Advanced Biomechancial Rehabilitation

30/07/201809/08/2018

A Well Wrapped ”Goldmarie”

This has been an exciting year for ABR development and also for our team in general. There have been many challenges to be met and new methods of working have been initiated. We hope to write more about all of this later, but at the moment it will suffice to say that even severe illnesses within the lives of the team members and their families are being treated with a wealth of ABR ideas and techniques. Leonid Blyum is untiring in his development of ABR Practices and these wrapping techniques have been revised and improved this season as well. For our team, it is always exciting to see how the techniques work in the daily and practical life!

One of the newer ABR techniques we have been writing about frequently in the blog in 2017 (see: https://abr-denmark.blog/2017/09/12/as-good-as-being-yours/ ) are the new “Power Wraps”. These wraps are being integrated into the daily lives of more and more of our children and young people working in the program – but not only that – into the lives of adults with various conditions.

Some of these stories are so amazing that we need to start to share them and so we will begin below with the story of “Goldmarie”!

This is a hemiplegic woman of 48 years of age. When she was 8 years old she was run over by a drunk motorcycle driver. Upon awakening, she could not do anything at all, but then received 1.5 years of rehabilitation which brought her to the stand which she was before she started with the wraps in October 2017. The physio therapists told her when she was 9, that she could not achieve anything more – and so it was and her condition has been stable since then. Marie walks, she is independent, but the spasticity on the right side of her body – both arm, hand, leg, foot and face being affected – had remained since she was a child and had not improved at all.

When she heard that she could start to integrate the ABR wraps into her daily life, she was very excited and wanted to start straight away. Her husband agreed to help her apply the wraps. Within the very first day of doing wraps on her right hand and foot, she could start to feel changes. The tensions were much less, she could rest her weight on the right foot and put the heel down. After ten days of doing wraps she gave a long report of the transformations she was experiencing:

After one or two nights with the wraps on I started to notice a difference. My lower arm was more relaxed than I could ever remember it being.
My shoulder is not as tense and I do not pull it up into that tensed position as much as I used to do.
It is easier to integrate the right hand into some usage.
My face is more symmetrical – my husband noticed that I smile more symmetrical and talking is also easier.
The tensions are much less.

When I started with the foot wrap a few weeks later, I could notice that it was much easier to walk on the right foot after only one night. The wrap bothered me in the night so I took it off, but the hours I had it on had an affect anyways.

Now after 9 months of continued wrap usage Marie has told us:

The changes I could experience from the very start of using the wraps are less dramatic, but improvements keep coming.
For me one of the most important things is that the tensions I always felt are mostly gone! This changes my entire day.
Something is happening inside of me – it is not easy to explain.
I am happy and relaxed and now enjoy life in a much different fashion! I am glad. My mood is much better.
Improvements with my right hand continue to happen. It is easier to use it. I do not simply forget it because the left hand and arm are so much easier and stronger. But I can use the right hand with not as much effort and therefore I do use it more!
The thumb on the right hand does not hide itself under my palm.
It is much easier to turn the hand – (supination) and to open and
spread the fingers.

It is much easier to walk on the right leg.
My right foot can balance better and is not pulled up on its toes as much
The position of the right leg is not as turned inwards as it was before.
I can walk faster and even keep up with my husband when we go for a walk – otherwise he always needed to wait for me.
I do not tire as easily as I used to.

It is astounding that 40 years after a severe accident a woman of 48 can achieve so many improvements with such little efforts over a short amount of time. Stories like these – and we now have many of them – are showing us that the entire understanding behind ABR is working and effective. For our ABR Parents it is a wealth of information that these adults are bringing us which makes us understand how important ABR effects are!

For a child with CP or other Special Needs ABR is as important as food and water is for the healthy child. ABR impact – mechanical tissue stimulation and mechanical tissue feeding – raises daily life quality on a day to day basis, and helps to prevent the downwards cycles from taking over!

We send a big thank you to “Goldmarie” for sharing her “Wrap Story” here with all of us.

13/12/201713/12/2017

How the Three Wise Men Heal the Biotensegrity Tower

After the Biotensegrity Interest Group IX meeting had come to an end Leonid Blyum raised his proverbial pointer finger towards the ceiling and said:

“Diane, tomorrow morning we shall ask Steve whether we can try to “heal” his Biotensegrity Tower with the ABR wraps!”

Whether this got Leonid out of bed earlier than usual is not sure, but in any case we were filming the short interviews with Steve and Graham by around 10:30.

Afterwards we filmed the video below where one can clearly see how the mechanically weakened Biotensegrity Tower obtains a much improved tensional uniformity when an ABR Wrap is added in a clever manner.

