HeadEast: Assisting individuals with an acquired brain injury to be more independent and involved in their chosen community

Issue 59 Autumn 2014

"Farewell" to HeadEastBy Jim Pescud

After more than nine years with HeadEast I have decided to retire from full time work.

Over recent years certain realities have made themselves known to me, in a real and personal way. Friends and close relations have died, others have become very ill.

There are things I wish to do in my life. When my ability to do

these things will end or when I may end, is a mystery. So, I’ve decided to make the move now. I’ll be doing some part time work but not a great deal. This will entail running Breathworks courses, which are based on mindful meditation, for those suffering from stress, chronic pain and illness. I will also be teaching mindfulness meditation on a one to one basis from time to time. Check out my Breathwork Australia web site below.www.breathworks-mindfulness.com.au

I have a desire to use the space I will now have to deepen my own meditation and spiritual practice. This will include going on more meditation retreats and increasing my daily practice.

I have had two lives with HeadEast. I worked here first from September 1998 to February 2002. A number of you I know remember this time. We were based at Ocean Street, Bondi.

The collective Community Education and Newsletter teams

Thank You LunchBy Craig Boulton

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The service had only been going for a few years. We had a good sized house with a large back yard. We certainly made excellent use of that space for BBQs and parties.

I was fortunate to be able to come back to HeadEast after three years in the UK living in Buddhist meditation retreat centres.

Through both these periods with HeadEast, I’ve enjoyed working with staff, clients and their families. Sometimes the work has been difficult but mostly I have found the relationships I have developed with clients and their families to be a gift.

It is rare that one is allowed into people’s lives to the extent we are in this type of work. I am grateful for the level of trust and openness that has come from clients and their families. This has been such a privilege.

I do hope I still get invites to some HeadEast events, like the Sports Picnic Day and the End of Year Party. I’ll be keeping my work mobile phone number, so give me a call from time to time so we can catch up for a cuppa.

I wish the staff, clients and their families all the very best. Farewell...

On the 29th of January, HeadEast held their annual Newsletter and Community Education teams Thank You Lunch. The lunch is put on by HeadEast to thank and honour the volunteers who participate to make these teams so great.

In attendance were HeadEast staff members: Scott, Vashti, Faina and Jim. The HeadEast client volunteers present were: Tony, Pat, Laya, Ash, Ed, Robert, Russell, Glenda, Eirene and Craig. We all gathered at a BBQ shelter at the Northern end of Coogee Beach.

It was a warm day but not too hot and we all had a nice lunch of fish and chips and a cool drink. It was then announced, surprisingly, that long time HeadEast staff member and facilitator of the Community Education team, Jim Pescud, will be retiring at the end of March. He will be missed.

Jim congratulating Ed on a job well done last year

By Scott Birdsell

2014 Peter HenryOutstanding News-letter Article Award

Quotes: By Russell Potter

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Please read more about Jim’s retirement in his article "Farewell" to HeadEast in this issue.

Then Jim, Scott and Faina presented the awards to the Newsletter and Community Education teams for the hard work and efforts they gave in 2013. Both teams have done an excellent job throughout 2013 and we are hoping 2014 will be the same, if not better. Well done to everyone.

HeadEast News is pleased to announce, Tony Wilmers as the recipient of the 2013 Peter Henry Outstanding News Letter Article Award, for his article Experiencing Ansel Adams: A Client Outing. Tony’s article appeared in the HeadEast News 2013 Summer edition issue #58.

Peter was a long time HeadEast News staff member who also served on the Community Education Team. Sadly, Peter passed away in 2011, his estate leaving a sum of money to his family. To recognize and honour what HeadEast had done for Peter over the years, Peter’s family made a donation to HeadEast from that sum.

HeadEast wanted to use the Henry’s donation in some way that might benefit its members and also honour the work that Peter was so passionate about at HeadEast. So we decided to set up The Peter Henry Outstanding Newsletter Article Award.

The award recognises achievement in a HeadEast Newsletter article, not so much how the article is written but more about what the article has to say in regards to living with an acquired brain injury.

“Give a man a fish and he has fish for a day: teach a man to fish and he has fish for a life-time”- Chinese Proverb

“All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”- Edmund Burke

Outing: Art GalleryBy Tony WillmersNSW

Scott Congratulating Tony

Quotes Continued:

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The recipient will receive a certificate and then have their name engraved on a plaque.

