pseudoscience or worse. If we do not develop
the skills to sit at that debating table, then
such labels will go unchallenged, and this
has a cumulative effect on the whole field.
Leaders in these professions have spent long
years and made great efforts to drive this
point home, to produce textbooks, upgrade
educational practices, and encourage
high-quality research, precisely so as to
ensure a robust scientific underpinning.
16
This pandemic was always going to
bring a sea change. A fresh look at those
elements that unite, rather than divide, may
go a long way toward furthering, rather than
damaging, professions that have suffered
from fragmentation and misperception for
decades. It would be a great shame, and a
lost opportunity, to leave them open to the
kind of criticism they have the potential
to attract. There is a unique chance to
join a dialogue and contribute to the
strengthening (rather than the weakening)
of the professions and overlapping
bodywork and integrative health fields
in the face of what is likely to be a new
public understanding of science.
Notes
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13. Sasha Chaitow, "Redemption Through The Arts:
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Thesis, University of Essex, June 2014; Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke, Western Esoteric Traditions: A
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16. Leon Chaitow, "Evolution from Quakery to
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www.leonchaitow.com/2008/01/26/evolution-
from-quackery-to-integration-to-functional.
With 20 years in teaching and over a decade
in journalism and academic publishing, Sasha
Chaitow, PhD, served as managing editor of the
Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies
from 2018–2020. Based between the UK and
Greece, she teaches research literacy and writing
for the sciences at the University of Patras,
Greece. She is a professional artist, gallerist, and
educator who exhibits and teaches internationally.
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