In this post I am beginning to introduce
you to the idea of Super-Relaxation and how such Super-Relaxation allows to Unlock
the Healthy Developmental Potential of a child affected by cerebral palsy even
in the most severe cases.
We are going to do this introduction in a
step-by-step manner – starting with a deeper look into the essence of
'ordinary' Relaxation and understanding how the
Relaxation is different from Anti-Tension. This will enable us to move
further towards what Super-Relaxation is, and to see clearly why it is such a
powerful approach. As the next step we'll look at the difference between two avenues of making the most of your
child's developmental potential – the
'Unlocking' strategy and the 'Boosting'
strategy. And finally we'll put the pieces together – showing how all these
elements can quite easily and smoothly
fit into the daily life of your child and your own.
I haven't posted anything to
this blog for a long, long time – nearly 9 months. Not that I have ran out of
the ABR insights to share – it is actually quite the opposite. There have been
so many new developments and discoveries in the recent months that I felt
somewhat overwhelmed with the rapid pace
of the new ideas and understandings. So, frankly I did not really know what I
had to start with. The main idea behind this blog's postings is to help you to navigate
through the information overload and to add clarity to your understanding of
your child's development. At the stage
when so many new things sprang up within ABR all at once – I had a feeling that
I was more likely to contribute to your informational overload rather than
helping you with that extra clarity …
However, for the last couple
of months I have been overflowing with the insights I wanted to share but experienced
that infamous 'writer's block'. The trouble with writing is the same as with
any other skill: once the routine was interrupted
– it is very difficult to get back on track.
However, sometimes life lends
a helping hand to a struggling writer …
This time it happened in the
form of ABR Miracle and Magic combined! I was provided with a true life story
that is so incredible that it has to be shared regardless of whatever writer's
block I face.
Alright, first of all WHAT IS
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE "MIRACLE" AND THE "MAGIC"?.
Often we tend to think of
those two as being very much the same,
which is incorrect.
Miracle is about the outcome. Magic is about the process.
Miracle is the result that is
radically better and faster than the one that is 'normally' expected by
following the 'standard' course of action. 'Miracle' is the case when the 'impossible'
becomes real.
Magic, on the other hand, is the
process, which is mysterious and not readily understood by following the
intuitive or scientific interpretation of how the things 'normally happen' and 'should
work' .
In fact, most miracles in life arise not from 'magic' but from the deep
understanding and systematic implementation.
Major developmental progress
that your children affected by Cerebral Palsy achieve via your ABR work – head
control, weight-bearing, expanded movement repertoire, sitting etc. – are true
miracles because they are thought to be 'impossible' for a brain-injured child.
But do you achieve that by magic? – Not at all. Those 'typical' ABR miracles –
including the mind-blowing freaking ones – are the result of your systematic
and smart work.
What is this? – That's a
miracle, plain and simple. Because a GMFCS Level 3 child is not supposed to
improve after the age of 5 … But he does – thanks to the ABR work of his parents. The impossible – becomes possible…
But at the same time – the
very fact that one needs to put dozens and dozens of hours of the routine work –
somewhat blurs the magnitude of such miracles.
What I want to share today is a different kind of miracle – a more 'obvious'
one. The one that happened quickly and unconventionally…
A couple of years back in one
of my most popular blog posts: Mind-blowing-freaking-miracle-pelvis-transformation-in-quadriplegic-cerebral-palsy
– I've introduced Alex 'The Great' – the ABR wizard PT from Greece responsible
for that incredible pelvic transformation of a severely affected quadriplegic
child that gave the name to that post.
Well, it is time to bring Alex
onto the ABR central stage yet again… With even more incredible stuff.
This post is somewhat of a re-start . I have made an announcement about starting these series THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WALKING FOR THE PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY a good 2 months ago – but my full immersion into the depth of Salutogenesis matters kept me pretty much oblivious to the outside world for the past 2 months. Those were an extremely rewarding months for myself intellectually and I assure that all of you are going to be the major benefactors of these new ideas for years to come…
Anyway with the key pieces of the Salutogenic puzzle being in place – it feels like it is time to re-emerge and deliver on my previous promises – especially bearing in mind that all the videos for the "TheTruth About The Walking" series have already been done back in May – all I need to do is to give you a little bit of a written context around them.
