Here are real stories from readers that appeared here on Fitness Fixer during 2009.
Get inspired. Use these for your New Year's Resolutions and throughout the New Year to come. Get happy and healthy using these methods, then send your own:
Designs World Health
Stuart Wood got up and just did it, He studied and used my work, then designed several programs for children and adults to learn healthy movement not only for itself, but to use for building community works. Watch for many honorable and important projects from Stuart to come as one of my Academy appointees - Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy
Fixed ankle pain and used healthy squatting, bending, and horse riding for a month rugged trek. Composer Andrea Clearfield and artist Maureen Drdak trekked a month in Nepal to record the sacred music and art of LUNG-TA, the Windhorse - Pain Free Trekking to Kingdom of Lo
Lisa P was told to stop running. She got out of shape but the injuries remained. She learned to stop the foot injuries, lost weight, got in shape, ran marathons, changed to healthy movement, and was able to fulfill her dream of working as a professional photographer - Physician Told Her Give Up, Fitness Fixer Made Her Able
David from Belgium took time to make us many training videos even with firstborn daughter Aiko on the way, then continued after her arrival with this gem, called by reader Shannon Hammer, "The most charming "fitness video" I have ever seen." - Fast Fitness - Isometric Abs Training. Keep your sound/speakers on.
Two great people won their fame this year and manfully allowed their stories to go next year so others could be counted now - Fellow rider BikaBill, and my old friend and fellow wild-hair Mark Lonsdale who will have his successes as frogman, marksman, and Specialized Tactical Training Unit instructor, coming soon.
Thank You Readers For Nice Comments And Successes In The Comments
Anton, Alberto (farioreo), Anya, Terry Lee, Teresa, Vietanh, Dada, Caregiver Sandy, Captain Scott, Mr. Glass, Poleminx, Y, Marina, Rennie, Rene, Belly Dancer, Ted, Shannon, Dentists Plantation, BikaBill, Cockroach Catcher, jojo, JayaKrishna, MegaMom, TonyP. Sam, rania123456, meanne, Joe, Jeff, Elliott, RealMother, Hope, M.Pradeep, Kirstine, Steven, Uma, Vasudha, Laura, byte5, Sylvia, DD, Naiche, Margie, Reggie (R2_G2), SwissGraphics, Charles, Brooke, Sebastian, JH, adarrel, Ted, priyamno1, EMR, NurseLine, John, Dufbil (David), Alena, Shane, Maryk, Jilly, Ness, 4myJagiya, MountainsMan, Wondering Oriental, alkime, Anonymous, and others. Anyone else? Let me know if you should be here to thank.
Thank You All For Your E-Mails Of Success
Paul J wrote, "8 months Chiropractor free, so Merry Christmas to you."
Anya taught her Grandmother to fix neck pain over Skype. Watch for insightful, smart, strong, stories from Anya to come next year. Anya reminds, "We are so far from knowing our limits!"
Hundreds more, too shy to put their story online, mailed me notes of the best thanks - that because of these methods, they stopped pain, they got strong, they had their lives back.
Thank you everyone for using my methods for Good. Thank you for writing your stories for others to benefit. Congratulations on your great work.
For Next Year
Start envisioning your success using these methods. Send me your photo sharing link with photos of what you do to fix your fitness, your well being, your life. Send in your story and you will soon be in the Fitness Fixer Hall of Fame 2010.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Thank you Grand Rounds Volume 6: Number 14 - the last Grand Rounds of 2009 - for including my article Contest To Sit Up Straight - A Hint in the 'round-up' of best medical writing for the week.
Grand Rounds host Jessica Otte, a Family Practice Resident from British Columbia, writes,
"Dr. Jolie Bookspan, the Fitness Fixer, will help you overcome your Cro Magnon-like state. Maybe we wouldn’t be such slouches if we just would follow her advice and learn How to Sit Up Straight!"
