You don’t have to have been working in the health care world as a professional for long to know that research findings, ‘the evidence’ so called, is very important when it comes to how we practice as professionals. The NICE guidelines that refer to our areas of work have become like the Bible and should guide our practice.
So, what can we say about the MAM 3 step rewind technique? What research is it based on? Can we be confident as we seek to learn this method, and later begin to practice it with clients, that we are firstly doing no harm to the people we want to serve, and secondly that we will be offering something that has been proven to work?
I often begin my talks and workshops by saying, nothing I say today is the ‘Truth’, there isn’t anything to believe as a result of listening to me talk today’. This comment always seems to amuse the audience. I go on to say that the human animal never interacts with the ‘Truth’ directly. Every experience we have is based on the filtered data coming at us from the outside world; we have to sort it, categorise it and give it meaning, and we are all doing this from our own personal points of view.
In much the same way research never arrives at the ‘Truth’, what it does offer us are correlations between effects. The closeness of these correlations is then measured, often using statistical analysis, taking note of as many of the potential variables as possible.
Even the fruit of the most robustly designed RCT should not be regarded as the ‘Truth’. The practice implications of the research still need to be on goingly tested inside the experience of the practitioners and the clients they serve. This process is both personal and collective.
Why do I take the time to say all this?
It seems to me that over the years we as birth professionals have in someways separated our own felt experience from what our institutions regard as evidence. What is needed in my opinion is an acknowledgement that our felt experience and that of our clients is a form of evidence, a very powerful source of data that can be used to shape our practice. For the last 15 years I have been using the MAM 3 step rewind technique with clients that report symptoms of trauma, and I have repeatedly seen the effects it has had in their lives.
That being said, we all practice in environments that demand a testing of our felt experience in ways that the scientific community are content with. The rigors of the empirical scientific method need to be applied as a safe guard agains any kind of superstitious, magical thinking about the practices we use with the general public.
With these thoughts in mind I want to draw your attention to what is and has been done when it comes to testing the claims of those of us who use and teach the MAM 3 Step Rewind Technique.
Today’s blog is an introduction to the sources of the data, and over the coming few weeks I will be offering some comments based on my reading of whats out there in the research world at the moment with regards to the techniqu.
Many of you may be familiar with the UK based institution called The Human Givens. For many years they have been teaching what they call the rewind technique (openly based on a the fast phobia cure developed by the originators of the model of NLP). Having been using the rewind for a number of years the Human givens institution have sought to gather evidence on the effectiveness of it’s use. Here is the link to their paper on the evidence base so far, it can be downloaded in full. If you are thinking of training with us, or if you already have, please do read this paper, I will be referring to it in future blogs. (The MAM Technique uses the rewind as its second step of three).
In closing I want to point you in the direction of what I think is a very important and exciting body of evidence being gathered in the USA. Here is a short video to introduce you to this non-profit organisation working with military veterans. This video contains links to the organisations website, where a number of completed research articles can be found and downloaded.
Thanks for reading this far, in my next blog I will start the process of reviewing, from my perspective, all the research sources I have mentioned above.
Yours,
Mark Harris