Summit Education 1 - Treadmill

[Barrett Dorko]

It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…

As I drew close to the Hilton Hotel in Toledo I began to recognize the surroundings and realized that this was my fourth trip to this building in as many years. Now working for a new sponsor I hadn’t anticipated this but sensed the comfort familiarity breeds. Before I even got out of the car I was making plans to drive down the street to the Bob Evans for dinner because I knew the gourmet fare in the restaurant here wasn’t what I wanted.

It’s been just over five months since I’ve done this job and during the first few minutes of the course in Detroit on Monday I was truly struggling. I realized that I had effectively eliminated a few of the things I always say and thought sure I had in my head what it wanted to say otherwise. That didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped but I got through it and found myself growing calmer as the days progressed. In Toledo today I begin again and doing this task four days in a row is also new to me. Tomorrow in Cleveland will be five, and a big class at that.

While not teaching I’m doing some contract work at a couple of skilled nursing facilities in Northeast Ohio, often thinking of how different a job that was and dreaming of my return to the road where they often park your car for you, put you in a fine room and make an omelet to your specifications in the morning. Sometimes there’s a student anxious to hear what I have to say as well. Not always. I consider that last thing to be a perk I shouldn’t expect.

I will admit that I am looking for those things that I like about this job and that I’m surprised to have discovered so few. In short, omelets are nice, but they don’t last very long.

This is a nice hotel but it’s only got a single treadmill. I got on it at 4 this morning, figuring I’d have to do that or wait in line. It worked out. No one was around the entire time and I completed a pretty good run without distraction or too much fatigue. A couple hours later I ate a nice omelet and then walked back to my room to gather some materials for the class, passing the small exercise area on my way there.

I saw something I can’t out of my head, and it generated this column – the first of my new teaching career. I saw another man on the treadmill pounding away and getting nowhere - and here’s what made me pause and write:

I felt myself with him.

I still do.

[Diane]

I find myself nodding along.
For a number of months now, I've noticed my mind wandering off to imagine what it might be like to take a holiday. Just a normal one, like most people take. I can hardly believe that it's been almost 20 years since I've gone anywhere warm and sunny to do anything unrelated to work. Could it be "other people" were right, and that a good R&R quality downtime is something that should go on the to-do list once in awhile, even for those of us who have wrangled our working lives into how we want them to be, and enjoy them? It's that feeling you mentioned of pounding away and getting nowhere that is starting to bug me.

[nari]

I also know that mouse feeling - running in a big (or small)wheel getting nowhere.

My solution was to leave clinical life, but that was a move that suited me, and would not be the right one for many others.
It's possible to be so involved with work that we don't notice we are bored - being on a treadmill and not knowing it.

Three weeks in the desert or the Costa Rica highlands would help - I'm sure. Antarctica would be highly therapeutic, but watch out for Monrovia-registered ships.....

Nari

[EricM]

I'll run in blistering heat or blizzards before I get on a treadmill. I need the going somewhere.

[Barrett Dorko]

I finished my first tour with Summit Education yesterday in Cleveland, packed the car and drove the 25 miles back to Cuyahoga Falls.

Not a bad week though the numbers were a little low. A few attending actually knew who it was they were about to see and what it was I would talk about. For the vast majority however the first hour’s information was variously surprising, exciting and disturbing. At least nobody stormed out, and for that I was grateful.

Still, the feeling of being on a treadmill stayed with me and I’ve yet to shake it. But I’m beginning to realize that for many years I’ve run in this way almost exclusively. There’s something about what it requires of my body that does me a whole lot of good without bothering me and sometimes I remember that Roger Bannister ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister) used one to great effect in the past. Never one to spend time gazing at nature, I’m happy to be indoors and close to a place where I can comfortably rest and shower. Miles from the hotel these things just aren’t available. I figure I’m just looking ahead a little more carefully than my fellow runners out on the roads. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

For all the repetition, my sense that I’m making no progress at all and the confusion I sometimes see in the faces of those before me, I like treadmills, and I should remember that.

One more thing; Karen Lines, a SomeSimpler from Victoria British Columbia, flew across a continent to attend my workshop yesterday, and to do that to watch a man on a treadmill, well, that’s pretty impressive. Thank you Karen.

[EricM]

This must be where we differ Barrett. However, waking up to 50 cm of fresh snow this morning :eek:, for once I'm wishing I had a treadmill.

[Diane]

Eric, you did say you run in a blizzard..

