Anat Baniel, the founder of the Anat Baniel Method, a powerful practice that takes advantage of the brain’s remarkable ability to change itself, for the better to heal body and mind.
Highlights:
01:47 Introduction
06:26 The Two Main Pillars
09:46 Resistance To Change
15:38 Conditions To Activate Brain Functions
24:22 Proper Intervention
33:01 Safety First
52:39 The Variation Essential
1:03:08 The Importance of Enthusiasm In Rehabilitation
1:19:58 The Nine Essentials
Transcription:
Anat Baniel 0:00
You have rehab facilities for stroke? He said yes. I said the usual length of rehab is between three to five weeks. He said, yes. I said, you send away your patients at the point where there is no real detectable improvement, it sort of plateaus.
Anat Baniel 0:19
He said, Yes. I said, Now, the understanding of the reason for reaching the plateau, is the fact that the person had a stroke, correct? He said, Yes, I said, that’s where you’re wrong. And that’s where my work comes in.
Anat Baniel 0:37
The reason they need rehabilitation is because they had a stroke. The reason that they could reach a plateau is the intervention. They reached the outcome because of the intervention, and they reach that plateau, because of the intervention.
Intro 0:58
This is the recovery after stroke podcast. With Bill Gasiamis, helping you navigate recovery after stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 1:11
Hello, and welcome to episode 232 of the recovery after stroke podcast. To learn more about my guests, including links to their social media and other pages and to download a full transcript of the entire interview.
Bill Gasiamis 1:23
Please go to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes. If you’d like to support this podcast, the best way to do it is to leave a five-star review and a few words about what the show means to you on iTunes, and Spotify. If you’re watching on YouTube, comment below the video, like this episode and to get notifications of future episodes, subscribe to the show on the platform of your choice.
Introduction – Anat Baniel
Bill Gasiamis 1:47
And if you subscribe in YouTube hit the notifications bell so that you can get notifications of new episodes as they arrive. My guest today is Anat Baniel, the founder of the Anat Baniel Method, a powerful practice that takes advantage of the brain’s remarkable ability to change itself, for the better to heal body and mind.
Bill Gasiamis 2:10
Anat is also the author of the book Kids Beyond Limits. And although marketed to parents of children with neurological conditions, be it from birth or as a result of traumatic brain injury. The book is rich in information that may help you while on the road to recovery after stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 2:29
Trained by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, and with high praise from people like John Gray, Norman Doidge, Arianna Huffington. And Jack Canfield, this book would be a great addition to your bookshelf. Anat Baniel, welcome to the podcast.
Anat Baniel 2:45
Happy to be here.
Bill Gasiamis 2:48
Thank you for being here. I’m probably three-quarters of the way through listening to your book, Kids Beyond Limits. And it’s interesting because the title of Kids Beyond Limits is I know, it’s been written for parents about their kids, but really, it’s also applicable to me and anyone else who’s had a stroke, or any other neurological condition that needs some new insights and new ideas, new ways of approaching recovery and healing the brain.
Bill Gasiamis 3:29
And also the other part of that which is like a new approach, or a different way of looking at healing the brain and recovering movement that was lost, etc. And I’ve got so many questions. But before we talk about the content in the book, which is so appropriate for my listeners, and people watching on YouTube, I’d like to ask you about how you got to be in a position where you’re doing the kind of work that’s helping people overcome neurological conditions.
Anat Baniel 4:08
Okay, so regarding the book Kids Beyond Limits I totally agree with you it’s about you know, how to facilitate for the brain to do its job when there’s interruption. Genetic or stroke, you know quite a few babies are born with stroke or gets stroke early on.
Anat Baniel 4:33
And then there’s the book for adults Moving To Life that you know, we’re actually going to publish soon a new edition so if people want to read about it in the more adult version, that’s possible. In a way it’s better for people who had a stroke, because it really deals with assault to the brain, Moving To Life is more in general how to enhance your life, not necessarily in the face of a traumatic brain injury.
Anat Baniel 5:05
So how I came to do this work, my training was in psychology, clinical psychology, I also have a degree in statistics, you know, because of interest also in the science side of things, but also always had interest in the brain. And as I was in my graduate studies you know, schooling to become a clinical psychologist, I realized that it was all very cognitive, it was very interesting, it was valuable, it served me my whole career.
Anat Baniel 5:53
And at the same time, what was missing for me was the immediacy of the body the immediacy of the kind of aesthetic experience and of movement that is so there for us all the time. And I search where I could study and I also made the about the brain, but there wasn’t much known in terms of actually impacting function directly thinking about the brain.
The Two Main Pillars – Neuromovement
Anat Baniel 6:26
So I then remembered my studies of Dr. Feldenkrais’ movement work. Moshé Feldenkrais as a child and with my dance teacher, so I found him and connected with him, and trained with him to learn his method. And his method, has two main pillars.
Anat Baniel 6:59
One is movement, the other one is the brain. So actually, he was a scientist, he was a, physicist and mathematician, and you know, so I got all what I was interested in, covered in one person’s way method. And I worked with him. And first I worked primarily with dancers and musicians, and academicians, because that was my world.
Anat Baniel 7:38
And Feldenkrais actually was the one who got me to work with the first child, I didn’t expect to work with children with babies. And in about a year or two parents started hearing about the work and the outcomes, and more and more parents started showing up.
Anat Baniel 8:05
So the children started taking more and more of my time, and the dancers and high performers became less and less. And then also, I started working with stroke patients, adult stroke patients. And in the process of doing that, I looked into understanding what about what I do gives the outcomes that the clients were getting, and they were getting really, in are getting really breakthrough outcomes. And, you know, we can talk more about that, but this was the path.
Bill Gasiamis 8:46
We will talk about that for sure. Because I think it misses things, sorry. A lot of recovery after a stroke misses some things that I think now that I’ve read, most of your book is obvious. Now that I’ve read a part is very easily missed during recovery.
Bill Gasiamis 9:12
My experience in recovery is you have brain surgery, you wake up, you can’t walk, you go into recovery, and the people trying to rehabilitate you, the personal therapists and occupational therapists, they do a fantastic job, they get you on your feet, and they try and reinstate what was there before using the same method that was being used before I was unwell and couldn’t use my left side of my body.
Resistance To Change
Bill Gasiamis 9:46
So they kind of approach it with the exact same tools that they would have if I for example, injured my knee, or my toes or my ankle. When the challenge is actually not my toes on my knee or my ankle, it’s my brain. And they understand Neuroplasticity to an extent. But they understand in a very simplistic and basic way, which is enough for a lot of people to get over the line and get decent results. But I think they missed some critical components, we’re going to talk about those in a moment.
