It's a long way to the top and other lessons in humility...

A conductor is certainly a specialist, but there is a very big difference between being a specialist and being an expert - and I love that difference.  I specialise in teaching people with neuro-motor disorders strategies and skills to enable them to manage their bodies better.  I don't make up these tricks and techniques, they are not my intellectual property - and I see my role, my specialty, as being able to articulate and share these solutions as openly and as freely as possible, and to facilitate the process of sharing and tweaking solutions that have worked for other people with similar challenges.  I have learned some of these tricks from other conductors, but most have been learned by being a partner in a problem solving process with an individual, and more often by letting my clients teach me the tricks they have worked out for themselves.  This means that the expertise and success are not mine; it means that I am teacher-learner combined, it means that I'm always on the lookout for new tricks to add to my repertoire and therefore always open to learning and growing, and it means professional humility is a part of being a conductor and I love that.

Lessons in humility come packaged in many wonderful formats.  Last week BC, a private client decided to stop training with me.  BC is a woman with advanced Parkinson's who started training with me because she was having frequent falls and trouble getting out of bed.  After a few weeks of private in home sessions she had mastered the tricks and techniques we had been working on to the point that she is no longer falling and can now get out of bed unassisted, and she no longer needed me to come to her home and practice with her.  I could choose to dwell on not being needed - but in reality no longer being needed is the best possible outcome and I'm celebrating. Conductive humility means knowing it is not about me - and that it never was - and there is nothing better than being around somebody who learns something and stepping back to let them own it.

Lessons in humility are sometimes delivered by posties on motorbikes. RP is a stroke survivor and a Harley Davidson enthusiast who has set up a rehabilitation space in his garage with parallel bars and steps - a dream workspace for a mobile conductor.  Last week while I was there working with RP, the postie - a big burly guy on a motorcycle - came up the long driveway to deliver the mail.  This week the same postie came up the driveway on his motorcycle. He had no mail to deliver, just wanted to tell RP that a few years ago he had been in a bad motorcycle crash resulting in a brain injury, and despite what everyone told him he was now walking again, and was back on his motorcycle, and that RP shouldn't give hope.  That day, for the first time, RP and I walked all of the way down and all of the way back up his long driveway.  This week RP did it again, twice in one session.  Conductive humility is being able to celebrate that after months of RP and I working towards something together and of me encouraging and teaching RP, what got him over the hump was a burly postie on a motorcycle and his heartfelt act of kindness. 

Life Without Limits -- Conductive Education on the International Stage

I was planning to use this blog posting to simply announce an upcoming conference that I will be presenting at -- but it seemed a bit impersonal dear readers, to do so without at least saying hello to you, and telling you a bit about what has been going through my head lately.  That said -- if you are pressed for time and just want the facts, please find a link to the conference which takes place April 16-18th in Auckland below.  My presentation is on Friday April 17th at 2:30 pm and if you are in the 'hood it would be most wonderful to have support from the CE community there.


Work has been hectic and a bit stressful over the last while.  That may or may not be the subject of a future blog post.  Life outside work has been more about exploring, adventuring, and indulging than about maintaining this blog, for which I will not feign apology.  In fact, I actually offer the opposite of an apology -- I offer the encouragement to do the same.  When life is good, get out there and enjoy it.  When things are hectic and stressful, all the more reason to seek what makes you happy and to care for yourself by doing things that offer pleasure, restores balance, and provokes gratitude.

Yes, my time outside work has been about exploring, adventuring, and indulging.  But as conductors we are very lucky.  Politics and organizational crappiness aside, for most of us our work makes us happy, offers pleasure, and provokes gratitude.  On the weekends I love the outdoors -- and New Zealand's outdoor are inspirationally splendid.  During the work week my classroom is my sanctuary, my time with clients feeds my soul, and inspires me to be the best that I can be for them and for myself.  Working conductively reminds me to celebrate being exposed to the attitude and lifestyle of Conductive Education; it helps me take risks and try new things; it helps me value and appreciate being the best you can be within the context of a set of circumstances or of a moment, and it helps me celebrate even the tiniest of achievements and to remember that tiny achievements add up to more than the sum of their parts.  For example...

