What If Caregiver Injuries Are Not Inevitable-Interview with Ben Couch

Welcome And Guest Background

SPEAKER_00

0:18

Welcome to Patty's Place, a place where we're gonna talk about grief, dementia, and caregiving. I name I named this podcast Patty's Place in honor of my mom, Pat, who died from dementia about two years ago. I'm your host, Lisa. So hopefully grab your cup of coffee, your cup of tea, or if you're having a really bad day, a glass of wine, and let's get to chatting and know that you're not alone here in all of this. So today I'm very excited. Our guest is Ben Couch. He's the creator of Eastern Economics, sorry, Eastern Ergonomics, and a longtime healthcare educator. Ben has spent 40 years studying martial arts and over 20 years leading healthcare training at the national level. He's discovered that martial arts, body mechanics, can dramatically reduce caregiver injuries while improving care for people with dementia. Welcome, Ben. I'm very excited to talk to you today.

SPEAKER_03

1:05

Thanks so much, Lisa. It's really great to be here.

SPEAKER_00

1:07

Yeah, so you hold black belts in eight styles of martial arts, including a seventh degree black belt in karate.

SPEAKER_03

1:15

I do. It's been my lifelong obsession. I have uh I still have, in a lot of ways, no idea why that has spoken to me throughout my life so much. Um, you know, I really have always been a person who really values peace and communication and compassion. And to me, it it uh it's difficult to explain to people sometimes, but this is how I express it to the world, you know, through my students, the people I I give this knowledge to, and just having an area of passion and having something I love and being able to, for whatever reason, it it happens to be martial arts and being able to show that devotion and compassion and education to the world through that medium has just been a wonderful lifelong journey for me.

SPEAKER_00

2:04

I don't think a lot of people realize that you do more than just quote unquote a workout in martial arts. They teach you so much more with the mind and and feelings and everything. It's it it encompasses so much more uh with it. I don't think a lot of people realize that.

SPEAKER_03

2:20

Absolutely. Um, you know, it's at at you know, one of our core things that we evolved through is the conflict, you know, when when you know, but back before we kind of developed all these wonderful things out of our neocortex and you know, the things that we start to lose when dementia comes into the picture, right? And and we go back in time through kind of our our evolution and we see conflict has really informed our whole development as a species and and ultimately brought us to a place where we have reason and logic and rules and these very high-functioning act you know, brain activities that allow us to now step away from conflict and have other ways of resolving things. So when we I mean, it sounds like such a big picture when I talk about it like this, but when we when we really go back in time and look at what martial arts is looking at, in a way, it's really looking at the course of human evolution through you know the the brute violence of you know, the the first caveman bashing the second caveman with a rock to get you know the the piece of meat. Um, to you know, how do we negotiate without that now? How do we understand the root of that conflict without manifesting the violence of it? That is a really fascinating thing to me about how do we live, how do we interact with other people and uh make the world better so that we don't need, you know, if we understand conflict, then we don't need violence.

The Accidental Discovery At IHOP

SPEAKER_00

3:45

That's very true. I actually uh I actually do I have a black belt in Hopketo and wonderful, yes, and I know with Hopketo a lot of it is uh the saying is be the water, not the rock. And it really does apply to dementia and caregiving because sometimes you know the the my master and stuff would say some you have to absorb your opponent's power so sometimes in order to redirect it with that. Uh so you know it it comes into play with dementia and caregiving because sometimes you do have to take step out of your feelings and then think about the person who's ill and put it onto them. So what was your aha moment when you realized martial arts body mechanics could solve a massive problem in healthcare?