Anat Baniel 10:25
There is a resistance to change. And the resistance to change is not just this way, there is it, the word resistance is the correct word, but resistance to change. Also, on a biological basis. If you look at us, we develop habits. And the habits, we need the habits, we can’t function without habits. And the habits get grooved in they get automated, and our sense of safety and a sense of predictability.
Anat Baniel 11:03
You know, uncertainty is very disruptive to our sense of well being. So, in the habits form very quickly, and very powerfully. And we can change the habits, it’s a big part of what my work does. And that’s a big part of Feldenkrais’ work was doing.
Anat Baniel 11:24
Because how do you get the brain to not just learn something new, but to transition from what it is relied on until today, to transition and rely on your left foot, or on your right foot, you have a stroke, and all sudden you can’t rely on it? And very, very quickly, the brain changes itself reorganizes itself, so that you look to be able to transport yourself to transition yourself from point A to point B in a safe way?
Anat Baniel 12:02
And it doesn’t want you to use or doesn’t let you rely on that which is not reliable, and for good reason. But that becomes a very powerful habit very quickly. And because of that it’s so important what’s done immediately after stroke. And the kind the way that rehab is done is so important, because it can instill limitations very powerfully due to the way that the rehab is done.
Anat Baniel 12:36
And that’s the place where there’s in my experience, complete blindness and we can talk about that because it’s simple. It’s actually very simple. But it’s different. I was interviewed on another podcast last week. And at the end of the podcast, the interviewer said to me something that I never heard before in this way, and it was a wonderful, he said to me what you offer is very counterintuitive. And makes total sense. He said, and I never had those two things happen at the same time for the same thing.
Bill Gasiamis 13:18
With would completely agree. Absolutely 100% agree with that statement. And the reason being is because you talk about things that most people miss. And one of the things that you talk about is movement with attention. So we’re going through therapy, and although perhaps I’m in rehabilitation, and somebody’s paying attention to my movement, I am not being made aware to pay attention to the way that I’m moving and the way that I need to adjust my movement, right?
Anat Baniel 13:55
No, no, you’re missing something. I’m so sorry. And everybody needs it. And when I teach a training or a workshop, it takes three days of we been engaged in the process before people start really getting it. It’s not the attention to the instructions. It’s not even so much that attension to what you do you know, lift your arm you know, whatever.
Anat Baniel 14:19
It’s the attension to watch you feel as you do the movement and that is a huge job and that is the job that got Dr. Michael Merzenich to become a huge supporter of my work the rest of it to all the nine essentials and his research that we discovered because the one I knew it I made it my essential but when I wrote my book by colleague Dr. Neil sharp, I said to him can you go out and research to see if anyone in the research universe in neuroscience research has realize that movement, without attention to the feeling of self as you d, it does not provide change, or very limited change.
Anat Baniel 15:13
And if there’s an attention to the feeling of what is done as it is done, changes happen, improvements happen, the range of motion increases, spasticity reduces by the fact that it gives the brain information to improve what it’s doing the intention that it’s executing, as it’s executing it.
Conditions To Activate Brain Functions – Neuromovement
Anat Baniel 15:38
And this feels so weird, you know, it’s like, I don’t have to go 1 2 3 or stretch it or put electrical an thing, you just have to activate the capacity of the brain to feel, to notice the sensation, the feeling, because without it, we can direct ourselves anyway.
Anat Baniel 16:00
And that’s my main essential, that’s my first essential because movement, first of all, is my jewel. And I say that movement is the language of the brain. But then the question is, how good are you in speaking it or use it to communicate with the brain intentionally?
Anat Baniel 16:20
In the conditions and I should have brought it there’s a quote, where did I see? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I know where saw it. I can look for it in a minute briefly. If you provide the brain, the conditions that the brain needs, the conditions, that under which the brain functions well, then you get a brain that can learn and change in ways that otherwise it can’t. And when somebody had a stroke, we need to try and really optimize those conditions with which how we provide the interaction to the other person.
Bill Gasiamis 17:31
So practically, with regards to movement with attention, if I’m putting my foot on the ground, for the first time after my brain surgery, is the part when I’m putting my foot on the ground, and I’m paying attention what it’s giving me back what kind of feedback I’m getting from the ground or from the underneath of my foot. What specifically do I need to pay attention to?
Anat Baniel 17:58
Okay, so yes, but it’s a little more refined conversation, and there are important elements here. Okay. So let me just say a few general things that will then what I say can fit into it, okay? Because it’s a shifting in understanding, okay? The brain is an information system is a self organizing system, it’s a holistic system, when I move now, my brain has to come to every part of my body.
Anat Baniel 18:40
If I’m sitting like this, and I’m completely into something, and I’m totally safe, and I can maybe move this and not really care what happens to the rest of my body because it hasn’t impact my relationship to gravity. But if I’m standing up, I better know, if I move my arms forward, or otherwise I’ll fall on my face, right? So the brain is and it’s very complex, it’s very dynamic.
Anat Baniel 19:09
And it’s just they’re going back and forth you know, like, in it is the thing that gets us be who we are and organizes everything we do, right? Why am I saying that? In a minute, we’ll talk more about the essentials. But when somebody wakes up from surgery or just from the stroke, not everybody gets surgery after stroke.
Anat Baniel 19:42
And all sudden, your right leg doesn’t do what you want it to do. Right? The tendency or the arm the tendency is to try and interact with the parts that are not working like the arm or the leg. The most affected parts, which means are the parts of the brain lost most of the connections.
Bill Gasiamis 20:14
Yes.
Anat Baniel 20:15
That’s the parts of everybody zeros in.
Bill Gasiamis 20:19
Yes, correct.
Anat Baniel 20:20
That’s the last part I will touch. Think of it in terms of the whole body and think of a baby, a newborn. Every part of their body has twitches and stuff, but they’ve no voluntary movement, the first place that comes into voluntary control is basically the mouth tongue, the sucking actions, eyes, kicking, necks by the way.
Anat Baniel 20:50
But the child does not get really an ability to do much with the arms or the legs, like standard walk before, there’s very significant control of the center of the body. In very complex relationships, so I have now a granddaughter, she’s seven months old, I just got a video. And you know, I couldn’t even show it here, I can just put it up and show it. And you see she’s now holding objects, and she’s moving them and looking at them.
Anat Baniel 21:26
But the biggest thing she’s doing is rolling to her belly rolling through her back, rolling to her belly rolling to her back. And magnificent way that she does it, the arms and the legs are still kind of like the outcome of that as she gets more and she gets to sit, and stand. And I got my daughter to absolutely not do tummy time with her.
Anat Baniel 21:53
This is one of the again, another huge mistake in people tried to control an outcome before and skipping the process that leads to the outcome. So I’m talking about the process that leads to the outcome, I get somebody who had stroke one of the things that they will do first is go to their pelvis, their back their spine, because it’s much easier to recover.
