*Image and story shared with permission and anonymised*

This image is not the end of treatment for this person, but an achievement we are celebrating.  It is part of a long piece of work, is not without pain, and should not be taken out of that context. 

A picture can say a thousand different words to a thousand different people, but when a client shared this image with me it spoke to me.

On the one hand, this is image is a person running through a beautiful part of the land within which they live.  Enjoying a family jog in the sun, full of the joys and the knowledge that they are sharing their passion with their young children - and with each other.  To passers by they are expressing their identity as a family committed to exercise and the outdoors. Individually, they are embracing and living their values as people that love to run.

And yet there's pain. 

There has been pain.

And there is the uncertainty of what the future of that pain may be.

How might a...

Last week I was joined on my FB live by Rachel Hayden and Jack Holroyde to explore the obstacles and barriers to accessing Musculoskeletal Health Care (often delivered by a Physiotherapist) and how can improve our spaces to make them safer for transgender people and more inclusive generally of the non-binary and LGBTQ+ community. 

Rachel is is in transition, learning about gender and herself simultaneously. As a peer supporter and bodywork therapist, her recent explorations of pain science and critical thinking have led her smack into a confrontation with personal authenticity. She now seeks to live from that ambiguous, evolving truth, both as practitioner and as a complete human being.

Jack is a lifelong LGBTQ+ rights advocate who has held a number of directorships and elected positions within the UK LGBTQ+ community before he qualified as a physio in 2018.

A few weeks ago I spoke with Karen Litzy on her podcast Healthy, Wealthy, Smart about the integration of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy into physiotherapy practice.

The podcast is available on Spotify as well on her website. Here is the link to the full podcast:

http://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com/laurarathbone/

Dr Bronnie Lennox Thompson and I  talk Psychologically-informed therapy

 I had the great pleasure of chatting to the lovely Dr Bronnie Thompson last week. 

Bronnie is an Occupational Therapist PhD from New Zealand.  She has practiced in interdisciplinary pain management programmes, private practice, case management, primary prevention and secondary prevention.  Since 2002 she has been teaching postgraduate students in pain and pain management at Otago University.

Her main interest areas include pain and anxiety, motivation for self-management, resilience and daily coping choices.

My next chat in this series will be on my Facebook - click this link page as well as the clinic facebook (link) page and LIVE on Thursday 23rd July at 9pm (NL time, 8pm UK time and 2pm Central U.S time).  I will be joined Rachel Hayden from Wisconsin, U.S.A and Jack Holroyde, UK, to discuss the challenges the LGBTQ+ community face when accessing healthcare and the specific...

Ok, so we talk about balance a lot.  Balancing roles, balancing life commitments and balancing our physical and mental health.  But what does this even mean?

We have a sentence that we all say don't we...

"oooh yes, it's a balancing act isn't it" or "yes, it's all in the balance" 

(does everyone do this in a northern english accent, or just me?)

The problem with this, or the allure with this, is that it's relatable enough to mislead us into thinking we understand each other, but vague enough for us to make whopping assumptions about the experience of another person.  The function is to close down the conversation. That's what these types of sentences do. They have a meaning and linguistic function all of their own. 

But what if it didn't?  What if instead of rolling out this 'saying', we asked "what does balancing all this mean to you? how does it look when it all works, and how does it look when you are struggling to find a balance?".