee!

Music by Phlonomenon

John Cheney and his friends Scott Wurtz on percussion and Randy Shaw on guitar will return with music to pair with :Nota Bene wines. John is a fine keyboardist and good friend who loves to improvise in our winery warehouse setting. Let’s see what new harvest riffs he will conjure up to honor our youngest wines.

Nota Bene Cellars: 
9320 15th Avenue South 
Unit CC
 Seattle, WA 98108

Body Neutral

Techniques, Exercises and Secrets of Optimal Well Being

An Evening Event at East West Bookshop in Seattle

What keeps you at the top of your game? Do have a set of “best practices” to sustain your energy, build a reserve when times are tough and reach great heights with ease? Body Neutral has been researched, tested and developed in response to challenges clients face every day in overcoming physical and emotional limitations.

What are your challenges? Physical? Mental? Emotional? Are you ready to release what is standing in your way and let the energy you desire to flow through you? What can you start today and continue on a daily basis? Do you know your roadblocks and how only you orchestrate their placement?

Get ready to be amazed and be open to the possibility of a personal transformation. Moving forward one step at a time.

“ZERO,

Zero
is where the Real Fun starts. 
There’s too much counting
everywhere else!”― Hafiz

Event and Time: Body Neutral – 7 PM October 25th 2012 – Cost $15

Location: East West Bookshop
6500 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA

Facilitator: SCOTT WURTZ LMP PBP BA draws upon his extensive bodywork and Bowen Technique background to help bring greater awareness to your structural and breath patterns.(www.werestart.com) He co-facilitates a local group called Seattle ITP (Integral Transformative Practice). (www.itpinternational.org) Some of his teachers include Liz Koch(http://www.coreawareness.com) Deane Juhan ( www.JobsBody.com) and Louise Tremblay (www.techniquebowen.com) Recent interests are by way of research on the enteric brain http://www.psyking.net/id36.htm

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain

Balancing Your Body – Balancing Your Life!

Scott Wurtz LMP, PBP and Nancy Clark LMP, PBP

What have you noticed about this compelling roller coaster we call life? Driving round and round, slowing up and throttling down! Do you feel your breath quicken as you anticipate the next plunge? While enjoying the challenges or taking a breather from endless action; do you allow yourself to notice, to live from your Being instead of the continual journey of Doing?

In today’s hyper driven world, taking time to find your balance may be challenging. You may meditate, find calming exercise, walk, etc. to de-stress. But when do you really check in to see what’s up; only when something breaks down? Developing active measures to gauge your body’s overload and over stressed signals is vital to support healthy, functional living. Our social and work systems seemingly and consistently demand more. How do you make the time and find an effective way of checking in for yourself?

Ultimately, everyone discovers a way, a system of realizing greater meaning and perspective. Scott loves to write. In his quest to be more in the moment, checking in, he discovered his passion in proprioceptive writing. He noticed a challenge was to “get out of the drivers seat” and let his writing be, allowing his body to express without conscious mind getting in the way. He quickly noticed how easy it is to label feelings in the body; a pain in my back; tension in my calf; my eye is twitching! He found when he applied earlier lessons he learned in college, visa vie, a walking meditation exercise, he was able to let go of labeling. This process freed his mind from its linear drive system (reasoning/ projection/reflection) slowing down the roller coaster to feel flow while his chattering mind softened. He applied the lessons he learned from walking with awareness to his writing. He noticed how our sense of “being in control” gets diminished, which allows us to not cling to labeling, opening us to release judgments held from past experiences.

