Reclaiming Our Mojo: Challenging the Notion of Nontraditional versus Conventional Methods in Social Work Practice

This article examines the basic assumptions about what constitutes “progressive” social work theory and explores the conventional social work wisdom, institutionalized in NASW Insurance Trust's cautions about “using nontraditional therapies and modalities.” The author questions whether such caution in the absence of research regarding the use of such methods in social work practice may, paradoxically, undermine the profession's ability to respond to obvious and catastrophic problems, particularly the health care crisis impacting American Indians within the Indian Health Services service areas. The author suggests that the profession needs to take a more critical and open view of alternative therapies and modalities that may have implications for improving social work practice. Drawing upon the humorous metaphor of mojo¹ the author examines the ancient and broad cultural concept of “vital life energy” in both treatment and educational processes. The author suggests that it is the connectivity, flow, and interrelatedness in the social worker's and client's vital life energy interactions that make social work interventions work. The author presents four case vignettes that illustrate the role of vital life energy in the intervention and discusses the need for practitioners to critically evaluate their effectiveness, including the need to break new frontiers for social work practice. The author thus lays out some foundational blocks for consideration in developing an alternative view of progressive social work theory based upon traditional practice wisdom common in both ancient and currently practiced Chinese and indigenous traditional Lakota cultural practices.