Michelle’s Story

About ten years ago, I was involved in a car accident. It didn’t seem that dramatic at the time – just your run-of-the-mill launch off a stray pile of construction debris, a series of rolls through the air with engine screaming (onlookers too), then a last minute explosion as I dived for cover. Okay, so maybe it was a rear-ender, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. Unfortunately, if it doesn’t look dramatic, a lot of people can find it difficult getting their heads around the concept that people might be hurt as a result. I mean, I looked normal – no cuts, no bruises, but inside something wasn’t right. I soon found out that my neck and back had suffered some hard core soft tissue damage (excuse the confusing grammar, but you know what I mean).

Prior to my accident, I’d played a lot of sport, so I knew about injuries – remove the hockey stick, slap on some ice, rest and pretty soon you’re as good as new, so my attitude was the same with this injury. Maybe skip the part about the hockey stick – but essentially I expected with rest and treatment I would get better.

I iced, I rested, I treated – but I didn’t get any better. In fact, I seemed to be getting worse. The experts told me my job wasn’t helping – lots of craning over a desk or peering up at ceilings (don’t ask). Pretty soon I was in a serious cycle of pain. I couldn’t do most of the things I could before and the things I could made my pain significantly worse.

I’d suffer through work, go home to bed, then start again the next day. Weekends were spent doing as little as possible. Most of the time I was trying everything I could think of to make the pain go away. But I couldn’t think – the pain and the ineffectual painkillers were making it hard to concentrate.

My sporting career came to a sudden and rather jarring halt. Even something as simple as walking drove steel spikes into the base of my skull at every step. My social life withered and died and pretty soon my mood was sinking faster than the Titanic.

Was all lost? Hopeless? Doomed?

Read more

Josephine wrote this in 2005.

We recently reconnected and she gave her permission for me to share this with you.

At 25 years of age I have returned to hometown, Perth, for 4 months. It’s the first time I have lived here since setting off four years ago to travel and work across the globe. My motivation for taking this time out at home stems from two major reasons. A need to stop, reassess and clarify my direction and purpose in life. Also a growing need to address my physical condition, scoliosis. Scoliosis is ‘an excessive, sideways curvature of the spine’. (Encarta World English Dictionary) I wear orthotics, have dabbled in the Alexander Technique, had a diagnosis from a rather dry spinal surgeon specialist, experimented with hatha yoga, been the recipient of wonderful massages and have been crunched by a well meaning Osteopath.

I have found we are living in a world where modern treatment is all too often practised with little awareness of concern for the patient’s potential and interest to manage, understand and be an integral part for their individual condition. Frustration has prevailed when seeing specialists and highly trained people working apart and separate from each other, blinkered to the confines of their own method and understanding when dealing with a common condition. This has lead me to seek professionals who operate with an open mind, in turn leading me to a treatment that allows, indeed relies on, the emphasis for change and progress to start and end with me. Among other things, I had been led to working with a Feldenkrais practitioner.

…….

After journeying across the world into the heart of Africa, Mexico, Central America, India, Nepal, Thailand and Europe, I feel that in some ways it is only now that I really begin my journey. I look to the world, the future and my place in it with a renewed sense of wonder, clarity, openness and personal power.

Read more.