A small achievement was writing about the benefits of Conductive Education for people with degenerative conditions as part of my dissertation as a student at NICE, and having that shape my practice to this day.  A small achievement was opening my colleagues minds to the possibility of opening our services to people with Muscular Dystrophy and other neuromuscular conditions beyond those typically seen in CE.  A small achievement was getting a pep talk from conductor Mandy Elliott affirming that I was right to pursue this path.  A small achievement was starting to work with people with such conditions, even if at first it was just me providing individual sessions outside of our main programs and groups.  The work was too exciting to keep to myself, the clients too outrageously orthofunctional to deny my colleagues the chance to learn and to understand what we could do to support these people.  A small achievement was building a service relationship with the relevant association here in New Zealand and being invited to speak to their key workers about what Conductive Education had to offer.  A small achievement was being encouraged by the Muscular Dystrophy New Zealand service manager to submit an abstract for this conference and actually finding time to meet the submission deadline.  A small achievement was having my abstract accepted for presentation -- and yes, it is a small achievement as in terms of exercise and lifestyle for people with Muscular Dystrophy I didn't have much competition.  (I will post my abstract in the comments for those who wish to read it).

A big achievement, bigger than the sum of all of those small achievements - for what it is worth - is seeing Conductive Education represented at an academic, international conference.  I have a couple of months to prepare and I would be grateful for any support from the Conductive Community, anecdotal or other, from conductors who have worked with people with neuromuscular conditions beyond the few we typically see in CE and from people with these conditions who have benefitted from CE.  Not to be sardonic, but there is a good chance I will be presenting as an independent instead of on behalf of my current organization, so I could use all of the support from the CE community that I can muster.




Is it CE? YOU tell ME! - the long awaited sequel part 1

In my last posting I wrote about working conductively with LE, an adult with autism. In this post I want to share some thoughts and experiences about working with SJ, a 63 year old woman with severe depression and a pervasive personality disorder presenting as complete disconnect from everyone and everything.

I have been trying to write this posting for a long time -- I actually have several months worth of jumbled thoughts and notes that I have been keeping for when I was ready to write this, and in fact thinking about writing this has made it impossible for me to write anything else.  In a nutshell that is what it is like to work with SJ -- she is an energy vampire who on a bad day sucks me dry rendering me emotionally spent and making it hard for me to do anything else, and even days that are good by her standards are still very draining.  Working with SJ makes me doubt myself and what I have to offer personally and professionally.  Many of my sessions with her are complete disasters with no discernable positive outcome or flicker of success.  Even on our better days I have this overwhelming feeling of losing the war despite winning a battle, a feeling I have not had professionally since working with a close family friend with ALS in her miserable last stages of rapid deterioration.

SJ started working with me several months ago through the Enable Me program and has since chosen to work with me privately, twice weekly -- this is an important detail as it is a very full on and intensive way to work with somebody.  She demands a lot of my mental and emotional energy.  I'm sure she will tell you it is no picnic having me turn up at her door twice weekly with my high expectations, positive determinism, hope, and cheer in the face of this terrible illness that has made the thought of getting out of bed let alone participate in normal activities of daily life seem impossible for SJ.  She might not have a physical or neurological disability but she is one of the most impaired people I have ever worked with - and that again is a big statement coming from me.

I should add that I like SJ -- I like her a lot.  In the moments when the real SJ claws past the depression and de-personalization she is intelligent, witty, engaging, has a sense of humour, takes an interest in me and my other clients and my life, shows me photos and tells me about her life before this.  My main purpose most sessions is to help create enough of a gap in or a distraction from the black cloud so that the real SJ can claw her way out, even if it is only for that hour or a small part of it.  There are often days, and recently weeks where I have only seen the depressed and depersonalized SJ.

I don't know if SJ believes I can help her, but she would rather have me there than to get through her week on her own.  She has tried everything else -- every medication, several hospitalizations, several rounds of shock therapy -- and I guess my cheer and bossy insistance that she participate in life seems the lessor of such evils.  I don't know if I believe that I can help her.  I believe that supporting her physical health can only help her mental and emotional health, and we try to do this through basic activities like getting out of bed and moving, participating in anything regardless of how minute her participation is, having a shower and taking care of basic hygiene,  taking part in simple healthy cooking and eating something nutritious, and getting outside even for a few minutes.  SJ feels that she cannot do any of these things on her own, and there are many days even with me there that they remain impossible for her.