First of all, that post illustrated the remarkable saving of the heavily damaged leg by the "simple" technique of Transfascial Viscoelastic Stimulation aka "Egg Rolling".
Back then I included a couple of before/after pictures that shown the remarkable recovery of walking abilities in less than 2 weeks after introducing a set of ABR exercises.
So in this post, you can see that walking transformation much clearer – in the form of a 3-minute video that plays simultaneously the 2 short videos of Luca's walking taken on April 26th, 2012 and on May 7th, 2012 – so you can see the dynamic aspects of where we started from and how the situation have improved within just 12 days.
Secondly, and more importantly – I wanted to use this opportunity to help your understanding of what walking is – what makes it work properly or improperly – starting with this post and following into the series of connected ones: "The Truth About The Walking…".
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WALKING.
Most of the people – including professionals – have a very intuitive perception of how walking "works" – the legs support the body, muscles of the legs contract, move the leg bones and so it goes – the legs carrying the upper body in space.
Well, I hope that by now you realize – that when it comes to human movement – intuitive is misleading. I'll actually go further and say – intuitive is not simply misleading – it's actually profoundly wrong.
Who pays the highest price for the intuitive misconceptions about walking? – You, the parents of children with Cerebral Palsy.
You are the ones who end up doing damage to your kids bodies out of your best intentions, you are the ones who are being guided by false perceptions of what makes the increments of progress, you are the ones who invest your efforts in the activities with the least of long-term rewards … This list goes on and on …
So I am inviting you to really follow the next few posts very closely, especially if your child has a quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy – because for spastic quadriplegic kids everything "intuitive" about movement is a sure path to destruction and failure…
I have been silent in this blog for a while – but clearly not for the lack of productive activities…
First of all – there was a lot of training sessions in May held by the local ABR centers all around the world –from Hong Kong and Australia to Italy, Serbia, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and then, of course, in North and South America… Following our 3 weeks ‘ABR Trainers training’ in Montreal back in April a number of significant technical breakthroughs were introduced through all of the ABR satellite sessions… [For those of you who couldn’t attend in May-June – I really urge you not to delay and make sure you secure yourself a place at the next training session in your area. If you’ve got a job to do – you’ve got to do it in the best possible way, right? ]
Whenever the new things in roll in – I always face a lot of questions from our ABR trainers where we need to iron out all the aspects – strategic allocation of the new TransFascial Viscoelastic (TFVES) applications, the teaching nuances, tactical smarts of maintaining stability and providing optimal area access for the parents… and lots more.
I am really looking forwards with plenty of excitement because the more we see the results of the TransFascial Viscoelastic Applications – the more the “wow!” moments we all experience among the ABR Team – the responses from the dense and resistant areas, which used to take years now show major improvement within months , which is really rewarding and encouraging …
It was a record number of the Facebook likes that I have ever got… Well, of course, the enthusiastic response massages the writers ego :-) – but obviously that’s not the most important aspect.
First of all, it was encouraging to see that most of the professional colleagues and members of fascia community responded with enthusiastic thumbs up – leaving comments like that:
Hi Leonid and friends. I just saw this report for the first time. Very very impressive! I agree with you that learning to influence the interstitial fluid flow promises to be a very beneficial contribution to the therapeutic field. After www.fasciacongress.org/2012 I also started to work even slower with my hands in my clinical sessions; thinking about squeezing a sponge-like tissue and allowing it to re-hydrate with fresh liquids afterwards. I hope you continue this line of exploration, as well as the documentation of your results. Very impressive indeed! Fascianatedly yours Robert Schleip
But what’s probably even more important is that hopefully the posts like that are going to be of a good morale boost for your own day-in day-out work – clearly showing you that the TransFascial Viscoelastic Applications really delivers the important transformational effects to your children’s bodies.