When we move with speed not noticing our velocity, getting “tripped up” is a bit more common. Hence, an accident. Scott’s accident came with a dramatic fall and a shoulder injury. His shoulder became more and more dysfunctional as he pursued a year of therapy, exercising and swimming. A friend who had also injured her shoulder shared her positive results with Bowenwork Therapy. After just four treatments, Scott’s range of motion returned and his pain was gone! Six years later, when some soreness reappeared, he returned immediately to Bowenwork. One treatment was all that was necessary to release the tension allowing the soreness to resolve. His body’s ability to notice and implement change remained from the earlier Bowenwork treatments; allowing flow once again to return, naturally

During Scott’s process of receiving Bowenwork Therapy, he noticed a profound paradigm shift for himself. His ability to relax, noticing relaxation from the inside out, significantly changed. Instead of creating an external environment that induced and encouraged calm, he noticed his body awareness had shifted naturally to allow flow (relax). Instead of dictating to his body how to operate, he noticed that he had dropped judgment and conditions allowing his heightened ability to operate from a felt sense of natural relax (flow) to be supported. As his experience deepened with releasing judgment, just being in and with his body naturally was easier and easier. His habits changed as his presence in the moment to notice unconditionally increased. Natural returned! Ultimately he noticed that being with one’s nature, in nurturance of the physical body is reflective of balance. Ahhh!

Allowing and noticing balance in one’s life fosters and motivates us to willingly change habits. Changed habits heighten our awareness! When we notice our vitality returning, we want to naturally support that! We may feel genetics dictate what our life could be like, yet, science is uncovering genetics are simply our “original blueprint” of possibility. We would like to propose that the nature of Bowenwork Therapy supports and encourages our body to re-balance itself with that “original blueprint” as the guide.

Balancing Your Body – Balancing Your Life! We seem to take for granted our body will just keep ticking, running, rolling, not sensing when balance is beginning to be upset. Through therapy such as Bowenwork, we can attune to the greater context of our body and our Beingness. You don’t have to be in pain or wait and react when your body is in a crisis to begin the journey of allowing and noticing your body’s balance! Instead, act with intention to support your body’s natural point of balance; not trying to Do anything but Being and allowing your body to flow back to you peacefully!

Scott Wurtz is owner and creator at Wellness Restoration Arts in Seattle. Nancy owns and creates at Bowenwork Health Center in Marysville. Visit their websites at www.werestart.com and www.bowenworkhealthcenter.com for additional information with Bowenwork and the healing potentials it offers you!

Bowen News A monthly newsletter by Kevin Minney

Stroke and Bowenwork

The term stroke refers to what could be called a brain attack, with the damage coming to the brain instead of the heart. This attack can be a devastating blow to an individual and their family/support system with lifelong effects to deal with. There are different types of strokes as well as different areas of the brain that can be affected. There can be many different symptoms as a result.

The two types of strokes are ischemic and hemorrhagic. In the ischemic type sometimes an artery bringing blood to part of the brain gets blocked because arteriosclerosis has caused the inside walls of the artery to thicken up so the opening is too narrow for enough blood to get through or a blood clot gets stuck in the tube This means that not enough blood is getting to the brain cells in that area. Cells cannot live without oxygen, so if the blood supply is cut off, nerve cells die and that part of the brain stops working and some body functions are impaired. Ischemic stroke is the most common type of stroke.

In the hemorrhagic type of stroke, blood bursts through the walls of an artery and leaks into the brain (intracerebral hemorrhage) or onto the surface of the brain (subarachnoid hemorrhage). Blood is forced into brain tissue and because there isn’t much space around the brain in the skull cavity, the build up of blood presses on the part of the brain where the bleeding occurred, damaging the nerve cells so that area of the brain can’t function. Only 11 – 14% of strokes are hemorrhagic strokes.

Strokes occur in different parts of the brain and brain stem. The brainstem is the part of the brain that connects with the top of the spinal chord. It acts as the conduit for all of the nerves that connect the brain with the spinal chord, and also the cerebellum (see below). It also contains special nerve cells that control facial and eye movement and sensation, hearing, smell, taste, swallowing, tongue movement, and the muscles of the neck.

The cerebellum is situated under the cerebrum (the main part of the brain), and behind the brainstem. Its major function is to control and co-ordinate movement. The human brain is divided into regions. Each region controls various movements, senses, or intellectual functions. If a stroke damages brain cells in one of these regions the different functions they control may be affected. The different types of strokes can cause similar damage.

