Less is More - Looking for The Balance Working with Parkinson's, Cerebral Palsy and MS

"Less is More"

 Working with Parkinson's, Cerebral Palsy and MS

"Looking for The Balance"

I recently worked with someone who has Cerebral Palsy. Mostly in her legs, so walking was very challenging as was simply standing or getting up and down from a chair. Anything that involved the movement of one's weight through space really, which is of course just about everything.

The biggest block I have found in multiple areas of a variety of therapies, is the idea of bringing someone to " normal" or back to what is considered proper or healthy balance and equilibrium.
There is often an assumption of "How it should be", which completely skips over how it is. Anyone who has suffered a debilitating or crippling injury or who is dealing with new limitations of movement due to a pathology is also looking for what was there before. This can create blocks and obstacles to progress and it pushes the system too far too fast.

How do you give someone the feeling of balance when they have none that they can perceive? And there is the answer. "None that they can perceive."  It is not that balance does not exist in that system it is simply that it has not been accessed or its language has not been deciphered or translated. Every system has its own language. That is why one must always be able to let go of an idea or an agenda and listen and look and ask, until the language of that system reveals itself. And it always does.

In almost all clients that I have worked with over the last 30 years, who are dealing either with an injury or a distinct pathology both they and the practitioner or therapist are looking for what they used to be and hoping to get back there. And truly it may be more than possible to reach that goal. But to begin we must find the available micro-movements and the psychological and emotional postures that are present in the system as it is in this moment. Identifying shape and rhythm, resistance and rigidity from fear or pain are only two of the elements in the process.

Here, also, is where intuition steps in. When I looked at this client what I saw was someone whose energy and focus was out of her legs, pulled away from her legs. How could she find balance if she had no connection to or awakened awareness of the very structures that existed to balance her?

When we make a re-connection through both recalling sensation and a curious, slow and kind exploration the system itself reboots so to speak and the cellular memory begins to act.
 Once we have the awareness and the joy of re-connection then we can begin to get very specific about how, with this person, we can, together re-create  balance.

After an hour's session, this client had new legs! Her balance had improved and expanded, she could walk stand and sit with much more ease, but most of all she was filled with joy to know that it was possible to improve and to improve so quickly.

**Seeing this client again on my next visit to the Netherlands, 1 year later, she had not only maintained her balance, but had advanced in ways she never thought would again be possible. The cumulative effect of repetition and recall establishes healing where healing has often been despaired of.