Adaptive Yoga: Good For Every Body, Every Ability
When you think of yoga, the first things that might spring to mind are young, beautiful, fit, sexy people wearing fashionable workout gear and twisting their bodies gracefully in a lot of ways that the average person can’t imagine. You might look at it and think “I’m not that flexible; I’ll never be that flexible. I can’t do that.” I have spastic cerebral palsy; I looked at the movements and range of motion that seemed to be required of yoga and I knew there was no way my body could achieve such things. When I was a teenager, I worked [...]
Universal Design For All People: Beyond Mobility
When people think of the word ‘accessibility’ as it relates to the physical environment, most would tend to think of things in terms of what it means for wheelchair users. For example, stairs outside or inside a public establishment are a barrier to wheelchair users, a shortage of elevators cause barriers for wheelchair users, and inaccessible transit and non-kneeling buses are barriers to wheelchair users.But issues of accessibility do not just affect those of us in wheelchairs—it extends to anyone with any type of impairment, mobility or otherwise and beyond. What about the elderly woman in a walker? The older [...]
How to Recognize Concussion Symptoms
Concussion is a hot topic getting a lot of media attention lately. Professional athletes living with concussion symptoms have brought the topic to front page headlines, despite having been a common occurrence for many years. I can remember at least parts of my first concussion experience. Growing up in Kingston, Ontario, a proverbial hotbed of hockey, skating came shortly after walking as a developmental milestone in seemingly every child’s early years. My dad used to take me to public skating at a local rink where I would race around without a helmet, my blond hair flowing in the cold [...]