During a hospital visit in early October 1982 to see Tom Bowen, it was obvious that he was not doing very well at all. This was about two weeks before he died on the 27th of October. We talked about his clinic and his work for a bit and then he asked me two questions.
The first and most important to him, was whether I would look after his ‘kids’ as he called the patients on the monthly free Saturday clinic for the disabled?
The second was would I help to spread his work and methods after he was gone?
I have since found out that he had asked the second question of two other his ‘boys’, as he called us.
My immediate and heart answer to the first question was yes and that Romney Smeeton and I would continue his Saturday clinics for the disabled monthly for as long as needed.
After Tom passed, I reflected for some months on how best to spread his techniques or methods as I refer to his clinic approach. The demand was such from the practitioners who knew of Tom mentoring me, that I knew that I could not use his ‘apprenticeship’ method. I settled on a plan to find out how to best teach his methods in a group setting. I gathered eight practitioners of a variety of backgrounds and provided four 2-hour sessions a week apart. This was successful enough for me to structure two-day workshops. These were offered in both Geelong in my Belmont clinic and in the Gold Coast in sunny Queensland.
I was ‘head-hunted to teach the Bowen Methods to final year undergraduate Osteopathy students at RMIT. This was structured as a afternoon session, weekly for the 13 week semester. There was also teaching of the 40 plus class divided in small groups in the teaching clinic. I taught for 10 years.
Now to go back a step or two. Tom had said to me on my first Wednesday morning mentoring session “You should have no trouble with this because you do acupuncture.” It was apparent to me that the trigger points and the ‘blocks’ or ‘stoppers’ as he called them were all acupuncture points and that the areas treated were Channel or meridian lines. I then offered to teach a TCM based version of Tom’s methods to interested practitioners, through Trevor at China Books in Melbourne. The rest is history as they say as workshops followed in Brisbane Adelaide and in Melbourne that demonstrated that TCM and Shiatsu practitioners could readily apply the Bowen Methods to their clinical practice.
In October 2022 a two-day workshop was held to commemorate Tom’s 40th anniversary. This was filmed and 6 months later the recording published through the online course provider Net of Knowledge. A follow up workshop was held in May 2023 and recorded. This was published in November 2023 through Net of Knowledge. The on-seller sites are listed below. Contact Reception if you wish to know more.
Australia:- China Books
United Kingdom:- CPD-Cert
Ireland:- CPD-Cert
Europe: Acupuncture World or CPD-Cert
Germany:- Acupuncture World DE
USA:- Lhasa OMS
Canada:- Eastern Currents
India:- Institute of Acupuncture and Natural Medicine