Anat Baniel 22:24
Because let’s say, if somebody had a right side stroke, the left side, you know, the whole left side is impacted. But because there’s much less differentiation, there’s less density of mapping of the center of the body in very dramatic way, if you go and look at the homunculus, the sensory homunculus or the motor homunculus.
Anat Baniel 22:48
You know, the arms and hands are huge, and the thumb is enormous and the tongue is enormous. And then your tiny little fingers, the pelvis and a tiny little thing, that’s the back. So the lost proportion is much smaller, to recover function there is a lot easier.
Bill Gasiamis 23:08
Okay, so to give you an analogy you’re working with our strengths and not our weaknesses.
Intro 23:19
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. Like how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid? In case I make matters worse, doctors will explain things that obviously, you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask.
Intro 23:44
If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you’re finding yourself in that situation. Stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com where you can download a guide that will help you it’s called seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke. These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke, they’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.
Proper Intervention – Anat Baniel
Anat Baniel 24:19
Very much so but to understand the thinking. I say do not try to make somebody stand up when they lost their ability to stand up. Just like you will not take a three months old baby and try to make them stand up. And by the way, don’t do it with a nine-month-old either because if they don’t do it spontaneously, it means they’re not ready. They don’t have the underlying neural networks to perform it well enough.
Anat Baniel 24:50
So I’m working on helping that brain recover and it can’t go back if these are lost connections Since there are two things here, there are lost connections in their loss net networks, neural networks. Because the neural network is a lot bigger than a bunch of connections, you see, the motor cortex is associated the sensory which associated to the visual, which associated the large centers of the brain.
Anat Baniel 25:18
So but if you’re feeling nothing in the network, t he whole network is off. So if you bring back elements of the network, we just had been working with a 17 year old she had a tumor in her brainstem, which is like not a good place to get a tumor but anyway, when she was two years old they did a surgery and removed it.
Anat Baniel 25:47
She’s been getting therapy for 15 years. She’s 17, she’s by the way, the most potent or one of the most potent learners I’ve ever worked with. But she presented herself terrible kind of standing, but has two people to support her from the back, and she’s more spastic on the right side.
Anat Baniel 26:15
And her speech is (slurring) kind of like that. And it happened very young. So of course, in terms of schooling and everything got severely interrupted. So people also way underestimate her intelligence. Just two weeks ago, she has had a total of six weeks of sessions with us two weeks, and then they went back, they live in the other, you know, on the east coast, they came back for four weeks now.
Anat Baniel 26:44
So four-ish weeks into her thing. I and she couldn’t sightsee to one side, and, you know, can’t control. And, of course, we’ve already been me and my team, most of the work was done by my team, I had her on the floor, not on the table and I had her start doing a rolling movement through the side, in a way that a child, a young child tends to do it around age one and a half years to two years. I mean, that’s usually when they get that really well.
Anat Baniel 27:24
And very slowly, with the essentials, and at a certain point, she could just do it, and perfectly and quickly and very accurately in terms of the timing of what bends when and the way, the relationship of her head to the pelvis and the whole thing. And it was like, Whoa, it’s like her brain recognized it.
Anat Baniel 27:48
She did it until she was two or something like that. But she had no access to it. But when enough around it was built was recreated, reinvented by the brain. The whole thing came in. And we see that depends how much destruction there was. But I’m saying so much stuff. I don’t know if people can follow that. But the point is, you start where the person is, if the person is the person who had stroke or brain surgery, or brain surgery after stroke is not able to stand themselves up.
Anat Baniel 28:36
You might have to them up for medical reasons. There was another 26 year old woman friend of mine, a female athlete that had a horrible she did like a performance on bicycles mountain, and just smacked her head terribly, and so on and so forth. And, because of the drainage that they wanted the swelling, they needed her upright, then support her fully and hold her up fully, but don’t ask her to stand. Don’t expect her to participate, right? And you start working lying down because we learn to stand up line down.
Bill Gasiamis 29:21
You explained my whole experience with the right side, brain damage and then the left side deficits. It’s exactly what happened. And one of the first things that happened to me, which was extremely uncomfortable and really frightening, even though I went through the motions because I was told that that’s how I needed to be rehabilitated, was I was attached to the harness which was attached to the ceiling and I was like a puppet.
Bill Gasiamis 29:51
And that’s really uncomfortable in the crotch. And then I had one person on each side of my body moving my left leg for me into the position and into the right, and then the right leg and so on. And it was really, I have a photo of it, it was such a weird experience to be harnessed to the ceiling.
Anat Baniel 30:12
And did you find it helpful? Were you able to start standing better afterwards?
Bill Gasiamis 30:17
No, that took another two or three weeks for the standing to happen. That was probably two or three days after surgery, but the whole time, I needed to be the person who supported myself, because then they put me in between the two parallel bars, the two horizontal bars,and I had to hold myself up with the left side, again, of my body on my arm, which wasn’t working properly, the whole thing was completely dysfunctional and not really comfortable. And it was really scary. And I was afraid I was going to fall and my fear was getting in the way of my excitement to be there. And to participate in my in my own recovery.
Anat Baniel 31:10
I want to say that between doing what went through and doing nothing. I think doing what you went through is absolutely the thing to do. Correct. So it’s not like, Oh, you shouldn’t have done the rehab that you did. And it’s very important to say that. I mean, if you were just left lying down, I don’t want to even think what it would have been like.
Anat Baniel 31:41
However, we’re talking about the future. We’re talking about possibility. The same people that gave the dedication, you know, they learn to do this that give their time. And there’s the funding for it and the institution, that whole thing can be upgraded in a quantum way.
Anat Baniel 32:06
And that’s what I’m after. So it’s not about bashing what the people or what is being done. Even though it might sound like I’m doing that, it’s not that, it’s my passion is about it’s kind of like, if you want you need to get from the East Coast to the West Coast, you want to visit your family or to go something important.
Anat Baniel 32:35
But you only have a horse and the cart. And there are no roads paved. So we don’t want to do the horse and buggy version of crossing from the East Coast to the West Coast. We want to take the version of the you know, really good airplane to get us there.
Bill Gasiamis 32:56
The upgraded version, and that’s exactly it in order to feel safe.
Safety First – Anat Baniel
Anat Baniel 33:00
It’s more than an upgrade, it’s transformational. And by the way safety is most important, and you were obviously able to benefit. I work a lot of people that really didn’t. And because we’ve been working on a research proposal on stroke, we have studied the field, you know, and we haven’t looked at it for two years, you know, COVID kind of stopped everything.