Another element that I can’t resist to mention – is what is probably can count as my middle name – the appeal for your ‘focus and concentration’…
The recent upgrades to the ABR Techniques // TransFascial Viscoelastic Applications are really powerful, however, that transformational power is unlocked to its full extent only if you really concentrate and pay full and undivided attention to what you are doing.
You don’t need to be superhuman for that – studies clearly show that an average person can easily and reliably distinguish depth variations of 1/5 of a millimeter – which would be 1/100 of an inch (When you can feel that you flipped 2 pages of a magazine or a book instead of one – you are that good!). So it is all very much possible and realistic – but you need to keep your focus…
Imagine you were reading a book flipping 5 or even 10 pages at once – how much good would that do you? – But unfortunately, that’s exactly what often happens to many parents who let their minds drift elsewhere instead of keeping a solid focus on what’s going on under your hand..
But let’s get back on track – I am trying to deliver on my promises of the future post subjects – and whilst I have kind of postponed the completion of the “Reporting about Fascia Congress 3” posts – I am going to stick to the promise given in the previous post where I announced that the healing of the damaged tissues in the knee area was the first step in Luca’s road to recovery after that tragic accident.
Another major transformation that we managed to achieve thanks to some smart ABR strategies/techniques and consistent work of mama Katja – was a spectacular breakthrough in walking abilities that took place within a space of less than 2 weeks.
April 26th Luca was heavily relying on crutches and May 7th he was already walking comfortably with a single hand support and began to walk without the support (or to be precise it was May 5th when the filming took place – I received it on May 7th)
Based on Luca’s walking recovery case – all aspects of it: initial condition and troubles with walking; the designed ABR exercise program; and the transformation achieved – I created the fully fledged series: “The Unconventional Truth About The Walking”.
These series are going to be 5 Videos long (where the Video 4 is actually long enough to be counted as two videos) – and it have already been filmed – so I can pretty much guarantee that these are the posts that are going to appear weekly for the next few weeks.
Well, with all that being said – let me share my recent find that really got me incredibly excited – Discovering a theoretical goldmine!
It's a small world... and sometimes the international news turn out to be very local.
On March 14th, an awful tragedy struck. A bus carrying Belgian school kids from a ski holiday in Switzerland crashed into a wall of the tunnel killing 22 kids, 6 adults and leaving the survivors seriously injured.
That tragedy happened to be very local to ABR Team -- Luca, the son of Katja Schultz, a trainer from ABR Belgium, was on that bus... After several hours of terrifying wait -- she finally got the news that he was among the survivors. As she flew to Switzerland in the wee hours of the morning on a military plane dispatched by Belgian authorities -- she didn't know how bad were the injuries both physical and emotional.
Thanks a lot for viewing the first video ...That was very encouraging.
Well, in today's video" Fascia Research Congress 3 -- Field Report of DAY 1" there is way more content -- there were a number of very important presentations and although I tried being brief -- the total overview still run into 28 minutes.
However, every individual "eureka" realization is short enough (1-3 min) -- so I hope you'd find it well watchable.
Connective tissue could be strengthened
Hands-on work influences gene expression via mechanotrsnsduction'
How the brain map shrinks in Cerebral Palsy
How the wrong exercises in Cerebral Palsy could be extremely damaging
I am trying to step into the shoes of a real blogger -- the one with the instant upadates and the news report.
Me, Mark and Sarah are in Vancouver at the Fascia Research Congress # 3. Busy time here.
3 days packed with super-relevant and most-up-to-date stuff from Fascia science. Thursday I am speaking in front of Rolfers on the subject of "Guided Stress Transfer as the common fundamantal priniciple behind all manual therapies" and on Friday we have poster presentation hours...
Today was the day before -- the day when everyone meets and greets... and to my surprise -- since I am far from the most friendly and extrovert person -- it turns out that I have quite a lot of friends among fascia colleagues already.. Today was really more about hugs and handshakes ...
So here is the short video that gives you a basic feel of how things are. I tried my hand in editing -- the result is rather amateurish but I hope that will suffice.