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification,DrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
What does it take to sit up straight? Is it possible that the numbers of physicians, surgeons, instructors, and trainers who entered did not know? We now have five winners:
Paul J was first to write in to the contest with understanding,
"Brains are required to think and correct bad posture."
Steve Rice knew it when he wrote in the hints that first in importance, above doing any strengthening or stretching is,
"1. Engage the brain to develop better postural habits. No matter how strong the elongated muscles get, and how long the contracted muscles get, if the brain says "slouch" that's what the body will do. The other steps (stretch/strength) are necessary but not sufficient to fix the posture problem.
He also correctly stated that you use back muscles (not abs) to pull your spine back to straighten from rounded forward.
1. Only the brain is required. I simply have to do it! 2. Name the muscles -- lean back by stretching the pectorals, and maintain neutral spine in the lower back. All these years I was just too ignorant to use them until Dr. Jolie said so! 3. I think it's 'cause their chest is too tight from rounded shoulders. Good pectoral stretching, and remembering to maintain good posture will correct.
It's that remembering thing that's the problem. Fortunately my back keeps reminding my brain to use what I've learned! :-D
"Thanks, again, especially for what I've learned from you. My back is getting much better and I don't need a doctor!!!"
I learned things from readers:
Hopefully joking, were not one, but two surgeons who wrote that surgery is required to cut tight front (anterior) muscles.
Readers think abdominal muscles do every motion of all your limbs whether they do or not.
Readers think that somehow squeezing your abdominal muscles makes you move, and they think using one set of muscles magically makes you stop (inhibit) others. This is an often repeated bit of mythology, not true in all cases as previously thought. In fact, we couldn't move properly if it were true.
Readers think abdominal muscles somehow stop you from rounding forward and make you sit straight if you just do something called "engage." I have no idea how or what that would be. Abdominal muscles are flexors (bend the spine forward - not the body as a whole). Fourth winner Mr. Georges Nakhlé, my Academy instructor and manager of the Middle Eastern division was one of the two entrants who knew that abdominal muscles do not straighten you from a rounded forward position. Your back muscles are needed to pull back enough to straighten you (only if you use them). He names them in the Hints. Abdominal muscles do not attach to your legs. They cannot pull your body closer to your leg (or leg closer to body) if you are sitting with your hip slouched back away from your leg.
A helpful comment from Anonymous in Contest Hints enlightened me about a major source of the problem - readers honestly don't know what muscles do, and they feel like outsiders when hearing names of muscles and their actions. This is important. It opened a large door for me.
Thanks to these reader comments, I know to start writing articles explaining actual muscle use. No one should need any medical degree or training to know your body, names of parts, and how you move. Just like if you are not a mechanic, by knowing simple car parts, you can save much money and pain and being fooled by fancy sales talk.
Fifth winner was reader Sister Mary Smackham Witherstick of the Royal Order of Order,
"Quit yer sorry whining. Straighten up laddies!"
How hard was that?
Maybe our slogan for this contest could be the zombie cry from Return of the Living Dead,
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a life-saving holiday gift that you can give, even if you haven't shopped - give a CPR class.
CPR is a first aid procedure. With CPR training, you can help save someone who has stopped breathing or heartbeat.
CPR stands for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. CPR gives the person air, and presses on their chest to circulate blood until emergency care arrives.
CPR can be learned and practiced under instructor supervision in a single session class. Class lengths vary. Introductory 3 and 4 hour classes may include use of external automatic defibrillators (AED). Longer classes include additional procedures, the different protocols for adults, children, and infants, and how two people can work together to do rescues.
Gift idea - give a person a card with your pledge to pay for their class or go with them. Contact the Red Cross, Heart Association, and other community preparedness training group to check classes and prices in your area (Red Crescent is more projects than classes). CPR methods change over the years. If you took a class years ago, methods are different now. Certification expires after one year. This month I spent many days renewing my various certifications and teaching Red Cross certification classes as a volunteer.