I will confirm the fact that we have snow today, on the wet coast. (Only a sprinkle in Van though, no 50 cm.)

Still.... :sad::thumbs_do

[EricM]

I didn't say I wasn't still going out.;)
still snowing...

[nari]

Snowing? At the 49th parallel in April??? I think that would be exceptional behaviour on the part of the clouds. I'm envious....

Nari

[Jon Newman]

Lucky!

You could always sit around and read. This Page Is a Cloud (http://imani.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/sunday-salon-coming-to-a-close/) by Derek Walcott (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Walcott), for instance.

[John W]

The treadmill metaphor is apt- but it's a shrinking, accelerating one for me. Clinical life in outpatient physical therapy these days is an endless cycle of running from room to room as quickly and efficiently as possible, turning on your compassion switch, donning your Sherlock Holmes cap, checking the appropriate box on the charge sheet, and so it goes....round and round....

Then, a break(?) in the action: a staff meeting where you learn about the latest changes in Medicare documentation requirements, a reduction in a major insurance carrier's fee schedule, some "pain" doc is peaved because you ordered an AFO that he didn't think the patient needed (when he signed the order!), and so it goes....round and round...

More patients, less time, fewer resources...the squeeze is on.

[Pernkopf]

Hi Barrett,

Well I made it home from Cleveland albeit a little late due to a lightning strike at take-off in Seattle and the delay in the first place from snow in Victoria. It serves me right for boasting to you that we were mowing our lawns in January.

Thank you for your hospitality. I am forever changed by your remarkable insight into the human body's potential to heal itself. I applied what I learned Friday and I am home without my usual aches and pains. Movement, breathing, awareness, warming, parasympathetic dominance. Amazing.

I hope I infected at least two of your audience with my enthusiasm, (I staked out the left front of the class and no one joined me). Two nice local therapists behind me stayed after class and I could tell they were cautious but keen.

To everyone involved in SomaSimple I give you my thanks that you share and strive to move all people (practitioners and patients) in every sense of the word.

Karen.

[Barrett Dorko]

I could tell they were cautious but keen.

Karen,

Exactly. For all the enthusiasm expressed in my presence in the midst of a course I don’t have the sense that it’s enough to overcome the incredibly inert nature of therapy practice as I’ve come to see it today. Caution drives most and change is just too much trouble. It does not appear that any of the 100 or so students I spoke to last week have registered here or if they have they have anything to say, even in the way of a simple introduction.

Regarding this situation over the years I’ve grown from positively expectant to hopeful to disappointed to resigned to cynical. I know I can’t hide all of that.

Maybe that course in Cleveland so close to my home will change things but I’ll have to reserve judgment on that and just anticipate more time on the treadmill.

I know if I don’t, the silence will begin to bother me.

[Barrett Dorko]

Back to my “normal” job today. I’m at a Starbucks a couple of miles away reading and writing as usual and feel like last week has disappeared entirely.

I’m being asked to see a special patient this morning, someone who agreed to wait for my return and is in a great deal of pain. I’ll ask the five questions (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2404) and see whether or not I can help. I’ll fill out a 700 form for Medicare and enter the patient into the computer and, I suppose, further cement my new reputation as the “go to” guy for difficult problems at this facility. By “difficult” I mean painful.

What I think and do will remain a mystery to my colleagues. They don’t pay me to teach anything here and there’s no time anyway.

It’s a treadmill of a different sort, but, to me, it feels like a treadmill nonetheless.

[Barrett Dorko]

According to several TV shows I've watched for years there's something special about the first 48 hours after a crime is committed. If the detectives can't figure out what happened before this time has elapsed they know there's little chance they ever will. This is especially true when it comes to an abduction.

I've written in the past and now talk to my classes about the prevalence and nature of the alien abduction story (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3885) in our culture and it comes to mind this morning. I say that if a therapist is already on the Mothership when they arrive in class there's nothing I can say that will get them off. I suggest that a few are on the ramp and headed in that direction but that perhaps what I tell them and demonstrate repeatedly will turn them in another direction.

They laugh - some authentically and some nervously. On a day like today, well past the 48 hour deadline for last week's courses, I'm increasingly convinced that far more have been abducted than I ever imagined. The ones who aren't are being watched carefully and will be dragged into the Mothership as soon as they try to escape.

Not a single new registrant with a word to say, even about who they are.

