Video Clips and Commentaries

Look at those thin little legs and fleshless bum. I looked paralysed then. Now I have people say, noticing the wheelchair after I've been speaking to them for some time, “So are you paralysed then? You don't look it.” I still have to gain more muscle mass but my legs and bum have just changed so much and so many people have said so.

I'm lifting my bum to help get more of the pull. This changes over time, so that the legs take over. All the time, the idea of control is being reinforced. My stomach muscles were the first thing to really change. Where the lower ones had become soft and flabby and not at all helpful or controlling in balance and strength, they soon connected and strengthened, as have the muscles in my lower back. All essential stuff.

You can see greater strength in the push than the pull. It is, however, a push and not simply a flop with the hoist carrying the legs down. The last bit of this is quite impressive, I think. It may not be all organised, but I remember the day he first lowered my legs right down and took the harness off and I managed what you are seeing now. It was a massive achievement, one I had been working towards for some time.
Often, when I am struggling to do something - as here trying to get legs flat down on the table - he gives an instruction or tells me to tense a particular part, and I'll find it happens. It's a curious thing, because I don't think about his instruction, but rather it goes straight in, my brain processes it and causes the correct reaction. My initial session was made up of an almost hypnotic mediation with him talking to me, giving my brain sets of instructions (I don't remember what) and he has had a direct connection since - not in a scary or taking me over way! But in a way that means I respond and achieve in situations like this one you are seeing.