Michael Patrick is the Director of Bowen Therapy UK. He is a fully licensed Senior Bowtech Instructor and Therapist. He trained with the world’s leading authorities on Bowen Therapy including Ossie and Elaine Rentsch. With 17 years clinical experience working with professional and amateur athletes, complicated autoimmune conditions and rehabilitation, back pain etc. Michael holds clinic at Aichill Medical in Belgravia and his private clinic in Notting Hill, London. www.bowentherapyuk.com David O'Hare is an Irish former professional tennis player and current ATP Tour Professional Tennis Coach, currently coaching World #2 ranked doubles team Joe Salisbury & Rajeev Ram. Having completed his undergraduate studies in Sports Science and Health and Human Performance at the University of Memphis, David's interest in health and personal development has continued to grow. He is currently studying to be a Bowen Practitioner and hopes to continue his education in holistic practices alongside his professional coaching career.
Marie gives an insight into understanding with vibrations and frequencies matter when it comes to your skin and wellbeing. She takes you on a journey of how the environment we surround ourselves in and the people we associate with can impact our mood and health.
Michael Patrick is the Director of Bowen Therapy UK. He is a fully licensed Senior Bowtech Instructor and Therapist. He trained with the world’s leading authorities on Bowen Therapy including Ossie and Elaine Rentsch. With 17 years clinical experience working with professional and amateur athletes, complicated autoimmune conditions and rehabilitation, back pain etc. Michael holds clinic at Aichill Medical in Belgravia and his private clinic in Notting Hill, London. www.bowentherapyuk.com David O'Hare is an Irish former professional tennis player and current ATP Tour Professional Tennis Coach, currently coaching World #2 ranked doubles team Joe Salisbury & Rajeev Ram. Having completed his undergraduate studies in Sports Science and Health and Human Performance at the University of Memphis, David's interest in health and personal development has continued to grow. He is currently studying to be a Bowen Practitioner and hopes to continue his education in holistic practices alongside his professional coaching career.
Marie gives an insight into understanding with vibrations and frequencies matter when it comes to your skin and wellbeing. She takes you on a journey of how the environment we surround ourselves in and the people we associate with can impact our mood and health.
I'm joined today with two gentlemen that I've had the pleasure to meet. I have David O'Hare and Mike Patrick. I'm not gonna waste any time in introducing them cuz I always let my guests to introduce themselves. So first of all, welcome over to the lovely David O'Hare. If you can introduce. Yeah. Well thanks for having me First off, Marie. So David Harris is my name. I'm a current a TP tour coach. I'm traveling with Joe Salsbury, Raji Ram. They're the second rank team in the world right now and have won a couple Grand Slams and the most recent won the year end Nido Tour finals in Tourin, which is fantastic and played professionally. Myself, reached a career high in doubles of 117 and just this lifestyle, I suppose. I've always had a bit of a passion. health and fitness and, and wellness in general. Delighted to be on the podcast and delighted to chat to Mike today. Fantastic. And congratulations on all your successes. It's been amazing. And, Mike, if you want to introduce yourself, I've known Mike for quite a few years now, okay. So, I thank you for having Me too. Very good to be here with both of you. I'm a Bowen therapist and tutor, and have been, doing Bowen for about 18 years. lucky enough to, trained with the likes of Aussie and Elaine Ranch who, founded Botec, which is the original. Technique. They got the, the work directly from Tom Bowen and Ozzie named the technique after Tom. I've been a teacher of Bowen for, about, 10, maybe 13 years. And it was my great pleasure to, worked with Marie. So she was, she was on one of my early courses and. That's a lot of fun. And, and David, of course is on, uh, my, my current course. So, yeah, so I trained with you quite a few years ago and I absolutely loved it. And, learning all about the different modalities of the Bowen technique blew my mind. And it was really important to understand that, within the Bowen technique world, we're quite passionate about, the modalities that Tom Bow. presented, so mm-hmm. if you want to just explain who Tom Bowen was mm-hmm. and what the technique is, that'd be great. Okay. So Tom, was a man that lived in, Geelong, in Australia. He didn't have a background in healthcare or in body work or anything like that, but he was a very intuitive guy and he was developing, his technique. Out of a, a kind of a passion and what he described as a gift from God, he worked in a, a cement factory, and this is the legend. one day someone fell off the scaffolding that was, was in the factory and he went over and. Just did a few moves on this guy. Not much. Just did a bit and placed his hands on him and the guy could get up and he was okay. And it was just this moment of kind of disbelief what on earth. Did you do Tom? How, you know, this is just remarkable. And words spread pretty fast and he opened a, a clinic, there was an independent study done by the, the local government and he was treating, about 60 people a day. So 13,000 people a year. Yeah. How you say? Just, yeah, just remarkable. Sometime later, there was a health conference where Aussie wrench, was