[Jon Newman]

I've been enjoying the podcasts from Philosophy Bites (http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/) lately. Recently they had an episode/interview (with Richard Tuck (http://www.gov.harvard.edu/faculty/rtuck/)) exploring Free riding (http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=305605). Here's the descriptor:

If what I do has only a negligible impact on events, why should I bother doing it at all? Why not 'free ride' on other people's contributions? Richard Tuck explores these questions in this episode of Philosophy Bites.As usual, the comments are worth a look also.

I thought it was interesting anyway.

[Pernkopf]

Dear Barrett,

I have been reading your posts and thinking since I got back home. It occurs to me you might be taking the wrong animal to the water trough to drink. If the people taking your course are there for nothing more than education credits and polite nods and smiles, they wouldn't likely listen if you were give them the winning lottery numbers.

I only found out after the fact who the Cleveland Cavaliers are then it twigged why that would have been of interest to you. Then why not teach to those people who will drink the water. Classes for firefighters, nurses, police, set up through worker hygiene and safety programs. I'm sure someone will tell who knows someone and then you'll be teaching where and who you want. What drives demand for produce or resources? The public. If the therapy community refuses to believe there is a demand for quality, reasonably priced pain care then they are missing a big point. It is not all about them and their mystical power they wield over helpless mesoderm. It is supposed to be about our fellow human beings and alleviating suffering.

And then I come to this thought and answer my own question. (I know this may be a similar idea to everything you detest about cult therapies that direct sell their product to the public). In the short time and little I know of you, I would say you are such a man of integrity that you would be loath to pursue this avenue of instruction.

Well then I come to the conclusion that you may indeed have some sympathetic dominance creeping into you because of the lack of response by attendees to this forum. Do you remember the Steve Martin short story Cruel Shoes? Some people will always choose the cruelest shoes instead of comfortable and practical. Same goes with knowledge or in this case therapy. They want the sweat busting, face grimacing, you're getting you money's worth of therapy if it kills you techniques. Not ideomotion.

I've been told that I am a rather unique student in that I read and learn well outside of the material being presented. I gather information and fit things together to create the big picture. I am not linear and I fall of that track very quickly. That is how I came to SomaSimple for BD.com from a search on pain. Maybe the attendees don't think there is anything they need to know about pain. They have all the answers already.

Last thought: When you asked the five questions in a thread many people came forward with their thoughts and helped flesh out the idea being presented. Then why not ask the question: what is the difference between teaching a patient in pain and a PT not in pain? What is my roll in the expectations I have about the outcome of treatment/education?

Best regards,
Karen

[Luke Rickards]

Karen,

I'm not sure I understand why firefighters and policemen would be interested in understanding and treating people in chronic pain.

[nari]

Karen,

I wondered about firefighters and policemen too, and then thought about nurses. Nurses tend to be interested in topics around pain and assisting people in pain, especially if it is an unusual approach. They are interested in CAM, and in that way, would be quite receptive to anything new that affects patient care. Whether they then turn around and then call SC a CAM method could be an enduring nightmare for Barrett....:eek:

I also wondered if you see your idea as a more global concept for those not treating people with chronic pain, but to learn about their own responses better so in a crisis they would respond more effectively. I tend to agree with that idea.

Sometimes, PTs locked in the treadmill of a complex patient management program, cannot see the obvious even if they fall over it. Others may be less concreted into a defined program of workplace thinking.


Nari

[Pernkopf]

Hi Nari,

I was thinking more from the point of view of teaching people who are high risk for pain directly. I see them being firefighters and nurses and police, i.e. anyone that Barrett classifies as being in a culturally restricted movement pattern to help themselves. If any manual therapist chooses to not be educated at a seminar that is directed at them then what can you do. Cut out the middleman and educate the public, starting with those who are the most motivated; people in pain. I'm suggesting this not as mass patient gathering exercise but preventative care knowledge, with the caveat that not all pain is treatable with ideomotion and to seek medical advise if the pain is outside of that defined for ideomotion.

I talked to an RCMP member on my way to Cleveland because I could see she was standing very uncomfortably. I talked to her about breathing and moving to prevent pain. This is even before I had heard Barrett's full program. I talked to her, that was all, and she mentioned that he saw a massage therapist. The massage therapist doesn't know about ideomotion so I educated her patient for her.

Could you imagine how you would feel if the next time you were in an airport and were observing postures and gaits that you saw TSA agents moving in ideomotoric ways. You would smile and think "Barrett he's da man".

