So, Joan Lombardi, Joan tell us first a little bit about yourself. You can look at me or
you can look at this camera, either one. These are the two people you're talking about.
Okay.
So Joan, number one, you've been a dancer all your life.
Yes, I've been a dancer since I was, since I can remember.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, and currently you're a choreographer.
I'm a choreographer and an architectural designer.
Right. So in your choreography, you are in essence a dance teacher and a stylist.
For what group here?
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, I teach the advanced classes at the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet.
Right.
I choreograph on them and then I choreograph on different groups in Santa Fe of former
professional dancers who still want to do it.
Yes.
So, and then your other work is as a high-end landscape architect.
Yes, I also do landscape architecture.
Yes, right. So just to go back to the dancing for a minute, I know that this is your love
passion and until you came here, you had some discomfort, some pain in your neck with that
work.
Right. I had, well, it was two years ago, I was lifting my mother, who was 101 at the
time, out of an airplane seat where she had been sitting for five hours without moving
and she couldn't get up. And it was wintertime, I put a 45-pound backpack, Christmas presents
in the backpack, and I put my coat on and the backpack and went behind her and reached
over the seat to get her behind her armpits.
Yes.
And as I lifted her, the backpack whipped off to one side and I got whiplashed in my
neck.
Right. And then see what it felt like?
And then because it was a situation of her decline starting to happen after that point,
I focused totally on her and I was not paying attention because being a dancer, I always
healed very quickly and it was no longer true for me. I will be 75 this year and my body
has changed. It's not a 25-year-old anymore. That could always do whatever it wanted to
do and function really well.
So you put off care a little bit.
I put off care for a year and a half.
And then she passed away?
Yes, she passed away and I did physical therapy for several months and it would work for a
little bit of time, 20 minutes or half an hour or something and then it would lock in
again.
And describe the, I mean, I know stiffness, lack of range of motion is something that was
part of it and you're still going to be needing to work on that, but part of it was just pain.
Just pain and inability to move my head at all. I mean, it became very obvious relative
to driving a car. I mean, I could not turn my head. It was dangerous for me and that
was really the motivation to seek out better help.
Okay, so I think we've had seven sessions today. We just finished the seventh planting
of new collagen in the ligaments and tendons surrounding your neck together with some nerve
blocks that help to kind of reboot the nerves and ameliorate the pain and say some things
about the progression of how some of that stuff went.
Well, the first time I felt a little bit of improvement, the first PRP therapy, it wasn't
major, but I wasn't expecting major and I was encouraged when you kept telling me,
keep moving, you know, when you leave here, go for a walk kind of thing.
So, I continued my teaching, my demonstrating. I mean, I was hindered to a certain extent,
obviously, because I had been dealing with an incredible instrument that was injured.
Certainly, the second and the third, again, a treatment had a little bit of improvement,
but nothing major. The fourth was more. I had much more improvement.
And then the fifth, I had a down time. I had a down time. I went back east for Christmas
and it really sort of locked up again the neck. It wasn't that it was more pain, it was
that it was less range of motion and restriction.
And when I came back, within a week, I had another PRP therapy and it helped.
And I tried to explain to you that there are other factors in life always.
Right.
You have this principle of holistic medicine that means there's many parts to the whole.
Right.
And one of them is the environment and dampness will make some people sensitive.
And you were on Long Island.
I was surrounded by water.
Surrounded by water.
And more humid and cool.
Cold and damp.
Cold and damp.
Cold and damp.
Cold and damp situation.
And one of the principles of Chinese medicine, which is instrumental in helping us understand
these things, is that we are one with our environment.
And that if we don't somehow perfectly assimilate the fluids, the dampness in our bodies, we
can be bitten by an increase in the cold and damp weather.
Right.
Because there's a continuum from inside the body to outside the body.
Right.
And that was something you experienced.
I think just, at least, I hope that knowing and understanding that was illustrative, that
it's not just negative in a kind of monolithic sense, that there are these other factors.
And there are some possible natural medicines to take if you are, again, forced to be in
that situation.
Although, you said that you went back to Long Island last week.
And you did well.
Right.
It was just incredibly different.
Okay.
Incredibly different.
And you did not experience any of the pain or the restrictions or the stiffness.
Right.
So we're finishing here now, and that's why we're documenting this in this little video.
And, but it's not done.
You, as I explained in the fitness page on the website, we fixed some of the tougher
tissues, ligaments, tendons.
And they're critical and core, but they're still the muscles.
And as you already know, because you know Feldenkrais method, it's a neuromuscular system.
It's a very sophisticated system of signaling, plus muscle development, plus muscle loosening.
Right.
And so there's lots of work for you to do.
You're going to do it with some osteopathic manipulation and with some physical therapy
that's grounded in Feldenkrais method.
Right.
You, because you already know that method, I referred you to a physical therapist that
will work in that methodology.
So there's still plenty to do.
Absolutely.
And there's a lifetime of life to live.
And a lot of dancing to do.
Exactly.
Very good.
Well, congratulations on being able to dance now without pain.
Yes.
Thank you.
All right.
That's perfect.
We're done.
Let's go.