In a CPR class I taught earlier this month, obese students chomped potato chips while watching videos of CPR for heart attack. A student who said he was in graduate school for kinesiology sat extremely slouched for the 4 hour class, and bent wrong repeatedly to pick up blankets and move his practice CPR manikin. Remember - it's a class for better health?
Give blood. After I last wrote about donating, several readers asked if I give blood. I have given 41 times to the Red Cross (not paid), not counting three times directly for relatives in emergencies. This is a small number compared to Lillian in Blood Hero.
There Are Still Millions Around The World Without Basics to Live:
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Happy Holidays to all readers. Over the next month many cultures will celebrate many holidays on solar and lunar calendars. Enjoy all your days. Here are ways to make your time healthy - your cooking, your cleaning, your preparing, your traveling:
Is overeating, and overstressing avoidable on the holidays? - Grate Christmas
Be good to each other. If others are pushing past you, wave them with a smile. The purpose of the holidays is all for health and better spirit, not stress.
Reader Ivy wrote:
"I would like to express a huge thank you for all the wonderful posts on the Healthline website. I am sure that there are thousands of people who, like me, look forward to reading each one.
"No doubt you will be looking forward to the holiday period. May 2010 be a wonderful year.
"Much love to both you and Paul "Hugs "Ivy"
Ivy, many readers write me how your success stories have led them to healthier exercise, fixing pain, and happier life. Thank you all for using this work for Good.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Success - Using Good Bending For Shoveling Snow
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
About two feet of snow fell over the weekend in the Northeast US. I got a lovely Christmas card shortly after. I wrote back to thank the sender for remembering me.
KathyB replied,
"I not only remembered you, I've had you on my mind, as I so often do. I was thinking on Sunday, after I'd shoveled snow for 3 hours straight without hurting my back, and again yesterday when I did another half hour, that you gave me a gift that just keeps on giving, that I'll NEVER forget what you've done for me, and I thought how wonderful it must be to be able to do something like that for people.
"I wish you and Paul the very best always,
"Kathy"
Kathy - you make it all worthwhile. Kathy writes well. In fact, she is a professional mystery writer. I will ask her to tell us about some of her exciting books in the future.
In 2006 KathyB stopped 13 years of back pain using my work. She describes what she did in the comments of:
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification -DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. Dr. Brown did a nice thing by including both the link for our winning posts and the link for each entire blog.
A different host works hard each week to find and list the Grand Round articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host Dr Brown of Teen Health 411 for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our work.
My professional and life work is understanding and studying the fastest, highest, quickest, coldest, hottest, bravest, strongest in human physiology. I study the body in extremes. I study what makes one person able to survive an event and the person next to him perish. Strong brave men get hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me. I make grown men cry.
Since I was small, I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to live under the sea. I wanted to understand why three people will fall in freezing water, one will die, one will be sick, and one will be fine. In the same marathon, some racers will have heat exhaustion, others experience cold injury. I have lived underwater, on ships, and mountains. I examine long unsolved cold cases as Science Officer of The Vidocq Society, not to know how they died, but their state while alive. (I am the "Spock of Vidocq.")
Since I was very small, I read accounts of survival - stories of defecting MIG pilots, tiger pit prisoners, remote plane crashes, snowbound hikers, expeditions across continents, near-drownings, children of war, swimming races in the arctic, the different bones developed in children learning different trades and movement patterns. I grew up to study the difference in joint angles and limb lengths that confer speed or strength advantage. I study which and how much training supersedes inborn advantage and increases performance.
As a research scientist, I do the "get-your-hands-cold-and-dirty" work to distinguish what actually happens and how it comes to be that way. Many things we heard in school or in stories were never true, just repeated. My work in extremes is mostly behind the scenes (the team player scenario). Piles of data I collected and hand-analyzed for countless studies are in my file cabinets and brain. I apply these studies to develop training methods and injury recovery methods that work for the moment, and for long-term health.
Some readers have asked me to make a category of Fitness Fixer stories called Dr. Bookspan's Excellent Adventures. I will work on it. A few samples are in the Related links below.
