GRATE GROOVE Group in Grand Junction, Colorado

Dear Mardy & Grate Group,

The initial meeting was a great experience for me.  It was motivating and encouraging to gather with dedicated, willing and enthusiastic health care providers.  People who want to develop a collaboration with the intent and our local community in providing care to people with fibromyalgia.

It's an honor to be a part of this, and I look forward to learning and contributing.

Please look for items Bryce contributes at Lumigrate.com: The link to his first piece (about Active Release Technique and Fibromyalgia) is at: http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/helping-fibromyalgia-active-release-techniques-chiropractic-manual-therapy-part-1

I'm so happy to be a part of this new momentum. It's holds much promise!

Paula Anderson

I encourage people to write aht Paula has contributed to the Food forum in the nutrition section at Lumigrate's forum area, the link to one of the pieces (re: eating goals for the new year) for your ease is: http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/mindful-eating-2011-and-beyond
 

And I'm happy to be in it:)

Please find what Kohava has written on Lumigrate.com's forums.  Her piece about YogaDance/Dancing Butterflies is in the Movement Therapies forum and is at this link FYEase: http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/yogadancedancing-butterfliesdance-though-no-one-watching-healing-inside-out-through-danceby-ko

Mardy,

I really admire your mission of bringing awareness about FM to the community and beyond! I connected with you from a space in my heart that also has a mission...to bring the best health food to schools, hoping consequentely to affect better statistics of health in U.S.

I would like to give my support to you in your mission through yoga, health and wellness coaching.

I loved Deirdre Rawlings book, "Food That Helps Win the Battle Against Fibromyalgia", and this ignated me to set a cooking class for FM. If anybody would be interested please let me know!

www.integrativewellnesstoday.com [15] , 970-683-0166        Monica Cullinane

I also have another person that does Bowen Theraapy interested in coming for our next meeting!

And thank you for the core group for your willingness to get involved in the program, Mardy, of course, Bryce, Paula, Analli and Kohava.

This is a "seed" group of practitioners which has potential to be a great catalyst for fostering access and success for individuals' paths to health and independence.    

I believe that providing information and "tools" for management of pain and other symptoms of diagnosed illness can provide continuity and support for individuals, especially those who have FM. 

Please find Analii's contribution about 'functional wisdom' and 'female pelvis wisdom' in the Movement Therapies forum here at Lumigrate. For your ease, the link is: http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/restoring-functional-wisdom-female-pelvic-wisdom

Some of us were able to meet on Tuesday the 15th and some on  Wed the 16th; Kohava Howard lead a small group of DIVERSE abilities in YogaDance on the 15th -- Gwen (PT and life coach), me (OT and health care navigator) and Helen (elder 'fibromyalgia barometer')...  all enjoyed and came away inspired in their own way. I mostly had the 'aha' that in a mixed group of people who have fibromyalgia if you say 'stop when you need to, pace yourself', THAT is what got us into this health situation in the first place -- we're overachievers, we don't know when to quit!  So with people with fibromyalgia it's perhaps best to teach to the level or your most delicate person and not let them know that's what you're doing. 

The conversation gravitated to Acutonics, and it turns out we knew of one or the other local providers of this interesting and sensible therapy and the two providers are located right across the parking lot from each other!  So I've started approaching them about having the next meeting be about them.

Then today, Wednesday, Monica Cullinane, Gwen Pettit, Paula Anderson and I got together to meet over a health lunch at Spoons, the healthy and wholesome and OH SO GOOD restaurant in the Hospice and Palliative Care of Western Colorado care facility's lower level.  Busy at 11:30 and full at noon, it's so impressive to see what good quality and innovative thinking can do in a community.  The health coaches agreed that it is helpful for each of them to have a health coach so they're all connected... I'll post a photograph of them sharing the PeaceFleece Yenta sent us for fibromyalgia awareness in front of the hospic on this bright, warm mid February day. 

I get the sense from this group that things are gellin'! Maybe it's things like Analii calling first thing this morning saying she wouldn't be able to attend today but she wanted us to have something from her -- and she sent BEAUTIFUL TSHIRTS for all of us.  Long sleeved, creative works of art and LOVE.  Everyone is so giving and 'communal' -- thoughtful... and the common denominator is the PASSION is to help people who can benefit from what each provider specializes in.  

