Live your potential

Yoga and the mind body connection

 

Just discovered an inspirational guy called Matthew Sanford. You can find out more about him here. He's got a spinal cord injury and is an Iyengar yoga teacher. I used to love my yoga classes and spent about half an hour every morning out in the garden doing my exercises. In hospital, I used yoga relaxation techniques but since I've come home, I've not practised it at all. I miss the whole body experience of yoga, and the sense of connectedness I used to feel. I thought all that was beyond me. However, I see I'm wrong. Matthew practises and teaches yoga to a wide variety of individuals, including people with spinal cord injury. To get a sense of what he does, watch the brief video at the bottom of this page on his site. It looks like Matthew mainly practises in the States, but I wonder if we could get him to come over here? I've ordered his book and feel really excited about the idea of bringing yoga back into my life.

Falling down

Terrible spasms at the moment, which means my legs completely lock out, making transfers hard and dangerous. I seem to spend a lot of time falling down or on the floor. And since it's happening at a time of over-tiredness, I seem weaker and am finding it a lot harder to get back up again. Hmmm. Is this an indication of what life will be like as I get older and my shoulders start to give way? I do hope not. Because if it is, then older age is not going to be fun.

PC language

So, how do I prefer to be addressed? Disabled? A wheelchair user? Wheelchair rider? Second of these, probably. Don't see myself as disabled and "rider" sounds a bit too hippyish (I came across it on a US site). But all of these are better than "wheelchair bound". Someone asked me at a wedding on Saturday how long I had been wheelchair bound. Even before I was a wheelchair user I knew this was an unPC term. This was a wedding of media producers, so I'd have expected their guests to be aware of what kind of language was acceptable. I suppose from a literal point of view, I am kind of wheelchair bound. Yet a) that defines me by my mode of transport, rather than my own identity and b) it assumes I never leave my wheelchair. Neither of these are true.

Will I walk again?

I first read about this invention over on Tim's blog. And now I've just had an email from someone else about it. Maybe it's fate. Maybe I am meant to buy one of these amazing exo-skeletons and become half-robot (I prefer Tim's description of "half-man, half-biscuit tin"). But I'm reacting with caution for a number of reasons. One, the cost: "well below $35,000". That's still a lot of money, even though I'm good at fundraising. Two, the speed you go. I spent a lot of time in hospital watching people learning to walk again with crutches and they moved so so slowly and got so tired, I wondered whether it really was worth it. Yes, I do get frustrated at always having to crane my neck. I wish I could hug my wife and children when I'm standing. I'd love to be able to get up stairs into restaurants and shops. Yet I'm not sure it's worth the trouble of holding everyone back as you walk at a crawling pace beside them. Not sure. Anyway, the third and probably biggest hurdle to me becoming half-robot is that I don't have the balance: "The target market will be the Western world wheelchair-user community, of which 300,000 are spinal cord injury sufferers who are physically able to use crutches as a stabilizing tool." I don't think I could use crutches. I think I'd keep falling over. Which would be a lot more embarrassing than having to crane my neck.

How the other half lives

It's strange driving a "posh" car. You get different looks from people ("he seems a bit young to be driving that"). But it's an interesting car to drive. It doesn't have an iPod socket, because presumably your chauffeur will either sing or change your CDs for you. It does have cruise control, which allows me to experience the joy of driving with two hands on the wheel once more. And it has in-built sat nav. I succumbed to this about a month ago, fed up with getting lost in cities and thinking it unlikely that I would, as Annika hoped, "get a sense of direction". So my regular car has standalone sat nav which has proved a godsend, particularly in London. The Jaguar's sat nav is very different. Unlike mine, it objects to you disobeying its suggestions. If you miss a turning, it doesn't re-route you. No, it demands you turn around. Failing that, it tries every turning ahead to get you to return to its original plan. I'm surprised Jaguar owners allow themselves to be bossed around. Maybe they like dominant women telling them what to do.