A Sacred Space
I used to argue with my instructors when they would talk to us about “protecting our energy.” I used to say, “What the patients take is what they will take. I will just make more. I eat right, I sleep right, and I exercise.” I think that mindset got me pretty far in my early days as a physical therapist. But like all the people out there who are lucky enough to say they are lucky enough to have gotten to whatever age they are, I find myself doing what I need to do in order to protect myself while caring for and guiding my patients to a better quality of life. I think therapists call it boundary setting, or something like that . . . I like to read a lot about the world of clinical psychology, because I believe there is a lot of crossover into physical therapy. After all, one cannot separate their head from their body. There’s a superhighway running between the two: brain to body and back again. Here’s a simple example: when a person stubs their toe really badly, why do t...