Anat Baniel 33:32
So maybe there’s more stuff that we’re not aware of, but the statistics of success and failure in recovery from stroke. And, of course, what is considered success, I wouldn’t call it success. But the rate of success is really, really, really low. I mean, people don’t get back to being independent and functional in a sufficient way. You’re doing very well.
Bill Gasiamis 34:03
I agree. In order for me to feel safe. I asked to do my rehabilitation in a swimming pool. Because I didn’t need to be attached to the ceiling. And I didn’t need to be afraid of falling over. And it was a real godsend.
Anat Baniel 34:20
So you asked for what?
Bill Gasiamis 34:23
Rehabilitation in the swimming pool.
Anat Baniel 34:25
So you just did it without being hanged from the ceiling.
Bill Gasiamis 34:29
Yeah, I was in the swimming pool. The water was supporting my weight.
Anat Baniel 34:32
Oh, that is the best thing you could have done. Fact is we say that in my work. If I could do it all in water. Everybody will get better faster.
Anat Baniel 34:43
Yeah, right. Okay.
Anat Baniel 34:44
You take it with a gravitational demand. You see, lying down is the closest approximation to removing the demand that the gravitational field puts on the body in terms of balancing everything. So This was brilliant. I mean, this is actually, we used to have a petitioner that I trained, that did work in the pool with mostly with children. So we used to send our clients to also work with her. Because it is like the optimal conditions initially in the rehab process. I mean, it’s fantastic.
Bill Gasiamis 35:26
It worked, it was disarming, I was able to become a very different participant, a very different patient in that swimming pool compared to the one that was outside the swimming pool. I didn’t have the words to describe what you just described, about enhancing the methodologies used right now to rehabilitate people.
Bill Gasiamis 35:52
But that’s what I felt when I’m reading the book, when I’m listening to the book, I’m, I see your nine essential steps towards supporting somebody in their recovery. And, you know, we’ve already spoken about movement with attention, essential one, but essential two going slow, even though I was asked to go slow, there was an emphasis put on the benefit of being slow because I wanted to get better quick, I wanted to recover fast, I wanted to get out of rehab quickly.
Bill Gasiamis 36:28
So when they were slowing me down, which was an amazing thing. Now I understand it’s an amazing thing. I was getting frustrated and annoyed. Because they wouldn’t let me walk on my own sooner. And it was like, you say it’s not safe for you, and you’re not there yet. And they just didn’t emphasize certain things that they were doing. And I’m not sure whether they deeply know the benefit of being slow.
Anat Baniel 37:00
The being intentional. And a lot are not asking to go slow. They’re asking to go fast.
Bill Gasiamis 37:06
I yes you know, what they want you out of there quickly, because it’s a public system, you’re filling a position. And they want to make sure that they can get the next person in, and there’s not a big wait etc. So, tell me a little bit about, you know, the benefits of slowness, and being intentional.
Anat Baniel 37:25
Let me say something that maybe will make it very clear right away. Fast, we can only do what we already know. That means the connections are there, the myelination is there, the signals golf quickly, you know, the electrical signals move quickly. In the beginning of something is new, it’s not grooved in yet what we say grooved in which means the, the neurophysiological process of creating the connections and the communication between the cells that can go fast.
Anat Baniel 38:05
So when somebody has a stroke, a bunch of those communication channels are gone, right. And you need to create new ones. But when you create new ones, if you put the burden on fast on the new thing, it gets inhibited. And it reverts to what’s there. And what’s there is the way you show up after you had stroke, that is the existing things that you have whatever is left over.
Anat Baniel 38:39
And, one of the things that kicks in right away is spasticity. And in spasticity is the result of loss of differentiation of loss of connections. So things deceives the baby when it’s born, it can only do this or this with the hand it’s either all flexion or letting go flexion letting go it doesn’t have this this is billions of connections, billions upon billions of connections to be able to do that.
Anat Baniel 39:09
Okay. So so you get smacked on the head, blood whatever. And you lose those connections. When you give the intention it activates what it knows but the whole area that has been affected can only do one thing it is not differentiated anymore more we need to work on differentiation I just said she’s became a very close friend Jill Bolte Taylor, I’m sure you know the name.
Anat Baniel 39:41
And she did my training and she wants my work to get out and anybody emails her just she says go to Anat go to Anat do the Anat Baniel Method. And we’re all experiencing the the difficulty to bring the novel way of thinking the novel way of practicing rehabilitation into the world. And, she says to me Anat it’s all differentiation or bottom line it’s all differentiation, I said, Hello, good morning. You know, that’s what I’ve been telling her enough for, I don’t know, 8-10 years.
Anat Baniel 40:17
So what happens when you go fast? You get the outcome on your attempt to go fast, you get the default of what’s available, what’s available is specificity. And then guess what the brain group, you know, learns its experiences, that becomes the patter. That’s why I said to the head doctor, a bunch of years back of all the Kaiser, you know, medical system. And I was invited to speak to him privately in a dinner by another doctor to explain to him my thinking about brain change, and its relevance in medical intervention.
Anat Baniel 41:08
And I saw that he wasn’t quite groggy or whatever, so I asked him towards the end, I said to him, you have rehab facilities for stroke? He said, Yes. I said, the usual, let’s just talk about ischemic stroke. I said the usual length of rehab is between three to five weeks. He said, Yes. I said, you send away your patients. At the point where there is no real detectable improvement. It’s sort of plateaus. He said, Yes.
Anat Baniel 41:50
I said, now, the understanding of the reason for reaching the plateau. The reason for that is the fact that the person had a stroke, correct? He said, Yes, I said, That’s where you’re wrong. And that’s where my work comes in. The reason they need rehabilitation is because they had a stroke, the reason that they reach a plateau is the intervention. And that is, now they reached the outcome, because of the intervention. And they reached the plateau, because of the intervention.
Anat Baniel 42:33
I said, you shift some of how they do what they do, you will have a completely different trajectory of outcomes. That is what my work is all about. And that is what my vision is all about. So slow is important. Because it allows the person to feel, it gives the time and the space to feel what is going on that goes into movement with attention to what you feel. So if you ask somebody to move fast, or you move fast with them, you kill off the ability to do that, for the brain that are the conditions.
Anat Baniel 43:20
That’s what Michael Merzenich realize when he says in the foreword to my book, that how surprised he was to find me coming from a completely different direction. Defining the same understanding of what gets positive neuron, you know, branch age to happen is 30 years of neuroscience research, except by combining those and bringing it to rehab is a whole other story, which you’ve talked about.
Anat Baniel 43:52
So then I want to mention a couple other essentials, because it’s so quick to once you understand that you want the brain to perceive differences, because it’s one way perceived differences. That’s the information. The brain is an information system. It’s not a mechanical system. Stimulation alone is not information. Stimulation is required for there to be information. The brain generates transformed stimulation into information, it can work with by perceiving differences.