The stroke’s location in the left or right half of the brain will determine what effects will arise. The left side of your brain controls the motor and sensory functions of the right side of your body so if you have a stroke on the left side of your brain it will affect the right side of your body. Any of the following effects may occur depending on which area of the left side of the brain has been damaged: paralysis or loss of strength in right side of body; loss of feeling in right side of body; loss of awareness to the right; loss of vision to the right; difficulty speaking; not understanding what others are saying; inability to read and/or write; thoughts tend to be disconnected; verbal memory loss; difficulty with performing purposeful movement (e.g. combing the hair); confusion between left and right; easily frustrated; slowness, clumsiness; overwhelming urges to perform or repeat some actions; difficulty structuring and planning behavior; poor motivation; difficulty dealing with numbers (arithmetic).

The right side of your brain controls the motor and sensory functions for the left side of the body. Any of the following effects may occur depending on which area of the right side of the brain has been damaged: paralysis or loss of power (strength) in left side of body; loss of feeling in left side of body; loss of awareness to the left; loss of vision to the left; excessive talking; slurred monotonous speech; swallowing or eating difficulty; difficulty recognizing familiar faces; difficulty seeing how things relate to each other in space; difficulty interpreting sounds; denying existence of problems; depression; tendency to sarcasm, or uncharacteristic and at times embarrassing behavior or comments; Short attention span; memory problems; poor judgment of physical abilities (especially safety awareness); muddled sense of time; difficulty with abstract thinking (e.g. comparing ideas, solving problems); mood swings; lack of interest, difficulty in ‘getting going’; acting without thinking; difficulty in recognizing someone else’s mood.

If the brainstem has suffered the attack, brainstem strokes can cause: double vision (because one eye cannot move synchronously with the other); loss of sensation in one eye, or the face, or tongue; a dilated pupil; slurred speech; loss of movement on one side of the face; problems with swallowing; abnormal jerky movements when trying to do something; loss of power, and/or sensation on one side.

When stroke occurs in the cerebellum, there can be: loss of balance, a person may “seem drunk”. They walk with the feet more widely apart, and weave or wobble. They are not drunk but alcohol will make this worse, as alcohol interferes with cerebellar function. Results can be monotonous speech; shaking limb, when the person tries to do something, for example drink a cup of tea. This is called ataxia. If the stroke is only affecting one side of the cerebellum then the abnormality will be on the same side as the stroke. Abnormal eye movement, the eyes have a quick/slow flicker as they move. This is called nystagmus. Some of these abnormalities may occur in brainstem or even cerebral strokes, because the nerve connections with the cerebellum have been damaged.

Recovery from stroke within mainstream medicine involves a team approach that can combine physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy when needed. The aim of physiotherapy is to assess and treat problems to do with movement and balance. The aim of occupational therapy is to help the person to regain competence in the activities of daily living. Speech language therapy aims to manage swallowing and or communication difficulties.

Why should Bowenwork help in rehabilitating from stroke? What is the point of rehabilitation but to correct the “disconnection” between the affected portion of the brain and the areas and activities it would normally control. In addition, rehabilitation is aimed at recovering the optimal function of the body whether in gaining strength, range-of-motion, stamina or fine motor skills including speech. This is precisely what Bowenwork is made for. A “match made in heaven”, so to speak, that facilitates the perfection of communication between the brain and the body. So not merely can the body regain capacity but the tissue injury can begin to recover as well, when the appropriate cerebral stimuli are provided by Bowenwork. Another benefit is improved sense of well being after sessions which can serve to counteract the feelings of frustration, anger, fatigue and depression that can stall recovery. In fact, stroke may be one of the greatest opportunities for Bowenwork to help demonstrate the miraculous healing capacity of enhanced brain-body connection.

For More Information about Bowenwork or to schedule an appointment, please contact:
Scott Wurtz, LMP, PBP
206.524.5511