Free to Move Physio Pilates and Feldenkrais

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October 2011
Jodie Krantz completed segment 3 of the 'Bones for Life Training' programme. Jodie has now completed all 3 segmets twice for the second time and will soon be qualified to teach the programme. Sonja Johanssen from New York presented the programme, which is based on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and Ruthy Alon, Bones for Life is a series of 90 short movement 'processes' which help to improve posture and alignment as well as ease and efficiency of movement. Bones for Life focuses especially during weight bearing, walking and lifting, as well as falling more fluidly, to improve the strength and relience of our bones and reduce the risk of injuries.

Above: Ruthy Alon, creator of the Bones for Life programme

Above: Sonja Johansson demonstates some of the 'Bones for Life' processes.

Also in October, Jodie Krantz ran an introductory workshop on the Feldenkrais Method for approximately 20 Physiotherapists at Hollywood Hospital.

September 2011
Feldenkrais Discovery Day was held at St Catherine's College at the University of Western Australia on 17th September. Jodie Krantz is a WA committee member of the Australian Feldenkrais Guild and helped to organise the workshop which was presented by the Guild. Participants were able to choose from a selection of different workshop topics. This gave them a practical experience of this innovative method of improving posture, movement and body awareness. The wide range of interesting topics included 'Cycling with Ease and Power', 'Natural Facelift', 'Sitting Pretty at your Computer', 'Free your Hips (and release your inner dancer!' and 'Move over Anxiety'.

Above: Moshe Feldenkrais, Physicist, Inventor, Judo Expert and creator of the Feldenkrais Method

June 2011
A very warm 'thank you' to Cat Ryan, who taught our Wednesday night Studio classes in Term 2, while managing to juggle a lot of other commitments, including a full-time job at the Mercy Hospital Mt Lawley. We are so sorry to see Cat go, as she is a skilled and intuitive Physiotherapist and Pilates teacher. Her sunny nature makes her an absolute delight to work with. We hope you'll be back one day Cat. All the staff at Free to Move wish you the very best – health, wealth and happiness.

Above: Cat Ryan, Pilates Physio

April 2011
Free to Move warmly welcomed new Physiotherapists Gemma Creighton and Ali McIntosh. We are so privileged to have these two wonderful people on our team. Both Ali and Gemma are qualified in both Clinical Pilates and the Feldenkrais Method. Gemma has a special interest in theatre and the performing arts as well as extensive experience in rehabilitation. Ali has worked both in Australia and overseas in Sport Physiotherapy, Ergonomics and Occupational Health. Ali has an advanced graduate diploma in Sports Manual Therapy.

Above: (Left) Ali McIntosh and (Right) Gemma Creighton

February 2011
In February this year Jodie Krantz traveled as a volunteer Physiotherapist to the province of Tamil Nadu in southern India. Here she spent 2 weeks in Tiruchiparelli (Trichy) with a team of doctors, nurses, physios, dentists and opticians, providing much needed health service to extremely poor villagers. The trip was exceptionally well organised by Equal Health, a non-government organisation based in East Perth.

Story and pictures below.

		THE JOURNEY BEGINS . . . The trip commenced with 24 hours in Singapore. We had social get togethers and team meetings with the 50 Australian health professionals. We were bound for 3 different destinations in India. Two teams flew to Chennai (formerly Madras). The teams consisted of Doctors, Nurses, Dentists, Optometrists, a Paediatrician, an Eye Surgeon and Allied Health practitioners (5 Physios a Dietician, an OT and a Speech Pathologist) We disembarked the plane at Chennai to the overwhelming sounds, smells and sights of crazy India. It hits you 'like a smack in the face with a cold fish', especially if you are a first-timer to India!
ON THE BUS. . . The next day 18 of us boarded a bus for the hot and dusty ride to Amur village, near Trichy. Definitely not designed for anyone over 5 foot tall, the absolutely NON airconditioned bus ride took almost 7 hours. The very short 'toilet' stops were an adventure in themselves, especially when 18 of us had to queue for one toilet. Ah well, it beats squatting in the fields in full view of the road!
ABOVE: Towards the end of the day we were rewarded with a wonderful sunset. We arrived in the village of Amur, an hour outside Trichy, at around 8pm.		ABOVE: Inside bus, courtesy of Shri Ganesh Travels. Smiling on left is Andrea, Opthalmologist (eye surgeon). In the centre iis Achama, a dietician, who was born in Tamil Nadu and Heather, an Optometrist. The most notable thing about the bus travel was the wildly exciting, adrenalin pumping overtaking manoeuvres executed by the drivers. Why bother to spend the money on sky diving? We would be half way through an over-take and roughly adjacent to the truck we were passing, when the vehicle which appeared destined to collide head-on with us would pull left onto the dirt, as would the truck, allowing us to glide unscathed through the middle. Trucks in India have signs on the back urging drivers to 'sound horn please' as their rear-vision mirrors have often been knocked off during accidents. They can't see you coming so the drivers have to make sure they can hear you be repeatedly sounding their musical and extremely loud horns.
OUR HUT Andrea and I agreed that we would make good room buddies, because I don't mind spiders and she absolutely detests them. I can't stand rats or cockroaches and Andrea can deal with them if she has to. On the basis of this we formed a firm friendship and decided to share a room!!!! We had mozzie nets, a ceiling fan and our own ensuite with cold running water (when the pump was working). This could stop abruptly during the frequent power cuts, hopefully not when your hair was full of shampoo. Andrea and I were both thankful we had followed the suggestion to bring a self inflating mat to top our mattress. (Thanks Bill and Mary!!!!)
		ABOVE: View from our hut
ABOVE: Front of our thatched hut in Amur.		ABOVE: Inside our hut in Amur. I removed a friendly spider from the inside of my mozzie net.