trying to find a, a way of helping his wife who had been injured and. he went up to this guy Tom and Tom didn't know, you know, didn't know of each other, and they, they shook hands and they just had this moment of, a connection. And, um, Ozzy said, I want to learn from you. I wanna study. And Tom, who was actually a very, shy guy, he worked, on his own and he didn't have anyone really around. He, said, okay, come to my clinic. So, he took the phone number and called and arranged to go. turns out the clinic was 200 miles away And when he turned up, there was this, this man that had six rooms and he would go into each room one at a time. He'd just, he'd do very little work on each person and he'd leave and go in and do a couple of things and leave. And he just thought, God, this guy's a charlatan. I've come all this way and you. I can't believe it, but he had a, a full waiting room and he just spoke to the people in the waiting room and they were like, no, no, no. You've got to, give this a chance. He's incredible. And, and really, Tom would generally see people once or twice and they'd, get better. It's just, a really remarkable holistic therapy. Yeah. Which, it, it's so simple. And, it works at a pressure that the body doesn't resist, and all we're doing is initiating a response by the autonomic nervous system in order to get the body to fix itself. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things. when people first have Bo and they think, what the hell is going on? Because they expect manipulation, don't they? They expect like either a massage or a chiropractic type manipulation, but actually it is a rolling movement and then they can be left for anything up to, I dunno, 2, 5, 15 minutes depending on, certain parts of the body. Mm-hmm. and. Sitting there thinking, where have they gone? What, what are they doing? Mm-hmm. and, and they can't make sense of it. Mm-hmm. and David, what was your first experience when you first had it? Well, yeah, I, I come from a, a complete different kind of school of thought with all the kind of body work and, kind of pain that I've maybe experienced on various physio tables, as an athlete. And I, I got kind of got heard through, my girlfriend Rebecca about bone and that's kind of what sparked my curiosity and really opened the world to me. But certainly having read and with Mike having come so highly recommended from yourself, Marie, that was enough for me to be kind of convinced in. In the power. Yeah, exactly. So I'm still very early. In, in my training, so still, still plenty to do, still plenty to learn, But I will say having, it's quite a unique feeling when you kind of get someone on the table for the first time and, the sense of responsibility kinda. Even poking and prodding around and just like, I think Mike said it when we were in one of our first sessions, just, you know, oh, you'll, you'll doubt yourself and you'll think you've done the move terribly and, and just almost just trust the technique because yeah, I think it's, it's such a non-invasive, and you could almost feel like, oh, I'm not getting my bank from my book here, but, but just. Yeah. It's like communicating with the body at a, at a pressure, you know, there's no resistance from the musculature or from the neural. That's what I found anyway. it's very intuitive, Mike. So it is, it is. You know, it is. And what you're gonna do as well, the moves you choose or the, the procedures. But what you were hitting on there, David, is, the, the pressure, it's so key that the body doesn't resist and that it sort of just melts away. and what, what we're doing is affecting. Different types of stretch receptors, different types of nerve endings and, spindles that, that control tone in muscle and control proprioception and we're resetting. So, It's been, it's often described as a body returns to a blueprint. Yeah. Which I talk about with my clients. the primitive streak or what they call the finger of broad, which is what we talk about is, is the blueprint. Yeah. It's what the body remembers as the original. Yeah. Perfect. It recognizes health. Yeah, exactly. So we are talking about all the things that we're talking about and we recognize it, but for people that don't understand how this works. Yeah. We talk about lines of fascia. So if you can just explain what fascia is Yeah. And what the lines of fascia and how they interact with the body and why we move at certain points of what they do, okay. So fascia was, it wasn't actually really recognized until the, the mid nineties cuz on a cadaver or a dead body when, when they're dissecting bodies to learn medically what's going on it turns to mush. So it didn't look like it was of any use. So they were cut it away and look at the lovely muscles and it's a hamstring, whatnot. But it's actually incredibly important and it's, It's collagen fiber, it's a celly line in structure, so it's just, it's one cell next to another and there's a, a fluid inside. It's like a cobweb that goes down to pretty much every cell in the body. And within it, there's a, a fluid with a tiny electrical charge. So when you, stimulate it actually, is a communication system, which is quick. than the nervous system. So although there's six times more nerve endings in the fascia than there is in most muscle tissue, it communicates within the body, independently of the brain as well. Yeah. So it communicates more on an energetic level and it goes very, very quickly. and it magnetic you could look like. Yeah. So it's instant. Yeah. And it's global or it's, you could say quantum, it's going everywhere all at once. Mm-hmm. Now a nice