What is the best birthday present a person can get? – Well, there are many facets to that, right?
First of all – I want to thank all of you – my Facebook page and e-mail were full of birthday wishes and cards. I really appreciate that and it means a lot to me…
But today I wanted to talk about a different and very special present. Finally I know the answer to what really is an incredible birthday present :-)
Obviously I can only speak from my own weirdo perspective – but this year I have really got treated to an amazing birthday present… a 2-day long 1-on-1 meeting with a person I consider a bona fide genius – Dr. Jaap Van der Wal.
His insights lifted me out of one of my deepest and longest standing frustrations (obviously without knowing it – I was just one of 100s of people in the audience when he talked from the stage).
What frustration am I talking about? – well, the one that is central to the entire medical and biological discourse of today.
You see, there are two camps out there and the rift between them is of a Grand Canyon size.
I came back home a week ago after nearly 3 months on the road ... fortunately my family still recognized me... I guess it's the haircut ... :-)
Tons of materials accumulated during these months -- the teachings, the presentations and the comparisons of before/afters to do...
This year's round of assessment was very rewarding -- the ball rolling indeed works as expected -- probably even better! The improvements of the connections within the vertebral columns and the ability to connect the 'velcro attachments' of the shoulder blades -- are really quite amazing breakthroughs..
So my call to all of you esteemed ABR Parents-Therapists -- please do not skip learning courses... Ball rolling techniques are continually upgraded empowering you to become a lot more effective and efficient... There is one thing that one cannot buy in this life -- it's time... and in the development of the growing child with cerebral palsy -- 1 hour of work done this year is probably worth at least 2-3 hours done next year --from the perspective of developmental yield...
I am going to provide you with a lot more of the technical teachings in a format of videos and practical tips in the forthcoming months -- we already accumulated tons of such teaching material -- and working through sorting it out...
So -- there is going to be a lot more opportunities for you to progress via doing your homework better.
However, direct hands-on teaching by an expert ABR trainer -- is always a major shortcut for you. That's how you can develop your skills faster and get those skills in action -- boosting your kids' development...
I started sorting out the presentations we did with Mark during the visit to Hawaii -- in this post I am offering you the one that we did in the Rehabilitation Hospital of Hawaii.
It is far shorter than the main workshop that we delivered as part of the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities -- but maybe there is some advantage to this more compact format.
Couple of preliminary cover notes...
Unlike the main ABR workshop at the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities that was filmed with a professional camera by a videographer -- this on is filmed using a good old Flip placed stationary on a mini-tripod with a superwide view of the entire room.
I guess you'd realize that the quality is not supergood. However, it's not too bad either.
First, most of the presentation is based on the powerpoint slides -- so I have inserted them into the video -- making it a lot easier to follow the narrative.
Second, I must say that the Flip is surprizingly good in recording the sound considering the tough circumstances of filming.
So I hope that your viewing experience is going to be reasonable enough to allow you to concentrate on a content...
The really interesting part is the fact that only through the circumstances of this particular presentation I understood how much of routine challenges an immersion of the new paradigm and methods face -- even when there is a genuine interest and goodwill.
Let me paint a broader picture to help you to see the context...
First of all -- the MD who is in charge of a Rehab Hospital team attended the workshop that we did few days earlier and was very positive and receptive. He was the one who actually "send" a group of PTs and OT -- 12-15 people -- to learn from us.
So, there was no resistance -- only goodwill. But... then the reality kicks in..
Every therapsit has a significant workload scheduled days in advance...
Only now I realized how significant are those logistical and administrative constraints within the existent healthcare model..
Frankly, a physical therapist in many instances has no more freedom than a worker at the assembly line -- it's a conveyor belt! Patient after patient, who have to receive a type of therapy that has been pre-aproved by the insurance companies and by referring physicians who are absolutely removed from any hands-on work with the patients..
How on Earth even the most enthusiastic and thoughtful individuals inside this profession are going to progress beyond the routines that they've been doing for decades!?
