How Inequality in Research Vacuums Influence Therapy
What is the most unique thing about you? The thing that no one else has access to. It’s the undeniable strength and presence of your lived experience. As you move through the world your experiences move with you. Everything you encounter is processed through the lens of your own life.
The most fascinating thing about experience and perception to me is that it's deeply subjective. No two people observing a phenomenon are seeing the same thing. In fact, things often change based on the person perceiving that thing.
This brings me around to the wonderful world of science. Research is a distant love of mine. I find research and research methods to be interesting. Especially considering the previously stated fact about perception.
There’s a funny thing about research that happens. The way a hypothesis is tested and “validated” throughout the scientific community is to apply the same method and redo the same study. If the results continue to yield the same outcomes then it becomes shown to be highly likely that these things are true. Science never really proves anything. It only shows something to be likely. Scientific studies are always open to being disproven. That’s the point of a study. To disprove. At least that’s the way it's supposed to be.
But there’s a funny thing happening in the world of body-based therapies.
Practitioners are hyper-focused on evidence-based practices. That is to focus solely on the research without regard for the experience. But here’s the thing about research — it's happening in a vacuum.
It’s absent of the beautiful rainbow of experiences to which it will be applied. The significant shortcoming of research is its conducted on a homogenous group. Generally speaking, a lot of research is conducted on the white, middle class to wealthy, and male subjects.
Research is done in a vacuum. It doesn’t take into account the rainbow experiences of the world it attempts to apply itself. The world isn’t a vacuum and the lab doesn’t always apply to how the world works. And in the case of body-based therapies, it lacks the experience-led applications necessary to the modality.
What are we saying as practitioners when we put the experience of people below our own “expertise”. Especially when the evidence-based expertise may be based on research done on homogenous groups of people.
Applying the lab to the world is like saying I know all about your trauma because I read about it in a book.
Estonia aka Toni is a Somatic Yoga Therapist committed to supporting people to heal generational and familial trauma through body-mind-based therapies. She loves drinking homemade tea lattes. She’s obsessed with social justice, body-consciousness, and spirituality. Find her on IG the_trauma_doula