Anat Baniel 44:33
So if you move me really fast and hard and it hurts, and I’m afraid I’m gonna fall, I have no idea that brain is very global, undifferentiated chunks of information, which he says I’m in danger. So you hold your breath you stiffen your chest your arm gets more spastic something may happen and maybe you got your son into water. I mean you’re like in any intuitive genius, because this is brilliant. Now, next essential, reduce the force.
Anat Baniel 45:12
Because it’s a physiological law. This says it’s Weber-Fechner law that in order to perceive a difference, or perceive an increase or decrease in the intensity of a stimulation, the more the base stimulation is intense. The greater in a logarithmic equation, that means it’s like this, it just jumps up. So when it’s this stimulation is very faint, not so faint, you don’t perceive it but very faint, you need very little edit stimulation to notice the difference.
Anat Baniel 46:01
So if you’re in a dark room, and somebody puts just a little bit of light, you notice, you turn the flashlight on, you jump, right. But if you are in full sunlight, and somebody behind puts a flashlight, you wouldn’t know it happened. It happened but you wouldn’t know.
Anat Baniel 46:23
If you’re talking to somebody, if there’s a very light sound around you, like party, you were in a party and people drink usually when they drink, they get loud, you sit in a restaurant, you can’t hear what people say, because it requires for somebody to scream and God knows what level right and at a certain point, it just doesn’t work, you just don’t perceive it.
Anat Baniel 46:49
And that is really really a huge deal. Because once people have a stroke they get spastic, the spasticity itself is already very, very intense. So I put you lying down, I support your head. And I do not activate, I look to avoid activating the spasticity, because let’s face it, you will reduce your sensitivity. And then the whole exercise from my point of view is ridiculous, and a waste of an opportunity. So I leave your spastic arm, I leave your spastic leg, but I go and I just move your chest in certain ways that doesn’t require much differentiation.
Anat Baniel 47:41
And I just have taken note, there is a documentary about my work called A Life Unbound. First half is about a small child. Second half is about a 27-year-old young woman that had a stroke. And she, you know, aphasic and stuff, beautiful gal was a cheerleader for the NFL, sort of an athlete, terrible stroke, and they didn’t discover her for 36 hours. You know, so massive damage.
Anat Baniel 48:17
And she came when she was done already with the rehab. And in the very first session I did with her. She went with her father, they went to the hotel. And it was the first time that she felt her chest and her face since the stroke I didn’t even know that, I don’t know what the outcomes are going to be. But I start talking to the brain and go “look, look, you could do this, you can do that.” So reducing the effort. Now they’re hanging you from above.
Anat Baniel 48:53
You’re not a bird. So your whole life, everything is from the bottom up the baby’s like flat on the ground, then it rolls then it starts distancing itself from the ground until it comes to standing. And of course it’s an all four so it has four points of pressure, and then it comes all the way up. And it’s the information from the feet that the brain uses to balance you not information being hanged.
Anat Baniel 49:26
So this alone, I mean, it’s a variation of movement is okay but not as the basis. So reducing the effort in the force, in the movement itself is so important. I will not try to get somebody who had a stroke or any other kind of TBI to regain function in an upright position or semi upright position. I will get the brain to start restructuring itself, rebuilding itself or reorganizing itself from its line position.
Anat Baniel 50:03
And the most comfortable line position, which is on the side, bent more like a embryonic position. And that’s why I said water is so great because it’s supported from all directions, almost all directions, you don’t want to drown, and then comes variation. And variation is magical. Because people know what you lost. So they asked you to do the thing you lost. You can do the thing you lost, because if you could do it, you’ll do it.
Anat Baniel 50:39
I may start this insane thing. But this is how you would learn. Because if I don’t tell you what to do, did you tell a baby how to do all the movements? Of course no, you don’t, it’s the organic progression. So variations is such a rich source of information to the brain, intellectually, physically, emotionally. So if we can do something, one of the things that I do with people is have them fail on purpose in many different ways.
Bill Gasiamis 51:16
Say that again, fail on purpose in many different ways.
Anat Baniel 51:19
Fail on purpose in many different ways. I worked in the beginning, before I started doing so much work with children. I worked with some of the world’s best known classical musicians, conductors, wellness, players, you know, pianist, hall orchestras, I worked with the San Francisco orchestra, I worked with a Tanglewood Music Festival and their orchestra and some Seiji Ozawa, I mean, you name it, they worked with these people.
Anat Baniel 51:53
And not many of them are brilliant musicians, but they were trained, not following the essentials. They were supposed to hold the violin a certain way they said, so they developed repetitive injuries and so on. And I worked with a member, Chelsea a British brilliant cellist that could hardly play anymore. It was entangled. And I had only 20 minutes with him. It was a demo. So I set him down. And I did it also with a very well known cellist in a quartet, a very well known European quartet, I did a similar thing with him.
The Variation Essential – Neuromovement
Anat Baniel 52:39
I had him take a very, very simple kind of music, you know, like, Twinkle Twinkle, Anna Magdalena Bach thing that he wrote and I just take a phrase and they’re brilliant musicians so for them that alone is a huge variations because hey, I can play Schubert I can play this I can play that.
Anat Baniel 53:01
You know, I go I know you can, but we’re going to do this, you see, reduce the effort, reduce the intensity, and I had him hold the cello. But with a ball, imaginary ball, so he couldn’t really do the movements, right. And you activate the imagination, which is of course one of my essentials. And then I said to him just feel like you really loved it and just the German guy I said to him play it raw. And it was nothing he could play then he had pain here.
Anat Baniel 53:39
And then I said to him, play it badly. At first he couldn’t grasp what I told him because since he was a little child, he was always taught played a certain way to play it correctly. I said play badly. And he just couldn’t do it. He was so rigid. And I said do you teach little children to play the cello? He said yes. I said do they play badly sometimes? He said sure. I said Do you remember any of the badly played things?
Anat Baniel 54:11
He said sure. I said imitate it, so he did he played it badly. And then I asked him to play badly the second time a third time fourth time. While he was playing badly I did all kinds of movements a lot of different differentiations variations with the shoulders so he really played badly because he was holding the ball. The young guy didn’t even bother boy does something different.
Anat Baniel 54:34
But anyway, so it went like crazy. And when I asked him to do the fifth badly way, he couldn’t think of anything I said that’s okay 4 was good enough. So now just play. Two things happened. The pain was gone. And it stopped him from playing. I mean, he was afraid he was losing his career. You and the sound the tone was so spectacular. I heard it, he heard it. He was like stunned. Variation the brain needs elements with which to work to put together the thing you’re trying to accomplish,
Bill Gasiamis 55:23
I understand exactly what you’re saying I just me, re expressing it back to the audience in my own way is very difficult. But I know what you’re saying I came across many, many years ago, an artist who had lost the ability to paint because the because you’re describing with the cellist exactly the same problem that the artist had, for an entire lifetime, the artist was using their hand to paint and put ink on a piece of paper or canvas a certain way every single time. And what they discovered after many, many years was that there was some kind of a tremble in the hand, which was not the type of tremble that your associate to Parkinson’s or anything like that, because it wasn’t in any other part.
