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Ben Calder

@bengcalder

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Helping you find balance, vitality, health and connection through #Kinesiology, #Qigong & #BowenTechnique. Online + SY/CH/NW 🌿 Let’s connect!

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John Wilks speaks of our ability in Bowen to help the body drop down into the parasympathetic state and how important that is for healing and restoration in the body and how this supports our body to remind it of the value of this space for its own repair.

What have you noticed about the states you either initiate (as a practitioner) or experience as a client through Bowen?

We'd love to hear

See the full interview with John on our YouTube channel via the link in our bio

#bowen #bowentechnique #fasciarelease #myofasiclarelease #nervoussystemsupport #podcast #interview #teaching #integralhealth #health #painmanagement #resolvingpain #parasympatheticstates by @bengcalder

I’m really pleased to be supporting Mandem in the Woods this weekend by bringing some LifeForce Qigong to their community event.

What began as a vision to create a safe space for men to connect, talk openly and support one another has grown into a welcoming community built around friendship, nature and mutual support.

This Sunday’s event is open to everyone — partners, children, family and friends. It will be a chance to spend time outdoors, meet good people and celebrate the positive work this community continues to do.

I’ll be contributing some gentle LifeForce Qigong, combining simple movement, breath and awareness to help us connect with ourselves and the natural surroundings.

Event details
Boldmere Gate Circular, Sutton Coldfield
Meeting point: Boldmere Gate Car Park, B73 6LH
Sunday 8 November 10am–1pm Circular family-friendly hike

This is about more than walking. It is about community, connection, reducing isolation and creating space for people to come together.

Everyone is welcome.

Free tickets are available through Eventbrite via the link in the Mandem in the Woods bio.

I hope to see you there.

#MandemInTheWoods #CommunityMatters #MentalHealthSupport #MensMentalHealth #NatureAndWellbeing #CommunityConnection #FamilyFriendlyEvent #OutdoorWellbeing #LifeForceQigong #Qigong #MindfulMovement #MovingMeditation #NatureConnection #SuttonColdfield #Boldmere #BirminghamEvents #WestMidlandsEvents #EveryoneWelcome #ConnectionAndCommunity #ReducingIsolation by @bengcalder

Are you living your life — or is your shadow living it for you?

We all have parts of ourselves that have been pushed out of awareness.

Anger. Desire. Creativity. Vulnerability. Ambition. The parts we were told were too much, too difficult, or unacceptable.

These parts do not simply disappear. They can continue to influence our choices, relationships, and reactions from the background.
Embracing Your Shadow is an online instant-access course exploring this process through a Jungian, practical and compassionate lens.

This is not about banishing, fixing, or fighting the parts of yourself you dislike.

It is about meeting them with greater curiosity, understanding, and self-compassion.

Work through the course at your own pace and begin to explore the patterns that may be asking to be understood.
Access Embracing Your Shadow online today.
https://integral-health.cademy.io/embracing-your-shadow

#EmbracingYourShadow #ShadowWork #JungianPsychology #SelfUnderstanding #PersonalGrowth #InnerWork #SelfCompassion by @bengcalder

by @bengcalder

What happens when Bowen Therapy meets fascia, professional development and the search for better evidence?

In this episode of the BTPA Podcast, Ben Calder speaks with Barry Vautier, a New Zealand-based naturopath, massage practitioner, and teacher with more than 20 years’ experience in Fascial Kinetics and Bowen Therapy.

Barry shares his thoughts on:
The role of fascia in therapeutic practice
Readiness and the practitioner’s own development
Spiritual development and clinical work
Why research matters for the future of Bowen Therapy
The B-EAGER initiative and its work to encourage education, advocacy and research • How practitioners can remain curious, grounded and open to learning

It’s a thoughtful conversation about where Bowen Therapy has come from, where it may be going, and how practitioners can contribute to a stronger and more useful evidence base.

Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel via the link in our bio

What Is Bowen Therapy Really Doing? Barry Vautier on Fascia, Readiness and Research

If you find the conversation valuable, like, share and subscribe to the BTPA channel.

#BowenTherapy #BTPA #FascialKinetics #ComplementaryTherapy #MassageTherapy #Bodywork #BowenPractitioner #Research #ProfessionalDevelopment #interview #podcast #btpa by @bengcalder

I was reflecting this morning on how much energy it takes to constantly push through the changing seasons without ever pausing to reset our internal rhythm.

Autumn is the season for strengthening our immune defences and supporting our lung energy, helping us stay resilient as the environment shifts around us. It is also a quiet time for letting go of old emotional debris—the subtle regrets or past sadness that we no longer need to carry in our bodies.

For those looking to dive deeper into this work, we are holding our 5-day residential Luminous Being Retreat in Snowdonia from 8th–11th November, where the founder of the system will be here to lead people in a deep dive into the practice and inquiry into our own patterns.

Weekly classes are held at 7pm on Tuesdays in Shrewsbury and Thursdays in Hawarden. If you feel moved to explore this further, book in and get your first class FREE with code LFQFREE1 via the link in my bio

#LifeForceQigong #MindfulMovement #ShrewsburyWellness #HawardenEvents #QigongBasics #Stillness #InternalHealth #QigongFlow #JointHealth #EnergyHealing #Vitality #LifeForce #Balance #QigongPractice #EaseAndGrace #QigongLife #StressRelief by @bengcalder

🌀 Lifeforce Qigong with Ben Calder 🌀

We're delighted to welcome Ben Calder to Jenna Blair Yoga Wellbeing Centre. Ben has inspired me over the years and really so very pleased that he will be bringing his teaching to our space.

