Playing Doctor

My 10 year old daughter and her 9 year old cousin told me they were playing doctor.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea what they were playing. Could have been investment banker, lawyer, or professor.

When I walked in the room, my daughter was on a laptop. And my niece was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room.

I gulped.

Is this what children think that medicine is? That there is no "laying of the hands"?
That the computer is replacing the stethoscope as the identifying instrument?

I am a champion of technology and medicine.  I love it. That is certainly not the issue here.
What I am worried about is children learning to love medicine for what it is: connecting with people.

It is about listening, looking, and asking one more question. It is about trust, and bonding, and empathy.
It is not about clicking a box on a laptop to get to the next screen.

Last post

Hi All,

To avoid redundancy and combine my wellness ideas, all wellness blogging will be done on The 50 Point Energy Plan page: http://the50pointenergyplan.blogspot.com/

Please join me there for more inspiring wellness chats.

Ciao!
Sara

What is your theme for 2014?

I am not a fan of the word "resolutions". To me it means that I have already under performed, and I need to react to that by completing a resolution (I am sorry, I will do it better this year). There is a certain amount of guilt attached. When looking up the words, it translates into "a firm decision to start an action to solve a problem". It's like starting the year in a ditch.

So my new vision is to have a theme for the year. My theme for 2014 is Confidence. If you know me, you would raise your eyebrow as high as you could on your forehead and say, "Aren't you good with that?"

I want to be confident is all areas of my life. As a leader of my business, as a therapist to my clients, as a speaker at a national spa conference, as an author, as a mother, and to myself.

I want to be confident in my body, confident in the choices I make, and the relationships I make.

I have explored this idea with others who have come up with their own themes: Patience, Breath, Trust, Progress, Quality.

I encourage you to think of what your theme is for 2014. Please share it with me below in the comments.

How many wellness blogs can one woman have??

Apparently two. And then a third about cars, but let's not confuse things.

Most of my blogging is now taking place at http://the50pointenergyplan.blogspot.com/.

I wrote a plan called The 50 Point Energy Plan and it is the antidote to the pathological stress we have going on in our culture. In order to stay healthy, we must learn how to manage our energy better.

I believe with all that I have that we need to manage cortisol the stress hormone. And we don't "manage stress". I hate that term. That makes it seem legit. And then we hear the word stress which is horrible. Energy management: finding out who you (yes, you personally) need to manage your energy to stop chronic energy depletion that then leads to pathology.

As a physical therapist, my mission has always been to keep you healthy. But I want to be helping you  earlier in the chain. Let's cut out the middle man of therapy, which is the illness. I never ever want to meet you in a rehab gym when you are 75 assisting you in stacking cups seated in a wheelchair. I want to keep you so healthy that at 75 you are playing golf, traveling the globe, or whatever your passion is.

That's why I became a PT. That's why I opened a wellness spa. And that's why I am lecturing and speaking about The 50 Point Energy Plan.

Message me, call me, text me, send me a message in a bottle to learn more.

Sara Daly, PT, CLT, MT
saradaly77@gmail.com
802-349-8620

Bottom Dead Center

At the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, there is an exhibit of a double paddlewheel boat that cruised on Lake Champlain for years before it was brought to the museum to delight visitors. I took my children for a day of art and culture a few weeks ago, and we were on the ship learning about how the paddlewheels made the boat move. There was a small interactive display where you spun a "paddlewheel" and watched how the force of the piston made it rotate. But, there was a catch. It was possible for the piston that created the energy to get stuck in a position where no internal force of the engine could get it to move. Almost like if an elbow got hyperextended and "caught" The crew would use a large wooden pole to push the piston out of this "locked" position and the wheel started moving again.

This term is called Bottom Dead Center.

I grabbed my cell phone and typed a note to myself. Perfect wellness idea, this bottom dead center.

We have all been there just as that boat has been hundreds of times. Energy available, nothing broken, but not able to move. A place where you are "stuck" without any idea as to why.
This is Bottom Dead Center.

How do we get out of this predicament? Just as the ship did, we need a crew. We need a plan.
We need a simple tool. We need to realize we are stuck, and use our crew and tools to help us.
Call a friend for a walk. Make the doctors appointment you have been putting off. Put your running shoes in your car.

Just as the beautiful boat had problems with Bottom Dead Center, so will we. But it will only last a few minutes until we get this boat headed in the right direction.

28,000 breaths per day

The average breaths per minute is 28,000. I had a faulty number from a resource. I said the number outloud today and knew it wasn't right.

So, of the 28,000 breaths you take tomorrow, make a bunch of them nice deep cleansing ones. 

Breathe 100,000 times today.

We breathe in and out over 100,000 times a day. That's a lot of work, a lot of oxygenation, a lot of waste expelled. How many breaths are we aware of in a day? Maybe 50 if we try hard? The deep inhale as we get ready to talk on the phone, the exhale as we are deep in thought, the tighter chest breath as we exercise.

I challenge you to think about your breath today. Feel your bodies breath in different positions. Take a deep cleansing breath every hour to get oxygen deep into your lower lung. Breathe thru your nose and out your mouth 5 times.

Breathing and feeling the rise and fall of your body is one way to reduce stress, improve your health, benefits your cells, your posture, and your brain.