Anat Baniel 56:20
That’s what happened to real Fleischer, I worked with him. I mean, that’s what happens to a lot of musicians that have Sunday have involuntary spasticity. And yeah, I mean, I worked with hundreds of musicians. Yeah. Men. And, and it’s the biggest mistake in teaching music. You imagine you take a child, tell him to hold the violin, you say all it this way, now hold it this way.
Anat Baniel 56:43
Now, put it a little here, make it a little uncomfortable, not try to play this way now tried to play these will not lie on your back. And I worked. I mean, I was asked to do it professionally. But it wasn’t I didn’t have passionate about I work with golfers. I did a few things with golfers. And I just had them do. It did also move a whole movement lesson on the floor, I really needed to get their brain to just wake up and start operating on a higher level.
Anat Baniel 57:11
But then, because the brain itself when you give it the essentials becomes that’s what merzenich wrote, you know, in the back of my first book, he wrote that my work helps the brain become a stronger, better brain that does its own job better and its own job is to learn is to put things in a way that they weren’t there before.
Bill Gasiamis 57:36
Is it to find many, many different ways to get the same outcome. For example, the painting using the brush.
Anat Baniel 57:44
In many different ways to execute the same intention.
Bill Gasiamis 57:47
To get the same result?
Anat Baniel 57:49
Not to get the same result. We don’t control the result. We try to execute the same intention, in different ways. And I’ll give you a bigger extreme. My father, I just my book moving to life was just published. My father was a brilliant researcher, right. And there was something that if they build a whole plant to produce the thing that he invented.
Anat Baniel 58:20
And they had a big problem doesn’t matter the story they but something was happening that they didn’t expect. So that my father was sitting on a computer trying to resolve the problem, right? Chemists, and he’s working and he calls me he says I sat for two hours and I could not figure out a way to solve this problem. But he said, but I just read your book.
Anat Baniel 58:44
And I thought about the variation essential. So intentionally. He said, Oh, let’s try this. And he knew it wasn’t going to work. You know, sometimes when you’re big expert in something, you know, he said, but I took myself through the process of failing. He said in 10 minutes, I have the solution.
Anat Baniel 59:07
That’s how extreme it is, you can know it’s not gonna work but by the fact that you give yourself the experience of the process. Because in the process of failure, they’re always useful elements for success? So you create, you generate a lot of mobility and freedom and options for the brain to integrate from those different approach to create something new.
Bill Gasiamis 59:37
It’s like Edison. The story about Edison failing 9999 and then learning the one.
Anat Baniel 59:45
Yeah and the good thing is that most of the time you don’t have to fail 10,000 times. You really don’t. I mean, this will 70 new role, or the mother of my friend it’s heartbreak but you know, they were trying to spend her up, but not just to get the drainage, but they were doing it it’s part of physical therapy.
Anat Baniel 59:45
And, it’s devastating because if she knows what’s happening to her, she’s gonna be traumatized realizing how much she is lost or believes she is lost. And if she’s not getting what’s happening, what are you doing? And so I gave her the courage to stop it. And she’s not a practitioner, but I showed her on Zoom, very gentle few things, she couldn’t touch anything around the neck and you know, too much injuries and stuff.
Anat Baniel 1:00:37
But to do some very simple things around the chest and the pelvis in the feet, because the feet it reflects in the brain so much of what he does, when we walk in standard and so on, imagine an athlete she has more than most people. And I told her to do it so she could feel whether her daughter feels there’s a way to know if when you touch somebody, they’re feeling it what I call movement with attention.
Anat Baniel 1:01:15
And I said, then don’t do more than seven minutes at a time. Because if it’s not helping, don’t exhaust her system. And if it’s helping, don’t exhaust her system. So you see, that’s another thing, don’t exhaust people and let them sleep. That’s Jill Bolte Taylor, her mother, a big part of what worked is because she’d let her sleep and then little units you realize, when she’ll start little units, that was like ingenious on the part of her mom.
Anat Baniel 1:01:46
So she did that, in the next day, the girl was able to stay and hold up in a hurry to her head. Not 10,000. Now does she need a lot more for recovery, of course. But you see real change the girl that I don’t do that now they’re going home for a month, and they’re going to move for a year to be next to us, because we want her to catch up on because she’s brilliant. I said, this girl is so intelligent. And she grew into being very limited, because people didn’t see that she was intelligent, because she couldn’t respond to the way they were trying to help. You can hear I’m just crazy passionate about this.
Bill Gasiamis 1:02:29
I can. That’s why I’m letting you talk and for people listening, this is going to be a podcast that you have to listen to again, and you have to actually get the book because the book is extremely well written extremely succinct, and to the point and I get so much out of it. And, that’s why I am a bit in awe, and I’m a little bit overwhelmed at the same time because I’m learning so much. But we’re only spoken about three of your nine essentials, we’ve spoken about movement with attension, about being slow about variation. And we don’t need to talk about all of them.
Anat Baniel 1:03:05
And the reduction of force reduction.
The Importance of Enthusiasm In Rehabilitation
Bill Gasiamis 1:03:08
And reduction of force. But we don’t need to talk about all of them. However, I want to definitely talk about enthusiasm, because this is something that can be lost on survivors of stroke or traumatic brain injuries when they’re going into rehabilitation situation because there’s, like I was in a little bit of fear. I wasn’t enthusiastic about being hung up.
Bill Gasiamis 1:03:37
And, being rehabilitated in the form of a puppet. Although I understand why people were doing it I don’t have an issue with the way I was rehabilitated. But reading this, I see the missed opportunities that could have potentially been there. So tell me about the importance of enthusiasm and not just of the person going through the rehabilitation, not just the patient.
Anat Baniel 1:04:04
Okay, let me tell you what I mean, when you say ASAN, which really goes with the whole idea that the brain is perceived differences and the motional relationship or the relationship between learning and emotions. Okay, that’s really the essential that kind of like, really, that’s what’s behind it. So we reduce the force, we slow down, we focus on what we feel as we move. And then we notice that I’m just giving you an example. It’s just an example. That yesterday I could only move my arm this much rotated, let’s say, and now I’ve done this and often it rotates this much.
