In my last post I talked about lifting the fog to get off of the ledge. I made two summarizing statements: The fog of reason is the fog of working from bad information. The way out of this fog is critical rationalism. The fog of faith is the fog of working from maladaptive beliefs. The way out of this fog is through evangelism. These equate to “talking someone down from the ledge.” But there’s another option. You could just give them a map. I mean this both metaphorically and literally.… Read more Or, You Could Always Use Maps →
Pain is an opinion. Novel movements are those that your body has not yet made an opinion about. Novel movement creates a window of opportunity for your body to come to a non-painful opinion about a movement. If you get enough non-painful opinions accumulated, your body might change its overall opinion.
Novelty is king when it comes to moving with less pain. There’s some pretty cool brain chemistry at play in this. Dopamine is released in the brain when we encounter something novel. It’s like a messenger to the rest of the brain saying “Hey everybody, wake up and pay attention. This is something new.” Novelty is so useful because it is something you don’t yet have an impression of. In pain, you keep encountering movements that give the impression of danger and thus the response of protection. Novel movements give… Read more Novelty: A Window of Opportunity →
Saw this quote in a toy store with my son last year in the San Juan Islands: We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
I like movie analogies. After all, getting through pain, disability, and loss of function is a lot like a good Batman movie. In this recent blogpost, Seth Godin said this of Sofia Coppola: In describing the role her brother played in producing one of her movies, Sofia Coppola said, “he protected the film.” I hope the same could be said of my work as a physical therapist. Sometimes we are not in a position to self produce, direct, and star in our own movie. Hey, we can’t all be Clint… Read more We Can’t All be Clint Eastwood →
Forward Motion 