example is if you, break your arm, And you put, you have a cast put on it to prevent movement, to allow time for the bone, to heal your muscles waste away pretty quick. So in six weeks, when it's cut off, you have this funny little arm and you can't move the hand, well, you can't move the hand cuz the fascist carried on, depositing you carried on growing essentially. And you have, you have these deposits that solidify. So day on day there's a new deposit and then it, it, it builds up and thickens. And it takes a little bit of stretching. You can't force that to come back. It has to come back through a stretch and a release and a stretch and a release. So it comes back over time. Now with Bowen Bone's incredibly good at releasing fascia. Fascia responds faster and most strongly to a cross fiber stimulation, which is the bow and move. That's how it works. So if you think the people that work at desks. Day in, day out, then their hips and their, their hamstrings are gonna get really tight because they're sitting in a shortened position. And, over that period, the fascia is carrying on to deposit and, and becomes stuck. So Bowen is incredibly good at releasing restrictions and enabling the body. articulate the joints as it should, you know, in, in a healthier, freer way. It also hydrates as well, doesn't it? Cuz fascia becomes very dehydrated, like what you was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So hydration is really key and that's what it does. But h but dehydration of fascia can not only Yeah. Caused through injury. It can be caused by many different things, can't it? Mm-hmm. absolutely. So people who have had injections or steroids or, whatnot, what you put in your body is hugely important. Stress, stress tightens the whole, The whole body tightens up and, and it actually injuries occur even with athletes when the main muscles of, the larger muscles are generally a bit weak, they overuse the extremities and then at a point of stress they overreach. Yeah. And, if you have a niggle, like a, slight restriction in the fascia, then you far more likely to get injured as a result. and we collect them, we collect little, knots here and there. You know, as a chain will fit together. And, and then you have a restricted movement pattern. Fascia is is superficial, so mm-hmm. and it's also deep, too deep. it's pretty much every cell, it's everywhere. So it, it incumbencies everything. it's really important. And it also runs in. So So if you've got a pain in your back, you can actually work on your foot or you can work on your back of your head. So it works in those different trains. And actually it is really interesting, you know, especially with Chinese medicine, they're actually finding that the meridians are more functioning and they find it within the anatomy trains. So, yeah. Yeah. Um, it all is connected, so well. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, the Bowen moves tend to be in spots of the, the, uh, meridians as well, you know? Yeah, exactly. It's absolutely, especially, what we call the BackStoppers. They work massively on what's known as the back shoe points. In Chinese medicine and they are major source points that interact with most of the body. I mean, I've done quite a lot of modalities now and I've found that there's so many commonalities with them and it's just amazing. Yep. So, David, I wanna come over to you because you was a professional tennis player and then it was through injury that. Did you it through three? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I tore my medial ladderal ligaments in my right ankle, uh, back in 2018. And, actually during lockdown there was another course that I did, there's a crowd, in Canada called the Foot Collective, and I did their course and it was all about the benefits of, you know, a little bit earthing, so barefoot, how shoes, the kind of foam in the shoes. Yeah. You know, your feet primary use is appropriate reception. So when they're not getting that stimulus from the ground, you know, we tend to be landing a little bit harder. And their whole ethos is kind of, the ankle joint was, was a linchpin joint. And, and upstream from that, invariably knees and hips would, get hammered because they're kind of searching for that, that stimulus and we're not getting it for the ground. So we're kind of landing harder and that's shooting more stress. That's good. And so you then went from injury into coaching and you coach, Rajiv Ram and Joe Salsbury? Exactly right. Yeah. So kind of just natural progression really. I used to play, with Joe. We were a partner, so we went to university together and played professionally together. And then naturally side stepped into coaching, which I'm really enjoying. And it's funny, so much of it it's not even about the tennis now. It's about just keeping the guys fitting healthy. And that's both physically and, mentally and, and making sure kind of morale is high. And, there's a lot of losing in tennis at, you know, invariably the subtleties of the sport. There's a couple points here and there and, invariably there's only one or two guys that are winning every week. So, handling that may be pressure and, so I found Bone to be great. You know, getting people on the table and just working with them and really just calming them down, you know? Yeah. If anything, that was brilliant. Just to, steady the nervousness I think when you are, talking about especially any modality within sports, we are talking about, helping injury, but also Bowen is fantastic for, performance for mm-hmm. again, as what we said, hydration of fascia, that helps to reduce