I know that my role in the "Enable Me" project is personal trainer / exercise lady. However, I have been switching hats a lot lately -- mid session and discreetly taking my personal trainer hat off and slipping my conductor hat back on, barely stopping to notice how comfortable it feels, but noticing the change in my tone, the way sets and repetitions of exercises give way to rhythmically intended tasks, the subtle stylistic changes in the way the session is delivered. The people I work with in this project are in their eighties -- if they notice the hat change they don't react though they certainly respond. Whether what I am doing would look and sound normal in a CE group but seem a bit odd in the gym is irrelevant to these people for whom the concept of a personal trainer is as foreign as that of a conductor.
Don't get me wrong -- I am passionate about how valuable exercise is for people of all ages and abilities and firmly believe that exercise helps people stay strong and healthy and can actually intervene with what is often presumed to be an inevitable part of the ageing process. But there are times when what is needed and what is more appropriate in a given moment or over a few weeks of working with a particular person is Conductive Education -- the learning, the structured approach to problem solving, the way of breaking complex movements into manageable segments, practicing them, and stringing them back together as fluent, purposeful movement, the use of speech and rhythm and intention and motivation as facilitation -- in other words the unique tricks specific to the conductive trade.
Mr LH's file says that he has had a frozen shoulder, has had a few falls, and has mild cognitive decline. In reality Mr LH's movement and cognition is characteristic of something in the Parkinson's plus family of conditions -- I of course wouldn't try to guess or diagnose, that is certainly not my role, but I am pleased that the case manager and physiotherapist accept my experience based hunch that there is something neuro-motoric going on and have written a letter that Mr LH can take to his GP recommending further investigation. I am even more pleased that Mr LH has spontaneously started rhythmically saying tasks and counting with me (it is often hard for me to get people to count and say tasks in individual sessions, especially if they have not experienced the power of rhythmical intention in a CE group); I am even more pleased that when he counts he can walk and swing his arms and get up from a chair and coordinate complex movements. I hope -- as I often do about my 'hunches' -- that I am wrong and that there is no neuro-motor disorder creeping in. Without my training and experience as a conductor I would have no entry point for working with Mr LH -- I wouldn't know where to start.
Mr GL had a major stroke 15 years ago -- at the time he was fit and healthy and his stroke baffled his medical team and shocked Mr GL and his family. The 'Enable Me' case manager wasn't sure if this was something a personal trainer should be involved in and called to chat with me about how frail Mr GL was and about his increased risk of falls. I reminded her that I had many years of experience working with people after strokes in my previous life as a conductor. Today Mr GL and I had our first session -- within minutes it felt like we had been working together for years. I knew right away which tasks would work and what tricks to start him with, where to put my hands, where to push him, what it must have felt like for him to have his posture and symmetry and weight bearing corrected after 16 years. I saw his eyes light up when he conquered a task that moments ago had seemed impossible -- a few moments and a little conductive magic make a big difference when those moments are spent practicing and learning to apply nifty little CE tricks.
There have been a lot of people in the 'Enable Me' program that have been deemed too frail for personal training and who have instead received physiotherapy only instead of a combined approach -- there are a lot of people in the 'Enable Me' program that I would have been able to help if I had been given the chance to work with them. I got the contract with the 'Enable Me' program because of my work as a Conductor -- somebody whom I used to work with at the local cerebral palsy centre referred me and people involved with the program saw me working at the gym with people in wheelchairs. But I am contracted as a personal trainer, and what I bring to the table as a conductor is not fully understood or recognized, and therefore opportunities to help people as a conductor have been missed. At this point I do not believe that Conductive Education will even get a mention when the reports about the 'Enable Me' project are written up. I hope I can correct this but I am just not certain it will happen. I wish that when the contract was negotiated I had had the guts to stand up for Conductive Education instead of just being glad for the opportunity to take part.
