Pranotherapy - The Origins of Polarity Therapy and European Neuromuscular Technique

Book excerpt: In this volume, which includes a faithful reproduction of Dewanchand Varma's original book on Pranotherapy, the reader can trace one of the early developmental branches of modern manual therapy and learn something of the eccentric life of one its early pioneers in the West. Phil Young has drawn the threads of this development together with the inclusion of the previously unpublished notebooks of another such pioneer, Dr Randolph Stone, a contemporary of Varma who, like Stanley Lief the founder of modern European Neuromuscular Technique, was influenced by Varma's work. Stone was the founder of his own system of manual therapy, which he called Polarity Therapy, and although it is similar to Varma's work, it has maintained to this day more of the original vitalistic, energy approach.