Event this week Anna Rajala from the University of Brighton presents the second in our monthly Critical Physiotherapy Course events next week. Here are the details. Title: What’s “critical” about critical physiotherapy? Max Horkheimer and the idea of critical theory. Date and time: Mar 21, 20:00 GMT Location Local Time Time Zone UTC Offset Berlin (Germany - Berlin) Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 9:00:00 p.m. CET UTC+1 hour Toronto (Canada - Ontario) Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 4:00:00 p.m. EDT UTC-4 hours Athens (Greece) Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 10:00:00 p.m. EET UTC+2 hours Perth (Australia - Western Australia) Friday, 22 March 2019 at … [Read more...] about 2nd Critical Physiotherapy Course – What’s ‘critical’ about critical physiotherapy
The first Critical Physiotherapy Course session starts in 2 weeks
The first of our Critical Physiotherapy Course sessions titled The architecture of Movement will be running in just 2 weeks time. The times for various locations around the world are listed below. Location Local Time Time Zone UTC Offset Auckland (New Zealand - Auckland) Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 8:00:00 a.m. NZDT UTC+13 hours London (United Kingdom - England) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 7:00:00 p.m. GMT UTC New York (USA - New York) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 2:00:00 p.m. EST UTC-5 hours Los Angeles (USA - California) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 11:00:00 a.m. PST UTC-8 hours Berlin (Germany - Berlin) Wednesday, 20 February … [Read more...] about The first Critical Physiotherapy Course session starts in 2 weeks
The first ever Free Critical Physiotherapy Online Course is coming
We've been planning to run a free online course on thinking critically about physiotherapy for some years, but now we are happy to announce that it has finally come to fruition. A team of CPN members have been thinking about the kind of course that we would want for months now, and we have taken our time to try to develop a program that we think you will find interesting and exciting. The course is grounded in practical, everyday physiotherapy challenges, but uses the experience of physiotherapists who have a deep knowledge of theory and philosophy to expand on the ways we currently think about these situations and issues. Is autonomy really a good thing for physiotherapists? … [Read more...] about The first ever Free Critical Physiotherapy Online Course is coming
Wired into Pain
This post was originally published on Medium on 6th February 2018 (link) and is reposted here with the kind permission of Tom Jesson. A scientific revolution shows us that for centuries we have misunderstood pain. I am a Physiotherapist. Almost every person I see in clinic is in pain, and most already have an idea about what has caused their pain. If they are old enough, they might say ‘overuse’, or ‘wear and tear’; if they are younger, they might say ‘bad posture’ or ‘tight muscles’; if they have had a scan, they might say a ‘slipped disc’ or a ‘bone spur’. We accept these explanations prima facie. We consider pain to be a readout on the state of the … [Read more...] about Wired into Pain
Other ways of looking at others
One of the biggest perks of my job - and there are many - is the opportunity to work with physiotherapists who are looking for new ways to think about their profession. These are some of the people who are offering insights into how physiotherapy might develop in the future, and one theme of some of this work that's emerged in recent years has been around the ethical care of others. What's most interesting for me about this work is how it's inverting the way we've traditionally thought about others, placing the ethics of care before our knowledge of them and their world. Ethics preceding ontology if you will. Here are three examples. Since the start of the year I've been … [Read more...] about Other ways of looking at others
What should critical physiotherapy do for you?
There have been a few occasions over the last few months when people within the Critical Physiotherapy Network have been asked to do more for physiotherapy. The first time happened after our CPN Salon in Cape Town last year. Our esteemed colleague Professor Dina Brooks began the discussion by asking the CPN to do more to help mainstream physiotherapists make complex theories and philosophies more accessible. In her Reflections of a quantitative researcher on the CPN Salon, posted in July last year, Dina argued that the CPN risked functioning like a 'club' that excluded those who didn't subscribe to its principles. One of Dina's arguments at the time was that the CPN should build … [Read more...] about What should critical physiotherapy do for you?
Leaving (physiotherapy) home
I had a lovely conversation with some colleagues from Tromsø University's School of Physiotherapy on Monday night after my keynote to the Norwegian Physiotherapists' Congress. Having talked about 'The End of Physiotherapy', they asked me a question I seem to be getting asked a lot now. "So" they said, "what's the answer ... what's the future for physiotherapy?" Now it's an absolutely foundational principle for me that it's not my place to tell people 'the answer' (as if there could ever be an answer). And that's partly because I subscribe to a Foucauldian approach to critical thinking that says you don't replace one bad hegemony (or dominant way of viewing the world) with another. But … [Read more...] about Leaving (physiotherapy) home