About Body Stress Release

Body Stress Release (BSR) is a unique complementary health technique, researched and developed in South Africa in the 1980s by Gail and Ewald Meggersee, and practised worldwide.

Body Stress Release offers a gentle and effective way to release stored tension from the muscles, and works with your body’s natural desire to be stress-free.

This stored tension may be the cause of discomfort or other symptoms you’re experiencing. This can include a multitude of indications such as backache, neck pain, headaches, sciatic pain, cramp, constipation, vulval pain and anxiety – to name a few.

Our bodies store this body stress in layers, often over many years. Think of the layers of an onion. With BSR we encourage the body to release these layers, just like peeling back the layers of an onion.

Body Stress Release uses information provided by your body to locate stored tension. This could be affecting your nervous system and, therefore, your body’s ability to function to its fullest potential.

What is body stress?

In day-to-day life we’re subjected to different kinds of stress: physical, mental, emotional and chemical. Our bodies are designed to adapt to this positively until we find ourselves under excessive stress. When we reach this point of overload, the muscles can tighten in a protective action attempting to limit movement in the affected area – a joint or tendon perhaps. This tightening can result in the stress or tension becoming locked into the body’s physical structures. This is what we call ‘body stress’, and over time this accumulative build-up of body stress exerts pressure on the spinal nerves and may cause pain, numbness, muscle weakness, stiffness, distorted posture and impaired functioning.

At first you may feel progressively tired and achy, but later pain, stiffness, or numbness might set in. The effects vary, but the result could be a slow decline in overall health as it reduces the efficiency of your body’s natural self-healing ability.

Very often a client will report that their extremely painful symptoms have been brought on by the tiniest of movements, when in fact this seemingly insignificant movement is likely to be the last straw, resulting in body stress becoming locked-in. The physical tension needs to be effectively and precisely released to encourage and restore normal functioning, and in order to stop the cycle of stress overload and compensation.

Causes of body stress

Physical stress

an injury, strain or poor posture

Emotional stress

bereavement, work issues, relationship problems

Chemical stress

air pollutants, additives, chemicals in household products

What happens during an appointment?

During your first appointment your practitioner will give you a brief explanation of Body Stress Release and take a detailed case history.

You remain fully clothed and will either be lowered down, or asked to lie down, on a specially designed couch. The practitioner will test your body for body stress using a series of gentle reflex tests along your spine and other areas of your body as required. Your body will indicate the exact sites of body stress, and your practitioner will apply a gentle but precise stimulation to the affected areas to encourage your body to ‘release’ the tension, thereby restoring communication and its natural self-healing abilities.

After carrying out the releases, your practitioner will explain what they have found, advise you on posture and show you some simple self-help techniques.

Your practitioner will book three initial appointments for you over a period of two weeks. It’s important that you attend all three appointments, as BSR is a process and some clients can experience increased sensitivity – especially after the first release.

Responses are often rapid, although you may need further appointments depending on how your body responds and how long the tension has been stored.

The origins of BSR

Body Stress Release is a unique complementary health technique pioneered in South Africa in the 1980s by Gail and Ewald Meggersee, and is now practised worldwide.

The need to develop this technique arose from the debilitating pain that Ewald experienced into his adulthood, after he fell from a tree aged five.

During their research they discovered how the body automatically reacts to stress in a highly organised way, and stores the stress as lines of tension in specific directions. They also discovered how those different areas are interconnected, and that body stress in one part of the body can affect another part too. Their research and Ewald’s continued healing led to the creation of Body Stress Release.