Auntie Tales

I had a WONDERFUL weekend with Mum & Pioneer Sister's kids, collectively called The Einsteiners. We were driving to Mum's friend's housewarming party and Little Sister was playing with the clippy-clopping noisy horse in the backseat. Mum said, "What should we name the horse?" And eldest brother says, "How about annoying?" Hahahaha

View at the party:

GLORIOUS.

Funny way to spell "cool." Nope. It's spozed to say "GOAL" --as in soccer.

They had face-painting & an art tent for the kids. Nephew #2 (a.k.a. Dimples) soon was covered: arms, legs, and finally his whole face. I said to his older brother:
I'll bet you that when he's 21, he'll have tattoos and a motorcycle.
Older Brother: What are we betting?
Me: Lessee. You'll be 25 by then. How about a 6-pack of your favourite beverage?
Him: And if you win?
Me: Well, you get off easy because my favourite beverage is water.

Now for those of you who may raise a brow about my making bets of questionable beverage choices with my nephews--one word: polarity. Or in psycho-babble terms: oppositional. Both Dimples & Little Sister exhibit a bit of that pattern. Any direction, suggestion, whatever is met with an automatic "no." Come to think of it, it's a pattern throughout my family. Anyway, eventually in the next 10 years, Eldest will tell Dimples about our bet. And what will his response be but to prove me wrong? Thereby keeping his body tattoo-free. Just helping out my sister.

Speaking of bets, Eldest taught me & Dimples how to play poker. I got the change from my purse and divvied it up. Dimples took us to the cleaners. Pioneer Sister said, "Great. You're teaching my kids to gamble?" No, really it was Eldest teaching me.

As Pioneer Sister & I were having a cup of tea before heading out, Niece comes up to me and says,"Auntie Hal. Can I use your vibrator?" "Sweetie, it's called a percussor." Hahahaha Ah, kids.

Blah Blah Blah Brimhall

I'm back at the river house and so I'm slapping these photos up from the seminar. This is Dr. Tyran Mincey. I managed to capture him in his cowboy look this time!


There was a whole group of doctors up along the wall doing this exercise when Dr. Mincey walked in. So he tried it. You can see a bit of the laser to the right. Without getting too technical (really, as if I could!) it speeds up the healing process. It stimulates the mitochondria (energy factories) of the cell to produce more ATP (energy) in the cell. It really is the miracle tool. Great for injuries, pain & inflammation & a bevy of other symptoms. What could your cells do more of if they had more energy?

Lasering in different positions increases flexibility.

OK, on to Dr. Mincey's brother, Riley. He is one of the most positive people on the planet! When he was 2 months old, he had a botched needle procedure done on his leg and it got infected. They amputated starting at the knee and eventually they took his whole leg. They also wanted to take one of his arms. ????? Afterwards, everyone associated with the incident disappeared from the hospital. This was in 1968--can you imagine if that happened today? So this is Riley's little trick:

Hahahahahaha!

The seminar was sponsored by the Mincey Bros (Nutriwest PA) & was taught by Dr. Brett Brimhall. He's kind of a cross between his dad, (Dr. John) and Dan Murphy. The science stuff just flies off his tongue & sometime right over my head. But WOW! Awesome stuff!

Me & Dr. Brett

Chiro-sister Ruthie & Dr. Brett horsing around.

I learned a great new percussor technique from Dr. Cliffton Brady having to do with digestion and the colon. I worked on another doc there who had some shoulder pain. As I was working on him I was engulfed in a cloud of chlorine smell. He used to be a swimmer. Dr. Brady says that when you start doing percussor, you experience some pretty weird things. Yup. So it was a really great weekend--lots of learning and laughing. My favourite!

It always works out

I finally did it. I left my percussor behind in a hotel seminar room. It was a bit of a mad-dash-out-the-door, and there it sat under the table. Yikes! Thankfully I was going to lend it to chiro-sister Ruthie so I was looking for it when we were unloading her stuff into her car when we got back to Mum's.

Here's the thing, and it's just a belief I have, but it's useful:

It always works out.

No matter what "it" is. If I can't find the positive right away, I'll look harder. It's there waiting to be discovered. Everything has a lesson in it. [Like: where in the Land of Duh am I living that my cell phone number isn't scrawled all over it?!] There is no disaster that doesn't bring out the inherent goodness in people. Little ones, big ones, natural, man-made. People step up. Like Meaghan at the Hilton Harrisburg who's UPSing my percussor back to me. Worthy of a Borders gift card, don't you think?

And if I lost my percussor? Well then. I get the newer, smaller, quieter version. Eventually.

Forgetting the Bad

The above picture is a Grasshopper Note quote from John. He said it to me in a conversation. The photo is a shot of one of the hundreds of sunrises I used to watch in my old backyard. *sigh* LOVEly. So I was a bit . . . down, yesterday. Not something I usually admit to, but there it is. Too many notes. So here's the good: the gratitude I feel for friends & fam. THANK YOU for your kind words. Doug is on the road this week for us and called yesterday to get a head count for our seminars last night. He went all Ericksonian on me. It was v. cute. And John, my boss, my friend, manages to say the right thing at the right time. THANK YOU. I really am so blessed.

