My dad turns 88 this August. He taught me a lot of things about living a good life. He says having a project that you're passionate about keeps you vital. He lives with my mom in Big Bear Lake, California in the dream home they had built at the edge of the San Bernardino national forest overlooking the beautiful lake below.

For years the canyon outside the back deck was a tumble of brambles, trash and discarded odds and ends. Kind of a dump. It was really too steep to walk down. In the winter my husband sometimes dared to take the kids sledding down the sheer drop and everyone worried that they'd hit some buried barbed wire or worse.

But in his 80's, my dad, Fritz, has completely transformed what we now call Poppy's Perfect Canyon. He's pulled out bags and bags and bags of trash, cut back branches and hauled out dead shrubs. My dad dug yards and yards of pathways and lined them with rocks he relocated with care. He created a series of platforms and put benches and chairs about so you can meditate and pray with the gentle wind high in the pine trees overhead and the sparkling water below. Sometimes a coyote sits nearby and watches him work.

An amazing feat for anyone, no matter their age!

Earlier this year Fritz experienced sudden ankle pain and went to see his doctor. His doc said, "If you'd come to see me five years ago I would have predicted this bone on bone pain. You've worn away all of your cartilage. The only thing I can do for you now is give you a brace."

My dad wore the brace and even used a walker for a while. It was awful to see him in such pain and unable to work in his perfect canyon.

When I was home in May, he let me do an assessment of his feet. Of course, I knew he had extremely high arches but you'd be surprised how reticent your loved ones are to let you analyze them when you're a movement therapist.

I determined that he overuses his flexor hallucis brevis muscle and underuses ankle flexion to propel himself during the gait cycle. Which means when he walks he pushes off with his incredibly strong big toes and has very little mobility in his ankles. When I asked him to make circles with his ankles it was clear he'd never even thought about moving his ankle around like that. Without movement, joints become dry and cartilage wears away over time.

Luckily, my dad has an off-the-charts high pain threshold and has discovered that when he continues his regular daily movements (instead of keeping still) his ankles remain mobile enough to ward off the pain that keeps him from working in his canyon, his happy place.

I don't know if he does any of the toe stretches and mobility exercises that I gave him. Probably not. But I feel certain that if he'd done even a few minutes a day in his 70's he'd have kept more of his cartilage.

One of the main motivators of my movement practice over the years has been fending off the seemingly inevitable knee replacement surgery I thought I was headed for. My grandmother, my aunt and my father all had double knee replacements and my older sister is hoping to schedule hers to alleviate pain in her knees.

So far I'm good. In fact, I have almost none of the knee pain I had most of my life due to poor alignment.

My passion project is making sure as many people as possible stay out of pain and stay vital and fully involved in all the things they want to do into their old age.

I created Summer Shift to help you determine the simple shifts you need to make now to make sure you'll stay active and full of ease and joy all through your life.

I hope you'll join me!

With love, Kristen

p.s. I'm practically electrified with excitement at the prospect of talking to you about your challenges. Please, please set up a chat to tell me all about it. This course might not be the exact right thing for you, but I hope it is.

Here's the link to my schedule: https://ScheduleachatwithKristen.as.me/​

p.p.s. Summer Shift is a 6 week online group exploration guided by me. We'll move up the body week to week starting at the feet and discover your tension patterns/weaknesses and build new easy flexibility/strength to keep you feeling your best. There's also a weekly Q&A so I can give you specific feedback about your experience and create mini-exercise sequences just for you. Plus a weekly dance party so we can move the parts we've been thinking about in a fun and creative way (no pressure to dance if that's not your thing, but you might astound yourself!)

psst.... schedule a call.....

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