We hope you enjoy seeing this demonstration that illustrates how an ABR Biotensegrity Applied Wrap can help to reinstate tensional uniformity in children and adults whose structures have weakened, are sinking, folding or buckling – just as Steve’s Model made by Bruce Hamilton does when one loosens the tension slightly.

This improved tensional uniformity then leads to improvements at the level of the body to which it is applied as well as having a global effect. We will write more about this in another post!

In addition the video gives a small taste of the coming Christmas Holiday!

08/12/201712/12/2017

ABR is an Applied Biotensegrity Therapeutic Intervention

As I wrote this week in my last post: There Is So Much to Tell About! The Autumn and pre-Winter seasons have been amazingly full for our Denmark Team. We have been working, learning and finding new persons to be inspired by! Then again – the children and families themselves are a source of constant inspiration to whom we are most grateful for their devotion and diligence with the ABR work. Without ABR parents who do ABR at home most every day, there would be no ABR and no ABR development at all! It is your “home work” that shows us how to go further, how to change how to improve.

But now to the titled post theme: “Biotensegrity”. What is Biotensegrity and how does it relate to you as a parent of a child with developmental difficulties or to any person with a handicap himself?

Biotensegrity is a word first coined by Dr. Steve Levin. Steve Levin was an orthopaedic surgeon, who became inspired by Buckminster Fullers ideas of tensegrity and who then realized that one could apply the concepts and thoughts developed by Fuller to living organisms. Thus the term: Bio-tensegrity.

Those who have been following my blog will have read the chapter written for Dr. rer. nat., Dipl. phys. Danièle-Claude Martin’s book called “Living Bio-tensegrity”. (https://abr-denmark.blog/2017/01/03/bio-tensegrity/) This book illustrates the many concepts inherent to Biotensegrity. Daniele could see that these concepts and ides that she strives to describe in her book were being applied in practice in the ABR work. When writing her book she asked for a chapter about ABR so that the readers could see how Biotensegrity can look in practical application.

Dr. Steve Levin and Dr. Danièle Martin initiated a Biotensegrity Interest Group already nine years ago. This group met again for the IX BIG meeting in October and the members shared and discussed concepts related to Biotensegrity and how they relate to the new and emerging science about fascia and connective tissues. This is a very exciting meeting to take part in and this year again Leonid Blyum made a presentation about larger questions having to do with the Biotensegrity model. I took the opportunity to present our practical work in the field with ABR.

A day before the actual conference started however I could meet with Steve Levin and Graham Scarr. Graham is also extremely active in the field and has a book out about Biotensegrity as well. They were looking at a Tensegrity Mast that Steve had with him and as soon as I saw it I became very excited because I could see that the model would illustrate exactly to the point what we see in children and adults with cerebral palsy and related handicaps!

I did my best to hold a short interview with Steve Levin about how he sees ABR and how he could see the Biotensegrity Mast showing us something about our children. Here is a short clip from the interview:

The lecture I held at the BIG IX conference about ABR is called:

ABR Efforts – Addressing Buckling, Folding, Bulging, Sinking Volumes And Slabs

An Applied Biotensegrity Model For Children With Special Needs

In this sense the presentation fit perfectly with the illustration that one could get from Steve’s new Mast Model. If one loosens one strut, the entire model is weakened. If one tightens up one strut, the entire model re-gains its tensional uniformity.

It is this uniformity and tensional integrity that children with special needs are lacking. Their bodies react with sinking, bulging, folding and buckling under. These severely effected individuals perfectly illustrate the biotensegrity concepts in their structure, their attempts to move and even in their “behavior”! When the structure is architecturally unsound and reacts with buckling, sinking and folding – then no amount of brain or of muscle training can rectify this. The muscles and the brain are rather forced to try to find ways of working within the constraints of a seriously weakened structure.

The video clip below gives a description of an extremely creative child with microcephaly. His “small head” has been given the cause of his difficulties in walking. But one can see how creative he is. He manages to walk in spite of:

knees that buckle under and give way
A stiff spine
A weak trunk

His interesting usage of his hands for stability to be able to manage the weaknesses is very inventive and creative indeed.

ABR Techniques are all about restoring structural soundess and uniform reactions for individuals who have lost this or who have never had it. The Biotensegrity models are firing and inspiring our technique development and have been doing so for years.

ABR Biotensegrity Wrap Demonstration below:

Below are some slides from the presentation of our children and their progress. First some younger children.

Now an older guy – a GMFCS Level V young man (although he is moving up in his GMFM scores) – who is now 20. He is much older and far beyond an age or GMFCS Level where any improvement would be expected at all – only further deterioration. It is great to see how this young man is improving day by day!

Our next post will be about Leonid Blyum and how he “heals” Steve Levin’s tensegrity tower with ABR wraps . And also how ABR wraps get a new name!