Thank you for joining me!

To introduce myself I'm going to begin with a story. I've long considered myself to be Dorothy traveling down the Yellow Brick Road, but have recently realized that the metaphor goes even deeper. The first character Dorothy meets is the Scarecrow and he wants to ask the Wizard to give him a brain. The first 30 years of my life contained a bunch of education and years of working in hospitals as a physical therapist, and I consider that time to be the development of my brain. The second character she met was the Tin Woodsman and he wanted a heart. I went to Hawaii and started a farm and ranch and that began my connection to the Earth. I also began my spiritual journey, and part of that was through touch. Wherever I went I touched people physically, starting several outpatient physical therapy departments and treating patients even when I was the head of physical therapy departments in hospitals. Through touch I found a deeper connection and communication with people in the second thirty years of my life. That was the development of my heart. The third character was the Cowardly Lion and he wanted to find his courage. I've considered myself to be an introvert throughout most of my life, and now it seems to be my time to move into a new way of being, my courage.

There have been three words that describe me. The most obvious is motion and movement. Physical therapists are all about motion. We study any physical system that impacts movement - musculocutaneous, nervous, and circulatory. We use any physical means except drugs to help motion, and this includes water. I love to work in 95 degree water because it relaxes muscles and lessens the compression on weight-bearing joints.

Another aspect of my personality is that I've been a life-long learner. One of the main things I love to study is human consciousness, which to me means the awareness of what is around us. The proliferation of TV programs such as the Ghost Whisperer, Medium and the Mentalist are indications of that the world around us is expanding. More and more people are becoming aware of another level of awareness. My consciousness has expanded through touch when I feel things in bodies that aren't always physical. I credit another expansion to Angela Mattey who taught me how to table tip. The table actually tips once for no and twice for yes in response to questions asked.

The third word has been touch which I've mentioned before. Something magical, almost mystical happens when I do my hands-on work.

Conservatively, I've treated 130,000 people in my career. Many of them have been post operative knee and hip replacement patients. While there are some new drugs out for rheumatoid patients, joint replacement has been the main solution for osteoarthritis which is ten times the more common. I have been researching non-drug, non-surgical solutions for this type of arthritis, driven by the pain I occasionally experience. I would like to reach more people and prevent pain rather than rehab them one-on-one. The human body is miraculous, designed always to heal itself. My belief is that there must be natural solutions to help it heal osteoarthritis. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could dance into our later years without pain and doing the things that make life more meaningful and joyful? That's my quest.