What’s in a Name?
I’m abandoning my politics for a moment to have a little rant about something else: modality names.
Rolfing, Feldenkrais, and Trager, for example, are what I would describe as old classics. They’ve been around for many decades, and came about when bodywork and/or movement therapies were still in their infancy, at least in the Western world.
I’ve seen a trend recently, though, that I have to confess bothers me, and that’s the plethora of people naming techniques after themselves.
Last week, I made a post on one of my networks that I was looking for instructors for next year’s lineup of continuing education. I was a little bit shocked that half of the respondents sent me proposals for modalities that they have named after themselves. I’m going to be nice and not name any of these people, or their modalities. I must confess, though, that my first thought whenever I hear about a “new” modality that someone has named after him or herself, is usually that they’re being pretty presumptuous to think that they have actually invented something new, or that they’re on an ego trip.
A rather uppity young man who needed taking down a few notches told my chiropractor the other day that he had invented the “muscle elongation technique.” The chiropractor laughed out loud and said, “Son, don’t kid yourself, I learned that in chiropractic school in 1984.” ….READ MORE
Excellent post, Laura. I’m consistently amused by the concocted names that folks will create to describe their proprietary, one of a kind, cure-all modalities. Everything old is new again……how true!