Barrett Dorko
02-07-2006, 04:04 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
Forty miles outside of Des Moines Iowa it suddenly blared from the speakers in response to my incessant pressure on the radio’s “seek” function - “On The Bus We Play Everything!!” What followed until I reached the Sheraton an hour later was a variety of music I’ve never before heard sequentially. Obviously, this is The Bus’ thing; randomly chosen songs from multiple genres across several decades. I found the effect exhilarating and invigorating. It was a good thing too, because the farmland was about to put me to sleep.
My classes always want to know how long I treat people, how many visits and how long the effect of any single session will last. These aren’t unreasonable questions. Many clinics demand that therapists include this kind of information before any actual treatment is provided. I think that when you’re dealing with pathology that heals as expected protocols of care can be provided with confidence. My problem, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t see or treat such things. Predicting recovery accurately for an abnormal neurodynamic is difficult and, I think, counterproductive. Of course I can always say that if the patient does what I tell them to do regularly then they’ll get better, but that doesn’t exactly make me Nostradamus. (http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/Nostradamus/index.html)
The Bus continued to surprise me with each new selection as I wound my way toward the outskirts of the city. As often happens, I wasn’t going to actually see the city I was teaching in at all - only the hotel near the airport. In my experience, Des Moines in indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside – but I know my experience is a strange one. For all I actually know Des Moines Iowa is a wild and crazy place, but I would have to use my experience with the therapists in my class to determine that. If they truly reflect their local culture I should get some sense of the way things are within a few miles from the hotel. I never actually go there myself.
The rock-hard expectation of my classes is to be shown how to figure out precisely what is wrong with their patients complaining of pain and then be told exactly what to do with their hands on the patient’s surface in order to change that in the direction they prefer. After all, isn’t that what manual therapy is supposed to do? But they soon discover as I speak that I feel we can only hear what’s wrong, that we can’t actually trust what people say, and that we can only vaguely sense it with our hands. They learn that there’s little to see that I think is reliable and valid. Most importantly, they learn that with my hands I’m looking for what is right, not what’s wrong. I call it The Pollyanna Doctrine. (http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/pollyann.htm)
If the class in Des Moines reflected the local citizenry I would have to conclude that they are a sedate and fairly predictable lot. Most didn’t answer any question beyond a whisper and their reading didn’t extend into the latest neuroscience or into the intricacies of philosophy or phenomenology. They practice traditionally, and if they don’t, it’s clear that that they cannot express any defendable theory – not that I give them much of a chance to do so. Instead I invite them here - and they don’t come. Please remember that I said they seemed to practice traditionally etc. I don't actually know this.
But because I spent that solitary hour on the road approaching their town listening to The Bus I have a sense that beneath the surface of everyone there is something surprising, unexpected, compelling, interesting, unfamiliar and unpredictable. Because this thing is uniquely expressed I can’t hope to control it but only bear witness. Always, its power to affect the present experience of another fascinates me.
We’re all like this, even those people we call patients. When I’m asked how many times I see others and for how long and what happens once they walk out the door I can only shake my head and smile, and think ruefully about what our profession has become.
Maybe now I’ll start answering the question in this way; “In Des Moines there’s a radio station called The Bus…”
Maybe that will work.
Forty miles outside of Des Moines Iowa it suddenly blared from the speakers in response to my incessant pressure on the radio’s “seek” function - “On The Bus We Play Everything!!” What followed until I reached the Sheraton an hour later was a variety of music I’ve never before heard sequentially. Obviously, this is The Bus’ thing; randomly chosen songs from multiple genres across several decades. I found the effect exhilarating and invigorating. It was a good thing too, because the farmland was about to put me to sleep.
My classes always want to know how long I treat people, how many visits and how long the effect of any single session will last. These aren’t unreasonable questions. Many clinics demand that therapists include this kind of information before any actual treatment is provided. I think that when you’re dealing with pathology that heals as expected protocols of care can be provided with confidence. My problem, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t see or treat such things. Predicting recovery accurately for an abnormal neurodynamic is difficult and, I think, counterproductive. Of course I can always say that if the patient does what I tell them to do regularly then they’ll get better, but that doesn’t exactly make me Nostradamus. (http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/Nostradamus/index.html)
The Bus continued to surprise me with each new selection as I wound my way toward the outskirts of the city. As often happens, I wasn’t going to actually see the city I was teaching in at all - only the hotel near the airport. In my experience, Des Moines in indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside – but I know my experience is a strange one. For all I actually know Des Moines Iowa is a wild and crazy place, but I would have to use my experience with the therapists in my class to determine that. If they truly reflect their local culture I should get some sense of the way things are within a few miles from the hotel. I never actually go there myself.
The rock-hard expectation of my classes is to be shown how to figure out precisely what is wrong with their patients complaining of pain and then be told exactly what to do with their hands on the patient’s surface in order to change that in the direction they prefer. After all, isn’t that what manual therapy is supposed to do? But they soon discover as I speak that I feel we can only hear what’s wrong, that we can’t actually trust what people say, and that we can only vaguely sense it with our hands. They learn that there’s little to see that I think is reliable and valid. Most importantly, they learn that with my hands I’m looking for what is right, not what’s wrong. I call it The Pollyanna Doctrine. (http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/pollyann.htm)
If the class in Des Moines reflected the local citizenry I would have to conclude that they are a sedate and fairly predictable lot. Most didn’t answer any question beyond a whisper and their reading didn’t extend into the latest neuroscience or into the intricacies of philosophy or phenomenology. They practice traditionally, and if they don’t, it’s clear that that they cannot express any defendable theory – not that I give them much of a chance to do so. Instead I invite them here - and they don’t come. Please remember that I said they seemed to practice traditionally etc. I don't actually know this.
But because I spent that solitary hour on the road approaching their town listening to The Bus I have a sense that beneath the surface of everyone there is something surprising, unexpected, compelling, interesting, unfamiliar and unpredictable. Because this thing is uniquely expressed I can’t hope to control it but only bear witness. Always, its power to affect the present experience of another fascinates me.
We’re all like this, even those people we call patients. When I’m asked how many times I see others and for how long and what happens once they walk out the door I can only shake my head and smile, and think ruefully about what our profession has become.
Maybe now I’ll start answering the question in this way; “In Des Moines there’s a radio station called The Bus…”
Maybe that will work.