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All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labors in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly, but if unused and left idle, they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.
-Hippocrates
I have always looked to hire people for my practice that are excellent communicators and very intelligent. I know I am a good educator, and I involve my staff in our patient’s care by teaching them about the conditions we are working to help our patients overcome or manage with greater effect.
Jazz is an amazing medium that invites creativity, innovation, play, and striving for new ways to express oneself. Participation is a role that everyone gets to play; performers and listeners alike.
What could possibly be a better motivation to study and work to improve your abilities as a physician than the opportunity to improve the trajectory of a young child’s life? The benefit to the family’s health and wellbeing is a ripple from that as well.
Beth and I watched this film over the weekend. It is phenomenal, an inspiring and deeply moving film. It deals with the things that are at the center of both Beth and my vocational calling—to help children, their parents, families, and community thrive and have the opportunity for a full and meaningful life. Families from all over the world are featured. You will see astonishing contrasts in the conditions for children and their parents in different parts of the world. You will learn how incredibly important it is for us to invest our time and love and ability to care for them so they can thrive and it will make your heart soar. You will see how the lack of societal infrastructure to give parents the time to invest in their children is so damaging to all of us and it will make your heart ache.
It does take a whole village to raise one child. This is the best film I’ve ever seen to show us what that really means.
DNG
Directed by Estela Renner
You may recognize the title of this entry as the name of the book written by Carl Gustav Jung in 1957. In fact, I pulled that book off my shelf about six weeks ago and re-read the first chapter, entitled “The Plight of the Individual in Modern Society.” It gave me such pause that I put it away until yesterday when I read it again and the second chapter with it. Why? Because he might have been writing about his concerns about the ability of democracy to function in the year 2016 as we approach the coming presidential election in the United States. He wrote it as the Cold War was escalating. See what you think. Here are some excerpts from the chapter that I found especially prophetic.
“Man has to be unselfish if he wants peace in the world. Remove selfishness and egoism. Calm the passions. Purify the heart. Analyze your thoughts. Scrutinize your motives. Cleanse the dross of impurity. Realize God. All this you will obtain as a direct reaction to self-knowledge. That much is certain.”
This is what I do with the College of Music at Michigan State University. Please enjoy.
The following was originally posted on the website of the DOs (Osteopathic Physicians) on June 3, 2016.
MUSICIAN HEALTH
How I Practice: Texas DO gets in tune with musicians
Sajid Surve, DO, talks about the changing world of music education and why osteopathic physicians are uniquely qualified to treat musicians.
Musicians at the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Music recognize that when it comes to their health, the Texas Center for Performing Arts Health is a helpful instrument.
A musician himself, Sajid Surve, DO, co-director of the Texas Center for Performing Arts Health, a partnership between the UNT College of Music and the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Worth, discovered early on that music and medicine share a common goal: to heal. In this edited interview, he discusses the center’s efforts to help change music education and the reason DOs are uniquely qualified to treat musicians.
What is the Texas Center for Performing Arts Health?
The center, known as the Texas Center for Music & Medicine until two years ago, provides health care to performance artists and studies the performing arts population from a health perspective. It’s a lively research hub with a clinical presence. We have pianos with sensors built into the keys so we can measure the forces that pianists use, and we have sensors for trumpets to look at mouthpiece forces.
Is this research influencing music education?
Yes. Music education is changing right now. The UNT College of Music and the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine worked together to build a body of evidence to show that musicians have pretty high injury rates. We then joined with other groups to recommend that the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) create new standards requiring colleges to make students aware of the musculoskeletal, hearing, and vocal risks of making music. Because of our efforts, NASM issued the new standards a few years ago. The Texas Education Agency adopted similar standards for high school and middle school students.
What matters to me is that the musician is now better at playing music because of what I’ve done.
What’s the most common condition you see in musicians?
In general, musicians suffer from repetitive stress injuries. Every instrument has unique demands and as a result, they have these unique injuries. Trombonists, for example, can develop shoulder problems from the weight of the trumpet. Pianists often have hand problems. Clarinetists and oboists develop right thumb problems.
What does treatment look like?
With an osteopathic approach, we have to consider the whole situation. My focus isn’t necessarily on the instrument. For example, posture is how your body rises up to meet the instrument. Any aberration in a musician’s posture can cause neck and back pain. Maybe we give the patient a strengthening program to improve their posture. Or maybe they need to take more breaks. Or we need to treat their shoulder with osteopathic manipulative treatment. I do a ton of OMT in the clinic.