SPEAKER_03

4:31

So um the first inkling I had of it was um, as a lot of these things are, a total accident. Um, you know, you couldn't plan for it, you couldn't predict it. I was sitting in IHOP and I was actually with my instructor. Um I met him, my primary teacher, um, for the last boy, since about 2009. Um he and I met at a mutual organization we were a part of, and I was so I mean, he was I'd I'd already been doing martial arts at for 25 years at that point. Um, I I met him because he was on my panel uh for my fifth degree black belt test in Taekwondo. And um he was partnered with me. He was my demonstration partner, and I could just tell that he was, you know, I I thought I knew a lot at that point, as one does after 25 years. And I got in with him and realized this guy is so far above me, he's doing things I didn't know were possible. Um, and so I went to him and said, Look, I I want to be your student. Now, this is in Texas, I live in Arizona, okay, and he turned me down. And so there's uh a bunch of background for it, but ultimately I said, I will fly out there every month, one weekend every month to work with you if you will take me as a student. And under those circumstances, he agreed. He said, I won't do it if you're here once every six months. You just can't learn that way. So I made a radical commitment, um, kind of uprooted my life because this guy had answers I've been searching for for my whole life. So here we are, getting ready to go for a full Saturday training. Uh, we went out to IHOP to get a big breakfast, and there's a gentleman standing next to me. We're waiting to be seated. I was seated, he was standing, um, and I saw his knee start to buckle as one of those things that just out of the corner of my eye, he was right next to me, and I just saw him start to go down. He was a uh senior, and I didn't think about it. I just stood up and you know, adjusted him. Um, I've you know basically took his his humorous bone, which is a real key point in jiu-jitsu because of how it ties into the rest of the chain down to the center of gravity, and I just bumped his humorous bone back into place, sat back down, and nothing, you know, he just kind of looked at me funny. Um, and in a heartbeat, without thinking about it, I used jujitsu to help somebody. And that triggered this thought, you know. But up until then, like I said, I wasn't a violent person. It's not like I was looking at this because I was a bouncer in a bar or you know, a police officer or, you know, someone who deals with violence on a regular basis. I just enjoy the body work, you know, I just love learning how the body functions like that. And, you know, it clicked off to me that this doesn't necessarily have to be just about me. This doesn't have to be about my experience and my fun entirely. You know, I love it, but what if, you know, I'm not really out there using it to restrain people and all this stuff, and I'm doing it for fun. What if I could actually, beyond teaching my students, put some good out into the world with it by looking at, you know, like you said, I've had a national uh director role in the training space and in senior living for over 20 years. Transfers are the number one injury. I mean, they've they've devastated training budgets, um, home and family caregivers, even more so because they've got zero training. Um, and there's a lot of these mechanics that just aren't out there. So um I started taking those little chunks that made a big difference, those little tips that you know you see someone who's you know, maybe smaller or maybe older, and they're just moving younger people around or heavier people very easily. And why aren't we using those mechanics for the the things that are actually causing people injury in healthcare? So that that's uh the the long story of how I how I how I made this jump.

SPEAKER_00

8:19

Well, no, it's it is very interesting because you're right. You don't caregivers don't think about how much it it take takes a toll on their body when they are taking care of their loved one. And if they're a caregiver in a senior facility, they're doing it for eight hours a day. And if they don't do it right, they are gonna be, they're gonna hurt themselves. With all the different black belts that you hold in the different martial arts discipline, is there a specific principle from those arts that kind of translate a little bit better directly to the pay safer patient transfers?

SPEAKER_03

8:52

Um several. Um, so one of them, uh you know, one of the I'll go with some of the easy ones to explain online. Um, because so many of them are tactile, you kind of have to feel it. But yeah, there's a few I think I can explain pretty easily online. So um the the first one is just a mental shift. So when we look at in any environment, whether it's in the home or whether it's in a healthcare environment, you know, you look at the the daily task list and it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01

9:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

9:24

You know, for a home caregiver, geez, did we get the meds done? Do we have a doctor's appointment? What are we eating today? What kind of food might we be throwing at the wall today? Um, are we in a good mood? You know, there's so much to think about in a healthcare setting. I've got to get, you know, I'm gonna use some lousy healthcare lingo, you know, I've got to get five people toileted and fed and, you know, all that, like very mechanical. How often do we go into a transfer or some really any kind of situation in our head isn't even in there because in the situation because we're already five rooms down the hall transferring, you know, the person before lunch, or we're balancing our checkbook trying to figure out how to get dad's doctor bill paid, or you know, we're and we're not pressed. So the first thing I do is I actually try to get people to be present and just say, okay, just like you know, when we start class, you know, when start a martial arts class, at least a lot of the eastern ones, you'll just you know, you do your bow in. Yes. And yes, you know, part of that is putting in your own head, I am here now and I am doing this. I have left balancing the checkbook, my coach yelling at my kids, soccer team, my dad yelling at me over medication. I've I'm leaving all that on the side and I'm just focusing here. So one thing I tell people is the transfer doesn't start when you put your hands on the person, it starts as you're walking in the room. You know, think of like, you know, I'm bowing into class. I'm you know, just that's personal, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

10:56

Well a good way to think about it. Yeah.