I don't know if I believe that I can help her, but I know that I believe it is worth trying.  Her case manager believes that she will not get better and that I should brace for the worst -- he told me that there was nothing that could be done and that I could at best hope to make a moment better.  The mental health team feels that she is not responding to their intervention and the other day they said that they were supporting my work with her because it was the first time in a long time she had been willing to engage with someone even though they thought nothing would come out of it because nothing could be done.  My blood boils when I talk to these people -- how dare they write off a person, SJ, my client?  How dare they tell me that there is nothing that can be done just because they have run out of ideas? How dare they judge her potential based on their failure? How dare they pat me on the head when I'm excited about a tiny step forward or try to placate me by reminding me that this is how it is for SJ when I'm worried about a step in the wrong direction?  If they think I'm that silly and naive why the hell would the chuck me in on my own to work with her?  They have no hope for this woman, they do not believe that she can be helped or that it is worth trying, they 'gave her to me' as a way of clearing out their 'too-hard basket', and have stopped trying because she has not yet responded to their best shots.

I believe that 'they' are wrong.  There -- I said it out loud.  Yes I'm 'just a conductor / personal trainer and they are 'the mental health team', and what do I know, but I believe that they are wrong.  I believe that they are blaming her for their failure and lack of solution options.  Even after awful sessions on very bad days for SJ I believe it is worth trying; and on days when I've failed to make a dent in her black cloud I leave wondering what else I could have done or said.  I certainly question what I have to offer her, and I'm not sure that I believe that I can help her, but that is not the same as not believing that she is help-able.  And I hear my mentor AB's voice in my head - 'if something doesn't work we find something else to try or another way to try the same thing - this is what conductors do'.

If the student fails to learn, the tendency, says Feuerstein, is to blame the child: 
'We have a stiff finger that goes only in one direction...  One of the great problems is to make this stiff finger more flexible so that it turns towards oneself, toward the teacher'.  
The teacher has to ask himself, 'have I done all I needed in order to change this child?
--Florence Minnis in The Transformers: The Art of Inspired Teaching (1990)

I needed to get that out of my head so that I can write about the actual insights I've gained and lessons learned and reinforced from working conductively with SJ.  To be continued...


A Little Hope Goes a Long Way

"For the first time in years I have hope" MR said this morning, after gliding beautifully up and down her hallway several times , swinging her arms and counting 1-2 as she stepped, stopping, correcting herself and starting again with control when she lost balance or stumbled. "I feel like I don't just have to cope with it by myself in my head, that there is something that I can do for myself and that I know what I can do instead of wondering if I can do this or should do that".  MR is a single mom with multiple sclerosis (MS) whom I have been working with intensively with over the past several weeks through Phase 2 of the Enable Me Project. When I met her she was beside herself with depression and fear about her worsening walking and balance and not psychologically ready to look at a walking aid.  She was completely isolated, only leaving the house to get her son to school and do the groceries because it was easier not to go anywhere than to risk falling.

Enable Me Phase 2 is a shorter initiative that was tacked on to the end of the Enable Me Project -- again investigating the same pro-active intervention opportunities but this time for a very different population. Where in Phase 1 the participants were elderly people living independently in the community, the participants in Phase 2 are already 'in the system'.  They are people with disabilities that are already clients of Community Care Northern Beaches (the organization running the research project) either through Community Care's community living program or through their 'older parent carer' program.  At first the case managers were not sure whether it would be appropriate to have a personal trainer involved with this population group, but the case manager that I worked under in Phase 1 argued my case, told them that I was 'specialized' and had experience in disability and told them what she could about Conductive Education.  It helped that of all the clients in Phase 1, the ones who had the most success with 'personal training' were surprisingly the 'frailest' and most 'challenging' (translation - the people with chronic conditions such as stroke and back problems or early stage Parkinson's, or otherwise in the 'too hard' or 'nothing can be done' basket - exactly my cup of tea).

