We Had to Find a Way to Live a Happy Life ...

I enter Michaela’s home and know straight away that I am in an environment where parents are committed to providing as many movement possibilities for their child as they can: floor mats and balls and peanuts of different sorts next to the kitchen, a therapy table and a big free floor space in the room next door, and a pool in the backyard. 6-year-old Sophie is sitting in front of Michaela, and Michaela is helping her daughter to drink. 

Sophie has quadriplegic cerebral palsy as the result of severe brain damage from oxygen deprivation when she was born - this required 30 minutes of resuscitation to help her breathe on her own. Sophie is a happy little girl with a beautiful smile, and she presses her toes into my legs when I sit down nearby.

Michaela tells me about myofascial release, which is one of the things she had to learn to do to help Sophie get where she is now. Michaela also learned the “Movement Lesson” - a developmental approach created by Michelle Turner, an American “mother made movement professional”. Now, Michaela has a great understanding of how she can use touch to help her daughter create a more varied movement and how this impacts her brain, but it’s a hard job to do when coupled with non-stop caregiving and the physical demands of handling a growing child. 

That’s when Michaela discovered that the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ could be a great help to her too - so that she could move and handle Sophie with less pain and more comfort and awareness, which makes Michaela’s caregiving job more doable. 

ME: Could you give us some background info on what was happening in your life before you came to see me?

MICHAELA: I grew up riding horses a lot and being very active, and I always had quite physical jobs. I was always moving, walking and getting outdoors a lot of my time. When I had Sophie, we were living on a farm and managing it. It was quite an abrupt change from the lifestyle I was used to, to the first three weeks when she was in the hospital and right from the get-go, I had to put myself right down at the bottom of the list. My child was in intensive care, and I was trying to figure out how best to help her. I had to sit a lot by her side, and already at the beginning of my motherhood journey, I had a lot of pain, discomfort and stress. I was focused on her - and I’m glad I was - but it’s like you almost don’t notice what is going on with your own body.

By the time we got out of the hospital, we were lucky enough to be exclusively breastfeeding, and as any mother who does it knows, it’s a hard thing for your body to adapt to in the beginning. And we had extra challenges - all the medications, all the seizures she’d been having, all the extra help she needed.

I suddenly went from being a person who moved around a lot and did a lot of different types of movement to being a Sophie’s holder, a Sophie’s couch, a Sophie’s something because she needed so much help. She had a lot of stomach pain when she was little, so a lot of screaming and crying, so a lot of intensity and a lot of constant holding. I was still in a lot of pain to even sit or walk, and I just assumed it was because of what I needed to do to look after her. And that the only way to be in less pain would be to do less of what I was doing - less caring for her. Which felt like an impossible situation.

Then I started taking Sophie to a FeldenkraisⓇ practitioner when she was one (Caryn Truppman in Auckland). And afterwards to Melbourne for intensives with an ABM practitioner. 

I started learning a bit more about this concept of movement and learning, and then I found Tara - I had massages with her, and she was just finishing her FeldenkraisⓇ training. Previous massages would make me feel better for one day, and then all the discomfort would come back, or it'd even give me a headache. With Tara, I got the best massages - very relaxing, feeling very good, something that did help. So once Tara finished her training and was ready to offer hands-on sessions (Functional IntegrationⓇ), I was ready to be her first client, and I got three to four weekly FeldenkraisⓇ sessions. One session a week - and I was so much more comfortable, I could walk without pain! The pain was probably 60% gone, which was huge in such a short amount of time.

And the biggest impact was realising that I could be comfortable. I was still doing everything the same, still caring for Sophie in the same way, but I could be comfortable doing what I needed to do, and that it wasn't just an impossible choice of: do I look after my child or not. This set my spirit free because I had submitted to the fact that this was my life now. It wasn't like I had a disability at the same time, but it was so limiting. This was rather magical. I continued to see Tara for a year; sometimes, when she was away, I would go to see Viv. And then, suddenly, I went back to running for the first time. It felt so nice to have that freedom, and I could walk on the beach comfortably. 