A NEW weekly mindful movement class offering a space to practise and share the core elements of LifeForce Qigong, a gentle form of Tai Chi focused entirely on health and wellbeing. Designed for all levels of experience, abilities and ages, our foundation classes guide you through essential practices to help release physical limitations and harmonise the mind, increasing available energy, while keeping the body relaxed.

What we explore together:

Joint conditioning and postural alignment

Fascial release and the 'Oceanic Spine'

Building vitality and seasonal 5 Element practices

Gentle spiral movements and energy flow

Led by Centre for Integral Health founder Ben Calder, who has practised Qigong for over 35 years, these sessions provide a practical way to support your physical ease, emotional resilience and mental clarity through movement, focus and quiet reflection.

BOOK DIRECTLY WITH BEN HERE > https://bookwhen.com/integralhealth

Jenna 🧘‍♀️

#qigongshropshire #qigongshrewsbury Ben Calder - Integral Health @bengcalder by @bengcalder

Bowen is one of the most flexible careers in terms of work/life balance, allowing you to be as flexible as you need to be.

Lead tutor at College of Bowen College, Jo Whortley, talks about how this was her experience of managing a family and developing a new career. She also highlights that even as the number of Bowen practitioners in her area increased, she only got busier because of the collective power of their marketing.

We love Bowen because it is an AI-proof career and no matter how much work shifts to AI, Bowen, for its high-touch contact, will always have a place and if anything, the need for us will only increase

What are your thoughts on this?

You can see our full panel interview on how Bowen is an AI-proof career on our YouTube Channel via thelink in our bio

#bowen #bowentechnique #fasciarelease #myofasiclarelease #nervoussystemsupport #podcast #interview #teaching #integralhealth #health #painmanagement #resolvingpain #aifutures #aiproof #aicareers #beyondai #bowencareers by @bengcalder

We are often afraid that if we fully surrender to our shadow, we will never come back from it—that the quiet spaces inside us stretch on without end, and we might get lost in them entirely. We worry that showing these unpalatable parts of ourselves will be too much for others to bear, leaving us alone with only our heaviest thoughts for company.

Yet the self-reflection you might be avoiding is often the very thing that helps everything shift.

This self-paced course offers a gentle, structured space to meet these internal patterns with curiosity rather than judgement.

If you feel moved to explore this further, Ben would love to hear from you if this is relevant for you, or you can begin the Embracing Your Shadow self-paced course via the link in my bio

#shadowwork #theshadow #shadowself #innerwork #integratingtheshadow #shadowworker #embraceyourdarkness #knowthyself #subconsciousmind #darknightofthesoul by @bengcalder

I noticed how easily our shoulders tend to creep upward toward our ears as the autumn schedule gets busier, and it made me reflect on how much we hold onto without realising it.

This seasonal transition is a natural invitation to support our immune system and nurture our lung energy through conscious breathing and gentle movement. When we create space in the body, we often find that old emotional weights—such as lingering regret or quiet sorrow—can finally begin to release.

LifeForce Qigong is a practical way to reset that physical and energetic baseline, helping you move through the darker months with more ease and clarity.

To explore this inquiry further, we are delighted to offer our 5-day residential Luminous Being Retreat in Snowdonia from 8th–11th November, featuring the founder of the system leading a deep dive into the practice and inquiry into our own patterns.

Weekly classes are held at 7pm on Tuesdays in Shrewsbury and Thursdays in Hawarden

Book in and get your first class FREE with code LFQFREE1 via the link in my bio

#LifeForceQigong #MindfulMovement #ShrewsburyWellness #HawardenEvents #QigongBasics #Stillness #InternalHealth #QigongFlow #JointHealth #EnergyHealing #Vitality #LifeForce #Balance #QigongPractice #EaseAndGrace #QigongLife #StressRelief by @bengcalder

Dr Romney Smeeton, talking to us about how structure governs function and then what comes beyond that, the higher levels of understanding where he feels we get something really special in the work we do.
He also speaks about his exploration of Tom's work, looking at different dimensions. And why it is important to keep on exploring

What are your thoughts on this

You can see the full two-part interview with Romeny on our YouTube channel via the link in our bio

#bowen #bowentechnique #fasciarelease #myofasiclarelease #nervoussystemsupport #podcast #interview #teaching #integralhealth #health #painmanagement #resolvingpain by @bengcalder

A Caesarean scar is frequently surrounded by sensations that patients learn to quietly tolerate: patches of complete numbness, areas of intense hypersensitivity, or a persistent coldness to the touch.

These sensory shifts occur because cutaneous and subcutaneous nerve branches—such as the ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerves—are inevitably severed or tethered within the fibrous matrix. When neural gliding is restricted, or when the lymphatic vacuum of the lower abdomen is impeded by dense fibrous barriers, fluid pools. The area may feel boggy, swollen, or perpetually cold from diminished microcirculation.

Yet the deeper disruption is often internal disconnection. Many women describe feeling as though their body has been split into an upper and lower half, accompanied by a subtle aversion to touching the lower abdomen. When sensation is dulled or painful, sexual intimacy, pelvic floor recruitment, and self-confidence can quietly suffer, placing unseen strain on relationships and daily vitality.

Restoring tissue mobility is not about forcing an aggressive breakdown of tissue. Through the gentle, precise digital moves of McLoughlin Scar Tissue Release (MSTR®), we encourage the disorganised collagen fibres to realign, inviting neural feedback and vascular flow back into areas that felt absent for years.

Clinical consultations and treatments are available at the Chester Wellness Centre and the Centre for Integral Health in Shrewsbury.
Ben would love to hear from you if you feel curious to explore how your body might reconnect

#scartreatment #scarhealing #scarremodelling #scarpain #painsolutions #fascia #fasciarelease #complexpainsolutions #myscarjourney #training #education #physiotherapy #healthcare #bodywork #bowentechnique by @bengcalder