the, onset of any injury. Yeah. for relaxation for all sorts, sorts. Yeah, so you mentioned, uh, the, the mental health aspect as well, and, and bone is incredible for that, because obviously we store, a lot of toxins that are related to stress and memories in our, in our tissue. Mm-hmm. Um, and by releasing the tone and the stress related tension from the tissue, the body's unable to clear it. So you get to move on. Yeah. That. Yeah, I do a lot of work with that, with it's implicit tissue memory where people just hold onto things and actually you can have quite an emotional response really. I actually had a really big emotional response. Do you remember when it was during an exam as well, and it was like, oh my God, what's happening? Cuz I feel that I deal with my emotions quite well. You probably don't like but, um, yeah, actually I know when it was, it was with, with Ozzie and Elaine wrench. Right, right. And I was the model for them. It was just bizarre. I had this uncontrollable, almost like breakdown. It was like a release crying. Really bad Sobbing. Yeah. And I was just left on my own. And then after that I felt I felt million dollar. I mean, I was absolutely exhausted. Yeah, It was really, really bizarre. But it's so profound, isn't it? Well, you can let go of, that's unbelievable. But I was so unprepared for it because I thought, where the hell does this come from? Because I didn't feel particularly stressed. I wasn't upset about anything. Mm-hmm. But that just goes to show you about that implicit tissue memory, because obviously I've had a lot of trauma in my past in with that, and it was just that one move. Mm-hmm. and it was literally as though someone had switched a switch on. It was really bizarre. It's so common as well. It's so common. I'm, I'm obviously very much a novice at this, but if there's one. Commonality that I've, I've seen when I've treated someone is invariably they're just knocked out. You know, I'd really encourage anyone to just give a couple sessions a go. It's just, it's so relaxing. If you, yeah. I guess you could go in having a busy mind and if you were, you were expecting big changes and, and didn't quite believe the power of, and the subtleties of the moves and just respected the technique mm-hmm. Um, but if you do relinquish that and just, let go. To the trusted practitioner and, just,, release and sink into the bed. And it can be really profound. I've done couple minutes with Mike maybe for waiting on a body. I've had the fortune of having maybe some one-on-one time to, to catch up on some of the mis courses that I've had and he's, you know, done 20 minutes of me and I'm just out like a light, you know, it's incredible just the, the few moves that he's done on me and I've just completely. You entered into this total zone of relaxation it's something anyone can do. You know, I've done it a while, but anyone, you know, when you're training you'll be getting results cuz you have to do case studies. So 10 case studies and you will start getting results very early. It is. It is a technique and a, a toolbox. Um, and yeah, I'll never forget, I had my, my upstairs neighbor who's, you know, a little bit older than I, and she was on the table and she'd done some. Cute thing to her knee. And I was like, Jesus, let's see if I can do anything here now. And you know, and question every single move I made, I'm like, that wasn't good enough. I didn't wait long enough. I've done in the wrong sequence, you know? But sure enough, after the kind of hour, 70 minute session, she gets up on the table and yeah, able to put a bit more pressure on her knee. And I was like, wow. You know, what's in my hands? I'm magic. You know? So, uh, so it is amazing. I, I obviously, Yeah, totally recommend anyone to give, to give it a whirl. The power of touch, is so understated and I think, you've got trust in your own ability and it's like Mike says, trust the process. and it's the same when you have your patience or your clients, with you. The most important thing is to explain the procedure because there's nothing worse. For the, for the client. I think they feel awkward of that silence or that that space where you're not touching them. And the reason why that happens is because the brain has to reassess, doesn't it? So explain why we do these pauses. Yeah. So the, treatment is, done in series of moves and each set of moves has, a job to do, if you like. We start with what's known as stoppers and we're therefore targeting and relaxing this, sympathetic nervous system so that the parasympathetic becomes dominant, which means you come out of your fight or flight, any external or stimuli. Uh, we'll bring you back into the fight or flight. So we we're trying to make that more dominant and bring you down into the, the healing response. And therefore, in order to allow the body time to integrate the work, we leave a couple of minutes. For all that to happen. Yeah. And then you'll come back and, and build it up and, you'll become more and more relaxed through the treatment. So Yeah. And, also after the treatment, even though the treatment is really subtle mm-hmm. don't get me wrong, there are some moves that we do get in there, don't we? But um, yeah. Even though the treatment is very subtle, you can actually feel like David said, absolutely shattered after, and you can actually sometimes feel flu. Because it's like a detoxification process. Absolutely. Yeah. It can be a huge detoxification and sometimes we do work that involves stimulating lymphatic drainage specifically, and that that will release a lot. But yeah, we can also, stimulate the kidneys