Conductor of the airwaves

"A smiley pumpkin" by Susie Mallett October 2010

Or are they microwaves or some other kind of waves?

It is not really that important what kind of waves they are, what is important is that it works.

I have just been conducting via Skype and I really quite enjoy it.

I have had this option available to me for just about two years now and I have the feeling now that it is actually beginning to do the job that I imagined it would do.

I had always hoped that I would be able to be of help to people who know about conductive upbringing but are only able to attend sessions irregularly, in blocks or maybe only once a year at a summer camp. All of this may be several hundreds of miles away from home and therefore with little or no possibility of follow-up work.

I wanted to bridge this gap, to help families learn how to continue to live conductively between their visits to camps.

I have been in contact with several families whose children have been attending camps and we have spent some time asking and answering questions over Skype. As most of these families are in America and Canada it has very difficult to coordinate “meetings” at times when the children are not eithe at school or not in bed. It worked out sometimes at the weekends, between sports events and family outings. It has not been so successful as to make it a regular weekly or monthly session.

Now I have such a client in Europe, which makes the timing an awful lot easier. Apart from the ease of timing I really do feel like we are beginning to get a communication going that is working really well.

My client has a special notebook for writing questions that arise during the fourteen days between our “meetings”. We go through tism one question at a time, I show a few movements that may help, I describe why I think the physiotherapist has suggested certain movement in their sessions together, and expand on these when possible. I give tips for times of the day or certain activities in which movements can be incorporated to improve posture and loosen up joints. I search for info in the Internet and send the URLs immediately, or later if I need more time to find out what we need. We arrange to communicate via email if something crops up between Skype sessions.

Questions

My client always has a list of questions ready, many of them are of the sort that arise from being isolated with a newly diagnosed illness. They are questions that I can answer because of my experience, or I know where I can get an answer from. They are the sort of questions that get discussed in my conductive groups.

There are so many questions that can cause a client quite a lot of worry, but when answered the client is often immediately at ease. It is because of the need for such discussion that I offer a three- hour programme in my groups where there is time allocated for a round-table discussion on whatever the theme of the day is. This week we covered learning to cook and mobility scooters, last week it was the best type of walking sticks to use and accessible holidays in the hills of Bavaria.

Having a debilitating disease is bad enough without the worry of having unanswered questions. Without a group to attend near to home when discussion is an important part of the session, then Skype is the next best thing.

And one from me

I have one unanswered question at the moment too. Perhaps there is someone out there who can help to answer it. It is something that I have found an answer to this week for two clients here in Germany, but now I need an answer for a client in England.

I am looking for an individual or a company who supplies computers and computer accessories to people with disabilities. I am looking for the person who knows about speech -activated computers, and breath-activated computers, and about using the blink of an eye or a nod of the head to write a letter. All these devices and more I tried out with my client in the Computer Museum in Paderborn in the summer, and I now wish to have information about them for my clients to use at home.

I have a contact in Germany now I need one in the UK. Any information will be very gratefully received.