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How Therapists Benefit From Bowen College
Massage therapist, Christopher Sherman reviews Dr. Manon Bolliger's LISTEN program - a part of Bowen Therapy certification program at Bowen College. Sherman has taken Dr’s Bolliger’s LISTEN program. The LISTEN program is an exploration of all the components at our...
Taking the Measure of Contradictory Advice
In the last post I introduced you to a personal experience I had of subluxation of my right shoulder during a holiday in Paris. A trip to the hospital got me a sling and some drugs that either didn’t work or made me feel ill. What was to be done? The pain grew...
What is Bowen Therapy
The BowenFirst™Technique is a body manipulation therapy that uses very gentle pressure to stimulate the brain to reboot the body. Oftentimes, the most common approaches to stress management just don’t work and when they do, they don’t have long lasting results for the...
My Trip to the Hospital
In my last post I made some claims about pain that I want to illustrate with a personal example. This will take us a couple posts to cover, but it’s time well invested. During a holiday in October 2011, I had a subluxation of the right shoulder upon arriving in Paris....
The Bowen Technique Heals Pain and Trauma
As diverse as we are, emotional and physical pain is something most of us have in common. Pain relief is another story. Conventional medicine tends to fall short palliating with pills rather than curing, but there is an alternative. Award-winning naturopath Dr. Manon...
Pain Relief: Another Casualty in the War on Symptoms
We’ve been discussing the impact of the “war on symptoms” approach to health care. Let’s look at another example: pain following an injury. Our perception of the role and function of pain will determine how we experience the pain and what we want to do about it. The...
Why I Started Bowen College
I am Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND and I started Bowen College because I felt it was important to share an approach to healing that could help engage patients and clients in their own health. Once you address people’s pain they are then ready to address all of their health...
The Persecution of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynske
I finished my last post with the provocative claim that non-war on symptoms healthcare approaches were not only unfunded and sabotaged, but actually outlawed. If you suspect I’ve exaggerating, consider the case of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski over the last 30 years. His...
The War on Cancer as Part of the War on Symptoms
In my last post I reflected on the short-sighted predilection to remove the gallbladder of patients with chronic gall stone problems. As I pointed, though, this was not the end, but the beginning of a treadmill of new problems. Certainly those symptoms too can be...
Failing Cancer Patients
In recent posts I’ve been discussing fallout from the misguided war on symptoms approach to health care and – in the last post – specific problems related to cancer treatment were raised. Let’s look more closely at this situation. Despite all the effort and resources...
Have we forgotten what a gallbladder is for?
In my last post I raised the broad statistical costs of the war of symptoms. But what about the impact on the individual patient? This “war” is waged against part of the body and has just a partially “functioning body” as its best outcome. That paradigm sees symptoms...
Casualties from the War on Symptoms
In my last post I left off by raising the question of what doctors can do to change the misguided and harmful obsession with symptom relief in our healthcare system. The first step may well be simply coming to terms with the situation. For most people in the Western...
There’s a Growing Unrest with Symptom-Focused Health Care
In recent posts I explained the limitations of popular current ideas of health as merely the absence of symptoms. Do doctors have a role in expanding the expectations of what is considered health? Can we broaden patients’ views on health or are we merely technicians...
What does the headache medication industry tell us about attitudes toward health?
I left off my last post promising an example that illustrated the difference between achieving good health and merely relieving symptoms. Consider the sale of over-the-counter headache drugs. These may get rid of yours symptoms, but you are still a person with...
Symptom-Free Does Not Mean Healthy
In my last post I contrasted mainstream health institutions’ attitude to health with the definition of the World Health Organization: “complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” It is evident that patients with...
What is a condition of Good Health?
Understanding the patient’s purpose in coming to you is paramount for a doctor. The Latin root of “doctor” means “to educate,” but this often falls short of the mandate. We must educate patients about their symptoms, as well as the possible causes and all the options...
Untangling the Subjective and the Objective in Diagnosis
In my last post I made the point that doctors who allowed their assumption of detached objectivity to blind them to the meaning of their patients’ objectives and objections were missing out on a valuable venue for recovering health. The patients’ objections define the...
Doctors must be open to patients’ objectives and objections
In recent posts I’ve established that patients have their objectives or agendas in their illness, which is revealed in the meaning they attach to symptoms, uncovered in their descriptions. In light of the objectives and objections of the patient, what is the role of...
When “Objective” is Euphemism for the Doctor’s Subjective Perspective
I have spent my last several posts discussing the shortcoming of standard approaches to the subjective dimension of the SOAP formula. In the next series of post I’ll address the “O”: objective! The doctor’s task conventionally is noting the patient’s subjective vision...
LISTEN to Symptoms to Know what We’re Treating
My last post recounted an experience with an MS patient who seemed to prefer her disease to being cured because of the greater attentiveness and intimacy she felt it stirred in her husband. Not all patients will be so clear about their unconscious driving forces, but...
When the Cure Really is Worst than the Disease?
Early in my practice, I saw a patient, a psychologist, who had developed MS six months prior. She arrived in a wheelchair, guided in by her husband, who was also a patient of mine. I conducted a 2-hour interview and felt fairly certain of the treatment. A mere six...
What the Patient Believes About Their Illness Matters
In my last post I introduced two patients with sequelae of polio. A male patient was looking to improve his condition so as to care for his wife who developed Alzheimer’s and a female patient want to improve her conditions so that she would not be compelled to settle...
A Comparative Study of Two Patients Sequelae of Polio.
For a second illustration of how important is a patient’s subjective meaning of their symptoms, I want to compare two different patients affected with the sequelae of polio. Both received the same treatment. I treated them both with a technique called BowenFirst™, a...
Business as Usual Misses too Much Prevents Optimum Patient Care
In my last two posts I introduced the case study of a 67-year-old whose subjective experience of her diagnosis was continually ignored by the objective assessment and plan of a health care regime that was oblivious to her story of her injury. (Reviewing the past two...