Posture And Stance For Stability

SPEAKER_03

10:58

Focused. And I I'm sometimes I'll tell people literally say to yourself, I'm about to do a transfer. I am transferring someone now. Because if we if we allow our minds to go, then our body's not focused in the transfer either. And that's when mistakes start to happen. You know, it's like they say uh more car accidents happen closer to home. Why? Because we're on autopilot, we're not thinking about it. I'm not thinking, okay, which turn do I have to take and paying really close attention. I'm just letting, you know, my autopilot run things. So when I'm doing, oh, I've got 17 transfers today. Well, number three may be the one I'm not paying attention to because I'm already working on number 10, and that's in my own head, and that's where injury happens. So mentally, I think there's a lot we can take from that. Physically, um, I like to look at things like balance points, posture. Um, you know, when I when I talk about posture and how that functions, you know, a lot of us now function like the leaning tower of Pisa, right? Because we have the cell phones and you know, we start life, you know, kind of hunched over. We start our transfers hunched over. And, you know, even just a small tilt of the chin, up or down, fundamentally breaks our connection with the ground. It it that that perfect posture that routes force down just like a skyscraper, dropping all that force straight down into a stable base. You know, if you think about a skyscraper and on the top floor, you built like, you know, another 500 feet off the edge, just on the top floor. Well, that's going to create a real imbalance because it's not supported by the base. So our posture affects everything, our breathing affects everything, um, and the way we stand affects everything. So another one that um I talk about a lot is what we call triangulation points in our balance. So when we stand, if you draw an equilateral triangle with our two feet as the base, the third point in that triangle, both in front of us and behind us, is the weakest point of balance, like the third leg on a stool. So a lot of caregivers will square up with their feet squared. Well, that means our weakest point when I'm trying to bring someone up from standing is the point where I'm trying to bring the person to. So I am pulling myself right over if I stand squared up with my feet. I'm falling into them already.

SPEAKER_02

13:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

13:28

Or if they get going too fast, they come into me and I'm falling backwards and I have nothing to catch me behind. If I blade my stance and put one foot in front of each in front of the other, now I've rotated my triangulation point out to the side because my hips are off to the side. So it's not in front of me any before it anymore, it's out of the equation. So that's little adjustments like that that I see even the pros telling people to stand like that. Well, if we're really looking at how we move weight, that's that that's in front of us, out in front of us, that's not a good way to do it. That's the way to do it if we're doing like a deadlift. If the weight is underneath us and we can rise straight up, but if we're pulling it in from out there somewhere, then having our feet squared, we start already being pulled over by the weight in front of us. Little little adjustments like that. It takes a second to learn, but it makes a phenomenal difference in how stable we are as we're trying to do these transfers.

SPEAKER_00

14:26

It makes a lot of sense. I didn't even think about all that because I would think the majority, and this is just based on when my mom ended up being when she wasn't quote unquote mobile anymore, they were transferring her from, you know, the hospital bed to the wheelchair and the wheelchair to the power lift, uh, power chair. You know, so those are like the majority of what you would transfer, even at home, you would be transferring with that. And yeah, when you're trying to grab them from the the chair, you know, you you do have to stand them up for a second before you move them to the other place. So what what do you I would do you think that martial arts also the mindset also can help if you're dealing with a loved one or as a caregiver in a facility, if the the patient is agitated?