Anat Baniel 1:04:57
Further, and maybe lighter, always When it goes like that better, it’s lighter, easier, more pleasurable, that always happens, there’s the way that the brain goes like check like it works well. But I need to do this, I don’t know, for tennis for something. So I’d go like this. But because it’s not the whole thing, I’m going to either not notice it or not give it importance. The brain gets gazillions of units of experiences every day, right?
Anat Baniel 1:05:34
But some things get memorized. You know, or grooved in very quickly. And other things just like dissipate, right, they don’t release stay. One of the ways, there are two ways that are very clearly the way the brain goes like, this is important in the neurophysiological processes of grooving it in very quickly.
Anat Baniel 1:06:02
One is when it’s really dangerous, or painful, or scary, that it compromises our sense of safety. Okay, the other one, when it’s really great, really pleasurable, distinctly better than anything else until that moment, positive emotions. So both of them have a lot of power, the negative has actually more power because it’s like survival.
Anat Baniel 1:06:32
When something good happen, and you go and you amplify, do you let yourself feel enthusiasm. And the best place to start practicing enthusiasm is maybe a little bit outside of yourself. So you go to the grocery store, and the checkout person is a has a nice buckle on their belt.
Anat Baniel 1:06:59
And you go like, Oh my goodness, I really think this gorgeous, and maybe you even tell them or, or I mean, you just let yourself be an amplifier of the positive and the seeker of the positive not Pollyanna, not denial kind of nonsense. But a sick. And the my students that improve the fastest are the ones that get most kind of that ladder of well being.
Anat Baniel 1:07:35
Now the story comes, I worked with this little girl she was diagnosed really, really bad. She had real ish stuff with a brain, okay. She changed every lesson. And of course, the practitioner, the more the practitioner can feel subtle changes, the more powerful and useful they are to their client.
Anat Baniel 1:08:08
Because if I work with you, and you’ve changed just a little, and I don’t notice it, and I keep going as if it didn’t happen. Missed opportunity. If I notice it, and I go with you, you notice that you go with me, I noticed you go with you. And we’re running forward together, right? So but it’s not like oh, yeah, you’re great because that externalizes I want the experience to be internal.
Anat Baniel 1:08:35
So it’s very quiet, it can be totally non-verbal, we train parents to not say good, yes, to just feel it inside, because one of the parents would bring her and every little change, got them to feel hopeful and grateful and happy. They saw that is going the right way or possibility. The other parent actually had the reverse reaction basically, because the changes were so “small” but they got despaired.
Anat Baniel 1:09:21
And I started noticing and then I noticed it also other places. So I realized it’s real it’s not just me fantasizing. I realized that when she was with one parent, everything she changed really fast. I mean, the progress was just the other parent it was like with clay. And after a while, I asked the one parent that felt good about the process, the little changes to be the only one to bring her two years until that the changes were so significant that it didn’t matter which parent came.
Anat Baniel 1:10:01
I mean, she’s arrived, at such a place that it was fine. And I’ve had it with other other people, I’ve had it sometimes with therapists, you know, that come to watch. And if they were, like had difficult feelings or competitive feelings, I felt it immediately in the channel.
Bill Gasiamis 1:10:26
If I remember correctly, with the enthusiasm, essential, and that particular chapter, the parent who was getting better results with the child was saying, Look how far you’ve come. And then the mother was saying, Man, they’ve got so far to go or something like that.
Anat Baniel 1:10:52
It actually a lot more immediate, it’s in the moment. So we’re now working with a wonderful gal, adult, the older side who had a devastating stroke, went through three years of intense, intense, intense, you know, rehab, and then found us a and moved here, to be able to work and I don’t know how she was before the stroke, but she changes. But she really is still very impacted, but by what is not there yet.
Anat Baniel 1:11:37
I mean, she remembers how she was before. And, she keeps comparing yourself to how she was before. So when she’s with us, she feels the change and she’s delighted. But then when she doesn’t get our emotional support, she sinks into the sense of the comparison. And she’s paying a high price for it, I mean, she is progressed and she’s doing a lot better and, also during therapy, they told her whoever was their therapists kind of scared her about a few things.
Anat Baniel 1:12:15
If you don’t hold that arm your shoulder with the disconnect, if you don’t do this, this will happen. And it’s kinda like it’s already not happening. And already there are music is free and already down, he’s hanging and it hasn’t fallen off the shoulder. But but there’s, there’s a huge bias towards the fear actually, for her the the triggers the fear. And, so enthusiaism I wrote the book for the parents of the therapist, but in this case, my listeners, the adults who are themselves the subjects.
Anat Baniel 1:12:57
So it is really a practice, not to go into denial not to say that everything’s fine when it’s not denial is not my thing. However, the change is really the change. And because it’s a quantum system, the brain is not a small change, or a large change, it is a change or no change. It is a desire change, or an undesired change, these are the distinctions.
Anat Baniel 1:13:26
So if it’s in the direction you want, if you feel so you know, when I work somebody, and they get off the table, and they are free of pain. And then they say, well, let me see if I feel the pain. I said no, if you look for it, you will find it. Especially if you have had this for a long time, three years of you know all the limitations and everything. They’re there, she can always go back to it. That’s not something that I mean, it’s just like you can go back to crawling on all fours.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:01
You can change your physiology so that it’s making pain again.
Anat Baniel 1:14:06
We don’t lose the old patterns. We develop new ones.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:09
Yeah. And you replace the old pattern with a new one.
Anat Baniel 1:14:12
Yeah, I will need to get off really soon. I mean, I’m always happy to talk with you and your audience again. Listen, I would like we are going to be showing the Life Unbound. It’s a very, very inspiring we have Merzenich on it, we have Martha Herbert, we have Jill Bolte Taylor, we have five scientists that say why they think what I do is cool. I mean that approach makes sense.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:56
Yeah. I agree. The approach makes sense.
Anat Baniel 1:14:59
And then I’d love to let your people know that so they can watch it.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:05
Yeah, absolutely, I will. I really appreciate your time, I really appreciate the fact that you do the work that you do. Your book is amazing, I haven’t finished it yet, I’m going to finish it. And it really has changed the way that I can now kind of express the path to recovery, where, where before, it didn’t feel like I was doing the that I had the best opportunity in the version of recovery that I was given, although I’m very grateful for it.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:41
I see how it can be definitely enhanced by adding some of the amazing essentials that you spoke about, you know, and that we’ve already discussed. So it does do that, like your method does make me feel and I think I would have benefited from having those additional essentials and that different counter intuitive way to look at recovery, all the all those years ago.
Bill Gasiamis 1:16:11
But that being said, it doesn’t mean it. I love what you also said earlier, which was that the Recovery Version that I was giving is still amazing in the face of having no recovery support. So it’s brilliant, right? And I’m very happy and grateful for it. This is a great tool to enhance the things that other people are doing.
