BODY STRESS RELEASE is a gentle, non-therapeutic complementary health technique now available in Northern Ireland. The procedure uses a series of light, precise stimulation to encourage the body to release stored tensions that can manifest as backache, headaches, postural distortions or fatigue in a person’s body.(Refer to next page for further information.)

WHERE DID BODY STRESS RELEASE ORIGINATE?
Body Stress Release (BSR) was developed in South Africa by Ewald and Gail Meggersee and has been researched and practiced since 1981. In 1988 the BSR Association was formed and along with its constitution ensures a professional standard among all BSR practitioners.

Ewald's Personal Experience
At the age of five Ewald, whilst playing, fell out of a tree and was unconscious for a week. Throughout his subsequent childhood and early adulthood, he suffered severe cramping and shooting pains throughout his body. As an adult, regular chiropractic treatments provided temporary relief only for the pains to return later. After several occasions when Ewald lost the sensations in his lower body, their fears of him becoming paralysed made the couple rethink their future. They gave up their respective jobs, Gail was a French teacher and Ewald an industrial chemist, and moved to America to train as chiropractors. There they hoped to discover a way to identify the source of Ewald's pain and reverse his worsening condition.

During their studies in America, they had the good fortune to meet Dr Richard van Rumpt, a retired chiropractor who had researched an approach completely different to chiropractic manipulation. This used the body’s natural biofeedback mechanism to aid the self-healing process. On returning to South Africa, Gail and Ewald built on Dr van Rumpt’s methods to help them interpret the body's feedback-response to areas of abnormal muscle stress and contraction using Ewald as their “guinea pig”. The technique became known as Body Stress Release.

Their new technique was proven first hand. Ewald went from being a near cripple to regaining his strength and having a pain-free body which continues to improve. “For the first time in my life I can feel the sensation of socks and shoes on my feet and have improved movement in my ankles”, he says.

BSR has helped thousands of South Africans since Gail and Ewald started their BSR practice in Cape Town in the 1980s. Clients have found this gentle technique of releasing long-held body stress to work wonders for them where other more conventional practices had failed.

STRESS AND HEALTH
We are constantly subjected to various forms of stress in our daily lives. A certain amount is necessary, to provide us with challenges, and to stimulate us to strive for survival and to make progress in our daily lives.

The body is self-healing and its mechanisms allow constant monitoring of every function taking place to allow us to adapt to our external influences and stresses and make appropriate internal changes and adaptations as required.

Certain stress factors will cause a temporary reduction of the body’s efficiency, or health, e.g. a strained muscle will be stiff and painful for a few days; then it will return to its normal condition. The body is capable of healing wounds and fractures, counteracting harmful chemicals, adapting to sudden changes in temperature, etc.

Stress Overload of the body - stress becomes a negative, destructive factor in life when it goes beyond your own body’s ability to adapt to it. “Overload” occurs when physical tensions, instead of being naturally released from the body, become stored within it as “Body Stress”. Individuals differ in their emotional and physical makeup and also their susceptibility to stress overload.