So to cut the story short -- the only time available was ... the lunch hour..
Well, it's a bit weird -- to introduce the ground-breaking concepts to the chewing crowd... :-)
However, on the one hand, even opera singers sometimes perform in front of the audience that eats and drinks, right? :-)
On the other hand, one can entertain the thought that the digestion of the "food for one's stomach" might facilitate the digestion of the "food for one's mind"....
I do not have much science to bakc this up -- but why not? :-)
On top of that, somewhere half way through the presentation ... the fire alarm went off! ...But as you all know -- I am loud and passionate enough not to be bothered by such minor inconveniences ...
So here we go ... this is a compact version of the presentation that introduces 2 key ideas:
Connective tissue focus instead of the mainstream brain and muscles focus in interpretation of Cerebral Palsy
Transition to the "Thrifty" Rehabilitation and Therapy based on connective tissue emphasis vs. the "Lavish" one that defines the therapies for Cerebral Palsy and brain-injury rehabilitation modalities today.
Part 1.
Part 2
Besides of going through these videos yourself I do encourage you to invite your PT, OT etc. to watch it as well... Hopefully, that will help your future communication with them...
Your comments are most appreciated. The more you say -- the more we'd be able to adjust and adapt the style and emphasis of presenation to help your 'inner game' development the most...
Long time – no see… Once again – contrary to my best intentions there was a gap in getting stuff published on this blog. The theorists of blogging say that nothing is more detrimental to the readership than irregularity and unpredictability…
Not that I have run out of the things to share – pretty much the opposite – but casual writing seems to be going for me only when I am out of the field work…
Anyway – I hope that blogging sporadically is still better than silence..
Well, first of all the last 7 weeks have been very packed.
In March I went to Singapore to re-film the last bits of the long overdue extended course on Super-Soft Ball Rolling Massage – the problem is always the same: by the time I finish one version there are so many upgrades to the technique itself and teachings that the entire course starts feeling awkward and outdated. Even though I realize that it could always be labeled as a ‘beta’ release 1.0 with subsequent updates –it doesn’t work for me – to the frustration of my production team I end up with another major overhaul.
However, finally it looks that the Super-Soft Ball Rolling Massage technique enters into the maturity phase with clear distinction between the skill levels – so I am feeling a lot better about the release of the intro course. Hopefully by the end of the summer we’ll get everything finished – as you all know too well – I am not known for lack of thoroughness :-)
Then there was a training session in Montreal. Very encouraging.
On the one hand, excellent progresses related to the evolution of the dorsal compartments (the back; vertebral column etc. ) – and respectively tons of material worthy of quite impressive “before/afters”.
On the other hand – I am very happy to have achieved a next milestone in the development of Super-Soft Ball Rolling Technique – the increased volumetric response, which integrates the benefits of the 3Q and the ball rolling at the same time.
As I am saying that – I realize that I have uploaded the video “ABR Technique Essence” to the Vimeo library but completely overlooked embedding into the blog:
Here it is.
On a practical side – I strongly encourage all of you to learn the recent upgrades of the Ball Rolling – the “Intense Technique” and the “Submerged Technique”.
I recommend it wholeheartedly – go ahead and sign up for the summer trainings if you haven’t done so yet– because these technique upgrades are going to be a major boost in the efficacy of your homework – at least doubling it…
Next big thing – me and Mark Driscoll (our principal research guy) – have conducted a 4-hour workshop at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Disabilities – http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/ – titled: “Thrifty” Rehabilitation – Home- Based and Family-Centered Treatment of Cerebral Palsy.
There were about 30 professional attendees – MDs, PTs, OTs – who specialize in Cerebral Palsy.
Frankly, over the years of life at the fringes being labeled as “alternative” I am used to the resistance and certain arrogance of the medical community towards “unofficial” newcomers.
Well, this time was a refreshing difference.
It appears that our duo with Mark finally managed to strike the right chord and engage the medical audience really deeply. Four hours is a long period of time – but the attention never waned.
I think that finally we have found a winning formula
