About Clare

Clare Handforth is 38 years old, is a keen sportsperson and has a 15 year long I.T. career behind her which she left to become self employed and open her Body Balancing Clinic after several years of  treating clients locally in the evenings and at weekends.

Qualifications include :

I.I.H.T Body Massage Certificate

I.I.S.T Sports Massage Certificate

I.I.H.T Indian Head Massage Diploma

Cert E.C.B.S (European College of Bowen Studies) - Bowen Practitioner

Professional memberships include:

F.H.T. - Federation of Holistic Therapies

B.T.E.R - Bowen Therapists European Register

The NHS Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners 

More about Clare...

Clare says, "I come from a sporting background, taking part in many team sports over the years from school age to the present day. As the years flew by and age crept on I started to notice that my body was not as adept as it used to be at recovering from the odd knocks encountered during a game of lacrosse, football or ice hockey!. It was during the Millenium year (2000) that I was devastated to find I had damaged one of my pelvic ligaments during a particuarly rough football game and was effectively 'on my back' for 6 weeks. Chiropractic treatment followed and although temporary relief was achieved, I found I was left with a recurring 'ache' in my lower back that just would not shift no matter how many times I saw the chiropractor.

Having always had an interest in the bodies own healing properties I decided that I was going to take some qualifications myself in my spare time and started attending night school studying Body massage, Sports Injury therapy and Indian Head massage. I was pleased to complete the studies and become fully qualified in all these by February of 2002.

It was during 2003 that an old friend from college came back into my life raving about this 'new' complementary therapy that I must try called The Bowen Technique. The old friend, it turned out had left her own very successful sports teaching career to become a clinic practitioner in this therapy 6 years previously and was now a teacher of the technique!.

She badgered me to give it a try, to see if it resolved the recurring ache in my back which by was now even more regular and more intense than before. So, I gave in during one visit to her house and allowed her to 'do her stuff'.

First of all, I got off the treatment couch and realised I felt exactly the same as I had before the treatment, in fact I was a litte fed up at the fact she had hardly touched my back. So I am thinking to myself, that this is not for me at all. Then about 4 hours later when I was whining to my partner at home about this treatment experience, I had the most sudden intense heat sensation occur as if a lightening flash had cracked down my back from my right shoulder in a zig zag direction to my left hip!. I stood very still for a moment wondering what had hit me, then I noticed as I gingerly moved myself around my kitchen that I was suddenly much looser and guess what, that damn ache was not there anymore in my lower back.

Unconvinced that it would last I went to bed a little subdued by the experience. On waking I was amazed to find that yes, it was still not there and in fact to this day that ache has never returned. 

So why was the experience so special?. Well I rang my old friend the next day and recounted what had happened and she simply said, "Ah yes, that will have been a Bowen response, most likely a fascia adjustment, you would know that if you were a Bowen Therapist yourself!". 

Of course, that comment alone was enough to make me want to  take the qualification in Bowen. I couldnt believe that something so simple and gentle had effectively removed the previous 2.5 years of constant aching. I had to find out for myself how it worked!.

The rest as they say is history .... I have fully qualified in The Bowen Technique and left my I.T. career to concentrate on providing Complementary Therapies to an ever growing list of clients through my Body Balancing Clinic.

I am a huge evangelist for the statement Hippocrates made: 

'The body heals itself; the phsyician is only nature's assistant' .

I hope you have found reading this section interesting. I very much look forward to being able to help many more people find and restore their own bodies balance through Complementary Therapy.

To contact me to find out more or to book an appointment at the clinic, please feel free to do so through the 'Contact Us' section.

Many Thanks

Clare