or, the digestive system and, liver and, and help the body to detox. and so therefore it's very good for those that are really. because you can help strengthen the body's, immune response and energetic flow without, releasing too much Yeah. Or doing too much work. And also obviously good for athletes to improve performance, for example. Yeah. Or someone that needs to detox. That's fantastic. So what would you recommend a general, course of treatment to be? Is it okay for people to just come in and have a one-off, or would you say that they have a course of treatment? Well, normally they'd have a course. I always want change, so I expect that there would be a difference from one, quite often significant if, you know, if they're in a lot of pain. Particularly if there's an acute pain, then there's a lot we can do for that. Mm-hmm. that's actually how I tend to look at recovery. Yeah. If we look at pain as sort of an electrical, Signal firing. Yeah. And we just, we wanna calm that down. And then when they're more comfortable, then the body will relax a bit more. And you can, you can help to, give organic strength and then get onto, release restrictions in fascia and in and joint mobility so that the postly, they kind of go back to where is isn't a healthier place to be. So everyone, everyone's unique, but, a short course of treatment would generally be recommended. If you came for three sessions or six sessions, then you know that would be amount. And we, ask for seven to 10 days, wait, don't we, in between the sessions. I'd ask for five to 10 depends slightly on what we're doing. If, if, if you have, if you're doing the more kind of central nervous system, coxy related and nerve work, then I tend to see'em a bit sooner, because there's more opportunity for them to pinch things or to, slightly re-injure it. so for nerdy stuff, I'd see them sort of, you know, around five days. And then if you are doing the lymphatic drainage, Side of things and you know, you might be seven to 10, you know, maybe a bit longer. So you, spent some time in Dubai, but you're back home now. Um, that's right. Where is your practice? About Gravie? Previously I was at third Space with a medical group and it's, some great people from there. So it's, it's a smaller team, but it's brilliant. We've got excellent physios and plates and, nutrition ended by genetic, medicine And Boeing, so, okay. So if people wanna visit you, we'll put the details in the description my website, bone therapy uk.com would, has obviously clinic details and course details. Excellent. Um, yeah, so anybody who wants to find out more, head onto Mike's website. I of course do the bone technique. I do a lot more, other, bits and pieces, but also I would say that, like David, David, is coach, you know, he's, you can learn your a and p alongside this, can't you, which is anatomy and physiology. Yeah. and, I mean, you are, you are loving it, aren't you? So, yeah, I've done the first kind of six, five modules with, with the spring, 2022, and now I'm kind of just gonna join up with the, with the new crew, so kind of three more to go and then the chat. And has it opened your mind to the, to the world of fascia? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I did, health and human performance. I did sports science with a concentration of health, human performance in Memphis. So it was always kind of that way inclined, and it's always kind of sparked my interest. But I have to say, I would consider myself maybe a healthy skeptic, I dunno, like I'd definitely like to kind of go in and figure things out, and understand. But having seen. Mike, do you know, even just his observation skills, when we were kind of have a class and he's kind of talking it through and how people move. Just his ability to understand the body and where stiffness may be. Just through, looking at a body for, you know, 20, 30 seconds was, was mind blowing., and just how subtle the moves he's been a real inspiration to learn under and yeah, absolutely fascinated by by the power of the technique really. Yeah. He's great. And I know Rebecca she's a fan of Bowen, isn't she? She's had some Well, that's absolutely, yes. you know, her little bit about her story is she kinda had a little bit. you know, i b s and was kind of bounced around a few of the different Western, if it was gyny or back and forth and, and until she kind of saw you and you, you performed, you know, her six bone sessions in a, in a couple bouts of probiotics, that that totally changed her and she all of a sudden had her life back and could eat. Yeah. Almost what she wanted. So she's a huge advocate it is so powerful and as I said, I think it's really important to just, trust the process. And the guys that you are coaching, they're lucky, lucky guys because even if you're practicing, you're still healing right, Mike? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's such a good thing to work with athletes on. Uh, I've done it a lot as well in tennis too, and how you can deal with, new injur. And get them back on court or to stop, injuries coming. It's just, it's just remarkable. It's really, it's just amazing. Yeah. Well, I wanna thank you both for joining me it's been amazing and I'm sure my listeners will really, appreciate all of the explanation of what Boeing is and what fascia is. And if they need to find out anymore, they can hop onto your website. Mike, I. The details under the description. Um, but I wanna thank you very much for your time. It's been great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Marie. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.
