Q. Dear Donna: I am a physical therapist who specializes in working with paraplegics. I have noticed that some of my patients are homolateral. I do not know how to help them correct this with such limited mobility?
A. I think I tell the story in Energy Medicine about how very early in my career I was teaching a class in a retirement home and one of the men was paralyzed on one side of his body from a stroke. By beginning to imagine doing some of the exercises that involve having the energies cross over from one side of the body to the other, he regained movement on the paralyzed side. This amazed everyone, especially him, and it gave him a whole new sense of power and purpose in his life as he had been very active before his stroke and had become utterly depressed with the paralysis.
By now I have done this dozens of time with people who are unable to physically do the exercises, and frequently with impressive results. You can teach your patients to use their minds to do the homolateral cross-over (pp.250-52) and the cross crawl (pp. 80-4). You can do the Rhythmic 8's (p. 202) in front of them and have them follow the exercise with their eyes. If they have any mobility in the upper body, you can have them do figure eights and Celtic weaves, and imagine the energies moving in the same way in their lower bodies. Understanding the principle that the mind can move energies will open you to many creative uses of the techniques with your patients.
Also you can, yourself, do the homolateral routine ‘to’ them by picking up their legs and their arms, while they are resting.
More power to you and to them!
This video by, EEM Advanced Practitioners, Janie Chandler and Laurel Camden, demonstrates a fantastic technique for homolateral repatterning that can be used with paraplegics.