SPEAKER_03

15:14

Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, and I this is where I think a lot of um sort of modern understanding comes in a lot um because when we talk, you know, essentially strictly martial culture and you know, samurai and warrior and all that, there's less emphasis on de-escalation and more emphasis on overwhelming um and and you know, sort of victory at all costs, where in a lot of again, we we talk about how we've sort of evolved out of that mindset to where we're trying to de-escalate violence now. So you look at um really what a lot of has been created by say the legal system or just you know, growing in in our understanding of human nature, we're now seeing a lot of professionals out there talking about how do we approach a violent person, or you know, even an agitated person, not necessarily even a violent person, but someone who's really agitated. And so that's something I do with my students because, you know, just from the standpoint of a martial arts teacher who is educating other people, you know, if they go out and hurt somebody, even if it was justified, they're looking at, you know, lawsuits and prosecutions and all, you know, if there's all these uh incentives to find other ways now that, you know, in the past were not so present. Um, it was a little bit more, you know, well, you got what you had coming. Now the the legalization of things has really changed the landscape of how we how we think about violence. So we've got people like Rory Miller, who's a he's a great author, talking about you know, the use of force and how we can de-escalate and find ways around it. So he's a he's an exceptional martial artist. Um, and I've read you know everything of his I can get my hands on because he was at a very high-level response in um prisons, and he had to deal with the worst of the worst, who would like they'd send him in when you know of a high-level prisoner would barricade themselves in their cell and they had to get him out. You know, he he dealt with real violence, but he also has to deal with, as a martial artist, how do we translate that for people who aren't in that kind of situation? How do we de-escalate? So I like to take those principles and bring them back to how do we just talk to people who are upset? You know, because that's on the that's on the spectrum, right? It's you know, being upset over my customer service is just a very low level, you know, you're yelling at me about that. That's a very low level version of you know violence because we all those emotions that go into that eventually build up into a violent encounter. It's just we're dealing with it before. So how can we do things like actually just you know, maybe the most powerful thing, shutting our mouths and listening? Um, letting people feel heard and validated. Oh, geez, I I understand why do you feel that way? Now that you explain it to me, man, I would feel that way too. Would you please tell me, you know, what I can do to help the situation, as opposed to going into that defensive space? Um, you know, how do we understand, you know, when we understand what ramps us up in our own levels of violence or in our own levels of agitation, how do we calm that? And a lot of times it's just having the confidence and the experience to model being calm so that the other person can realize that you're not, you know, you're not engaging in that agitation, but you're there to help them out of it. So I think martial arts is very important in that, especially if we're embodying that highest level of it in in my mind, which is eliminating the need for violence. Um, how do we make sure that uh it's uh Say noji, uh the concept of uh in Japanese sword victory while you're still in the sheath? You know, I achieve victory without every up ever unsheathing my sword. And um, how do we take that sort of highest level of martial arts intelligence and mastery and translate it into no violence at all?

SPEAKER_00

19:27

Well well, right. And I think, like you said, to think about going into the room being calm like you were entering uh one of a class or that, and to try to put yourself into that your loved one or if you're a caregiver in a facility, thinking about the patient there because maybe they're scared, maybe they don't understand what's going on, you know, like they don't know why you're touching them. You know, they're not they're not trying to attack you, they just don't understand, you know, or and and it's hard to give up that independence too. You know, that you it's hard to admit that you need that help, you know, with it to try to understand that instead of get angry at at the person uh with that as well.

SPEAKER_03

20:07

And I think that's what a lot of violence stems from is we don't understand each other. You know, we have needs and we view them as competing when most of the time they're not, um but we don't know how to talk about them. And when dementia enters the mix and communication breaks down and someone maybe doesn't have the word for bathroom anymore, you know, you you get dropped. I I kind of do a thought experiment with people, and I say, okay, imagine you get dropped all alone in a country where you don't speak the language and you don't know how to ask for help and you don't know anyone, and you have to go to the bathroom right now. Are you going to be agitated? How are you gonna express that need? Um, and it's it's worth thinking about because so much of the the dementia miscommunication, I think, is attributing behaviors to their being difficult. Well, I'm difficult when I don't have a bathroom nearby and I really need to go. Right. I'm difficult. You know, my my wife carries around, you know, a little power bar in her purse because she knows I get hangry when I don't eat. Exactly. Yeah. She just knows my, but you know, if people don't know that about me um and I don't communicate it, you know, uh it's gonna go badly. So that that communication of needs and uh especially communicating with folks and understanding at a at a deep level when people don't necessarily have the words anymore. Um, how do we interpret that foreign language that they're speaking into something that can meet the needs of of all parties?

SPEAKER_00

21:48

What would you say it if you could get every healthcare administrator to understand one thing about caregiver injuries, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03

21:57

First off, is that they're not an inevitable Part of doing business.

SPEAKER_02

22:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

22:02

And that's a lot of I I like to I like to look at unrealized assumptions. You know, that's that's something that I'm always asking myself, like, what don't I know that I don't know? Um, what am I missing that there's a perspective? There's always a perspective I'm missing, there's always a piece of information that could help me with something. And what am I assuming that I don't realize I'm assuming? So over um, I I started in healthcare in 2001. And over the the course of that time, um, working as a as a national training director for a group of, we had between 60 and 80 retirement communities um at any at any given moment. Um one of the things I've heard from risk managers all the time was, you know, these transfer injuries are killing us. You know, we're spending so much time, we're spending so much, you know, time with the state, time with workers' comp, you know, money on all of these things. And then I looked at, you know, what, so what are we doing about it? And the answer was basically nothing. Um, we we have an injury and then we go do the same training that created that injury in the first place. We haven't updated, you know, we've added things like, you know, like you were mentioning, and they're great hoyer lifts and you know, transport devices and all of these devices. But at the end of the day, you know, we're we're hoping those save us from training that doesn't work because the assumption I'm I'm reading into this a little bit just based on my experience, but it seems like the assumption is that this is inevitable. We're just going to have these things. We have brought training to its ultimate place and we're stuck with what we've got left. And I think that's an assumption we don't realize that we've made the we we there are better ways to train on this. And um it it strikes me as crazy that I'm you know, I'm looking around the field at like who are my competitors, and I'm not really finding anyone else who's looking at this differently, which just blows my mind. Um, if it's the number one cause of injury in one of the most dangerous professions in the United States, more so than coal mining, steel mills, prison guarding, you know, prison guards are safer than caregivers. Um, why are we not reconsidering this? So that's that's what I really challenge healthcare administrators with. We what we're doing isn't working, so wouldn't you like to, you know, shelve the complaints and just find a better way?