Happy Solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Mobilize and Strengthen With Serratus PushUps
Friday, December 18, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Strengthen and learn to use the often forgotten serratus anterior muscles and learn a good mobilization for your shoulders so that you don't get stiff, and become stuck round-shouldered when driving or typing.
"Serratus" muscles wrap your chest below your armpits. Their sections fan out like your fingers, looking serrated, giving the name. They wrap around your sides to the front, so are further described with the word "anterior." Muscle names are often descriptive, and can be easy and fun to understand. They are important for keeping your shoulder blades in place - but only when you use them to.
My student Yash demonstrates:
1. Hold a push up position with straight not locked arms. This is often called a plank position. Keeping your arms straight at the elbow, let your upper body sink under your weight so that your shoulder blades roll back and squeeze together - photo 1.
2. Correct that problem by pulling your upper back to a straighter position - photo 2
3. Do as many repetitions of sinking and pulling upward to correct the winging that you can at once. Improve by increasing the number and speed you can correct.Coming posts will describe the serratus more and what it does, more on winging scapula, more fixes for it, and more on understanding muscle names and uses. Understanding, rather than memorizing, will help you know if claims for exercise fads and machines will help or not, and to not feel like an outsider about your anatomy and health. No medical degrees needed to understand your own body.
StuartShip - How To Start Healthy Movement Programs
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Reader Stuart Wood knew that the way to healthier communities is getting up and teaching it. He wrote me several impressive notes of using my work to fix his own injuries, then for his Boss, then requesting if he could use it formally to teach community projects. I awarded him an Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy.
Stuart writes this update:
"After months of reading your blog I have become inspired to teach some of your information to whoever is willing to listen. I think the health and fitness situation in our country can benefit from your work and after trying it out and seeing results, as well as helping my friend to fix his bulging disc, I thought that the information you provide on your websites and in your books needs to reach more people. I read your blog regularly and have always loved the inspirational stories that your readers have supplied. The writings between you and "Inspirational Ivy" really helped to make me realize that I could be healthy and strong for many years to come as well as the posts of the Thai women in their 80's going strong! I think it is so unfortunate that aging and weakness are commonly believed to go hand in hand. I think the problem needs to be addressed when children are young and before they ingrain bad health and movement habits.
"My co-workers have been receptive to your ideas and they have helped me greatly in thinking about and learning how to effectively explain your technique.
Today I taught for the first time in a semi-formal setting. I had a friend who had helped fix his own back pain (bulged disc) take pictures for me. The first thing I learned is that I have much improvement to make in my own movement, I suggest (like you have said) that everyone have a friend take candid pictures of them to test their progress. The group of kids I'm teaching are at the Archer Center in Tucson, AZ. They are part of the CATCH after school program and I wanted to teach them some good movement habits to benefit them in their daily lives as well as in sports and play-time.
"I was not sure how to start or what to teach exactly and time was limited for each group (only about 20 minutes) so I went to the Functional Fitness Friday posts and the (main) stretches like the side-stretch (done well at right, using wall for straight placement) and chest stretch and lunge. It was quite the learning experience! The first group of children were between 8-10 or so and their attention spans were short and I couldn't achieve much with them in the short time. I think the best thing would be big exercises like push-ups with neutral spine and lunge and activities full of movement because they seemed most interested in those things. The second group of kids were older and they were very focused and interested. I taught them the side and chest stretches, emphasizing relaxation and making it feel good. I had them do the wall test and then stretch and see if they found a difference. Some did and some didn't. I realized that teaching these age groups would require multiple sessions broken down into different sessions and incorporated into games.
"What I realized most was how interested the instructor was, he felt the difference at once between improper and proper techniques. I think in addition to teaching children I would like to teach the instructors because they are the primary source of information for the children. I am also very inspired to keep at it myself because I want to be effective in my demonstrations and be a model student myself."
"My teaching from today is listed under "Teaching to CATCH program" which is an after school health and wellness program.
