Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68165
SOMATIC RESEARCH professions have adopted it. To live up to the standards and expectations of other health and wellness professions and to be considered a part of integrative health care, it is important that we make research literacy and research capacity our standard of practice. Our innate curiosity can be the impetus to becoming research literate. It is imperative that we stop relying solely on those in other fi elds to do our research for us. WHAT LIES AHEAD Many of the strides we have made in becoming research literate have focused on our ability to fi nd research articles and incorporate the data into our practices. This is a necessary fi rst step to research literacy. In her Somatic Research columns for Massage & Bodywork the last couple of years, Ravensara Travillian did an excellent job of teaching you to think critically about research, analyzing which research articles passed muster for relevance, generalizability, and reproducibility. Many of you have gone to PubMed and BioMed Central and found information that assisted you in practice. Keep up the good work! I, too, will highlight articles relevant to the massage and bodywork profession and help you make sense of how the information revealed might impact your clinical decision making and treatment planning. Research literacy is not just about translating research into clinical practice (bench-to-bedside). Translational research is equal parts bench-to-bedside and bedside- to-bench (practitioners relaying clinical experiences back to the researchers). The bench-to-bedside approach is only effective when the cycle is complete: researchers have access to clinical information and practitioners feed information back to the researchers on the clinical relevance of the discoveries (above). Lab Clinic Population New Applications New Tools & According to the Translational Research Working Group, translation research "transforms scientifi c discoveries arising from laboratory, clinical, or population studies into clinical applications." In this equal parts approach, researchers have access to clinical information and practitioners feed information back to researchers on the clinical relevance of discoveries. For more information, visit www.cancer.gov/trwg/TRWG-defi nition-and-TR-continuum. My intention in this column is to provide you with equal parts bench-to- bedside and bedside-to-bench. I will be a resource for understanding the clinical implications of research and provide opportunities for you to engage with the academic world of research. As a profession, we have much to learn on how to infl uence research effectively. Until we do, we will be disappointed in the content of studies done without the consult of massage therapists or our trained hands providing the massage. We will continue to see headlines purporting that massage is bad for athletes, quoting research that claims "massage actually impairs blood fl ow to the muscle after exercise."1 Keep in mind that rigorous studies representing massage as practiced exist. They are not the majority—yet. It is our responsibility to ensure that massage research involves massage therapists as consultants, practitioners, and principle investigators (PIs), one step at a time. To become well rounded, we must infl uence research as much as research infl uences us. How do we reach out to researchers? I recommend a couple of approaches. WRITE CASE REPORTS We all have stories to tell; we should start with simple cases explaining who we are, whom we treat, and what we commonly do. This includes everything from record keeping and interview questions to our assessment techniques and massage applications. Case reports do not have to be rare and exciting interactions where we "healed" someone in one or two sessions, though we all probably have a few of those stories to tell. It is important that we use the existing academic model and make a wide range of our stories accessible to researchers and health professionals by getting them published in peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (JBMT) and IJTMB. connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 117