Aquapoetics

Review: Bodyway as in Waterway

  

This extract from Mirka Knaster's valuable book on body-oriented practices, Discovering the Body's Wisdom, uses water as its metaphor for the constant change and movement (circulatory and interrelating) that characterizes the life of a human body.  Mirka writes:

There's a lot of name-calling in the field of body practices.  It's not mud-slinging, but a habit of differentiating and labeling.  Some practitioners are engaged in bodywork.  Others consider their approaches therapy.  Still others say they're neither, but rather somatic education, movement awareness, structural integration, or even emotional integration. ...

To get around the divisions in the field, I created the term bodyways.  It broadly incorporates therapy and education as well as relaxation, while still allowing for each separate category of  practice and its distinguishing characteristics.  I chose way (from the Old English wegan, "to move") because it suggests a pathway or process, as in waterway.

Think of the many different waterways through which water moves: creeks, streams, rivulets, rivers, channels, brooks, rills, seas, oceans, bays, sounds, and lakes.  All of the bodyways involve movement, and often the least effortful way can bring about the most ease.  Life is, after all, movement.  We are living bodies, always in process. As 70 percent water, we are in constant flux, just like a stream.  And just like a stream receives water from various sources, so too do we take in new information from a variety of bodyways.

From Discovering the Body's Wisdom: A Comprehensive Guide to More than Fifty Mind-Body Practices that can Relieve Pain, Reduce Stress, and Foster Health, Spiritual Growth, and Inner Peace by Mirka Knaster,   p. xv-xvi (Bantam Books, 1996).

Do you keep records of your alternative aquatics* sessions?

• Is there any value in documenting anecdotal results obtained in aquatic practices such as those offered in alternative health and spa settings?

• If these practices do not fit current scientific-medical models does that mean they are not valid as therapeutic modalities?

• What aspects of these so-called alternative practices might warrant further study?

• Could we develop an appropriate framework for documentation and research into alternative aquatics?

These are some of the questions I have often asked myself since I discovered aquatic bodywork, beginning with Watsu, and found that my previous scientific background did not explain or prepare me for much of what I have experienced through this work over the last decade.  It is an area that I believe remains largely unexplored, at least in any kind of collaborative way across a spectrum of alternative aquatics practitioners.

The article that follows was prepared for a clinical aquatics audience.  These practitioners have, in recent years, adopted several alternative practices (Watsu for example).  However, in most cases, at least officially, these non-traditional techniques and the philosophies behind them are adjusted to fit the stipulations of the clinical context which requires evidence-based therapy in order to be able to bill through Medicare in the US.

I suggest that quite often something is lost in that translation or adaptation.  I would like to see more recognition by clinical and non-clinical practitioners alike of the nature of the significant differences between their  practices.  It is not always appropriate to assess the therapeutic value of alternative practices by scientific methods and certainly not reasonable to devalue or sideline them when they do not fit such methods.

One way to effectively demonstrate this would be for alternative aquatics practitioners to document their sessions and results more consistently than generally occurs.  I invite your comments and your ideas for promoting the keeping and sharing of records of aquatic sessions, and eventually for furthering research into those aspects that do not fit the current scientific models. 

If you are an alternative aquatics practitioner who already keeps records, I welcome your contact.  If you are interested in keeping records, I would be glad to share with you a forthcoming basic documentation system that can be adapted to your particular setting and circumstances.  Please contact me using the Email option in the left-hand column of this website or Comment below.

* By Alternative Aquatics I mean any water-based healing modality that involves movement and/or bodywork but that is not considered suitable without significant modification for clinical settings or medical billing (see below for a list of factors related to this).
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CINGA Government Services guidelines for the documentation of aquatic therapy billed under Medicare, identified the following 'weaknesses' in services, which they considered made them ineligible for coverage.  The exact same list could be used to describe many non-clinical aquatic bodywork practices.  In fact, these aspects may also be part of what makes the latter beneficial whether scientifically proven to be so or not.

• services provided to beneficiaries with no [medically] identified need for the use of this type of treatment
• little evidence to support [therapeutic] need for use of a water-based environment
• services provided for excessive durations of time per treatment session (in excess of one hour)
• services continued for long periods of time (several months) in the absence of documented functional gains
• services were repetitive and appeared to be for conditioning and fitness or maintenance

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