Our Personal Ethics: This class is directed at practitioners who have years of experience. The reason is, we all collect various issues that arise because, unlike other caregiving professions, we are using informed touch as a therapeutic tool. This class is an opportunity to join with your professional peers and honestly discuss the real issues that underly our work with clients. Ethics can be most clearly understood in real life situations. We need to clearly distinguish the differences between ethics, laws, professional standards, business agreements and cultural norms. It is very easy to conflate these different principles and wind up with a vague sense of our own ethical principles. In the 1960’s Martin Luther King drew a distinction between “just laws and unjust laws.” Mahatma Gandhi was a strong influence upon King; both were men of strong faith, and both asked inside for the right way to proceed in taking action so that they would hold themselves to higher ethical standards than those they opposed politically.

As caregivers we need to discern what is appropriete: Laws very from age to age and from population to population. The same is true of cultural norms and professional standards. And what is considered unethical behavior can vary from person to person. Ethics are often taught in a religious context; once again ethics may be conflated with morality and religious precepts. So what is at the core of ethical behavior? The first consideration is a weighing process. We need to go inside and feel how and where the ethical question is impacting us. Everyone makes mistakes; it’s how we learn what doesn’t work. We need to take full responsibility for our action; it’s important that we don’t confuse responsibility with guilt.

Personal Ethics – Three Unique Parts of This Class

Doing our own therapy: Therapy, be it psychotherapy, counseling, spiritual direction or life coaching, is no longer considered to be a sign that we are ill or dysfunctional. Especially for professionals in the healing arts it is essential that we are aware of our own issues and propensities. It is not uncommon for our clients to have emotional releases, flashbacks or spiritual awakenings while we are working with them. Are we able to legitimately accompany them when we have avoided dealing with our own issues? It may be alright to say “It is beyond my scope of practice when we are just beginning this work. But the more experience we have the more we come to realize that it is probably more honest to say: “this is beyond my scope of experience.” With experience and therapy comes training comes curiosity and training. To be truly ethical we need to attend to this part of ourselves.

Being in supervision: There is a growing awareness in our profession, like other caregiving professionals, that we need to have a supervision group where we can discuss the personal issues that arise in our practice. So many of us work by ourselves! Think about the kind of issues that have come up in your practice that you were not able to discuss with anyone. Many of the issues that become ethical dilemmas start from lack of communication. We all need someone, preferably a fellow professional, to talk with about those issues. It may be a fallacy to go to professionals who do not touch their clients to get help around issues that relate to touch. One of the best forms of supervision is an multi-professional peer group. In such a group it is easier to see the situation from a number of different perspectives. Issues that appear daunting can be discussed honestly and openly amongst a group that has been going long enough to establish enough trust for honest sharing.

Customizing our Continuing Education: We need to look honestly at what we didn’t get in school. One of my favorite sayings about bodywork is: “Our clients take us where we need to go.” There may not be the specific material we need to learn to accompany our clients offered as continuing education. In fact the real issues that arise with clients often call for more medical or psychological understanding. When we are willing to acquire that understanding, it benefits us as well as our clients. For instance, suppose that our client finds out that he has Parkinson’s disease – do we stop working with that client because we don’t know the prognosis of the disease or the pros and cons of our work for that condition? What if we find out that a client is bi-polar, is suffering from PTSD or has a borderline personality? Do we not have an ethical responsibility to the client to find out if and how we can be helpful?

Our Personal Ethics: This class is directed at practitioners who have years of experience. The reason is, we all collect various issues that arise because, unlike other caregiving professions, we are using informed touch as a therapeutic tool. This class is an opportunity to join with your professional peers and honestly discuss the real issues that underly our work with clients. Ethics can be most clearly understood in real life situations. We need to clearly distinguish the differences between ethics, laws, professional standards, business agreements and cultural norms. It is very easy to conflate these different principles and wind up with a vague sense of our own ethical principles. In the 1960’s Martin Luther King drew a distinction between “just laws and unjust laws.” Mahatma Gandhi was a strong influence upon King; both were men of strong faith, and both asked inside for the right way to proceed in taking action so that they would hold themselves to higher ethical standards than those they opposed politically.

         ** Let’s gather together for a rousing, informative, and inspiring time!**

As caregivers we need to discern what is appropriete: Laws very from age to age and from population to population. The same is true of cultural norms and professional standards. And what is considered unethical behavior can vary from person to person. Ethics are often taught in a religious context; once again ethics may be conflated with morality and religious precepts. So what is at the core of ethical behavior? The first consideration is a weighing process. We need to go inside and feel how and where the ethical question is impacting us. Everyone makes mistakes; it’s how we learn what doesn’t work. We need to take full responsibility for our action; it’s important that we don’t confuse responsibility with guilt.

Ethical Touch and Caregiving: Think carefully about the differences between: ethics, morals, laws, rules, standards, credos, beliefs, ideologies, principles, fairness, causes, agendas, and our ideas of right and wrong. Reading much of the material on ethics that has been written for bodyworkers indicates confusion between the above terminologies in an attempt to establish an ethical system that applies to bodyworkers universally.

There is often confusion about what is ethical and what is risky in terms of the law i.e. what you can be sued for… many of the writings are proscriptive – do this, don’t do that! Many of the writings concern themselves with business ethics. In today’s world, with more and more revelations about business malfeasance, we need to ask ourselves why would we go to business leaders for such advice.

Our closest contact with the principles of the business world comes from our interaction with health insurance companies. There are far too many examples of how insurance companies manipulate payments to us and our clients; only the naïve or inexperienced practitioner could turn a blind eye to the goings on of third party payers.