Freda and Body Language
This morning’s session.
“I think I was asleep when you knocked!
Last night I told my carer I wouldn’t be changing into my bed clothes because I was going out for a meal and then to the cinema with my father.
The carer was not sure how to respond to this but eventually she managed to convince me that I was dreaming…. I had been asleep when she arrived.
I don’t have much memory of my father except as a little girl.
He would come home at about 6 pm and my mother always had a meal ready for him. I used to immediately present him with a book which he would read to me and then take a wrong turn in the story.
I loved this. ”
As she reminisced I could almost see her child-like delight in these precious moments.
Something subtle in her mind-body, activated and lively.
I sit in front of her and ask if her leg would like to move into my lap (I’m on a low stool in front of her arm chair)
She waits while she peers at her right leg and then “oh, might as well”
A truculent leg perhaps?
She has very oedematous feet and lower legs and I like to spend a little time encouraging the ankles and joints of the feet to move freely and to stimulate more sensory awareness so that she has better feedback from the floor when she walks.
Her hips in contrast, are very free in rotation and flexion.
We move away from her armchair and remain standing just in front of a piano stool for a little while.
A little activity in standing… releasing each knee forward to allow the heel to rise, alternating left and right.
“They are so different”…
The right leg takes a little longer to respond to weight bearing.
We sit with her in front of me for my version of “lazy semi-supine” .
I sit on a chair behind her and straddle the piano stool, with her back to me.
She inclines backwards from the hips to rest against me as though I am the back of a chair and from where I can gently encourage length and width through the front of her torso and also, guide delicate movement of her head at the top of her spine.
“How is this?”
A long pause.
“It seems to suggest movement where there isn’t any”
We work a little more, with her now sitting unsupported and transferring weight from one side of the pelvis to the other; walking forwards and back on the firm surface of the stool, and encouraging balance by activating the musculature of the upper body and torso.
At one point she inadvertently keels over to her left.
“That wasn’t me or you…. somebody else interfered with that!”
As we plan to stand I ask her to notice what happens to the flexibility of her ankles.
I explain that it’s fun to sneak up on the brain and divert attention away from unnecessary tension.
“Hah!….. I like the idea of sneaking up on my brain”
She moves smoothly from sitting to standing.
“I thought it was going to be difficult but it wasn’t at all”!
We place her next appointment in the diary.
By next week it will already be the middle of May.
Freda’s 99th birthday cards are still gaily on her noticeboard in the hall.
