Canine Bowen Technique
What Is It ?
The Canine Bowen Technique (CBT) is a soft-tissue remedial therapy involving ‘light-touch’ moves of fingers or thumbs over muscle, ligament, tendon and/or fascia at specific points of the dog’s body.
The work is very subtle and involves no hard or prolonged pressure. A key feature of Canine Bowen Technique is that the treatment is never forced on the dog - in fact provoking the body into a fearful or defensive reaction is very much counter-productive to maximising the effects of the treatment.
One of the major principles of Canine Bowen Technique - indeed any complementary therapy, human or animal - is that it is holistic. In other words, it “treats the body as a whole, without referral to named disease”. So Canine Bowen Technique therapists do not treat the veterinary-diagnosed disease or condition per se, but treat the dog, as they see it, on the day.
For example, although a dog may be brought with a condition such as rear-leg lameness, a Canine Bowen Technique therapist may well treat other parts of the body as well, including the back, neck, and front-legs, in order to address other possible problem areas caused as a result of the dog compensating for the presenting condition. In this case the dog may well have tried to shift its weight forward in order to relieve the pain in the rear-legs, but this, in turn, will affect the carriage of the head and neck, and require the front-legs to carry more load. By addressing these other areas, we are maximising the dog’s attempts to return its body to proper balance.
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