Saturday, May 9, 2009

Research Methods - Blog 4

Research Methods
Assessment Task 1 – Blog 4 – Evaluation of Research Findings
Sam Steven
May 2009
Unraveling the Mysteries of Unwinding

Unraveling the Mysteries of Unwinding. (2008).
Retrieved May 6, 2009, from
http://www.terrarosa.com.au/articles/Terra_News2.pdf

The first thing that occurred to me when I downloaded this article was that the authors name was not published. After a more in-depth search of the website I was still unable to identify who had written the article so I figured the next best method of evaluating the articles source was to evaluate the source in which the article was published.

Terra Rosa ‘Your Resource for Massage Information’ is an online site full of educational information relating to massage therapy. It offers a wide range of articles, learning tools and links to relevant topics. The article itself is published in the Terra Rosa Bodywork e-news, issue 2, December 2008. I was unable to identify how frequent the newsletters were.

The newsletter itself contained a dozen articles by different authors. This suggested that perhaps the authors were all experts in the specific fields they were writing about. Therefore I assumed that the author of ‘Unraveling…’ was also at least a fairly credible source of information.

I found the article itself informative in parts. Unwinding is an unfamiliar method of treatment to me so I was interested to learn the basic principles behind it. It had a good introduction where it highlighted the terminology “unwind” describing the significance of the treatment and the basic principles of the technique. However I felt there was a lack of definition in regards to when this treatment would be used compared to other treatment methods, what type of tissue damage would benefit from this treatment and perhaps an example of how the muscles or tissues respond. After reading on I found what I thought perhaps should have been included in the introduction:

“Tissue Memory
The metaphors used to explain fascial unwinding include: unwinding tangled telephone wires or twisted rubber bands. Most common explanation is that our tissues hold memory of trauma, and unwinding will allow the client’s body to move to self correction. Fascia may become short and tight due to trauma, poor posture, and physical stress. Upledger and Vredevoogd (1983) described it as follows: “When an injuring force occurs, the tissue which receives the force is changes. Perhaps it retains the energy of the impact. The human body the either dissipates that energy and returns to normal; or the body somehow localizes the impact energy and walls it off.” Unwinding attempts to free these stored energy. (Upledger, 1987)”

Perhaps the following subtitle identifying the ‘Benefits’ also would have been more suitably located if it was chronologically toward the beginning of the article after the introduction rather than in the middle.

Another aspect of the article I found odd was the instructional descriptions of how to perform Unwinding techniques on a client. Firstly the article appeared to be a broad insight to the treatment, its background and principles, to inform people of Unwinding. Then all of a sudden it gives a range very information lacking instructions on how to perform the treatment itself including pictures, which certainly helped get an idea of what the instructions were unable to describe but which I found rather inappropriate for what I thought was the purpose of the article.

The Author identified a host of references - 14 to be precise, which I thought might have been a little over the top, all of whom were however current and credible sources relevant to the topic.

In summary I believe the purpose of the article was to inform the reader of the Unwinding treatment and to give an insight to how it is performed, how it works and its benefits. The author achieved this however I think there was too much information. It was sometimes unclear and poorly structured. There are grammatical errors and some parts of the article were irrelevant to what I figured was the purpose of the article. In fact, I would have been satisfied had I simply read the introduction, the information on ‘Tissue Memory’ and ‘Benefits’ and the summary.








References:

Upledger, J.E., Vredevoogd, J.,
1983. Craniosacral Therapy.
Eastland Press, Seattle, WA.


Upledger, J.E., 1987. Craniosacral
Therapy II. Beyond the Dura.
Eastland Press, Seattle, WA.


Unraveling the Mysteries of Unwinding. (2008).
Retrieved May 6, 2009, from
http://www.terrarosa.com.au/articles/Terra_News2.pdf

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