Thomas Ambrose Bowen was born on 18 April 1916 in Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. From the 1950s until his death on 27 October 1982 he developed his unique soft-tissue therapeutic technique that is now known as The Bowen Technique.

Tom Bowen was not formally trained in any medical or alternative therapy discipline. He stated simply that his work was 'a gift from God'; nevertheless, he considered himself to be an osteopath since his assessment and treatment of each patient reflected the complete physiological situation presenting in the moment.

It was through his general love of sports and his regular attendance at games of Victorian-rules football in and around Geelong that Tom Bowen became interested in massage and other soft-tissue manipulation. He watched the teams' trainers treat injured players and began to learn from them. He observed that particular 'moves' on the body's soft tissue resulted in particular effects. One of the men he met at the 'footy club' was Ernie Saunders, a renowned soft-tissue 'manipulator' from a suburb of nearby Melbourne. Saunders is generally believed to have had a powerful influence on Bowen's skills with manual therapy, especially in the beginning.

One person who benefited from Tom Bowen's hands-on therapy was Rene Horwood, the wife of Stan Horwood, a friend of Bowen's from the Geelong Cement Works. (Note: Rene is short for Irene, Mrs. Horwood's middle name, and rhymes with Irene.) The Horwoods credited Rene's recovery from a stroke to Bowen's hands-on therapy. In 1957, they invited him to use their home for seeing patients in the evenings after work. The front room of their home at 100 Autumn Street, Geelong, Geelong became Tom Bowen's first clinic.

Stan Horwood died a few months after Bowen began seeing patients. As Stan had requested, Rene looked after Tom. She acted as his mentor, receptionist, and business manager for all but two of the 26 years of Bowen's practice. Rene, who had run a successful hairdressing business in Melbourne, also helped Bowen develop some of his techniques. She outlived him by almost 19 years, dying in September 2001 at the age of 93.

Bowen did not advertise his work but relied instead on word-of-mouth recommendations. Nevertheless, patients often queued up in the front yard until 3 o'clock in the morning waiting to be treated.

When demand for Bowen's therapy outgrew the one-room clinic on Autumn Street, Tom and Rene rented a larger clinic on Latrobe Terrace. All told, Bowen practised out of five successive clinics, all in Geelong: the first on Autumn Street, then two on Latrobe Terrace and the last two on Villamanta Street. Click here for details about Tom Bowen's style of working in his clinics. Click here for details about Tom Bowen's style of working in his clinics.

Tom Bowen treated an average of 14 patients per hour. Two main factors account for his ability to work at this phenomenal pace:

* His uncanny ability to assess each person's needs with little verbal or hands-on interaction. He was aware of the specific 'moves' that were needed (as well as how much hands-on work might be too much for them) by observing them in the waiting room and treatment room. As he worked, his super-sensitive fingers would assess, treat, and monitor changes in their tissue, allowing him to get maximum results with the minimum number of 'moves'.

* His assistants. These women escorted the patients into the treatment rooms, took their histories, helped get them onto the treatment beds in the appropriate position, and loosened their clothing so that Bowen could make best use of his time. He would move from room to room applying his technique as needed, and would signal his assistants by clicking his fingers to turn the patients over or get them up.

(Note: Nowadays, Bowen practitioners do not work at that rate; most see from one to six clients per hour. Without Tom Bowen's assessment skills, most practitioners need three, four, or more sessions to get the results that Tom Bowen often achieved in one or two. Even so, the Bowen Technique is remarkable for the speed with which it stimulates healing and the length of time that the results last.)

Before Tom Bowen rented his first outside clinic, he went to the authorities to register his practice. They told him that only physiotherapists were required to register; if he called himself anything else, he wouldn't have to register. He called himself an osteopath because that was his philosophical and practical approach to healing. In the early 1970s, however, the regulations were changed; osteopaths, chiropractors, and naturopaths would be required to be licensed and to register with the government. Bowen applied for registration as an osteopath. He passed the practical requirements with flying colours but was denied on other grounds: not having a diploma from a registered academy and refusing to answer abstract questions -- saying instead that he had to see and touch clients in order to know which moves would be appropriate in each particular case. After being denied recognition as an osteopath, he changed his title from 'osteopath' to 'manual therapist'.

Tom Bowen was demoralised by this rejection, in part because his patients would not become eligible for insurance coverage for his treatments. His concern for his patients' wellbeing and his lack of interest in money were legendary. Click here for more examples of his generosity.