Posts Tagged ‘ABR’

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Able Bodied

January 3, 2022

I have one term left at the school of Advanced Bio-Mechanical Rehabilitation. I will write about graduation soon; for now I wish to talk about the difference between being disabled and able bodied. This is, essentially, a transition that I must make at graduation and I will talk of the bio-mechanical aspects of this. I spent the first 28 years of my life in an able bodied body and then, all of a sudden, found myself without so much function that I lost comprehension of what it is to be able bodied. I am then confronted with the question as to what makes one able bodied. Most consider this as the ability to walk, with the ability to perform bodily functions as a second thought, while, in my experience, bodily functions are the first that must be regained. They are intrinsic and it is within intrinsic structure that we must seek the answers to what makes us able bodied.

I am so far from walking and yet feel so close to being able bodied. For too long I lived with catastrophic collapse of the entire body while, at the same time, suffering paralysis from the waist down. Not only was there no hope of regaining the use of my muscles, while in such a condition, I also had little understanding of where hope lay. For nearly five years I wandered in the darkness until I met a gentleman who taught me various eternal truths of the body. I learnt to understand that the structure of my body is not dependent upon the lack of ability to use muscles and so I came to see that the structure of my body could be dramatically improved …..and that’s what I’ve done, over approaching 21 years!

Whereas once I was dead weight, from the waist down, now I have so much levity, from the transformed structure of my head, neck, shoulder girdle, chest and even pelvis, that my entire body has life in it to some degree. Now I can hold my head high, in a purely structural sense, and have so much capacity down to the chest that I’m working on the finishing touches to the structure from the waist up. A little more drawing out of the back, a little more strengthening under the shoulder blades and a little more stitching under the rib cage and I’m pretty much there. The waist down has always been a different story, and in some respects that has not changed, although, even there I have engineered such structural improvement that I truly feel connection through the hip joints and have flow right down into the feet. I no longer live with worry that the flesh of a little toe may start breaking down.

My pelvis has woken up to such a deep level that I’ve embarked on a new phase of regrowing my damaged pelvic floor and left bum cheek. I still want a cushion, but the increased flesh on my bum and the massive improvement in the strength of the lumbar sacral junction, together with greater volume to the pelvis, has resulted in being able to sit so comfortably. To be able to relax, in stature, with no regard for consequences, as those consequences will never be too great, is much of what it is to be able bodied.

Understanding how much disabled people struggle, with the ability to simply be in this world, goes a long way to understanding disability. I’m so flourishing in my ability, to simply be, that I hope, soon, to leave the world of disability behind.

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Sacrum

January 23, 2021

I had a job to do today to screw a hook on an internal door in my cottage. There is a bench in front of the door which is part of how I move around indoors (see blog post ‘The Heart of the Home’) . I thought maybe I could sit on the bench, but needed to be higher. I could have found something to put on top of the bench to sit on, but with nothing to hand I decided to try doing the job in high kneeling.

High kneeling is a position that has been possible for many years, right from the early days of injury, although it has never been a functional position. I used to have little quality to the trunk in general, even less in the lumbar region, virtually none in the pelvis and a definite disconnection at the lumbar sacral junction. Even sitting used to involve propping my body on top of collapsed pelvic structure, so the more demanding position of high kneeling was nothing but propping myself up. My lifeless pelvis would tilt drastically forwards resulting in severe flexion of the lumbar spine and discomfort in the weakness (disconnection) at the lumbar sacral junction. It would take all my effort with both arms just to hold myself there.

This type of structural weakness, with tilted pelvis and arched back, is common in many people with varying disabilities and is also notable in a significant portion of the able bodied population, to a lesser degree. I caught the news the other day where a disabled child had undergone a miracle operation (so to speak) to enable him to walk for the first time in his life. He was wobbling along using crutches with the arching of his back so severe that it was painful to watch. Having never been on his feet the kid thought it was great, although in reality he had simply swapped one struggle for another that was potentially even harder. It was only the use of crutches that kept him on his feet and the importance of ensuring there is sufficient underlying structure to support the bodily position cannot be over emphasised. It is often the case with disabled people that they attain to positions and actions that are beyond the structural capacity of their bodies; mainly through endeavour to live life, the best they can, but also through a desire to push beyond their boundaries.

My work in bio-mechanics has led me to expand the boundaries, through improving structural capacity, rather than to seek to push beyond them, although I am guilty at times of exceeding those boundaries and screwing the hook on the door, in high kneeling, is one such example. What surprised me this time, though, was the involvement of the sacrum. I’ve never known that feeling before, nor such capability. I wasn’t sure it would work, but found I could use my left elbow, against the door, to hold myself up and still use my left hand to hold the screw, while using the screwdriver with my right. With new structural capacity in the sacrum the right side of my body held well and only the weaker left side wanted to collapse.

I have been improving my body for years and for a long time now the sacrum has played a functional role in sitting. Now for the first time it is strong enough to begin playing a functional role in the more demanding position of high kneeling. I have every reason to believe I will continue to improve, while finding new strengths never ceases to amaze me.

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Chance or Fate

October 29, 2020

I was friends with a guy called Ziggy who lived in the main house at the Cheshire Home. He was severely disabled with cerebral palsy. One day he was going to have some hyperbaric oxygen treatment at a centre in East Grinstead and I was asked if I would go along to hold his hand in the chamber. The treatment is to breathe oxygen under pressure in a compression chamber, the sort that divers use when they get the bends; the idea being that the oxygen then manages to penetrate parts of the brain normally not accessed, encouraging rejuvenation of damaged tissue. While I was there, the woman running the centre talked me into having a course of treatment myself. I wasn’t that interested, but was intrigued by the Russian gentleman working there and wanted to know what he was up to.