To Grand Junction.... the Groove is out there, and we can't wait to see where we all go together! ~~ Mardy

Here's a copy of what I wrote about in the PeaceFleece 'stream' in the Fibromyalgia Awareness Forum here at Lumigrate.

You've maybe read in another area on Lumigrate about the "Grate Groove of Grand Junction" Lumigrate is pulling together to grow into a bigger and bigger circle of providers that will have a 'groove' from one to the  other because of spending some quality time learning about what the other does and gradually growing with other committed individuals.  Since one of Lumigrate's core concerns is chronic illness along the chronic fatigue syndrome/ fibromyalgia spectrum, that is what we're focusing on FIRST.  And that's what the PeaceFleece is about as well .. Fibromyalgia Awareness 2011 via Lumigrate.  So it came together this week!  

With a foundation to start from this year of 'Mardy's List of Providers' in the Grand Valley area (see link at bottom/below), which I began preparing as needs and questions emerged in 2010, and integrating progressive providers such as the two pictured here -- Gwen Pettit (life coach forum contributor 'virtually' able to work with remote clients via technology) and Monica Cullinane (yoga instructor and life coach with new website and business,  Integrative Wellness Today, with national/international reach and focus on nutrition and foods), we're getting things going very nicely.  GRATEly you might say! Groovy, eh?

Please notice the fun shirt Monica is wearing -- that's an original work of art by Grate Groove's Analii Cunningham, who wasn't able to make the meeting but set us up with shirts with peace sign flowers to complement the PeaceFleece theme as well as Monica's community/school garden project at Wingate Elementary.  I'm finding this a tremendously easy group to move along with in such rapid fashion, most likely because of everyone's common viewpoints about collaboration in order to make an impact on medicine and health today, as well as the abundant passion related to their working aspect of it. 

I wish to thank everyone for getting this going so well. We're going with where the interest and conversations take us and that brought us around to sound therapy we hope for the next meeting.  And Monica already has a class outlined and targeted for late March related to cooking and foods related to fibromyalgia and fatigue. More on that in the Forums when we get exact information.

And we thank the Hospice and Palliative Care of Western Colorado for having worked so hard for so many years to have made the wonderful space which serves so many in the community, including us at their Spoons restaurant where we met this beautiful winter day for a lunch meeting! Still like having that fleece on outside!  ALWAYS wanting to have peace! Continue thanking Yenta for the blanket for FUNdraising ~~ Mardy

Link to the Mardy's List (for W. Colorado BUT there also is a topic on how I went about the detective work on it for others in the rest of the country): www.lumigrate.com/forums/health-issuesdis-eases/healthy-communities-referrals-ideas-more/mardys-list-providers-your-re [21]

Link to the Forum on Fibromyalgia Awareness, where you'll see the Yenta/PeaceFleece for 2011 listed and the MANY popular topics covered in the last year.  www.lumigrate.com/forums/health-issuesdis-eases/fibromyalgia-chronic-pain-and-chronic-fatigueexhaustion/awareness-outr [22]

The first person to hop up at the initial meeting of the Grate Group of 'starters' was Monica Cullinane, 'getting it' about the collaborative nature of the Grate Groove and the gestalt of fibromyalgia related to nutrition.  As a life coach as well as yoga instructor (Adacemy of Yoga in downtown Grand Junction), combined with certification in integrative nutrition, she was wanting to do include fibromyalgia in her cooking class series.  It was titled "Inflammation Vacation" since it was spring break timeframe, and you can follow the link below to read about it AND see how ITC Compounding and Natural Wellness Pharmacy hopped in to answer questions that I had to build upon things I learned in the class. 

Since it's difficult to do classes for people with fibromyalgia because of their vascilating ability levels and frequent need to no-show/postpone, the course was broadened to be about inflammation. 

www.lumigrate.com/forum/spring-inflammation-vacation-cooking-alleviate-fibromyalgia-arthritis [24]

She also co-presented with Christopher Lepisto, ND related to detoxification and cleansing on April 4 at Academy of Yoga to a really impressive group of health seekers, continuing the collaborative process of health education surrounding the Groove participants and hopefully making it a bigger and 'deeper' provider/information source on Lumigrate.com and in the Grand Valley of western Colorado. 

Naturally, I had brought the Peace Fleece Yenta sent me last holiday season to promote fibromyalgia awareness through it's soft and warm ways, as it does, so have this photo to share here.  (For more about the Peace Fleece, the Awareness forum in the Fibromyalgia Section of the Forums is where you may find it's WHOLE adventure!).   