Stuart is working on two other community programs so far, including a wellness Pilot program and a water harvesting project for his dry city of Tucson, with stories to come.
He summarizes:
"I went to the Parks and Rec Aquatics Supervisor and asked if I could teach and take some pics. The city of Tucson is starting a wellness pilot program in early January because of the high rate of strain related injuries. Because my friend (the one who I helped fix back pain) talked about the good your work had done for him with the aquatics supervisor at a recent wellness meeting for city employees, he already knew a little about what I was up to and is going to work with me to incorporate your method into the wellness program to teach employees at district meetings city wide!
"I just graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelors in anthropology. I would like to pursue graduate school but not sure in what field.
"Thanks for the graduation present, couldn't have asked for better!" ;)
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
This week's Grand Rounds theme was to reduce key healthcare topics to a word. Articles were listed about medicine that is timely, patient centered, or efficient. Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Awards give Appreciation and encouragement for real world health. Check it here and add what you would like to achieve for next year.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our work.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
We have three excellent answers so far that will be announced as contest winners along with reader BikaBill who sent in winning photos. There is still time to send in yours to be among the winners. About thirty to forty wrote claiming some vague involvement of abdominal muscles. Pop fitness throws around "abs" so much that odd ideas get ingrained that are not real anatomy.
To help with your contest and your real life, which is the idea of the contest:
Hint 1
Abdominal muscles curl your spine forward.
If you are already sitting rounded forward, you do not want to curl forward more. You need the opposite - back muscles to unround, not the abdominal muscles in front.
Readers correctly noticing the tilted back pelvis that is part of rounded spine in the photo of bad sitting (note the stripes pointing back at the side of the hip instead of vertical) were correct that the top of the hip/pelvis needs to pull forward, to reduce the angle between pelvis and leg so that the pelvis can straighten to upright and vertical. Abdominal muscles do not that do that. Abdominal muscles do not connect to your leg, so cannot move your leg closer to your body or your body closer to your leg.
Think what muscles may be the ones you need instead. Then, do strong muscles move all by themselves?
Hint 2
Mr. Georges Nakhlé is my director of the Lebanon office of The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM), the teaching arm of my practice. He instructs classes and wrote in to help readers:
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
My answer is: Muscles required to contract are : the paravertebrals (extension of vertebrae), trapezius inferior (adduction and lowering of scapula), the deltoideus posterior and latissimus dorsi (extension of arm) and the rhomboideus (for scapula stabilization)
Muscles required to stretch: pelvi-trochanters to ease the medial rotation of the pelvis on the femur and the pectoralis major
Muscles required to straighten the back: the major work goes for the Latissimus dorsi and a part for paravertebrals; the rhomboideus for scapula stabilization, the trapezius inferior for scapula lowering, the triceps brachii for arm extension.
Another contest question was: >Explain why the same tightness or weakness does not show itself standing where people often hyperlordose instead of flex the lower spine.
Mr. Nakhlé writes:
Tightness when standing: When standing the psoas is stretched so it pulls the lumbar vertebrae, and if the rectus femoris is tight it will tilt the pelvis in an anterior pelvic tilt. Weakness when standing: when standing we don't need muscle strength, just little adjustments.
Readers what do you think?
Here is the Contest. Send In Your Answers, Winners Announced Next Week:
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels, links in posts, archives, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Thank you to djwhelan - Slouching and calling it fitness photo
Fast Fitness - Getting Exercise Making Holiday Light Power
Friday, December 11, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Why pay money to go to a gym to use electricity to power a treadmill or exercise bike, when it should be the other way around.
Burn calories and save money generating electricity to power holiday lights for your house and community (and maybe your blender).
Fourteen year old William Kamkwamba brought the first electric power to his village. He had no school to teach him, he went to the library to learn how to build a windmill from parts he hunted in a junkyard. If he can do it, can the engineers, builders, electricians, tinkers, teachers, and smarties of Fitness Fixer readers make a simple bicycle generator to hook up to holiday lights?