It is hard to feel anything else when you feel grateful.

P.S. I received a comment from a fellow percussor enthusiast for my Percussor 101 blogpost. A friend! Carol Porter lives in Hawaii & wrote a great Sept. 17th post on her own percussor experiences. (I tried to click on the actual post to create a link, but it didn't work, so that's why I'm giving the date for it). Hi Carol! :-) H.

Visit at Dr. Lee's Office

Cool mission statement, huh? #3 is v. Jerry Stocking-ish.

Every Tuesday morning, the office is closed and Dr. Lee treats the staff and they work on each other. Then they go to lunch for a meeting. How cool is that?! Here he is adjusting Donna with the adjustor.

Me & the doc in the footbath room.

I'm sorry not to have gotten more pictures. I had wanted to get a group photo, but they were SO busy Wed. a.m. that there was no time. I also wanted to get some of the tensegrity room. My lungs are pretty much cleared out from that and all the other work we did. I'm on the mend! On the last day Dr. Lee put me to work on a patient with the percussor. She had a charming southern accent and said, "Dahling, I wish I could take you home with me." Well, as a matter of fact, you can...

THANKS to Dr. Lee and Sally, Diane, Donna, Jan, & Virginia for making me feel so WELCOME!

P.S. 1/2 price sale with ALL John Morgan products PLUS *FREE* shipping! Check it out!

Relax Dammit

It’s a running joke in my family that if anyone says “relax,” it is automatically followed with a “dammit.” It’s an unfortunate anchor related to my chiropractic father. He was really wonderful with friends and patients, but when it came to his family…there would come a point where his impatience won out, and as he was adjusting us, he would say, “Relax, dammit.”

I’ve had the opportunity to be working at the Mimslyn spa, where we offer couples massages. Basically you’re massaging two people in the same room. It eases the nervousness some people might feel receiving their first massage. This most often refers to husbands who are strong-armed into getting a massage.

"What you need is a massage."

As a massage therapist, I really believe almost every BODY can benefit from a massage. Bruce Lipton says that 95% of disease is related to stress. We hold that stress and tension in our bodies and massage is a great way to release it. When you feel better, you do better. That said, I’ve seen a husband dragged to a weekend get-away (and end up on my table) because his wife said he needed to relax. Dammit. He wanted to stay home and watch Tiger playing golf. I am confident he did receive benefits from the massage, but will that cancel out the resentment towards his wife for missing Tiger?

Most recently, a well-meaning sibling scheduled a massage for a brother on his wedding day because he needed to relax. The poor boy. He’d never had a massage, didn’t want a massage but was there under obligation. Yikes! Keep your shirt on—and the rest of everything. I did a percussor session with him and we chatted a bit. I did work that tension out of his shoulders. And by the end of our session, he was relaxed. :-) Dammit.

It’s v. easy for other people to tell us what we need. [Read with Dr. Phil voice] I’ll tell you what YOU should do, you should _______.

Sometimes we can offer a different perspective. And sometimes we *should* on other people according to our own values and preferences with advice that is most often unsolicited. That’s when we cross the boundary into Relaxdammit Land.

Now shut up and get on the massage table. hahaha

Percussor 101

This is a percussor. I have successfully failed to describe it accurately enough--and a picture is worth a thousand words. So here it is:

I can't talk about the Erchonia percussor without talking about Dr. John Brimhall, because that's who taught me. I learned from him before I became a massage therapist--in fact it was this work that inspired me to go to school. For all my non-Brimhallers out there, a percussor is a hand-held instrument that works on fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that hold muscles, organs, etc. in place. It's v. strong stuff--2000 lbs. of pressure, if I'm remembering correctly. You know that filmy stuff across a chicken breast? Fascia. Dr. John says you could take everything out of the body and leave the fascia and you would still have the shape of your body. Whenever there's trauma to the body, the fascia can get restricted to create restricted movement or pain. As a massage therapist, I had a whole semester on myofascial release.

S-L-O-W work and pretty much like watching paint dry. Hehhhh...the percussor is way faster and efficient. Not only is it great for pain, but it's wonderful for TMJ (jaw) problems, breathing problems (there's a diaphragm release that really helps with asthma), and scar tissue release.

Surgery always disrupts the fascia and can create all sorts of problems, especially any kind of abdominal surgery, like a C-section. Dr. Lee tells a rather graphic story about a C-section patient who'd suffered from chronic constipation. I'm debating whether to say the rest...OK, get ready to say Eeewwww! On the way home she stopped at a gas station and FILLED one toilet, moved on to the next and was afraid to leave....yup, she was literally full of crap.

I worked on a client who was having extreme TMJ pain and it was related to a hysterectomy she'd had 7 years prior. The scar was less than an inch across, but as it released, so did her TMJ pain. Amazing stuff. I also worked on a woman who'd had multiple car accidents and surgeries. Not only are you working on the physical scar, but also the emotional trauma related to it as well. So the percussor releases all that pent-up energy as well as addressing unresolved emotions related to the initial trauma. And that was my first experience of being engulfed in a cloud of the energy of the anesthesia. Whew! Dr. Brady, another Brimhall doc, said When you work with the percussor, you'll start to experience some strange things. I have had some v. strange enxperiences that I will save for another time!