 I recommend people search on Lumigrate.com for the word "Lepisto" -- videos x3 of various lengths and complete seminars on detoxification and cleansing as well as food allergies and the full barrel concept of health / illness which is so helpful a visual/concept.  His fibromyalgia-specific piece is a podcast / teleseminar he did with Cinda Crawford which I put in the Top Picks on Lumigrate because I so value his input on naturopathic approaches to FMS.  That link is: http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/my-interview-naturopathic-med... [25]

Knowing that the March meeting of Collective Health Initiatives would coincide with spring break as well as falling on St Patrick's Day, I went ahead and volunteered to present because it was the perfect timeframe for Lumigrate and the Grate Groove to be having even just a few more people understanding what we're about.

I was very pleased when the first comment was from CHI founder, Cindy Schmidt, MPT, who saw that this could be a model for other particular health issues.  I'd like nothing MORE than to see the Grate Groove make wonderful connections and inroads with health care related to Lumigrate's initial concentration of users (fibromyalgia and fatigue) and expand out, just as the information on Lumigrate.com is 'morphing'. 

CHI formed about the same time that Lumigrate launched and it's really been interesting to me at meetings to hear Cindy report on things and the discussions and realize that organizations parallel each other on the timeline.  At two years CHI became a nonprofit trade association and Lumigrate had brought a nation-wide provider of information, prescriptions, and products related to nutrition and hormone supplementation.  I served Greens First since it was St Patrick's Day, a product I purchase at ITC, and let everyone know their first podcasts were being edited and would be available as a resource for our second birthday.  Then everyone wanted to share some Yenta Peace Fleece together. 

Paulie Stifler, Cindy Schmidt, and Kohava Howard wrap up and Cindy 'fits in' as they laugh about her squatting to be their petite height. 

Newest CHI member, #222 I believe, Carolyn Lampshire, LE with Mardy Ross of Lumigrate, keeper of the 'Peace Fleece'.   

I'm really looking forward to all the fabulous things we can create together with this kind of group; thank you for including me, it's a real honor and I'm looking forward to more learning (and fun, as it's been fun too.)

To wellness in western Colorado and beyond

Carolyn

I snapped this photo of one of our 'core group gatherings' of the Grate Groove of the Grand Valley.  The Grate Groove was designed to have a handful or two of providers initially get to know each other and what we do professionally in the formative months ...  "cross pollination" I call it. 

The next step is to reach out to others who have an interest and ability in the fibromyalgia population and who will participate in collaborative and ethical ways if doing valid treatments/education with people, both allopathic and 'progressive' or complementary/alternative.  On this occasion Analii was able to arrive at the start of our scheduled time and present about Pelvic Wisdom, and Bryce arrived when he was finished up with his morning patients and showed us the type of core exercises he has historically prescribed (he keeps things VERY simple and straightforward, and people appreciate that).   Then he and Analii really lead us in a thought-provoking conversation about the whats and whys. 

Carolyn and Kohava reminded me how many people have fallen in the past and hurt their spine/tailbone and just HOW prevailant other pain conditions are -- so it was really a very 'information hungry' small group. Since Lumigrate is about integrative medicine and has an initial core of followers interested about fibromyalgia, we've started with FMS and will expand into other areas as the demand and our resources to cover allow.   These are rewarding moments coming from the Grate Groove, as people ARE collaborating about challenging patients and therefore the consumers are getting to receive the benefits of this 'Grate Groovy Group', and it's growing in topics and providers and being known about as a resource in the community. 

If providers can understand fibromyalgia, they can also be understanding and being of more benefit to about 20% of the population who are 'on the continuum' right now of having the condition.  For example, someone might attend a PT session, yoga class, exercise class and not come back if it flares them up -- the providers don't know that's why they didn't come back oftentimes, so they don't learn that someone with FMS can look like they're keeping up with a class or exercise routine and then really 'suffer the effects afterwards'. 

When I first started having a stream of people with FMS coming to me as an outpatient OT (meaning they had insurance to pay the very high costs of insurance-based, allopathic medicine as I was doing at the time), I'd ask as part of my assessment if they ever had PT or other similar services and they typically said 'yes, but I didn't go back because they only made it worse'. 

When I looked into what was going on, I found that PTs are so 'set up to function around orthopedic injuries' with younger people, they didn't drop the level of exercise down and it came from a lack of education about what fibromyalgia is and how to treat it.  Lumigrate was created to solve that gap -- consumers more than likely will find it and Lumigrate encourages people to be the YOU in control and take information to providers surrounding you. 

