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approach to the biopsychosocial model to the close reading of the patient's narrative and their feedback. CONCLUSION This short guide is only a small part of what narrative medicine entails; fuller training includes learning to work with your own words and those of others in a small group setting, allowing vulnerability and observation to reveal how we tell our stories. Once that skill is grasped, it can be applied to patient narratives to help you explore their stories in a systematic, compassionate way that goes well beyond a checklist approach that will still leave disconnected pieces. In this patient's narrative, the rheumatologist did in fact apply a biopsychosocial approach. He gave the patient several opportunities to ask questions and asked how she felt and what stressors may be in the background. But this information was left hanging, and once the test results were seen to be clear, the patient was dismissed with the remark "maybe it's somatized grief." The rheumatologist's diagnoses may have been correct, but it gave the patient no direction; rather, it seemed to confirm her need for control. The physiotherapist did not go much further with it, but he did achieve a few small successes by showing her that she had been genuinely seen, her quirks acknowledged, her wishes—and her resistance—respected, turning the relationship into an alliance of equals. He followed up a few times to check on her progress, encouraging her to make little changes where he thought she might respond. Though these are small steps, this is the kind of meaningful encounter that can begin to foster trust, allowing the therapist to frame the necessary advice in a way that actually gets through. If trained in the application of narrative medicine, it is easy enough to adapt intake forms by asking new patients to write a short narrative of their experience of their condition before their session. Explain that you are requesting this information so that you can understand the full extent of their experience, beyond what a checklist can reveal. Invite them to be as open and uninhibited as possible in their writing. Tell them you want to understand their condition through their eyes, and that this will help you serve them better. Then, have them email it within two or three days before attending your clinic, which will allow you the time to work through the narrative and explore it in a similar way to the exercise we went through here—while also checking the boxes on the more standard forms. In this way, you have a starting point to work from before meeting the patient, it does not take much additional time to process, and you can begin building the foundation of trust and cooperation prior to your first meeting. LEARN MORE For more details on the practical application of narrative- based medicine in a clinical setting, see Dr. Charon's book The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). To learn more about narrative medicine in general, see the notes included in the "Listen, My Body Electric" article in the March/April 2021 issue of Massage & Bodywork (page 42). Finally, The Close Reading Guide (used in this article) is adapted from a workshop given by the Narrative Medicine Faculty at Columbia University in March 2021, where free weekly sessions are run to introduce clinicians, humanities scholars, and all interested parties to narrative medicine (narrativemedicine.blog). Note 1. Adapted from: Rita Charon, Nellie Hermann, and Michael J. Devlin, "Close Reading and Creative Writing in Clinical Education: Teaching Attention, Representation, and Affiliation," Academic Medicine 91, no. 3 (March 2016): 345– 50, https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000000827. With 20 years in teaching and more than a decade in journalism and academic publishing, Sasha Chaitow, PhD, is series editor for Elsevier's Leon Chaitow Library of Bodywork and Movement Therapies and former managing editor of the Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies. Based between the UK and Greece, she teaches research literacy and science reporting at the University of Patras, Greece. She is also a professional artist, gallerist, and educator who exhibits and teaches internationally. L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 45 SOMATIC RESE ARCH If trained in the application of narrative medicine, it is easy enough to adapt intake forms by asking new patients to write a short narrative of their experience of their condition before their session.