Treating musicians’ injuries can be really tough if you don’t approach treatment with the mindset of considering the whole patient. This is why DOs are uniquely qualified to treat musicians. I’m so thankful to have my osteopathic background.
What is the most rewarding aspect of your job?
I had the fortune of helping a young singer who had been injured and was unable to sing. She came to me with paperwork to withdraw from the university, but over the course of six to seven months she was able to sing again. She invited me to her senior recital, and sitting in that audience watching her deliver stunningly beautiful arias, knowing that I had a part in making that happen, was one of the greatest moments ever.
What matters to me is that the musician is now better at playing music because of what I’ve done.
On the subject of transforming limitations into possibilities, Anat Baniel, well known Feldenkrais practitioner and teacher, describes aspects of her work with children in a teaching video, which depicts her working with children and also talking about the work separately from being with them. I found my reaction to what I saw changed over the course of three complete viewings over the course of one day. The first viewing I watched nearly straight through only pausing a couple of times to look again at something or to better hear what she said by repeating a section. I didn’t take notes. The second time I used a pause, stop/start, rewind, review, and make notes kind of method. The third time I watched in order to fill in aspects of my notes, and to watch most sections several times, each time with different intentions about what I was trying to see. I tried to see it from her point of view, and then from the perspective of the child as well. There were several parts where the two blended into a coherent whole as they moved together. As I watched the video, I began to see more and more of what was taking place between she and the child that was part of her non-verbal physical presence: elements of this included tactile, kinesthetic, and emotional/vital flows that had wave-like properties. From my notes I made summaries to facilitate my understanding of three of the main points conveyed in her discussion and tie them into my understanding and experience thus far. Three qualitative elements of the work emphasized were: VARIATION, SUBTLETY, and SLOWNESS.
VARIATION……fast only gets the brain to do what it already knows. Sensations barreling into our nervous system without pause prohibit us from being able to listen and learn & prevent our ability to make connections. Our interactions with the surrounding world and our participation in it with awareness and intention require us to spend time between perception and interpretation. By doing this, we begin to be present and assume a role in the reality of our experience. What seems to be out there becomes connected to what seems to be in here, making perception more simply experienced as what is-from a particular perspective. An apparent duality collapses into unity. Using meditation and mindfulness practices that allow us to cultivate detachment, we can improve our ability to move between and through perspectives. If that which is aware within us catches the moment between the receipt of a perception and the attribution of meaning to that perception, we can find multiple shades of experience within it. This is a way to bring variation into each moment and helps us become aware at more levels of understanding, eventually allowing us to watch several aspects of our being simultaneously as we go about doing whatever it is we are doing at the time.
SUBTLETY…..becoming quiet often corresponds to gaining the skill or remembering the ability to listen to one’s own body. By avoiding excess, pushing too hard, forcing, or trying too hard, we are ushered into the world of fine differentiations. The amount of force required to accomplish a task is the correct amount of force to use. Skill, finesse, and the ability to make fine distinctions come from participation with awareness, being present fully as we act. The ability to perceive subtle differences is the foundation of intelligence. A characteristic of wellness in all living things is the ability to make subtle corrections early on when deviation from equilibrium has occurred. This allows the organism to remain adaptable to the environment. This occurs at all levels of organization. Examples include receptors in our feet which send continuous feedback to our brain so that we maintain our balance as we walk, the constant changes in rate and depth of breathing we make to keep up with our level of activity, and the maintenance of a constant concentration of sodium in our blood by little filters in our kidneys that continuously monitor it and decide when to keep or let go of water so that our chemistry remains in balance. Everything in us is intelligent. Bringing that to bear on issues of movement means we take the sensations we experience and remember to integrate them smoothly into responses that keep us in balance.
GOING SLOWLY…. Gives the brain a chance to pay attention. Intention, intensity, precision, and control can be honed by participation in activity with awareness. I am here now, and I am awake. The experience of being in a boat that slows its speed is a good example of how this works. As the speed slows, the boat sinks into the water and settles more deeply into where it is at the moment. If you are in the boat, you notice the change. More can be felt in the place you inhabit when you slow down. A depth of experience becomes available that is simply not available when you are speeding past. Clarity of perception and depth of understanding are gifts we learn from slow. Not surprisingly, beauty and joy become much more available as well. To appreciate something in depth requires awareness over time. Applying slow to all skills in the use of our body facilitates cultivation of our abilities and allows us to grow and evolve at whatever we choose to do with our selves. The breath is a bridge between our thinking and our feeling aspects, and settling it as we prepare to act is an excellent way to bring all the elements toward coherence as we begin any endeavor, so that the fullness of what we are doing can be appreciated.
dng