Comments on: Research breakthrough allows paraplegic man to stand on his own http://www.kurzweilai.net/research-breakthrough-allows-paraplegic-man-to-stand-on-his-own Accelerating Intelligence Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:46:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: geekette http://www.kurzweilai.net/research-breakthrough-allows-paraplegic-man-to-stand-on-his-own/comment-page-1#comment-3708 geekette Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:25:41 +0000 http://www.kurzweilai.net/?p=119298#comment-3708 I teach Tai Chi Chair (our dvd is going on 10 years at amazon fyi) and have met some very remarkable quadri and para plegics. Molly Hale was also paralyzed from the chest down, also from a car accident, 9 years ago. She is now a 2nd degree black belt in aikido and teaches in the pool as well as from the mat. She has used mind training as well as water based physical therapy. She told me the first thing she did was decide that there was no way she would allow herself to be diapered the rest of her life. There is a movie made about her life. http://www.abilityproduction.org/index.htm I am proud to say she is my friend. It takes courage to ignore doctors who claim you will never walk again. A long time ago, I had a scuba accident, and was temporarily paralyzed. The doctors told me I would never finish my phd, and that I would never be able to do research again. What do they know? I not only finished but won an award from AAAI for Outstanding Research in the field of Distributed AI. With a very long recovery, with speech and physical therapy. I had to relearn a number of subjects. Overcoming these accidents is not just a matter of will and technology that helps us is a miracle, but we can never forget that as humans, we also need a community of friends around us encouraging us and helping. Because sometimes when you are in that situation, you are so weak that you cannot assert yourself. I can't count the number of people in wheel chairs who have been bullied or neglected. Molly and I taught a Wheel Chair Massage class at the local YMCA. Can you imagine, being locked in a chair, and then no one really touching you as well? Anything that empowers the individual to increase health is fantastic as far as I'm concerned. To the scientists, hats off to you! I teach Tai Chi Chair (our dvd is going on 10 years at amazon fyi) and have met some very remarkable quadri and para plegics. Molly Hale
was also paralyzed from the chest down, also from a car accident, 9 years ago. She is now a 2nd degree black belt in aikido and teaches in the pool as well as from the mat. She has used mind training as well as water based physical therapy. She told me the first thing she did was decide that there was no way she would allow herself to be diapered the rest of her life. There is a movie made about her life. http://www.abilityproduction.org/index.htm I am proud to say she is my friend. It takes courage to ignore doctors who claim you will never walk again. A long time ago, I had a scuba accident, and was temporarily paralyzed. The doctors told me I would never finish my phd, and that I would never be able to do research again. What do they know? I not only finished but won an award from AAAI for Outstanding Research in the field of Distributed AI. With a very long recovery, with speech and physical therapy. I had to relearn a number of subjects.

Overcoming these accidents is not just a matter of will and technology that helps us is a miracle, but we can never forget that as humans, we also need a community of friends around us encouraging us and helping. Because sometimes when you are in that situation, you are so weak that you cannot assert yourself. I can’t count the number of people in wheel chairs who have been bullied or neglected. Molly and I taught a Wheel Chair Massage class at the local YMCA. Can you imagine, being locked in a chair, and then no one really touching you as well?

Anything that empowers the individual to increase health is fantastic as far as I’m concerned. To the scientists, hats off to you!

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