Reading the Body and
Learning to Heal
A sociological perspective on
alternative and complementary
medicine
Nicola Kay Gale
N.K.Gale@warwick.ac.uk
Structure of presentation
w Introduction to the study
w Methods
w Analytical themes focusing on embodiment
w New Directions: Learning to heal
Introduction
w What is CAM?
w Why this study?
w Focus of the presentation – ‘embodied
practice’
Methods
w Exploratory study
w 8 semi-structured
interviews (45-90
minutes) with
experienced CAM
practitioners
w Reflections on identity
and practice
Questions:
w How they became
involved in their
therapy
w Own health beliefs and
behaviours
w Their practice and their
relationship with
patients
Analytical Themes
w Reading the body
w The practitioner’s role in healing
w The practitioner ‘embodying the therapy’
Part 1 – Reading the body
w Body Language and interpreting ‘dis-ease’
w Holism and the ‘mindbodyspirit’ – a
sociological problem
Kern (2001)
‘Nature is supremely intelligent and does not
make mistakes. Nature always seeks balance
whatever the circumstances’
Scott (1998)
‘Bodily-based politics’
‘the homoeopath and the vital force… join
hands in a quest for liberation which
sometimes goes, literally “over the head” of
the patient’
Part 2 – The practitioner’s
role in healing
w Practitioner-patient relationship and the
mind-body interaction
w Responding to the patient’s needs (creating
narratives of meaning)
w Personal responsibility and personal
development
w Education in the therapeutic encounter
Mr E
w ‘The old business of GPs… [has] gone out the
window… They tend to refer you on, which means
they are clearing house… people used to go for
their spiritual needs to their local vicar or whatever
their religion happened to be. They don’t bother
any more…which is why a lot of people go to
alternative therapists because the alternative
therapists (a) will give you more time and (b)…
have the answers that people think are necessary’
Mr B
w ‘I’ve seen situations in my practice where I
felt there was a connection between
symptoms that the patients just didn’t buy.
And there is no point in pushing that because
if it is not their reality, it doesn’t matter
whether I feel that I’m right or wrong’
Personal Responsibility (Mrs P)
w ‘Most of [my clients] are of the same mind
[as me], to be honest, that they have come
with the same idea that they are taking
responsibility for their own health’
Coward (1989)
w ‘The wholesome entrepreneur’
w ‘The perfect resolution of a personal politics
of the body with a peaceful co-existence
within the existing economic structure’
Lupton (1995)
w ‘Under the prevailing discourse of
“healthism”, the pursuit of good health has
become an end in itself rather than a means
to an end’
Mr D
w ‘There is also an educative component in what goes
on. People come in from the allopathic point of
view, where the disease is like a photograph, it’s
just a moment and that is what you deal with…[but]
the homoeopath would look at it… as a video… Do
they want a longer term quality of life or do they
just want to get rid of their pain? And you go as far
as the patient wants to go… You have to start
where the patients is… otherwise the patient can’t
empathize, they can’t get to where you are and they
don’t see what you are seeing’
Mrs P
w ‘I had a client who came who was forever
saying to me “I feel miles better, but, of
course, I don’t know if that’s all in the
mind”. And I said “well that’s where we
want it to be” and I don’t think that she has
grasped the idea even now!’
Part 3 – practitioners
‘embodying the therapy’
• The ‘wounded’ healer
• The ‘balanced’ healer
• A personal and spiritual journey of health
and healing
Danciger
w ‘Symbolic stories are a great gift for they
continually open up new ways of seeing,
perceiving and experiencing our realities’
Self-healing
Wounded
⇓
Self-healing and self-development
⇓
Balanced
Self-identity
w ‘I maintain a positive attitude to life
whenever possible’
w ‘Emotionally, I think that I’m a better
person… I feel more stable, calmer…
because of doing the Yoga and investigating
what is going on inside’
Emotion work
w Dealing with difficult patients (Ms K)
w ‘But then you can look at yourself and think
what it is that is upsetting you about this
person and if you can honestly find the
answer to that then it is usually ok, it usually
changes the whole dynamic of it’
Reflexivity and the limits of
practice – Kern (2001)
w ‘In craniosacral work one may never know
what really needs to happen for the patient,
but the intelligence within the patient’s own
system does… Therefore, finding a neutral
place from which to practice is of critical
importance if the patient’s self-healing forces
are to be supported without interference’
Learning to heal?
w Knowledge
What is the form and
structure of
knowledge/s
re/produced by
alternative medical
communities about
health and healing?
w Identity
In what ways do
students negotiate the
learning process and
how does this shape or
change their embodied
identities?
Embodiment
w Embodied knowledge – intuitive, practical,
experiential and emotional knowledge as
well as formal knowledge
w Embodied identities – overcoming the mindbody dualism, and makes explicit the
personal development that goes alongside the
learning process
Alison Jaggar (1989)
w ‘the reconstruction of knowledge is
inseparable from the reconstruction of
ourselves’
The research
w Mixed methods ethnography
w 3 Case studies – Reiki, Osteopathy and
Homoeopathy training colleges
w Participant-observation
w Content analysis (Atlas TI or similar)
Themes for analysis
w Social values ascribed to different types of
knowledge and ways of knowing about health and
healing;
w The embodied and social identity of the ‘knower’;
w Emotional intelligence and emotion work in
healing;
w The learning process (experiential/intuitive), and
w The body and embodiment
Any questions?
… thank you
N.K.Gale@warwick.ac.uk