Registered Body Stress Release Practitioner
Peter van Minnen has been practising Body Stress Release for over 27 years. He trained at the Body Stress Release Academy in South Africa, qualifying in 1992, and has been based in Westerham, Kent since 1993. He is one of the most experienced BSR practitioners in the United Kingdom.
His introduction to BSR was personal before it was professional. Peter spent years as an architect, crouched over a drawing board for long hours, and had lived with a back problem for 15 years that had not responded to conventional approaches. A course of BSR cleared it. That experience did not simply change his health. It changed the direction of his career and his life.
Peter has since applied BSR across an enormous range of patient presentations, from chronic back and neck pain to headaches, sciatica, joint pain, whiplash, sports injuries and stress-related conditions including panic attacks and persistent fatigue. Over the past 24 years he has also extended his practice to horses and dogs, applying BSR to animals with results that are, as he is fond of noting, rather difficult to attribute to placebo. He published a book on this work in 2009, “Horses Have Wings,” documenting 53 case histories treating horses. In February 2020 he was invited to South Africa to spend two weeks treating horses and dogs in Cape Town and along the Garden Route, following interest generated by the book.
During his time at Neal’s Yard Therapy Rooms in London, where he was based until 2017, his clients included Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, actors Margaret Tyzack and Geraldine James, and a number of familiar faces from the world of television. More significant, in Peter’s view, are the many patients who had exhausted conventional treatment options and found genuine relief with BSR when nothing else had helped.
Peter has written on the questions his patients most frequently arrive with. His articles on what body stress release is and how it differs from osteopathy or massage, why some back pain does not respond to conventional treatment and chronic pain and the nervous system provide an accessible foundation for anyone new to the discipline. His piece on body stress release for animals tells a story that many patients find both compelling and reassuring.
What Body Stress Release Is
BSR is a gentle, non-invasive therapy developed by Ewald and Gail Meggersee in South Africa. It operates on the understanding that physical, chemical and emotional stressors can cause tension to become stored in the body’s connective tissue and nerve pathways, where it disrupts the nervous system’s ability to self-regulate. BSR uses light, precise pressure applied to specific reflex sites along the spine and body to communicate with the nervous system and encourage the release of this stored tension.
There is no manipulation, no forceful pressure and no discomfort. The client remains fully clothed throughout. BSR does not conflict with any medication or medical treatment.
What Peter Treats
Chronic back and neck pain including conditions that have not responded to other treatments, sciatica and referred nerve pain, joint pain and reduced mobility, tension headaches and migraines, whiplash injuries, sports and accident injuries, panic attacks and stress-related physical symptoms, low energy and a persistent sense of being under-par, and ongoing maintenance for patients who wish to sustain the results of a completed course of treatment.
Book a session with Peter or learn more about body stress release at Hever Health.