I spent an hour a day for a week sitting in the chamber with only a port hole in the door to see out of. Through that I watched Leonid Blyum, the Russian gentleman, teaching a group of mothers to work upon their young children, all of whom had cerebral palsy. The children were lying on benches with their bodies wedged with towels so they were firmly supported. More towels were then carefully folded and laid on the child one by one in a specific construction. The mother used the palm of her hand to slowly compress this construction, followed by a release of the compression, repeating the motion over and over again. The towels were obviously being used as an air cushion designed in such a way as to deliver a mechanical input into the body.

Every now and then everyone would stop while Leonid gave an explanation. I couldn’t hear what was being said, from inside the chamber, but he used a flip pad to draw diagrams that made sense. I realised he had knowledge that went beyond that of the medical establishment and I knew then that I had to team up with him. None of his clients had spinal injury although all had serious physical disability from neurological conditions. He examined my body, asked me some questions, told me I’d have to find someone to work on me and agreed to take me on.

I’ve always lived life my own way, never been good at being told what to do and never blindly followed anyone. After meeting Leonid I was having a drink with some old mates and told them about the therapy program I was embarking upon. My good friend Wayne, who knows me well, said to me, “Do you mean to tell me you’re going to let someone tell you what to do?” “Yes”, I replied. “I don’t believe you”, was Wayne’s response. There was only so much I understood when I started, but I grasped enough straight away not to be blindly following and I wasn’t so much being told what to do as ‘trusting Leonid to guide me’. That was the start of not only my true rehabilitation, but also a journey of discovery into a higher understanding of health.

In Memory of Ziggy

Without my dear friend Ziggy, who’s sadly no longer with us, I may never have met Leonid Blyum. Was it chance or was it fate fulfilling my destiny?

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Climbing a Mountain

October 8, 2020

I haven’t written a blog post for a whole year. I didn’t feel I had anything new to say. I even sat down in February and got half way through writing a post only to give up. I was just repeating myself. I’d said it all before and was relating what I was saying to yet more small improvements in the head, but that’s just it. What it takes to heal a body, from such a catastrophic injury, is one small improvement after another. Advanced Bio-Mehanical Rehabilitation, as the way of therapy I work with is known, is not a miracle cure, and there are no miracle cures, just steps in the right direction. Each step is nothing more than a tiny incremental change, but if you take enough small steps you can climb a mountain and climbing a mountain is exactly what you have to do to overcome the physical effects of a spinal injury.

Paraplegia is considered a permanent condition and without dedication to a way of healing it will be. I talked in November 2017, in a post entitled ‘Competitive Co-Operative’,about spinal injury being about far more than the loss of muscular function, due to nerve damage, and that there is enormous collateral damage; structural collapse that fails to recover naturally and overtime the changes become ingrained in the body and, if we are not careful, permanent. The cells of our body are constantly replenished and I am led to believe that every seven years we have an entirely new body with every cell being replaced over that period of time. Those changes will be replaced in the same ingrained fashion, unless we encourage the body to return to balance, as it replaces its cells. By delivering repetitive mechanical inputs, into the system of the body, we can encourage that return to balance as the body’s replenishes itself.

By the very nature of the work we are undertaking, it is a long slow process, although I find it incredible that the improvements, however slow, creep up on you so that now and then you suddenly realise how much you have changed and how far you have come. It would be nice to think that those who have known me throughout my rehabilitation notice these changes, bearing in mind that over the last twenty years we have radically altered the structure of my entire body to the point that I barely resemble the paraplegic I once was, and there are some who do. However, there are others who seem to forget just how bad a condition I was once in. I met someone at a funeral earlier this year who asked me if I was still doing the therapy and whether it was working. I looked down at my body and thought, ‘Can’t you see!’.

There’s a guy who drinks in my local pub, whom I haven’t know for long, who on hearing about my therapy work wanted to know more. I gave him the links to my website (www.spinalroots.net), blog (www.spinalroots.blog) and film (www.spinalroots.uk) and on seeing him the following week was impressed with how much he’d looked into it. He realised not only the enormity of the physical improvements, but the extent of the life journey I have undertaken. He’s inspired me to talk more about the psychological aspects of overcoming such an injury, realising that you can’t begin to heal a body without also healing the mind. So maybe it’s time to go back to the beginning and tell the story from a different perspective.

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Filmmaking

July 31, 2019

I’ve been quiet for a long time! I haven’t been idle though; I’ve been busy making a film. Last October I commissioned, Ethan Ross, a young lad fresh out of college to film a trip to the ABR Centre in Belgium, together with scenes at my place. I then spent the next six months editing the footage and producing a film. I did once make a film of my dog’s puppies, but having never done anything on this scale it was quite a learning curve. I finished it a while ago, am very pleased with the result and have been entering it into a few film festivals.

The premier of ‘Spinalroots’, the movie, is being held at the Byline and Curious Arts Festival at Pippingford Park near Nutley over August Bank Holiday weekend. The film is scheduled to be shown Monday morning at 9.30. Possibly not prime time spot, but a public premier nonetheless and I’ll have all weekend to hand out flyers to advertise it.

The plan is to release the film on the internet the same day and in the meantime please have a look at the trailer below.

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