It ends up being unfathomable that new knowledge is so hard to impart to those who could do the most good with it. In the end my belief is that Barrett's and Diane's programs need to be taught at the student level. My College of Massage Therapist of BC needs to hear the information and the curriculum needs to change and acknowledge the scientific basis of the manual treatments and get rid of the mystery meat approach to massage.

~Karen

[Diane]

get rid of the mystery meat approach to massage.
Karen, that's hilarious. :D.
I love that tag line.

Maybe you'll be the one to engineer the change in massage therapy.

[EricM]

Karen
It is certainly a worthy pursuit to educate members of the public and many are already doing this. Neil Pearson's perhaps the most high profile educator in our neck of the woods at the moment, however, there are others even here on the island. Our health authority has started open house type lecture series in Victoria and Comox and to a lesser extent I do this in Nanaimo. Given the appropriate resources I would do more :rolleyes:

However well we might educate the public I'm becoming more convinced it can all so easily be wiped out as soon as the individual contacts a less well informed therapist. This is where the hard work needs to be done and there's been no better at it than Barrett, even if he is feeling like a mouse running on a wheel these days.

[Diane]

Moseley actually studied this whole reluctance of PTs to take to new info, because they don't believe patients will understand it: Moseley GL (2003) Unravelling the barriers to reconceptualisation of the problem in chronic pain (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2238&postcount=1): The actual and perceived ability of patients and health professionals to understand the neurophysiology. J Pain 4(4) 184-189

As it turned out, patients understand/retain it better than PTs do. Maybe they are better motivated.

Here are more Moseley publications (http://www.fhs.usyd.edu.au/phy/publications/moseley_l.shtml).

[Barrett Dorko]

I always mention Moseley's study and have a slide that addresses it directly. I say, "I know you're concerned about how this new approach to pain might be seen by your patients but it's been my experience that it's our colleagues that put up the greatest resistance, and their arguments in opposition aren't always on the level you might hope for. They respond with sarcasm, implications of craziness and arguments from ignorance. Since I suggest you evaluate your patients less and devote more time to their individual care than might be financially expedient there's little chance that your boss is going to like this either."

If I'm right about all of this it would explain the great silence from the locals I met last week.

As far as I can tell, not a single one has registered or objected.

Back at my regular job they ask, "How was your trip?" and nobody asks "What do you teach?"

[gilbert thomson]

Barrett

Keep pounding on the treadmill...it's important.

Like the other treadmills, even though you literally are not getting anywhere, there are beneficial effects!

I know from experience how tough it is to get any interest going among our colleagues for meaningful discussion of new ideas (or even basic science). At my first job years ago I enthusiastically started a journal club for our staff, to try to get our therapists to read and discuss ONE article per month. Subjects which I found fascinating like neuroscience, learning, and motor control. Attendance went from 4 to 2 to 1 (me) and that was that.

So keep it up. It is appreciated.
-Gilbert

[Barrett Dorko]

Journal club? What kind of a nerd are you Gilbert?

Kidding, of course.

Still no word here from Ohio or Michigan. I'd blame the time of year but that's too easy, and, in my experience, it's irrelevant.

[Barrett Dorko]

If I hear nothing by the end of this week, and we're very close to that, I will assume that the Mothership has left Earth's atmosphere, taking 100 therapists with it.

In my mind it's shaped like a cube (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_starship).

[Diane]

I checked out the link, and saw the term greeble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble). It seems like a good metaphor for the (superficial) complicatedness of treatment, all the different sides of it, how it grew into a bit of a kluge...

The world is greebly, treatment culture is greebly.

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

Greebly indeed.

See the latest post in the True Enough thread ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5471) for more insight into this week’s silence, which is ongoing by the way.

[Cathy R]

Barrett,

This is my first time posting. I was in your class in Lansing, MI. I've been an occasional lurker on this site for a few years and am appreciative of the insights and information I've gained from here. I really enjoyed the class and appreciate all the information you've gathered and presented in class. I've had more success with explaining and facilitating ideomotion with my patients since taking the class. Thank you for continuing to teach and for all your postings on these pages.

-Cathy R.

[Barrett Dorko]

Cathy,

I appreciate your posting and wish I could remember which one you were. You'll be glad to hear that upon my review Summit will no longer use that hotel.

As you've seen, for all the enthusiasm surrounding you in class (at least, according to the written reviews), little or nothing translates to these pages aside from my bellyaching about the consequent silence. Since you were familiar with the writing here before class I'm not certain you count - no offense. What more can I do to generate a movement toward Soma Simple? Is there a way off of the treadmill?