Over and over and over again I hear people relate the advice they have been given by well meaning professionals -- 'you have CP / MS / PD / stroke / old age / whatever, there is nothing that can be done, accept it'. That is just not how we think in Conductive Education -- because I am a conductor I have a place to start and a unique bag of tricks and conductive magic, but more importantly I have a conductive attitude that makes me believe that there is always something that can be done, something that can be learned, that it is worth trying, so I do start, and start again, and try something new if one thing doesn't work. I'd like to think that I am the same when I am wearing my personal training hat -- and I know that if I am it is because that conductive attitude is so much a part of me now, or because no matter what role I'm in, I'm always wearing my conductor hat.
http://195.122.253.112/public/mp3/Beatles/14%20Let%20It%20Be/The%20Beatles%20-%20Let%20It%20Be%20-%2010%20The%20Long%20And%20Winding%20Road.mp3
Don't get me wrong -- I am passionate about how valuable exercise is for people of all ages and abilities and firmly believe that exercise helps people stay strong and healthy and can actually intervene with what is often presumed to be an inevitable part of the ageing process. But there are times when what is needed and what is more appropriate in a given moment or over a few weeks of working with a particular person is Conductive Education -- the learning, the structured approach to problem solving, the way of breaking complex movements into manageable segments, practicing them, and stringing them back together as fluent, purposeful movement, the use of speech and rhythm and intention and motivation as facilitation -- in other words the unique tricks specific to the conductive trade.
Mr LH's file says that he has had a frozen shoulder, has had a few falls, and has mild cognitive decline. In reality Mr LH's movement and cognition is characteristic of something in the Parkinson's plus family of conditions -- I of course wouldn't try to guess or diagnose, that is certainly not my role, but I am pleased that the case manager and physiotherapist accept my experience based hunch that there is something neuro-motoric going on and have written a letter that Mr LH can take to his GP recommending further investigation. I am even more pleased that Mr LH has spontaneously started rhythmically saying tasks and counting with me (it is often hard for me to get people to count and say tasks in individual sessions, especially if they have not experienced the power of rhythmical intention in a CE group); I am even more pleased that when he counts he can walk and swing his arms and get up from a chair and coordinate complex movements. I hope -- as I often do about my 'hunches' -- that I am wrong and that there is no neuro-motor disorder creeping in. Without my training and experience as a conductor I would have no entry point for working with Mr LH -- I wouldn't know where to start.
Mr GL had a major stroke 15 years ago -- at the time he was fit and healthy and his stroke baffled his medical team and shocked Mr GL and his family. The 'Enable Me' case manager wasn't sure if this was something a personal trainer should be involved in and called to chat with me about how frail Mr GL was and about his increased risk of falls. I reminded her that I had many years of experience working with people after strokes in my previous life as a conductor. Today Mr GL and I had our first session -- within minutes it felt like we had been working together for years. I knew right away which tasks would work and what tricks to start him with, where to put my hands, where to push him, what it must have felt like for him to have his posture and symmetry and weight bearing corrected after 16 years. I saw his eyes light up when he conquered a task that moments ago had seemed impossible -- a few moments and a little conductive magic make a big difference when those moments are spent practicing and learning to apply nifty little CE tricks.
There have been a lot of people in the 'Enable Me' program that have been deemed too frail for personal training and who have instead received physiotherapy only instead of a combined approach -- there are a lot of people in the 'Enable Me' program that I would have been able to help if I had been given the chance to work with them. I got the contract with the 'Enable Me' program because of my work as a Conductor -- somebody whom I used to work with at the local cerebral palsy centre referred me and people involved with the program saw me working at the gym with people in wheelchairs. But I am contracted as a personal trainer, and what I bring to the table as a conductor is not fully understood or recognized, and therefore opportunities to help people as a conductor have been missed. At this point I do not believe that Conductive Education will even get a mention when the reports about the 'Enable Me' project are written up. I hope I can correct this but I am just not certain it will happen. I wish that when the contract was negotiated I had had the guts to stand up for Conductive Education instead of just being glad for the opportunity to take part.
Over and over and over again I hear people relate the advice they have been given by well meaning professionals -- 'you have CP / MS / PD / stroke / old age / whatever, there is nothing that can be done, accept it'. That is just not how we think in Conductive Education -- because I am a conductor I have a place to start and a unique bag of tricks and conductive magic, but more importantly I have a conductive attitude that makes me believe that there is always something that can be done, something that can be learned, that it is worth trying, so I do start, and start again, and try something new if one thing doesn't work. I'd like to think that I am the same when I am wearing my personal training hat -- and I know that if I am it is because that conductive attitude is so much a part of me now, or because no matter what role I'm in, I'm always wearing my conductor hat.
http://195.122.253.112/public/mp3/Beatles/14%20Let%20It%20Be/The%20Beatles%20-%20Let%20It%20Be%20-%2010%20The%20Long%20And%20Winding%20Road.mp3