Then, for a while, we lost access to this type of lessons. Both me and Sophie’s dad had the skills to work on her, but making time for ourselves seemed so difficult. By the time you’ve done what you need to, you are done for the day, too. I got very sore again, even just walking. In part, it was because Sophie was getting bigger and heavier. I was getting strong movement habits as it was a lot of repetition, and I was spending more and more time feeding her, being in the same position - as she wasn’t tolerating seating well but was drinking and eating more. Slowly and gradually, the demands of care and the need to stay in a certain position and deal with the growing weight of the child, who was pushing quite strongly at times - all this got really tricky.

I had started doing some strength training and reminding my body that there are different movements in life. I could also access an infrared sauna, workouts and yoga classes and use resistance bands. In the beginning, the strength training exercises helped a lot, but they also had limitations. I started powerlifting, and I really enjoyed it. But I still had to manage a lot of discomfort - by the end of the day, I’d be very sore; or if I wasn’t working out, I’d get sore pretty quickly. And then I found you!

When I was sore, I found it pretty scary to think I wouldn’t be able to physically do what I do, that this was a possibility. I guess I was partly motivated by fear - especially when Sophie was sick and I had to hold her for 24 hours straight. That’s when you realise that your body is very important to keep doing what you have to do. And another part was just wanting to feel good in my body again, and knowing this was possible. I also saw how much something like FeldenkraisⓇ and Movement Lesson helped Sophie - she got different challenges from me, but it made a big difference. 

ME: Where was your pain and discomfort?

MICHAELA: My back, especially, and my hip. I was willing to do something to take care of my body. I tried all the things I could - all the things I knew to do myself, physio and exercise-based work, and strength training. I’ve been doing it all, but it had limitations. As I said, it was a mix of fear that my body was not up to the job and of genuinely wanting to be comfortable and knowing it was possible. We were back in New Zealand, and finances became easier again.

ME: When did you start noticing that our sessions make a difference?

MICHAELA: I think it was my fourth lesson with you when I noticed a big difference. Each session helped a bit, and when you are sore, it can take a while for the pain to settle. I was also trying hard to avoid the sore, and it takes a lot of mental energy - not that it really works. But by the fourth lesson with you, I couldn’t even find it - like, where was that sore bit?! The pain was gone, and it was a huge relief on all levels. And not even just a relief from pain, but a reminder that my body can be comfortable.

Often, when you have something that hurts, it feels like it can only get worse and stay forever. You might know it’s not the case logically, but it feels that way. And I noticed that feeling in a new, comfortable way helped with everything I did. I also noticed massive improvements in my powerlifting - I started getting compliments on my form in different lifts and exercises I previously struggled with.

Being comfortable plays into everything - you are more patient and less irritable. When you are not comfortable a lot of the time, you can’t enjoy things you’d enjoy otherwise - because it leaves you in a space where you’re just coping. And when you have the bodily experience of feeling differently, you don’t agree that discomfort and pain are just the price to pay for what’s going on or that it’s just a part of getting older. Because that’s another thing that keeps coming into your head.

I find a lot of parallels to our journey with Sophie here - finding a mindset that is helpful. It’s very easy to be told something and accept it as a given. When Sophie was born, we were given a very grim outcome - all the time, doctors were telling me the worst-case scenario. I joined a support group to see what people were talking about when their kids were 10-12 years old, and I remember feeling so depressed. I didn’t want to be a parent to a child who would face surgeries and medication problems all the time. And I remember deciding that I couldn’t live with the impending doom or misery coming up. I remember thinking - what if there was a possibility it could be better than that? What if? This shift in my mindset made me start looking in different places. We had to find a way to live a happy life with big challenges that seemed like nothing but negative things.

[TO BE CONTINUED … Read Part 2 here]