Try a bike shop to see how to make or get a bicycle powered generator. Several models power bicycle lights. Adapt one to hook up to holiday lights.
Each person in your group can get a turn to burn healthy calories and get in shape pedaling for an hour. The world gets clean electricity and you make it.
Happy New Decade of Common Sense Functional and Green Fitness.
Related:
These are the kinds of projects my Academy works on - The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM). Come join us - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of Fluorescent light, human-powered electric generator (le vélo produit l'énergie électrique pour allumer le siège recouvert de néons qui est à l'arrière), by Dalbera and Arsenale (53ème Biennale de Venise) (Set
The medical community often does not look on fitness as legitimate medicine, or may think it is only posture for an obsessed few. Check Fitness Fixer for reasons why injuries persist, despite exercise and medical care - or maybe because of them.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Stuart W first contacted me with dozens of great observations and questions about fixing his injuries, tightness, and tension headaches using methods of healthy mechanics I developed. It was apparent that Stuart would soon be fixing more than himself, the bulging disc of his boss, and the aqua-aerobics class where he lifeguards.
Stuart writes:
"Oh, one more thing, I dearly want to become a certified student or teacher of AFEM. I have a dream of neighborhood groups all working together on community projects using proper mechanics to get free exercise, pain relief, and help beautify their cities. I live in Tucson and there is lots work to be done installing rainwater harvesting works!
"It a local group and they install groundworks in neighborhoods to harvest runoff water for native plants. Yes I would want to teach them to bend and dig correctly (hopefully they will be receptive) I better get to work with them first and lead by example so they know I'm for real. I could take photos for sure, both before and after instruction, possibly with little interviews of pain before and after techniques...
"I would love to travel and teach that would be great, there is an aqua-aerobics class that is full of older women who are in the class for "exercise" but they do improper stretches and I know that they could be helped, after they unsteadily get out of the pool I watch them walk around knock-kneed (and doing quadriceps stretches with lower spines overarched) and my heart goes out to them.
"I would also love to teach kids at schools proper habits because they have all this wonderful flexibility then after a few years cultural habits turn them into tight- hipped hunched teens. I think "fitness as a lifestyle" is such a commonsense and wonderful idea that much of the world adheres to and I think the "fitness" craze in the US is very destructive. So much effort going into (paying for!) bad exercises that could be redirected to health.
"I recently attended a water-harvesting workshop where we dug basins and planted trees I thought it would be difficult to properly bend all day but it was not and I even figured out how to swing a pick-axe without bending badly. I took pictures of the project as well as of the other volunteers who were digging and stooping in harmful ways so that if I get your permission to instruct them I will have before and after photos. Thanks, I hope to hear from you soon!
"Because my friend ( the one who I helped fix back pain) talked about the good your work had done for him with the aquatics supervisor at a recent wellness meeting for city employees, he already knew a little about what I was up to and is going to work with me to incorporate your method into the wellness program to teach employees at district meetings city wide! Wonderful!
"I was just thinking about how I used to pay for chiropractic work which led me nowherrrrrrre, except on a quest for good info, which led me to you!" - Stuart Wood
For his care and interest, I have given Stuart an Academy Appointment for the coming year for Community Health Projects. The idea is that his fun happy projects blossom into years of health for people and the larger community.
JoinTheFun:
We need better titles for our people who work to make things happen. They are not just coordinators or facilitators or directors, they are the brains and muscle too. What can we call these appointments?
Join Stuart in his work, and do the same for your own local world. Send in your own ideas and stories. See my Academy page - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of construction of a 10,000 liter rainwater harvesting and ground well water storage tank, Some Rights Reserved, by Weenhayek
Stuart Wood got up and just did it, He studied and used my work, then designed several programs for children and adults to learn healthy movement not only for itself, but to use for building community works. Watch for many honorable and important projects from Stuart to come as one of my Academy appointees - Reader Gains Academy Appointment for Making Community Projects Healthy
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