I’m a tall man. Not an abnormally tall man but tall enough to be completely at ease describing myself as such. I was about to suggest abnormal was such a strong and negative word but as it turns out, abnormally for myself, I checked online for something and didn’t just try to wing it. It turns out the prefix ab- simply means ‘away/from’ and as such looking at examples like abrasive, abdicate, ablution, absolve, they don’t seem to have a contrary and therefore aren’t able to be viewed in the binary positive and negative. To abdicate is to step away from power, to be abrasive is to take away the smooth, to absolve is to distance from guilt or punishment and ablution is to wash away the dirt. A cloth would absorb the water but the word sorb refers to “the fruit of the true service tree” which is Biblical and which means the two words aren’t related and cannot be compared to the negative prefix un- in nature.
I digress.
Being tall I hit my head a lot, I am also prone to hurting my back. I managed to hurt it badly about five or six years ago when I was trimming grapes in France. You spend eight hours Monday to Friday bent low trimming leaves off vines which are about one to two feet from the ground. That is a lot of moving while being bent over, and after four weeks strained my lower lumbar, slightly stretching the space between and pinching a nerve in the process. I tried over the time yoga and Pilates, went to a chiropractor, but never managed to quite shake the awareness of something not being quite right. In times of inactivity it would start hurting and I discovered over time the busier I was the less I felt it. Eventually I remembered a treatment I was given by a friend in Australia called Bowen Therapy, which is a very subtle process, don’t worry I’m not about to meander through the meaning of sub, which involves rolling the muscles and in a way activating them, allowing them to recover themselves. I could barely move before that first time in Australia and the next day I had returned to about 75% which felt at the time like a miracle. I don’t necessarily automatically believe in certain treatments, different people react differently and stronger to different things, I never got much from acupuncture for example while others swear by it. I would comfortably swear by Bowen, nearly on par with my exclamation over my height.
I discovered a woman in Scotland near me who practices it and had my first treatment with her prior to a lengthy period of active life on a sail boat. I felt my back had recovered. It felt good and strong for the first time in a few years. About six months ago though as my friend attempted to convince me to appreciate not just Crossfit but Crossfit done to create a rugby player style body, I over did myself on a sit up bench. My back ever so slightly clicked, not painfully at all but I knew I had done something. Right enough I had shifted and unbalanced my lumbar and hip. With my hips now negative and unaligned the old pain subtly returned until a few days ago when I twinged something moving a particularly heavy bread basket. Yesterday I strained it further and was in crippling pain. This is a very long winded back story for something that is supposed to only be around the five hundred word mark so I have little more space to talk about Bowen other than I went today again and while I can still feel it, usually the day after is when you really notice the change. I will return next week and have a second session soon after the first which I have never done before. I just want to be really sure. In the meantime yoga must return to habit status. Ultimately I simply attempted to create context and a backstory to a therapy which few know about but I fully believe many could benefit from. Why it’s not more commonly practised is beyond me.
Observations and Misunderstandings 