Where To Get Training And Support

SPEAKER_00

24:34

And and I know just from the personal experience witnessing the caregivers that took care of my mom, uh it is such a hard job and and they don't get paid very much for what they have to take care of and and that that yeah, it would be nice for the the administrators to look at that, you know, give them more training, even give them more training with dementia, because even on the memory care floor, not a lot of the caregivers really understood, you know, and no fault to of them, they weren't given that training, you know, to understand that an agitated person with dementia, you have to handle them a little bit better, you know. Um, and the number one thing with dementia too is that they do not like showers. I I don't know, I'm not really sure why that is. I don't know if it's because of the way the water hits their their skin or something, but that is always a fight. Uh uh with that. So I want to make sure we talk about as you said, you do this training. You have two different websites. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03

25:40

Uh so my company website is illumined.com, E-L-U-M-N-E-D.com.

SPEAKER_02

25:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

25:46

Um, the the program that I offer is called Eastern Ergonomics.

SPEAKER_01

25:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

25:50

Um that that's one of my programs. That's the the one that deals with the ergonomics and the transfers and lifting. Um, so that one is all one word, Easternergonomics.com.

SPEAKER_00

26:00

Okay. And so I I know you're based in Arizona, but can other facilities in different states are you are you able to work with them or how does how could they get in touch with you? Just go to that website or yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03

26:14

Um, that site has all my contact information on it, and I'm happy to work with people, you know, anywhere. Um, I do work in person, so at least for initially. So that's one of my requirements to work with me is you've got to feel what I'm doing, and I've got to feel what you're doing because some of the changes are so subtle that unless I'm in the room with you, it's hard for me to coach or even, you know, necessarily feel because you know, some movements you're just using different muscles. It looks the same. So I do like to be in person with people. There's some things I can do online, some basics. Um, but for you know, real healthcare stuff, um, as as long as you're willing to have me in person, I'm really glad to go work with anyone anywhere.

SPEAKER_00

26:55

And then you were just mentioning too, before we uh before we started this, you have a new uh it's an online class for the home caregiver. Can we talk about that for a few minutes?

SPEAKER_03

27:07

Yeah, um, absolutely. So that's something that I'm offering. I've got a separate registration page for that. It's called unbreakyourback.com. It's one word. Um, and that's it is gonna be an online course. Um, this is my first launch of it. I'm experimenting with it. Um, it's gonna be on April 25th, and it's gonna be a two-hour class uh from 10 to noon uh Pacific time.

SPEAKER_02

27:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

27:30

Uh and it's it's kind of covering a lot of the information that we we talked about earlier, but in a lot more depth. So, how do we hold our breathing? How do we hold our posture? How do we think about our balance points and some basics of body movement that I can convey online without the touch? Um, but they're still really powerful ways to help home and family caregivers just get a little bit of an edge because um, you know, you look at even the pros who have had, you know, the what I kind of consider to be substandard training, um, at least it's some kind of training. And they have, you know, people around to reinforce and and who are aware of that. Um, you know, they're kind of looking, you know, like, oh, there's a hundred thousand dollar injury. Hey, let's stop that before it happens. Homing, home and family caregivers don't have that.

SPEAKER_01

28:17

Right.

Using Connection To Avoid Conflict

SPEAKER_03

28:18

So they're doing their best. They're doing what worked yesterday, even if it almost made them fall, or even if it almost took their back out. So there's a lot we can do for people who haven't had any training in a real short time that will will give them, you know, some information that even the pros don't have, unless they've worked with me. And um it it'll it'll really help them out. And a lot of that comes from just my my work with my own mom. Um, because my mom has Alzheimer's disease. Um, I've I've been her caregiver and um I've I've now it's different when you watch caregivers transfer someone who's your mom, and you're watching with the son's eyes. You know, you can watch the you can watch folks transfer other people all day long, but suddenly it's my mom, and you better do it right. So I'm looking real careful and I'm seeing, you know, like, oh, there's these problems, and how can how can we fix those for you know in in a different kind of setting?

