Thomas Ambrose Bowen

1916 - 1982

"I expect to pass through this world but once,
any good thing therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature,
let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall never pass this way again."
[Tom Bowen's favourite saying]

Thomas Ambrose Bowen was born in 1916 in Brunswick, Australia. He probably left school at the age of 15 and decided to become a carpenter following his father example. When he later moved to Geelong where his parents had moved earlier, he worked in various odd jobs until he ended up working as a handyman in a local cement works.

Tom was his whole life a sports enthusiast and alongside his own hobbies he had time and energy to run a Salvation Army Boys’ Club, where he coached the boys in various sports including his own favourite swimming. He was also interested in Aussie rules and went often to watch the games in Geelong area. Gradually, he developed keen interest in massage and soft tissue therapies as he watched how the injured players were treated. Apparently, he began at that time to understand how certain conditions and misalignments were linked together and how certain “moves” affected different parts of the body.

One person, who is said to have had a strong influence on young Tom, was Ernie Saunders who was known around Melbourne as a legendary physical manipulator. Tom and Ernie had often quite long discussions in 1950s regarding various therapeutic practises, but soon Tom decided to move on his own way. Tom never got any formal education but was completely self-taught by reading books he found interesting and useful. It’s possible that he got some influence also from osteopaths and chiropractors.

While working at the Cement Works, Tom started to give treatments to his co-workers and then also others in the evenings after work. Gradually, the word of mouth began to spread all over and he finally decided to set up his own clinic in Geelong where he worked full time. Sometimes people came to his practise sometimes over a great distance, even hundreds of kilometres away, which tells something about Tom’s fame in those days.

At first, Tom didn’t give any special name to his technique but said only that it was “a gift from God”. He couldn’t quite explain himself either where his ideas came from and most of his work was in fact intuitive. However, one feature in Tom made him really unique: his ability to “see” what was wrong in a body and where did that condition stem from.

As Tom also knew how he could initiate the processes needed in the body to repair the problem, the technique developed into a very effective and rapid form of therapy. Tom used to say to his clients that if he “can’t get it” in one or two sessions, then they had better take there money elsewhere.

In 1973 when he was interviewed by a government committee studying alternative therapies, Tom Bowen estimated he did approximately 13.000 treatments a year, most of them being first or second sessions. That sounds really amazing, but in that time Tom had to assistants working for him at the clinic and he was doing treatments in two separate treatment rooms at the same time. As the breaks that are essential in the technique, allowed him to do so, he was able to treat up to 14 people in one hour.

Tom didn’t ever document or speak about his work in public. During the years there were many men who had the opportunity to follow his work and learn from him, but only six of them were able to spent more time watching him work. These men are known as Tom’s Boys. Each of them learned probably a bit different things from him and also understood what they saw in their own ways. However, Tom had said already back then that he had taught “his boys” only about 10 % of what the technique was capable of, and the rest was up to them to learn by themselves!

Tom managed to work and develop his technique over 30 years before he died in 1982. After Tom’s passing all his six main students began to teach their own version of the technique that had at this point named after its originator as the Bowen Technique. One of the Boys, Oswald “Ossie” Rentsch, is the one to thank for making the technique known worldwide. Nowadays the Bowen Technique has spread through Britain to other parts of Europe and also to the United States.


Source material:   
http://www.thebowentechnique.com
http://www.bowendirectory.com