How I Bounced Back After Parkinson’s Diagnosis to Make US National Rowing Team, by Todd Vogt
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Fascia (Connective Tissue) and Parkinson's Disease
We discover that fascia is essentially the connective tissue which is found throughout our body, wrapping muscles and organs, nerves and bones. This connective tissue is incredibly important and has profound and primary roles in our biological system, health and wellness. This is an “emerging” field in medicine, but has been known about and worked with in other disciplines for a very long time.
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The Past, Persistence and Parkinson's Disease
By Stefania Lungu, contributing author and person with Parkinson’s Disease.
“I am 66 years old and this is my story. I strongly believe that almost all major illnesses have deep roots in some traumas/shocks we have at certain moments of our lives, which we were not able to “digest”. All my emotional traumas are related to members of my family. My first shock was back in 1994, when I was alone with a little child to raise. Knock-knock, depression installed itself immediately and I was not able to recognize it and give it a proper treatment. I was very angry, and afraid that I would not be able to cope with all my problems. Yet, in all the critical moments of my life, I received from seemingly nowhere some help from ”above”, and somehow I managed to solve step by step the problems which arose, even when I remained jobless in 2000, and by miracle an old tennis friend helped me to find a new job in a bank, that help restore confidence in myself.”
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Hand-Held Accessories and Hand-Eye Co-ordination in Movement Therapies for Parkinson's Disease
An early discovery in pursuing whole-body movement as the principle therapy for increasing my range of motion, re-connecting body and mind, and integrating Primitive Reflexes, was the importance of holding something in my hands as part and parcel of the therapy, thereby enhancing the Applied Neuroplasticity and Somatic Experiencing benefits of movement.
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Dance Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
Of all the therapies and modalities we’ve discussed here, I believe the most beneficial overall for progressive symptom reduction and movement recovery are Dance based. Here we define Dance Therapy broadly and simply as “moving to music or a beat”
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Balloon Based Play Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
Playing with balloons helped me re-discover much more slow, fluid and graceful movement. I believe that this type of controlled movement exercise could be very beneficial - even more so than playing with balls.
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Light Therapy and Parkinson's Disease
The purposes of this article, which I will endeavour to keep updated, is to act as a central resource of information on light therapy and its applications to Parkinson's Disease.
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The Dorsal Vagus Nerve and Parkinson's Disease
In this article, I would like to return to this topic, and concentrate this time on that primitive, reptilian branch of the Vagus Nerve, and its potentially central role in Parkinson's Disease.
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Building Aliveness with Parkinson's Disease
The contrast to two years ago is quite stark. Back then I was literally near-Death and dying fast. Then, in my Death Feigning or "off" state, I would be in a much deeper Freeze, with more "rigor mortis" (rigidity). I was literally a zombie. Now I am much more functional - half-alive instead of near-dead - while symptomatic, unless having a really bad day. Even when the drugs switched me on, back then, it was not into full Aliveness, but into another half-dead, unfeeling, empty state - that of permanent Fight-Flight which I had pre-existed all in my life. Moreover, I was taking so many drugs that my movement (and emotions) were uncontrolled, I would go over to a state of dyskinesia which could be worse than the symptoms. Some of the drugs (ropenirole) I was on then actually made my Fight-Flight much, much worse than before.
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Tennis as Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
Tennis seems to be the perfect exercise to help PD - the hand-eye coordination, sudden quick movements, the thinking process used to execute a shot. I now play most days - mainly doubles - for up to three hours. Luckily, our club has a lot of members so there’s never a shortage of people to play with. And the strange, but rewarding part is that my game is getting better! Four years ago I would never have dreamt that I would be winning club competitions and playing matches for my club in the Leicestershire league. I started playing tennis shortly before being diagnosed in my early 50s, enjoying coaching sessions and playing a couple of times a week with my children.
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Neural Exercises and Parkinson's Disease
This article explores how I've found that persistent and targeted "neural exercises" can progressively reduce various symptoms/problems of Parkinson's Disease, through neuroplastic processes. In particular, here I will demonstrate specific neural exercises, and how I have significantly improved my own quality of life through pursuing these persistently over time, via entries from my video diary which are interspersed through the article.