In Phase 2 of Enable Me -- so far -- I have been working with adults with MS, cerebral palsy, stroke, acquired brain injury, intellectual disability, autism, and pervasive anxiety disorder on a range of goals as varied as the individuals and conditions setting them. I am spending much more time as a conductor and continuing to test the boundaries of CE as an approach to working with people with and without motor disorders.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm glad for the tools of my personal training trade; MH has an acquired brain injury but her main goals are around fitness and weight loss; a few minutes of yoga are the difference between LE losing it completely or being able to recover and make it through the session after a massive panic attack; JW certainly has cerebral palsy but wants the strength to swim a lap of an olympic pool.

More importantly, I'm glad for the philosophical tools of my conductor trade from which I approach people.  I'm glad that I can see the person and not just the problem; that I seek the why that underpins the what of their goals and that I value it; that I have the patience to wait for sometimes minute results and that I never get tired of wildly celebrating achievements large and small; that I appreciate the effort and determination it takes to stand up and try again and know to reward effort that when there are not positive results; that I know I need to equip people with flexible and dynamic tools which they can use and modify as and when needed instead of with a list of meaningless exercises to do every morning.

MR really did walk beautifully this morning; it was the best I have seen her walk in the 7 weeks we have been working together. She seemed to glide down her hallway, swinging her arms, stepping evenly while counting 1-2-1-2, stopping to make necessary corrections without me having to say anything. When I told her so she beamed with pride -- which certainly suits her better than the despair she wore when I first met her -- and told me that her daughter and her friend had both said her walking was looking better, and that she had been out to meet her girlfriend for lunch for the first time in months.

I'm glad that I could teach MR some core strengthening exercises that she could practice on the swiss ball.  I'm really glad that because of Conductive Education I knew enough about MS and ataxia to be able to help MR with her walking and could help her make sense of her ataxia.  I'm most glad that because of the way that CE has taught me to approach people I knew that the pride and sense of achievement I saw on MR's face was more important than the fluency of her walking, and that the real achievement was not that she walked well enough that her friend noticed but that she had the confidence to go out and to meet her friend.  And I'm over the moon ecstatic that for the first time in years she has hope because my years in Conductive Education have taught me that hope is transformational; it influences potential and outcome long after a person stops 'doing CE' because that person believes in possibility and in herself again.

MR will be discharged from Enable Me next week. I would worry, but I know that she leaves with a pocketful of tricks and techniques, and enough hope to know that it is worth using them.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” 
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

Seeing is believing -- and believing is seeing

We often say seeing is believing -- and this is taken to mean that whatever we it is that we want to believe must first be demonstrated, must be proved, must exist, and must be objectively true.  Skepticism is considered healthy - be critical, suspend judgment, just the facts ma'am.  Our society values evidence over experience and intuition, and faith and hope are considered charlatan.  Conductive Education has been ridiculed and denounced and disregarded -- we haven't figured out how to quantify and clearly articulate what it is that we do; nor have external researchers, and why should they -- it is their job to be critical and objective.   And we, the 'global conductive community' -- for lack of a better way of describing the flotsam of people around the world working in the field of Conductive Education, supporting and fighting for Conductive Education, and benefitting from experiencing Conductive Education -- don't help the situation.  We talk about the intangible and psychosocial defining elements of Conductive Education and then try to find a tangible and objective way to be measured and defined so that we can fit in to wherever it is we are trying to eek out an existence.  Or we quietly do what we do and hope to remain unnoticed and therefore unscrutinized but never actually articulate what it is that we are so passionate about and protective of.

Where am I going with this ranting raving opening to this first blog, you ask?  I don't pretend to have the answers, just my experience, my stories, and my thoughts.  In this blog I plan to write about some of the unmeasurable and intangible conductive magic underlying the practice -- because it is important, because it is what makes us different, and because it is what makes me and many of the others that I have conducted love Conductive Education.  And I will start today with some thoughts inspired by KD about seeing and believing.

