By Charly SHELTON

May is Stroke Awareness month. Strokes can happen at any time to anyone who has risk factors for blood clotting. High blood pressure is a key factor, as are cholesterol levels and a person’s level of regular activity. Experts agree that the best stroke treatment is stroke prevention; however, if a person does suffer a stroke there are ways to recover.

“It changed my attitude a lot because, when people ask what it’s like having a stroke, I say it’s like being hit by a Mack truck. It hits on the physical level, the emotional level and the mental level. A lot of the physical therapists say, ‘There’s only so much you can do,’” said Alan Lamb, Wing Chun master and Chi Gung healer. “But my message is there’s a lot you can do, especially if you go into alternative systems to improve the measured movement, the complexity of movement and the rebuilding of neural pathways.”

Lamb was just beginning a program working with stroke patients to use the energy work of Chi Gung to help aid their physical therapy when he himself was afflicted with a TIA (transient ischemic attack), which is a small stroke. He lost the use of his right side and his legs in the stroke and had to put his skills to use on himself to regain mobility. His doctor said he may recover in four to five years, based on the amount of damage done, and to not expect much before then. A year later, though, Lamb was walking and had shed the right-side paralysis. He credits his recovery being much quicker than what was thought possible as due to a combination of regular physical therapy and the energy meditations and physical exercises of Chi Gung.

“My upper body is completely rebuilt but my legs are still a problem. I’m still going to physical therapists and neurologists, and they all say because of the way the brain is connected to the legs, and the legs are weight-bearing, they’re generally the last things to recover. So I still have good days and bad days with my legs but my upper body – I got rid of the paralysis and the fine points of Wing Chun, I think, were the most important part,” Lamb said. “These exercises are called Chi Gung and they’re for building neural pathways and improving the fine motion of the hands. It gets fairly complicated because you start with one hand, then two hands. It’s just like a kid playing basketball – if they only dribble with the right hand then they’re going to be beaten by the other player because they’re not able to defend on both sides. The same thing happens with stroke training; you have your good hand and you have your bad hand, and people gravitate to using the good hand. Consequently, the bad hand gets worse because it’s not being used. With these exercises, you can actually train the body to do the exercise with the good hand and then the good hand can teach the bad hand how to do it to the point where the bad hand can be almost as good as the other side. It’s just about building the number of repetitions.”

Lamb has noticed from experience, and his doctors agree, that the patient’s attitude is the most important aspect of recovery. While the exercises in both physical therapy and in Chi Gung are helpful, the patient needs to keep a positive attitude to do them over and over to get the benefits. Some estimates say the exercises need to be done 10,000 to 20,000 times each to rebuild the neural pathways that were damaged in the stroke and allow for free, voluntary motion again.

Lamb noted that is why stroke recovery can be challenging – people “want a quick recovery without doing a lot of work.”

“Once they see how much work is involved, a lot of them get discouraged,” he said.

A neurologist Lamb was working with pointed out that getting people motivated is more important than the exercises themselves.

“The exercises are great but without the motivation people won’t use them,” Lamb said.

For more information or to find out about any ongoing stroke rehabilitation treatments with Alan Lamb, visit his website AlanLambWingChun.com.

  Charly Shelton