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Busy, Anxious Thoughts and Parkinson's Disease
Many people with PD (PwP), and caregivers will also be well aware of this, often encounter an almost constant chatter of busy thoughts in their own heads. This inner voice can speak in undertones of self-doubt and guilt, but also can be constantly seeking to blame others, marshalling arguments and self-justifications. These thoughts can go round and round like a tape stuck on a loop, and be very difficult to break out of. Indeed, PwP can become irritable when someone seeks to interrupt these thoughts. These anecdotal experiences have now been backed by science too. A recent article in "Nature",
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Visual Cues in Therapies for Parkinson's Disease
I learned about the connection between the eyes/vision and movement of the body in an online course run by my friend and "Wisdom Coach" Cheryl Townsley, where a tutorial showed how, looking up or down with the eyes (not via movement of the head) creates an immediate increase in the range of specific arm/shoulder motions. I could quickly check this was indeed true for myself. Indeed, the connection between eye and body movement is so important that professional athletes are being trained in these types of techniques, and are given specific eye exercises to improve sports performance!
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Mirroring and Rehearsal Therapies for Parkinson's Disease
Movement in humans is a learned behaviour. We learn to move mainly by watching other people go through the motions: we are not born with any innate ability to move around independently. As babies and toddlers, we spend years watching and mimicking our parents, programming our brains with the data they provide. Our brain knows all about walking before we even attempt to walk ourselves, through unconscious observation. Later, we start to get the hang of it through intensive practice, and especially by falling down and making mistakes. Encouragement and supportive instruction from adults help us to keep practising until we have, at last, developed the ability to move independently. But imagine, if as we started to trying to walk, when we fell over on the second attempt, our parents said "oh dear, walking is not for you"! Unfortunately, this is precisely the message people with PD tend to be given.
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Hands, Fingers and Parkinson's Disease
I have done a lot of hand/finger stimulation and experimented to optimize such exercises, in the spirit of Curiosity and Play. I've personally found significant benefit in pursuing this line of research. Indeed, I have managed to recover a lot of my independence and quality of life through hand and finger therapy, and I know just how much of a major part it has played in my own progressive symptom reduction.
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Eye and Vision Exercise in Parkinson's Disease
Indeed, the connections between eye health and general wellness are phenomenally strong, and so being mindful of how we use our eyes is a very important part of the jigsaw to progressive symptom reduction. Here, I will cover some of the things I've learned and what I've found actually helps me. Primary sources are Dr Eric Cobb of Zhealth Education, Cheryl Townsley - Wisdom Coach, Dr Joaquin Farias - developer of the Farias Technique for movement disorders, and Dr Stephen Porges - developer of the Polyvagal Theory.
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Social Engagement and Parkinson's Disease
Recently, I described how the "Polyvagal Theory" of Dr Stephen Porges not only provides an elegant explanation for Parkinson's Disease and all its symptoms, but also suggests the actions we can take towards healing. Here, we return to this Nervous System (NS) dysfunction perspective of PD, and explore further how it informs us about what we can do to progressively decrease our symptoms.
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What's It Like to Have Parkinson's Disease?
A friend suggested I write more about what Parkinson's Disease is like "on the inside". At the same time, I was researching the different senses of the human body, and the problems which can occur with these in PD. In this article, I attempt to to tie these two threads together.
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Walking, Cycling and Dancing: Ankle Mobilization in Parkinson's Disease
In this article, we explore, with the assistance of my friend and mentor, Cheryl Townsley, Health & Wisdom Coach, how the concepts of stress interruption and nervous system resetting help us understand why walking, cycling and dancing - exercises that inherently involve mobilization of the ankle joints - are so beneficial for People with Parkinson's Disease (PwPs), and why we need to keep practicing these regularly.
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The Overlaps Between Stress and Parkinson's Disease, Part 2
Although the seven stage framework has been developed to describe acutely applied short duration stress, without any reference to PD, the very same framework also describes well the declining state of a PwPs body over time - if the disease is allowed to progress. Therefore, we believe that not only are PwPs permanently stuck in such stress response states, the degree of the stress that we are stuck in also moves through the stages as our situation is allowed to degenerated.
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