Anat Baniel 1:16:34
And I would go further. It’s not just enhance what they do is different. What we do is to transform how we do it. We did move from buggies to airplanes. So they’re still transportation, it’s the recovery. But he said different universe. It’s important part step in the evolution of humankind.
Anat Baniel 1:17:05
It’s different humans, humans that operate that way use their own brains, you see, you can’t help somebody else to go gentler and do variations. And if you’re stuck and rigid and repetitive and limited and forceful, you you have to be doing the essentials from within yourself. So your awareness in I one of my essentials is awareness. You know, I mean, it’s truly an it’s an evolution of the use of self is what was given to us. You know, look at us, that we have ways to go, but yeah, so it’s not just improving what they’re doing. It’s different.
Bill Gasiamis 1:17:58
Yeah. And I love that part. I love that part that you said it’s also about us understanding the nine essentials, that people recovering. So that we can apply them.
Anat Baniel 1:18:08
With us the nine essentials with us exercising, yeah, you can’t do them. You can’t bring them to someone else. If you’re not doing them because then you’re not doing them you’re doing the opposite or different. It’s a transformational, it’s a shift. It’s not a little editing. That was one of the things that people have asked me occasionally, well, why don’t you just, you know, collaborate with the PTs, as I said, because it’s just like asking me to speak, you know, Chinese when I’m speaking Hebrew is a different language. It’s a different thing. And it’s hopefully, the future not too far away from now. That’s the point.
Bill Gasiamis 1:18:54
Anat, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Anat Baniel 1:18:57
Thank you for allowing me to speak what I really think. And thanks for all you’re doing and for caring about your people.
Bill Gasiamis 1:19:08
Thanks for joining us on today’s episode. This is an interview that you must listen to more than once I believe. It is a very deep conversation that I must admit even I struggled to have the words to bring out what I wanted. Anat to discuss and tell us about so that you can understand the importance of the work that she’s doing and how she helps people.
Bill Gasiamis 1:19:34
But if you do listen to it and you’re curious and you just kind of barely understood some of the concepts, what I would encourage you to do is get her book, absolutely get her book, go through the book lists, listen to it online, if you can read it, and understand her nine essentials to supporting somebody.
The Nine Essetials
Bill Gasiamis 1:19:58
Make gains in recovery after a traumatic brain injury, or whether they’re born with a neurological condition because they are really counterintuitive and quite amazingly expressed in the book these nine steps, basically. So you know, before I wrap this episode up what they are is, is essential number one is to move with attension. And it doesn’t actually mean what the chapter heading says it’s far deeper and more nuanced than that.
Bill Gasiamis 1:20:39
Essential number two is to do things slowly to move slowly. And we briefly touched on that in the episode, essential three is variation, to give the body lots of different variation, lots of different ways to get to the same outcome or to the same intention. Essential number four is to use subtlety, something we didn’t really go into too much and discuss. Essential number eight is to a bigger part an essential number five is to enroll enthusiasm in the path to celebration of wins that somebody has no matter how big or small they are.
Bill Gasiamis 1:21:29
Essential six is flexible goals, which is a really important one, which we didn’t touch on, that you need to understand about having flexible goals so that the goal posts can be moved in your favor, if you don’t reach a particular outcome. Essential seven is the learning switch, which I haven’t read about yet. And I’m not sure what that refers to. But no doubt, it’s going to be another amazing chapter.
Bill Gasiamis 1:21:58
Essential eight is imagination and dreams. So how to activate your imagination. And I’m not sure exactly what dreams refers to, but it’d be really worth looking at. And essential nine is awareness. And I imagine that’s around about having awareness about what it is that you’re experiencing, and that you’re noticing.
Bill Gasiamis 1:22:25
And although the books written for parents, it kind of is something that you could look at and learn from, and apply to yourself in your own recovery. And potentially, you could make this book available to your caregivers, that they know what page you’re on, if they’re interested in, in understanding, a different way of looking at recovery.
Bill Gasiamis 1:22:53
And not only your caregivers, but also your physical therapists and occupational therapists, I know I’m going on about this book. And as soon as like, I have shares in it, I don’t, this is not a book that. That’s like all the other books. It’s a very, very different book. And, and that’s perspective is very different. So anyhow, if at all you got curious about it, you’ll be able to find the links to the book and to a net website via the show notes.
Bill Gasiamis 1:23:24
So please feel free to go to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes so that you can see her episode, and then click on the link there and it’ll open up and it will give you all the details on the shownotes. So thank you so much for coming to the podcast and listening every week. I really appreciate it. Thanks for all the people who have left review, thanks to the people who get in touch and leave me amazing feedback.
Bill Gasiamis 1:23:54
And let me know how much of the podcast does for them. And I really appreciate the people who are sharing this podcast on social media and telling other people about it, because it’s really making it easier for other stroke survivors who are going through something similar to what we’ve all been through. It’s making it easier for them to find the podcast.
Bill Gasiamis 1:24:17
And that makes a huge difference when you’re in that early phase. And if you remember how good it was when you discovered the podcast, and makes a huge difference to to help how people can go about their recovery and not feel alone and hopefully it’ll lift their spirits and it’ll teach them something. If you’re a stroke survivor with a story to share about your experience, come join me on the show.
Bill Gasiamis 1:24:42
The Interviews are not scripted, you do not have to plan for them. All you have to do to qualify is best stroke survivor or care for a stroke survivor or be somebody who helps out stroke survivors. Whether you’re in the medical field or in an allied health environment, just go to recoveryafterstroke.com/contact fill out the contact form. And as soon as I receive it, I will respond with more details on how you can choose a time that works for you and me to meet over zoom. Thanks again for being here and listening. I truly appreciate you and see you on the next episode.
Intro 1:25:17
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals their opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast or the individual’s own experience and we do not necessarily share the same opinion nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed.
Intro 1:25:34
All content on this website at any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis. The content is intended to complement your medical treatment and support healing.
Intro 1:25:51
It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health advice. The information is general and may not be suitable for your personal injuries, circumstances or health objectives. Do not use our content as a standalone resource to diagnose treat, cure or prevent any disease for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional.
Intro 1:26:12
Never delay seeking advice or disregard the advice of a medical professional, your doctor or your rehabilitation program based on our content. If you have any questions or concerns about your health or medical condition, please seek guidance from a doctor or other medical professional if you are experiencing a health emergency or think you might be, call 000 in Australia or your local emergency number immediately for emergency assistance or go to the nearest hospital emergency department.
Intro 1:26:36
Medical information changes constantly. While we aim to provide current quality information in our content. We did not provide any guarantees and assume no legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, currency or completeness of the content. If you choose to rely on any information within our content, you do so solely at your own risk. We are careful with links we provide however third party links from our website are followed at your own risk and we are not responsible for any information you find there.