SPEAKER_00

29:17

Well, my mom was she did not like being in the wheelchair. She actually would shuffle her feet with it. And when they would go to transfer her from the wheelchair to her power recliner, she I I think she just was so nervous. She would grab onto the TV and the poor caregivers, there was always two of them, and they would have to be like, no, no, no, Pat. And they would have to grab that plus try to transfer her over because she was like, she was not having that. She was like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

29:46

And now we're back to conflict, right? How do we how do we get on the same page um in a situation like that? Uh it was it was really interesting because my mom was hospitalized after a fall um earlier this year, and so she was um you know very confused. She was kind of agitated and confused and uh very tired, sleeping a lot. Um, and she just hated she was immediately going to, as soon as she would wake up, pull out the IVs and get out of the hospital bed after a fall.

SPEAKER_02

30:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03

30:24

Um, and it was interesting because it was in the hospital, you've got all these medical professionals around, and they really didn't know how to how to work with someone who had dementia.

SPEAKER_00

30:36

No, they really don't.

SPEAKER_03

30:38

You know, it's it's a very specialized thing. And it I knew I shouldn't be surprised, but that like son in me was still like, what are you people doing? Don't you know how to do so immediately, you know, the the person who was sitting with her, because she had to have someone sitting the full time um to make sure she didn't do those things, would say, you know, she'd start to sit up and get out of bed. And the person would say, No, no, Beth, you have to you have to sit down, you have to lie back down. You can't get out of bed. And how do you think that went?

SPEAKER_02

31:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03

31:05

And so I'd go over and she'd start sitting up to get out of bed, and I'd say, Oh, mom, thank you. Thank you for the hug. You wanted to give me a hug. Thank you so much. That was so nice. Would you like to lie back down now? Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. And you know, so how do we how do we reroute those conversations to where it, you know, again, I say the transfer has to start before we put hands on the person? What you're what you just described, they're getting, they're they're not setting up the transfer necessarily. I'm not trying to pick on anybody. No, no, we all know.

SPEAKER_00

31:38

I understand.

Closing And Review Request

SPEAKER_03

31:38

Yeah, you know, I've just as a broad example, right? You know, have we kind of taken those sources of agitation out of the way beforehand? Have we dealt with them? Have we figured out how do we get on this person's side so that we both have the same goal as opposed to I want you to move over there and you want to stay here and I've got to figure out how to trick you? Or how do how do I get you to want to do that too? What's you know, how how do I talk to you so that we have the same goal in mind? Um and again, that that goes back to you know, when you look at jujitsu or aikido um or hopkido, you know, I I tell my students, you know, the the person who's being thrown tells you what kind of throw they want to be tossed with. You know, it it depends on what, you know, if they push you, they want to go a certain way. If they pull, they want to go a different way. They're telling you what to do. You don't you don't try to tell them what to do, they'll tell you how they want to be thrown. You know, the person who is being transferred is going to tell us what they need. Are we listening? You know, are are we listening to what they are telling us about how they want to be transferred? Do they want to sit by the television a little longer? Are they bored with the television? Or, you know, right. Have we removed the sources of agitation before we try to do? So I think it's a a really holistic problem. Um, kind of like I think martial arts is a really holistic solution. It's a model that we can use that gives us insight into the conflict that's happening or just how to how to ease transitions like that.

SPEAKER_00

33:10

This has been very, very interesting. Uh and it's it's very enlightening too because it is in some ways it's so simple, but yet it's so important. Again, it goes back to, like you said, trying to get into that person's space, you know, try to eliminate the conflict with it, and also to take care of the caregiver, too, when you're doing these, these types of things. So we will definitely put all of your websites on here so people can check it out and hopefully get in contact with you. Sign up for your if you're a home caregiver, sign up for that because you don't want to break your back. Because if you're hurt, you can't take care of your loved ones for that. So thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03

33:52

Absolutely. It's a real pleasure. Thank you, Lisa.

SPEAKER_00

33:55

So I hope everybody has enjoyed your cup of coffee, your cup of tea, your glass of wine. And just remember, please leave us a review, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and hopefully you'll just know you are not alone. And join us for another edition of Patty's Place.