If providers are better educated and aware and they scan, screen, talk to and ask more questions of their clients, patients/consumers, 'customers' --  they might figure out together they're in a precarious position with their health and be referred to resources such as Lumigrate or another provider in the Grate Groove which is 'just what the doctor ordered', except in our case it doesn't have to be a 'doctor'.... in this picture the only one with a "D" is Bryce Christianson, DC.  However, in the future, I hope EVERY provider of services applicable to health care from aestheticians and hair stylists to those with "D" after their names are aware of the Grate Groove and the resources available through Lumigrate to direct people to the service providers and information appropriate for them.  I routinely provide guidance to people of where and who to look at on Lumigrate (or elsewhere) and can do so for in depth, private sessions as well at a reasonable charge related to the 'occupation of health care' as some people are as in need of that as having professional assistance with income taxes, for instance. (Or they can find everything at Lumigrate.com on their own if they chose that route.) 

What I've learned so far from the Grate Groove's three months of existence in my community, is that there are many providers who say 'I was thinking I might have a little bit of fibromyalgia stuff going on' or 'now that you've told me what the contributors are, I realize I was having (this symptom) in the past and took care of it by (doing what they knew to do to correct it, such as diet or other lifestyle changes).  That is not surprising, as everyone is running around like crazy and very busy PLUS keeping up on the computer and phone with communications, which seem to be increasingly time consuming and boggled lately for everyone, requiring more late nights and things which contribute to adrenal fatigue.

I commend the Grate Groove for taking time every month to come together, learn, settle and, as you can see, 'hang out' comfortably with some time and space together to do that 'cross pollination'.  I particularly thank Analii for always saying 'yes' when asked to teach/further education and to have immediately done problem-solving by learning what it was with my body due to the fibromyalgia (hightened sensation about pain/pressure) and ordering a thinner yoga block to adapt with something a bit cushioning yet providing the support required for the unique work she has created.  Which as I have said over and over, has been extremely beneficial to me and solved a lot of 'problems' with pain and the structure of my body in just a few sessions!  Permanent solutions I believe, which can be maintained easily by working my body in the way she teaches instead of some things that have perhaps contributed to probems in the past, or just the accumulation of 'stuff' you 'hold onto' with your body. 

I'm looking forward to MORE from this group -- by the way, by the time the block arrived I was able to use the usual ones, allowing that block to be used by others when they begin, if they have similar pain sensitivity.  Then that might lead Analii to refer the person to learning at Lumigrate or through other qualified resources and providers and potentially solve problems before they get out of hand.  Or IF they're out of hand already, get them back 'in hand'.  And THAT is how the Grate Groove is going to help people enormously as time goes on, more and more.

As always, thanks to Monica Cullinane of Integrative Wellness Today and Academy of Yoga for providing the beautiful space for us for the meeting shown below in this photograph.  ~~ Mardy

Carolyn Lampshire, Analii Cunningham, Kohava Howard, Bryce Christianson at Academy of Yoga, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado, USA.  Owner Monica Cullinane got us set up and was off to educate at a local (and large) employer group's wellness program.  (Mid day, one mid-week, March 2011)

The concept with the Grate Groove is to create a group of providers in Grand Junction who are good at networking and marketing themselves and a 'concept', who will give of their time to learn and teach others about the chronic illness of CFS/FMS and who will refer ethically and do the right thing for the consumers, patients, clients and literally 'wear a groove' from one door to the other.  There's a nother organization in town called CHI/Collective Health Initiatives that has been formulating for two years and has attracted a lot of providers who are coming together to form a nonprofit it turns out, then go for finding funding and get a building -- at least that is their vision and intention.  In the mean time, I saw a subset withing the group plus other people I know of who I thought would work nicely together.  Below is our FIRST picture of Paule Stifler after she agreed to hop into the Groove with us!  Just like Lumigrate's content, our content providers are more likely to show up and come back if we have FUN, so that's what we do!  We look forward to each person reaching out to tell someone who fits with the above 'intention' our Grate Groove has. 

Mardy Ross, Paule Stifler (pronounced Paul-ee), Gwen Pettit after skin maintenance during the week, keeping covered up since Mardy's not so good at photoshop, Carolyn Lampshire.  Right: Gwen cracking us UP!