Month: November 2012

Exercise: Gentle and Flowing or Pounding and Pushing?

by Kate Greenaway, BAppSc(PT), Physiotherapist, Australia

Recently I had a fascinating experience that highlighted to me the difference between moving and exercising in a gentle flowing way or pounding and pushing the body. I was packing my car after a lovely time exercising in the local pool when I noticed two middle aged men running down a steep cement driveway near me – they were literally pounding and jarring their bodies. They were red and puffy in their faces and they looked miserable. It felt like they were punishing themselves in pushing their bodies for some sort of outcome. I was feeling really fluid and content in my body from the gentle moving and swimming that I had just completed and I could really feel the contrast with what these men were doing as they slammed their bodies with each step.

I remembered it was only a few years ago that I was pelting up and down the local pools to do my ’40 laps’ or pushing myself up the gazillion steps to the Byron Bay Lighthouse to feel good about doing something ‘healthy’ and ‘good’ for my body. Part of my drive came from the ideal that  ‘I should have a healthy body’ as I was a physiotherapist and ‘how could I tell my clients to look after their bodies and exercise if I wasn’t ?’ Continue reading “Exercise: Gentle and Flowing or Pounding and Pushing?” →

A Letter from Paul

by Paul Moses, Newrybar, Australia

I am a very fortunate man. On a daily basis I get to meet many people through my antique shop in Newrybar, a small town in the Northern Rivers region of Australia, which has become a destination for many.

This was not the case in the recent past times; to me people were an annoyance and a frustration that I had to deal with while earning a living in retail. What an arrogance I lived in, or in truth existed in and with.

This past came to an abrupt halt when, three years ago my heart finally had enough of this very existence and started stopping, missing beats and finally fibrillating as if it was choking from holding something back and all life, vitality, drained from my body. This was truly scary. My arrogance was confronted by the fact that life could be taken away, that it was not mine as such to be misused as I had.

Lying in an emergency cardiac ward had never been my intention, however I clearly knew all my choices for 53 years had led me to this very place and those choices, whether I thought them good or bad, I had to review them all. Continue reading “A Letter from Paul” →

The Im-patient Doctor


by Dr Anne Malatt MBBS, MS, FRANZCO, FRACS

I recently had surgery.

The wonder-fully inspiring account of this can be read elsewhere on this website.  I just felt to balance it with the other side of the story.

The surgery itself was an amazing healing.

I felt wonderful for a few days afterwards and lay on the couch allowing my family to look after me and feeling the grace of it all.

As my body started to heal, my mind started to play tricks.

I did not deserve to care for myself and be cared for; I was needed here there and everywhere; I started to feel empty because I was not “doing” anything… all my old thoughts and patterns started to rear their ugly heads and demand my attention.

The tension was too much for me. Continue reading “The Im-patient Doctor” →