Thursday, April 30, 2009

Playing Hooky

I'm feeling a little guilty, since I'm supposed to be finishing an article for a magazine and instead I'm writing here. But that's not the only thing that's keeping me away from the article. I've been working in a number of animations for the online course, which leads me to what I wanted to write about.
One of the things I like to do, to get inspiration for doing the animations, is look at the work of other people. I was having a problem with a "particle system", which I'm using to illustrate an embryology concept--this is one of those things that Rolfers seem to all do when we are explaining fascia, that being we resort to embryology to show that the body is not made up of "parts"--and searched the net to see if anyone else had solved this problem. What I found was a great website for a film/media school that had a montage of their work. www.brandnewschool.com
At the beginning of the montage the video had a roll of welcome text in different languages. Each language was in a different color and each sentence was on it's own line. So, the first line in each language came first. Then the second line in the paragraph...so that the languages were interspersed and you had to pick yours out of each paragraph. At first this was really confusing to me, but soon, within one or two lines my eye was locked on to the white english text.
This really interested me, so I ran the montage again and tried to not read the english but the concentrate on the german. Again, my eyes locked on the english.
Now I'm fascinated and wonder if this is indicative of how we see things we "know" but don't see things we don't know. You know?
Do any of you know if there's research into this kind of thing--beyond "what the blib do we know..."?
Ok, back to the article.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

How much should we "dumb-down"?

When I decided to leave engineering for health care, I took a year long anatomy and physiology course at the University of Colorado. Since I was late in applying to school I had to get on the "wait" list for the class. There were 300 people in the auditorium when I went to the first class!
I asked the professor after the first lecture if there was any real chance to get in the class. He, told me to wait until after the first exam and there would be plenty of room. He was right. After the first exam over 50% of the class dropped since it was so hard.
When the professor was challenged about how difficult the exam was he responded " So many of you want to be doctors. If I ever have to go into surgery and one of you are the surgeon I will be very comfortable knowing you know your A&P.".
This is how I run my classes, they are for people who are willing to push themselves to learn what they don't already know.
It seems like we--this is the collective we of people who instruct others--try to dumb things down so much that I wonder if we know what we are talking about. This will only harm the field of animal body therapy.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

What to do?

These days people are all trying to figure out how to make ends meet. This may mean that they won't be spending as much on their and their animals alternative health care. This will be mostly true if they don't perceive a direct relationship between the therapy and they achievement of some goal they may have.
When I worked for Hewlett Packard as an engineering manager the country went through another recession, companies weren't buying our products. During this time I heard about the strategy that Intel Corporation had for these types of economic downturns; they spent more money on the research and development to be able to produce better products and lead the market once there was a turn around in the economy.
We can and should do something similar to Intel, by investing in our own training. By gaining a new skill or, better yet, improving one we already have, we'll be poised to help our clients when they are able to afford our work again.
Spend time keeping in touch with your clients so they know you are still out there and that you are continuing with your development. You want to be on the "top" of their mind when they think about alternative therapies for their animals again.
Take time to get together with your colleagues and share our knowledge with them. If you belong to a discussion group participate in it. I recently started a discussion forum on www.animalsi.com please feel free to join it. I am asked every week for referrals to good body therapists, this is a way to make yourself known.
I like to spend my down time going over my course notes from my previous trainings, re-reading books, and looking for new ideas.
The most important thing is to stay involved with your work, keep your hands tuned up and let people know you're still out there.