[Diane]

Hi Cathy,
Welcome to somasimple. We have a "welcome" forum - feel free to start a thread, here (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=126), about yourself, what sort of work you do, etc.

Hi Barrett,
The treadmill thing raised a lot of thoughts, so here we go:

1. Most of life is a "treadmill" of one kind or another, just by virtue of the fact that it is cyclical. We wake up, we get up, we move around, do biological things (organism maintenance), do human troop maintenance things (because we are primates), go back to sleep. That's about it, near as I can make out. Day after day.

2. All of this cyclicity is because we are living organisms ruled by a brain that not only keeps us alive, it keeps itself alive by resting in some places while beefing up activity in others.
Until it's done.
Then it quits.
So the only real way to get off the treadmill is to die. Not a good option usually.

3. Movement is a fact of life, even if it seems merely cyclical. We can't escape movement. Even if we sit still and just think, our cells are moving, Brownian movement is still wafting 70 something % of our cellular content around (or at least would if it could).

4. Movement takes place on every scale from atomic to brain rhythms to organismic to planetary to cosmic, and there we are, stuck in the overall spectrum of movement somewhere, just because we are biological. Movement across vast stretches of time does result in change. This change is known as evolution. But, alas, most movement appears merely cyclical/treadmill/repetitive.

The day we don't move (even on a treadmill) it will be because we are not "life" anymore. (Then there will be lots of time to rest in (static) peace.)

5. Human primates are still troop creatures, with all the same submission/dominance and troop issues that come along with having ingroups and outgroups with boundaries that vary according to context and multiple variables and individual personal trajectories. Evolution managed to put us together and get us this far (in its own klugey way) even though it has never had a moment's rest the whole time to sit back and reflect.

6. Movement isn't responsible for the societal or treatment kluges though; wishful thinking based on momentary (still) snapshots of "if only's" reinforced by insertion into some sort of societal power grid is what makes things greebly, therefore klugey, I think...

7. Most of what we "think" (including deep philosophical principles, concepts), that which we are proud to call "human", is mostly a bunch of conceptual "stills" based on "if only's". Not all of them, maybe, but most.

8. I think we are dealing with our own human primate social grooming form of horribly static conceptual snapshots of something that is actually blameless, natural, and unavoidable; i.e., movement; movement of everything through time including human awareness and effort, e.g., to change the troop boundaries, politically or any other way. For every effort to push a troop boundary one way by one group (say, in a "progressive" direction, anti-quack for example) there is going to be a "reaction" from a more conservative contingent (let's call them "reactionaries") who want nothing but the status quo and hate change of any kind, especially if they happen to occupy positions the top of the troop. While they may be (secretly and deceptively) operating from biological motives like amygdalar fear and anxiety, they often express themselves outwardly as angry alpha baboons (see Sapolsky), or pretend like nothing happened and go back to the human equivalent of banana-seeking behavior (invisibility, blending into the troop's business as usual).

What's ironic in PT is that our profession is supposed to be about understanding (human organism) movement so we can move with (human organism) movement (in Canada we still have the slogan, "Physiotherapy - it'll move you");

1. We either nudge it along in directions that are conceived to be beneficial (the orthomesopedic way, based on a static idea of form, therefore something I'm philosophically opposed to)
2. or else tune into it, supplying it with some accompaniment for awhile so it can straighten itself out (the ectodermo way, based on an acceptance of movement as already present and continuous).

9. Maybe there should be a new fallacy - "the argument from stasis".

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

As usual we’re on a parallel path though not exactly on the same page. I have the sense that you’ve been reading ahead however.

In another thread titled We’re looking for a movement (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4177) some of these ideas are spoken of as well, sometimes by yours truly, sometimes by you. There’s some good stuff there.

[Nick]

9. Maybe there should be a new fallacy - "the argument from stasis".

That's one you can be sure will never be levelled at you, Diane!:thumbs_up

[Nick]

What more can I do to generate a movement toward Soma Simple? Is there a way off of the treadmill?

Do nothing.


It is just like treating a patient. The history is muddled. The diagnosis unclear. The solution within. Our profession is constrained by the same culture that reins in a patient's instinctive plan for correction. No one wants to rock the boat. But the movement is there. It's palpable. It sometimes shows up in weird ways. It is interpreted in a variety of ways. The right context (you course, SomaSimple, etc.) facilitates its expression.

I've always found the hardest part of Simple Contact is getting the person to move that way on their own.

[nari]

Sometimes I get the feeling that there are people who do practise SC following the course, but are simply not game enough to post, especially if they are having some difficulty with elicitation. It can also be hard to express concerns re SC via a keyboard.

I agree with Nick that getting patients and PTs to move on their own is hard. Somehow the presence of another person doing nothing makes it easier.

Nari

[Barrett Dorko]

Nic and Nari are both right.

I'm far less concerned with people employing Simple Contact (or not) then I am with their continued absence from any leaning venue I know of. If they want to remain mesodermally based when treating painful problems they might at least show up on a couple of other sites and make fun of us there, but I don't see that either.

Standing by and doing nothing can indeed be very powerful, and I need to remember that.

[Cathy R]

Barrett,

I was up in the front left side of the classroom in Lansing. I had a copy of "Shallow Dive" that I'd found on eBay and mentioned that I'd been in your class a few years ago in Toledo. I am a P.T. and am from South Bend, IN.
So, tough question about the treadmill. You certainly were very clear in the class about how to access and be a part of Soma Simple. When I check out on the site where it says "Quick Links" and then go to "Whose online", there's usually a few names and then a number of "Yahoo! slurp spider" and "guest"s. I don't know what that means, are those all people who are looking at the postings but not signed in? Maybe there are a lot of previous class participants who are lurking but aren't signed in.
So, for myself after taking your class the first time, sometimes I was able to facilitate it and explain it to patients and sometimes I would just feel like I was just awkwardly with my hands on someone and wondering what I was doing and then I'd just go back to doing the things I'd done previously. But I was certainly intrigued enough to keep wondering back to this site now and then and playing around with Simple Contact. I know when I discussed this briefly with you, Barrett, in Lansing, I mentioned that sometimes I would say to people "feel free to move" and you said, "no, don't say that" and that was very helpful to have that feedback. I realized that I'm not assisting to facilitate a previously unconscious movement if I'm verbally telling someone to move.
So, one thing I'm wondering about the course is that, at the time we're first practicing SC with each other, we've already had some explanation about the science behind it and about how the culture affects movement and we're practicing on other therapists who've had this same background information, so it didn't seem as strange at the time and it looked to me that by looking around the room that most people were able to facilitate it. However, for me it was more challenging to go back and do this with patients. So, I'm wondering if there would be a way to maybe have some sort of optional lab at the end of the day with practicing explaining and facilitating it with people who weren't in the class. I don't know how you'd find random people to come in for a few minutes at the end of the class day, but maybe if the class is at a hotel, they could have a few employees come by for a few minutes and then students who wanted to try to practice explaining and facilitating it would have more immediate feedback their first time practicing it with someone who wasn't in the class. Or maybe an optional written post test would be helpful with answering questions like, "How would you explain this to a patient?" After the test you could tell people to post their answers on Soma Simple if they want feedback. I'm thinking of that saying of "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” While the class is definitely dynamic and interactive for people who want to interact, I can also see how it would be easy to just sort of hang out and not get it and go away and not know what to do with this info. I know when I was a student in school, I sometimes thought that I understood what was being taught in the class, but, for me, it often wasn't until I sat down and studied to take a test and was able to explain it to someone else that the information really came together for me. So, maybe at the end of the day having some sort of optional practice session with people who weren't class participants or a test would help people to really get it and become involved. Barrett, I know you've written that, "I'm far less concerned with people employing Simple Contact (or not) then I am with their continued absence from any leaning venue I know of." But I wonder if people may be leaving the class without feeling like they have a good grasp of what it's about, they may be less likely to tune into and be a part of Soma Simple or any other learning venue.

These ideas may be the equivelant of turning the treadmill to full speed and incline, but I'm just trying to brainstorm based on my own experience what might be helpful to generate a movement toward Soma Simple. But, I'll be honest there's definitely a big inertia component on my part.

Thanks again to everyone who's a part of Soma Simple.

-Cathy R.

[Barrett Dorko]

Cathy,

Thank you for taking the time to post and for your continued effort.

Working with random sorts after class contains far too much liability.

If people want to learn they can find plenty of patients to handle and their colleagues are waiting to speak to them here. Fear of failure seems enough to retard any progress with their skills but no one is standing in their way and if they don't "get it" they aren't telling me that.

Disappearance and silence seem the preferred path, and I've yet to find a way of stopping that.