Talk:Bodywork (alternative medicine)

Bodywork and Massage Therapy
I belive there should be a differentiation between bodywork and massage therapy. All massage therapy is bodywork, but not all bodywork is massage therapy (e.g. Breema). Perklund 03:05, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Bodywork is a very general term and can refer to Pilates, Yoga, and personal training to name a few. --Kirien 19:20, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I also agree. Massage therapy certainly falls under the heading of bodywork, but bodywork and massage therapy are in no way the same, and should not be combined in one article. massage therapy should redirect to massage, and this article should be re-writen. Akromian 08:40, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Bodywork is often used to include body-centred psychotherapy - see http://www.entelia.de/, http://www.bodyworkers.org.uk/ http://www.psychocorporalintegration.info/ for instance. Tim Brown

bodywork or body work
is bodywork two words? is it one word? could it acceptably be both? should the wikipedia address this?

The name of this article comes directly from page 240 of one of Andrew Weil's books.

Andrew Weil, M.D. Spontaneous Healing: How to Discover and Enhance Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself. Fawcett Columbine, The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 1996.

The name of this article is correctly spelled. John Gohde 01:40, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * With all due respect to Dr. Weil, the spelling doesn't mirror current usage.


 * While both spellings are used (as they are in the article itself), spelling it as one word is by far the more common usage.


 * It is listed as one word in the American Heritage Dictionary: bodywork. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. (accessed: February 11, 2007) and the Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary, Bloomsbury Publishin Plc, 2001.


 * Additionally, the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals, the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, the Worlwide Aquatic Bodywork Association, and Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association are more appropriate references, they are leading organizations in the field.


 * I suspect this is a similar case to using either "data base" or "database"; the former was the initial usage, the latter is the present-day common usage, and the Wikipedia article is titled "Database".


 * On the basis of all of the above, I'll move the page to "Bodywork (alternative medicine)". &mdash; Chidom   talk   21:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

removed commercial link
There was a link to a commercial site which I erased. Makana Chai 01:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I Believe the Bodywork (alternative Medicine) category should properly be changed to the more "politically correct" category of Bodywork (complementary Medicine) for the reasons stated in the article.


 * Regarding external links, could I hear opinions on whether to remove the 3 that are currently listed? WP:EL states that external links should be used quite infrequently. My understanding is that the best use is when there is a single organization that represents the article subject (or maybe two links, such as if there is a school and a professional association with separate links but the same profession). The respiratory links seem quite off the mark for this page, and I'm not sure about the asian bodywork link; I'd say these seem to specific to be useful additions. Consensus?--Karinpower (talk) 04:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Correct, the respiratory links do not belong here, they belong to the medical field of Pulmonology where they are listed, so it's right to remove them here. The third link is a (commercial) school of Shiatzu and needs to be removed here and/or moved to that page. Osioni
 * Thanks. The third link is already on the Shaitsu page (though someone should probably take a good look at whether it is important enough to be listed there - if it's *the* organization to represent the profession for instance). So I'm going ahead and removing all three links here. --Karinpower (talk) 21:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

What is the difference between Bodywork and Manual therapy?
How is Bodywork different from Manual therapy. I've added a See also tag at the top of this article. Perhaps anyone has another idea on how the two concepts are related and how we should handle the pages on Wikipedia. makeswell (talk) 08:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * It seems almost like manual therapy is a subcategory of bodywork in that manual therapy deals with physical manipulation of the body while bodywork includes this category of treatment as well as energy-based methods. Perhaps we should just make manual therapy a subcategory of this page. What do you guys think? makeswell (talk) 08:19, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Both are related, but manual therapy is purely structural and more a form of Physiotherapy (this had been moved to Physical therapy, which was not quite correct). The Manual therapy page has its own category and is more representative of the method than this one. Bodywork may, but not always, include manual therapy and can also include Psychotherapy, but Manual therapy does not. Personal development and Physical education are also aspects of Bodywork but not generally of Manual therapy. Unlike Manual therapy, Bodywork can be practised without touch. Some methods listed under Manual therapy are recognised by the medical profession, not so in the case of Bodywork. Its page here needs expansion to be more representative of Bodywork and to be better understood. The tags on the top of Manual therapy apply equally to this page. Osioni (talk) 18:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)Osioni (talk)