SUPPORTING OUR FRONT LINES

In addition to completing two intensive trainings for Alexander Technique for PD and a certificate program in pain science, Cindi has recently completed Sharon Salzberg's Caregiver's Course, exploring the immense resilience of the human spirit, and how to find greater balance when serving others.

Care partners play a vital role in supporting people living with PD, but this support can come at a high personal cost, leading to frustration, exhaustion, and a fast track to burnout. Below are some findings on care partner stress in the PD community, along with how Alexander lessons may be a useful aid.

RESEARCH ON CARE PARTNER STRESS

The following is based on a presentation* by Maya Katz, M.D. of the UCSF Movement Disorder and Neuromodulation Center:

• Care partners' stress is significant in PD and can affect health outcomes.

• The majority of care partners would like to have time alone with clinicians to discuss issues but rarely have that opportunity.

• Care partners often feel inadequately prepared.

• Care partners often experience grief and guilt.

• Care partners commonly experience aggression directed towards them.

• Care partners commonly feel isolated.

• Care partners often have poor sleep. 

• Care partners commonly have their own injuries, strain, and back pain.

*(Bruno et al. 2016, Park & Related; Hudson & Payne, 2011, J of Palliative Med; Hudson, 2006, Palliative Med; Oguh et al., 2013, Park 7 Related)

LESSONS FOR CARE PARTNERS

Alexander lessons are also available just for care partners. Some benefits may include the following:

• Tools for reducing and managing one's own injuries, strain, and back pain 

• Time to receive support and feel more connected to oneself

• Space for one's own experience, wishes, and embodied agency

• Personalized mind-body self-care

• Better balance between the desire to help and meeting one's own needs

• Embodied compassion for oneself as well as others

• Increased inner resilience to counteract daily depletion

• Cultivation of more internal support for challenging moments

• An organizing and fortifying self-maintenance practice

• Learning more mindfulness in activity

• Restorative practice to recharge and foster a healthier ongoing balance

• Greater capacity to care for others with more calm, joy, and presence

Cindi offers private Alexander lessons for PD care partners in collaboration with the Dance for PD® program at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn.