Bowen Technique for Sciatica and Restless Leg

One of my Pilates colleagues, Sandra, came to me with a number of related issues: sciatic pain, numbness in her lower leg and foot, a pulling from her hip flexor into her back which would make it hard to get to sleep at night, restless leg syndrome and right ankle pain which was stopping her doing tango.

She responded surprisingly quickly to the first treatment and for four days afterwards her ankle pain, restless leg and the pain causing the sleep problem disappeared. She had a massage booked which she went to as it was more “relaxation” than therapy and she forgot the “don´t have any other treatments during your course of Bowen” warning. The day after this massage all her symptoms returned as bad as they had been. After the second treatment the numbness and hip/back pain got worse for 4 days and then on the 5th day the pain went.

After three treatments the numbness was significantly less, though she could still feel it, but the ankle pain, restless leg and hip-flexor/back pain had gone.

A year later, with perhaps one treatment in between, the ankle pain is a distant memory, and her restless leg and sciatic pain only bother her occasionally. There is still some residual pain in her back after exercise, but she doesn´t have any problem getting to sleep due to it. 

“The symptoms I came to James with seemed so disconnected, yet all equally annoying and uncomfortable. The restless leg was something I had learned to accept and almost didn't mention it to James as it runs in my family. One of my sisters, my mother and grandmother all suffer from it. And I thought it would never be solved.
 
I had tried other soft tissue therapies in the past, which seemed to help, but only for short periods. James started working on my back first and I was initially unsure as to how much this was going to help me, as it was so simple, soft and light.
 
Bowen provided me with an immediate sense of relaxation and pain relief: one day my back went into spasm at work and James did a move on my sacrum between clients, which to my great surprise released the pain instantly. Sometimes I would feel pain after the session, sometimes it would take a day to set in and other times there was no pain at all. In each case however after day 2-3 I would feel a real improvement or the pain was gone completely.
 
Definitely something I will seek to get done again if I needed it.”