ABOVE: Amur village		ABOVE: Amur village late afternoon
		CHEEKY KIDS This cheeky lad in an Amur village street (LEFT) asked me to take his photo then held his hand out for money to pay for the right to take it! The girl, rubbed her tummy as if to say she was hungry. I almost pulled out some coins, then remembered stories of dozens of children suddenly appearing from nowhere and begging for more. It's hard to resist giving when they have so little but it's not good to encourage begging. After persisting for a few minutes they rode off giggling, then kept riding past me and waving as I walked along the road.
OUR GREEN GIRLS These young girls in their lovely blue-green saris (RIGHT) were first year nursing students and our hosts and helpers in Trichy. They were employed by SEVAI, Equal Health's partner organisation. This grass roots group has been running for 30 years, employs about 350 local people and aims to promote training, employment and environmentally sustainable practices in the local region.

ABOVE: Rice workers in Amur village standing next to a big pile of rice.		ABOVE: Rice workers in Amur village. They loved being photographed.

		ABOVE: Washing was done for us by the Dhobi Wallah and hung on a fence at the edge of our compound.
		CAMP MEAL TIMES Every breakfast and dinner we ate Indian vegetarian food, under the coconut palms, over-looking the rice paddies. We also held our team meetings here before and after our working days. Our hosts found it hard to remember our 'weird' western names, and part way through the trip we discovered they had their own names for us, ranging from 'milky' to 'old woman but strong' to 'fat man' to 'villain'!
ABOVE: Our outdoor dining table at the camp. From Left to Right Heather (Optometrist and Bollywood Dance teacher extraoardinaire) Paul (Optical Dispenser and Founder of Equal Health, Sally (Dental Therapist) and Thien Nien (Dentist)
		ABOVE: Our team of Indian helpers outside the Cinema Complex where we conducted our medical clinic.

ABOVE: Treating a local woman on the floor of the 'Physio Department' which was in the basement of the Cinema Complex. To get there you had to walk over a large area of crumbling building rubble, so people in wheelchairs had to be carried in.		ABOVE: On our last day in Amur, we set up a clinic at our base camp. Rob and I quickly 'bagsed' the Gazebo, where we normally had our Pilates, Yoga and Bootcamp sessions in the morning and our Bollywood Dance practice in the evenings.
THE BEST PART The best part of the trip was that sometimes we were able to make a difference to the lives of others, occasionally even a big difference. The local people won our hearts with their joyful smiles, overwhelming appreciation of our assistance and their unaffected generosity of spirit. There were sad moments too, like the 'elderly' 57 year old woman suffering severe neck and arm pain. I found out her occupation was 'construction worker'. She had to carry cement, bricks and building rubble to and from the site on her head. I was not really able to do anything to counteract that kind of strain.
		ABOVE: Our team including Rob and I (back) Yogi (front left) and Logi (front right), local Physios who acted as our translators. Most of the time Rob and I had to share a translator which was challenging at times.

ABOVE: Perth Physiotherapist Rob Harper treats a local resident with the assistance of translator Yogeshwari AKA Yogi. Yogi was due to be married to another Physio on 16th March. It was an arranged marriage and she's only met him briefly once. She was very excited and optimistic.		ABOVE: Treating a local man with neck pain in the Muscular-Dystrophy Physio centre, under the Cinemas. You can see what the lighting was like! Working on the table beat crouching on the floor mats! Rob and I took turns.

ABOVE: Andrea Ang with eye patients. Andrea performed 14 cataract operations in a tiny private eye hospital during our stay in Trichy.

ABOVE: On our days off we visited local temples and the rockfort		ABOVE: Equal Health founding member Paul and Registered Nurse, Kylie, present the gift of a beautiful Sari to Lakshmi, co-founder with her late husband of a community hospital on the outskirts of Trichy. We visted the hospital and she treated us to a wonderful Indian banquet.

ABOVE: Temple elephant, who plucked coins off the heads of frightened children. They obviously gained some sort of good luck from the experience, as their parents were most insistent!		ABOVE: Hospital room in Lakshmi's hospital. This was similar to the bed where I spent the night in the 'Sub ICU' of a private hospital in Trichy, after I came down with severe food poisoning. I recovered in a few days thanks to the kindness and expertise of Dr Devaki, (Opthalmologist and daughter of Lakshmi) the hospital staff and 'Dr John', one of the wonderful Aussie doctors on our Trichy team.

		ABOVE: Shopping in Chennai - sweet shop and bakery. After my hospital experience I was not so keen to try food that had been packed under dubious conditions!!!!!

ABOVE: Shopping in Chennai with Gay- garlands of flowers at the bazaar.		ABOVE: Shopping in Chennai - all that glitters is not gold!
		BOLLYWOOD PARTY On our final night in India we stayed at the Regency Hotel in Chennai. What looked a little seedy to us on arrival in India was sheer luxury when we got back from Trichy. We enjoyed our hot showers, went shopping and got dressed up for our Bollywood Dance party. Waiters brought us delicious and spicy Indian finger foods and there was an open bar. It was great to meet up with the other team from Urapakam, who last year defeated the Trichy team in the dance contest by bribing the judges!!!!! To avoid that we got new Indian judges this year. They called it adraw!
ABOVE: Trichy team - girls from back left Kylie, Sally (aka as Salvita because Sally meant "sputum" in Tamil) Lynette, Natarsha, Thien Nien, Gay, Andrea and I. Natarsha ran Yoga classes for us in the mornings.

ABOVE: David (Optometrist), Rob (Physio), Blue (Dentist), Bill (Doctor), John (Doctor) and Paul (Team Leader / Optical Dispenser) incognito.		ABOVE: And last but not least, the men strut their stuff in a Bollywood dance to be reckoned with!!!!!