Concept
Bodywork (alternative medicine)
Related concepts (6)
Manual therapy
Manual therapy, or manipulative therapy, is a physical treatment primarily used by physical therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists to treat musculoskeletal pain and disability; it mostly includes kneading and manipulation of muscles, joint mobilization and joint manipulation. It is also used by Rolfers, massage therapists, athletic trainers, osteopaths, and physicians. A 2011 literature review indicates that placebo is one of likely many potentially relevant mechanisms through which manual therapy improves clinical outcomes related to musculoskeletal pain conditions.
Postural Integration
Postural Integration is a type of bodywork purporting to draw on "energy" and allow access to the past. It was devised in the late 1960s by Jack Painter (1933–2010) in California, US, after exploration in the fields of humanistic psychology and the human potential movement. According to Quackwatch, Postural Integration is "a form of bodywork that is an alleged access to the past and a purported means of: (a) releasing and integrating 'energy', and (b) finding a 'light, joyful balance' with 'mother earth'".
Body psychotherapy
Body psychotherapy, also called body-oriented psychotherapy, is an approach to psychotherapy which applies basic principles of somatic psychology. It originated in the work of Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and particularly Wilhelm Reich who developed it as vegetotherapy. Branches also were developed by Alexander Lowen, and John Pierrakos, both patients and students of Reich, like Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy and Gerda Boyesen. Wilhelm Reich and the post-Reichians are considered the central element of body psychotherapy.
Massage
Massage is the manipulation of the body's soft tissues. Massage techniques are commonly applied with hands, fingers, elbows, knees, forearms, feet or a device. The purpose of massage is generally for the treatment of body stress or pain. In European countries, a person professionally trained to give massages is traditionally known as a masseur (male) or masseuse (female). In the United States, these individuals are often referred to as massage therapists, because they must be certified and licensed as "licensed massage therapists".
Alternative medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of medical science and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources.
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.