KD is an adult with cerebral palsy -- she attended a CE group I ran here in Sydney a few years ago.  She is also an elite boccia player and has represented her state and her country at major competitions.  KD thrived in the Conductive Education environment -- she came into the classroom with a determination of steel and an attitude that roared "I will until".  And she did, regardless of who told her she shouldn't or couldn't.  I'll never forget the relief and joy she expressed when we first met for our initial consultation when she expressed her goals and her dreams and I said let's give it a shot.  She was amazed that I didn't tell her it was impossible, and I continue to be amazed that there are people out there like KD who despite decades of discouragement still have the guts to have goals and dreams, let alone express them.  Over a few years I watched KD go from a few assisted steps with two conductors and a walker, to practicing with a friend outside the classroom, to walking across a beach promenade with her walker, unassisted, as part of a fundraiser that she organized so that she could afford to travel with the boccia squad to compete overseas.

KD contacted me a few months ago asking if we could get started again.  She said that she had had a rough year -- not just any old rough year; frequent and severe seizures, injuries, hospitalizations, life support; we had nearly lost her on more than one occasion.  KD said that as a result she had lost a lot of motor and sensory function affecting her entire life and well-being and, most importantly to KD, her boccia.

When I met with her for consultation, it was clear that she had not exaggerated any of what she had described.  Her struggle and fatigue were apparent, there was less fire in her eyes -- it still flickered, but it was dim.  I imagine a couple of years of illness, loss, grief, fear, worst case scenarios, and being told that she was lucky to be alive but that no recovery of function could reasonably be expected would extinguish most people's fires -- but KD was still fighting, dragging herself up for the next round.  We struggled through a first session -- very basic movements.  It was challenging for both of us -- because the last time we worked together everything was very different.  KD got teary as we tried movements that she hadn't tried since her down turn, and added more things to the mental list she was keeping of what she could no longer do.  I asked about her goals for our sessions she met my eye (which in itself is a big challenge for KD at present) and said, pleadingly but with determination "I don't care what or how much, I just want to get some of it back".  And I saw the fire -- I stopped seeing all of the deterioration and stopped wondering where we would start -- I saw the fire in her eyes, and I heard myself say "you will".  I couldn't see, but I believed.  And because I believed, KD believed -- without question, without proof, without a promise, without seeing, she believed.

We believed in hope, in possibility, in potential.  I believed in KD -- more importantly, she believed in herself.  And because we believed instead of doubted, the next week when we worked together it was totally different.  Same bedroom, same body, same debilitating last few years.  But it was totally different.  Her ability to initiate and control movement was different; her pain free range of motion was different; her ability to stabilize non moving parts of her body was different; I'm talking about significant, noticable differences in her head, trunk, and limbs -- despite a stressful week of seizures so severe she nearly missed her own 40th birthday party.  I knew it, she knew it.  No miraculous recovery, but certainly some conductive magic.

When I commented (excitedly and amazedly) KD smiled and said she had been practicing.  Practicing basic movements physically when she could, in her mind -- visualizing -- when her body was too tired.  Thinking the movement commands to herself or having a friend repeat them out loud to her over the phone.  I lift my arm; I hold my head up; I move my leg.  There was no reason that this could not have been happening previously -- except that despair and frustration and hopelessness probably made trying and practicing seem futile.  A bit of belief -- an attitude adjustment -- refuelled KD's natural determination of steel -- I can; I will.

We talked that day about the verbal intention used in the CE task series -- not in terms of what rhythm was used or in terms of connecting intention and movement through  external and internal commands and involving higher brain functions.  We talked about the affirming power of the statements in positive present tense expressing and painting a picture in her mind of what she wants.  I lift my arm; I hold my head up; I move my leg -- out loud, in her mind, over and over again stating the goal in present tense as if already achieved, speaking what she wants not what she doesn't, replacing conscious and subconscious I can't with I am; I do; I will until.  Creating an image and holding it firmly in her mind's eye -- believing, seeing; seeing, believing.

We say 'listen, say, do' when explaining verbal intention --
Perhaps we really mean 'listen-say/believe/visualize-do'; perhaps the conductive magic is about what happens mentally in those precious seconds before the 'doing' starts.  There is no shortage on literature about the power of positive thinking, goal setting, and affirmation -- perhaps this should be included in our quest to define and make sense of Conductive Education.

"What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve"
   ---Napoleon Hill