A new book celebrating 10 years of critical physiotherapy writing

Just over 10 years ago I sent an email out to a handful of physiotherapy colleagues who I knew were doing critical physiotherapy work, asking if they wanted to form a network. My expectations were modest, because back then very few people published or presented anything you might call critical.

Shows what I know.

Within weeks I’d sent surprised thank you reply emails to 50, then 60, then 70 people, and by the end of the year we had 150 members, and critical physiotherapy was born.

Here’s the text of the original email, sent out on 27 June 2014:

I’ve been thinking for some time about setting up a network of physiotherapists who think ‘differently’ - people who are critical thinkers, philosophers, social theorists, educators, historians, qualitative researchers, PG students doing things other than clinical trials of hamstring stretching, etc. I thought a good way to do it might be to contact the people I knew who are like this and to ask them to nominate their friends and contacts, who I would then contact in turn - a bit of a snowball referral process. The end result would be a network of people who could then be brought together in hyperspace to share ideas and plan for world domination. What do you think of the idea? If you think it sounds a bit too much like one of those dreadful email chain letters, I’ll revise my plan!

So, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the birth of the CPN I started a project earlier this year to compile all of the blogs written over the last 10 years into an edited collection.

In a few days time I’ll post up some links to the book that I’ve called Physioheresy: 10 Years of Critical Physiotherapy Writing.

The book will be in ePub and pdf formats and will be free to download.

The book includes hundreds of blogposts challenging conventions, discussing everyday physiotherapy work, using theory, thoughts about learning and teaching, and profiles of CPN people.

What surprised me bringing all of this writing together was how much there was. Even with the notices and mundane posts on CPN business — which you’ll be glad to know I edited out — the book still runs to more than 300,000 words.

Hopefully, it will give you all some pleasure reading back over the business of the group in the first decade of its luscious life.

I’ll post up more in the coming days when the book is published.