Srijani Banerjee - 30 DoS - Day 29

Who am I?

I am Srijani Banerjee (BPT, MPT in Cardiorespiratory disorders and Dance Movement Therapy Practitioner).

What do I do? A lot of unnecessary languishing but apart from that, I am a Faculty in the Department of Physiotherapy in The Neotia University, West Bengal, India. I teach undergraduate students and BC* used to freelance as a Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) practitioner as well.

The “How” and “Why” of my CPN journey:

There comes a time when every physical therapist realises that the way they have been taught to treat patients and deal with illness is not working in the way we had wished it would. My concept of physiotherapy took a massive hit when my father had recurrent onset of acute neurological deficits (ischaemic stroke). The rehabilitation plan was making him angrier, gloomier and from being a person who loved his gym he became someone who would cry for death rather than do any exercise. This is when I started exploring other avenues and learnt about the use of dance for rehabilitation in patients with Parkinson disease. So, I joined diploma in dance movement therapy and while studying about embodiment approaches, I come across a paper by Prof. Nicholls on “The Body and Physiotherapy”. Never, in my wildest imagination, I had thought that Physiotherapy could be related to DMT in any way. After all, Helen Payne has repeatedly said, DMT is not about the physical aspect like Physiotherapy. It is different.

DMT gave me the answers to the questions which physiotherapy had raised, and my practice became better. As a DMT practitioner I was working with breast cancer survivors, patients with dementia and geriatric population but somehow, I found myself always assessing them with a physiotherapist’s perspective. I tried sharing this with my fellow physiotherapists, but unfortunately, I was met with mostly strange looks and awkward silences.

Now being with so much to ramble about and no one to listen to is quite difficult and finally after 10 years of practicing physiotherapy in the traditional way, I gathered my courage and got in touch with Prof. David Nicholls. He introduced me to Critical Physiotherapy Network. Reading about so many perspectives and learning about so many different ways of building the profession gives me hope and makes me believe that yes, I can truly guide a person towards a better life. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was very academically inclined and got quite good grades in my Undergraduate and Masters. I absolutely loved how the patients would be eternally grateful for whatever I was doing for them. All this was wonderful till the “Dad incident”. I mean, it was nice to practise physiotherapy in the age-old method, but I felt too much in control of another person’s life.

I have been an educator for almost 5 years now and today when I teach my students about autonomy of a patient, I try to make them understand that even though the person is having physical problems or has faced a life altering situation, it doesn’t give me the right to make decisions on his behalf. I mean as a physiotherapist I want to achieve 120o of hip flexion, but my patient is living a fulfilling life with 50o, or I want my patient to run marathons but all my patient wants is to hold his spouse’s hand to walk by the lake. Who am I to decide on behalf of them?

What I do now is sow the seeds of curiosity in my students, I make them see their patients as a social being where I try to encourage them to take into account a person’s behaviour, pre-injury social status and the habitat. The caregivers also have become an integral part of my treatment protocol because I have realised the loving touch and the smile of a loved one works wonder on our patients.

I have so much more to learn from critical physiotherapy. Reading the CPN Digest and the blogs, I started believing that I am not completely crazy (I mean, a little bit of craziness is needed to look at things from a different perspective). It is so inspiring to read about all the research that is re-shaping physiotherapy. The ease of access to such thoughts through CPN is what appeals me to the most. It feels like a “Safe Space” where we can nurture our questions and thoughts to re-imagine how we approach our patients in a different way.

I am very new to CPN but what I would really like to see in the future is, CPN training new graduates and undergraduates to understand the role of biopsychosocial aspects of human wellbeing which I am not sure how many Universities have in their curriculum. I would love to see the thoughts and teachings of the members of CPN to become a normal way of thinking.

Physiotherapy as a profession in my country lacks the opportunity of research. It is immensely difficult to do any “profession-altering” work here. For years, I have tried to find someone to mentor me in a research work where I can explore this interconnection between the physical wellbeing and social structure, but alas Physiotherapists here don’t know what to do about it and sociologists don’t wish to guide me. I hope that someday the profession can truly look beyond this demarcation of physical, functional, psychological or social aspect.

Finally, what I bring to the CPN. Now I was avoiding this for as long as possible but if I want people to really know about me, I should probably say something. I don’t have much research work to boast about but yes, I have an eager mind and I can talk (that’s an understatement as evident from this huge profile). I bring a teeny-weeny bit of knowledge about DMT which includes embodiment, the concept of self and Self, an understanding of how nature inspires the body to move and how it is wonderful to accept that there is no “right” way to do anything. What I feel is I bring is a gullible mind ready to get bamboozled by everything that’s happening in CPN and inform every person I know about how physiotherapy is changing.

Understanding that the Body and the Self is a vast entity which has space to welcome every critical physiotherapist to use movement as a way of exploring health is what brought me here and what defines my “Self”.

*Before COVID-19 (Disclaimer — taken from CPN. Definitely not my creation)