The award is selected by the Newsletter team choosing one article from each issue, usually the cover story and then at the end of the year voting on those four articles to select the winner of the award.

Congratulations Tony for writing an outstanding article!

HeadEast Coordinator Vince, my carer, Elizabeth and I were the only ones who turned up for the client outing in February to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Other HeadEast staff had called in sick that day, so Vince kindly stepped in. We were there to view the Australian Vernacular Photography Exhibition. It seemed I’m the only HeadEast client with a passion for black & white and art photography.

Many of the photographers represented in the exhibition I’ve crossed paths with over the years, with two of particular mention: William Yang and Robert MacFarlane. William and I were amongst twenty photographers in a Jan.-Feb. ‘96 exhibition entitled ‘Rage to See’ at a secondary space at the Opera House. The exhibition was named by my most frequent co-exhibitor in Australia and overseas: Emmanuel Angelicas.

For over two decades Robert MacFarlane was the revered Sydney Morning Herald’s weekly critic of Photography and he once submitted an article with a positive review of my B&W photos. A few years ago Robert had a stroke and about every two months we communicate online, he’s stated to me that we are connected through our disabilities.

The photos in the Vernacular exhibition were quite varied when

“It’s nice to have an open mind but not so open your brain falls out”- Richard Feyman

“Never argue with a fool: on-lookers may not be able to tell the difference”- Mark Twain

By Gerrit Fokkema, Blacktown man 1983, gelatin silver photograph, 30.6 ×

40.6 cm, purchased 1986 © Gerrit Fokkema

Eirene at her box.

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taken and not at all concerned with one subject matter. The exhibition depicts Australian culture and society as seen through the lens of some of the various formentioned photographers, 16 in total. The photos were taken from 1960 to 2000 tracking the change of what they viewed as a modern Australia. There are 27 photos in total, capturing scenes and people from urban and rural life, beach and hippie culture to the different identities of people, all whom call themselves Australian. I found the exhibition very good and compelling.

I’m sorry the outing was so poorly attended but if you want to see this free exhibition you still can as it runs until the 18th of May at The Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Below is one of the photos from the exhibition:

In recent times the community where I live has been able to set up a community garden. We were assisted by staff from the Royal Botanic Gardens Community Greening team and a group of university students affiliated with Working From the Ground Up (WFGU) project. Funding was provided by the NSW Government Environmental Trust in co-ordination with the Sustainable Actions Value Everyone program. Also contributing to the project is the use of the land by Housing NSW.

At this point, thanks should be given to the above mentioned organisations for their involvement and the opportunity given to us who benefit from working in the garden.

In the beginning the WFGU students called a meeting of

Community GardensBy Eirene Gibbs

Eirene in the community garden.

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residents at the Soldiers Settlement Housing Estate to determine what type of garden we wanted to establish. Eventually we decided to grow vegetables.

The garden itself consists of nine one metre square, raised wooden boxes, filled with soil. This was great because we seniors have difficulty bending over to touch our toes, so we appreciate the raised boxes to work in. Also included in the garden were several fruit trees. We have just harvested our first crop of apples. Completing the garden is an aluminium shed for tools, a compost bin and a new garden fence.

There are many benefits from growing our community garden but the first one that comes to mind is the wonderfully fresh produce. There is nothing as satisfying as going out to the garden and picking lettuce for a salad I’m making for lunch or picking fresh strawberries to nibble before they even get to the table! In our boxes we often grow different vegies and share some of them around among the other gardeners.

Another benefit is educational. We are learning composting, companion planting, seasonal planting, organic pest management and pruning, all adding to our environmental

awareness. Once a month, Phil, from the Botanical Gardens comes out to give us workshops in the garden and help us with questions that may have arisen, teaching us new skills.

This project has promoted a greater sense of community for those of us who have been involved in it. Often alienation and separation cause difficulties as we age and for those with disabilities. This project has given me a sense of empowerment, a fun activity to do with my neighbours and a sense of achievement. I feel that I and others have benefited greatly from this and want to encourage everyone to get involved in community projects. If you are interested in such things you can contact your local council.

By Jim Pescud

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I find driving on Sydney’s fast paced ‘take no prisoners’ road system a great place to see my patterns of thought and behaviour. It’s like a cognitive laboratory on tar.

A little time ago as I was driving to work and someone drove out in front of me from a Give Way sign. I swerved a little, just enough to avoid an accident. It was not a big deal for being on the road in peak hour.

I immediately felt a sense of, not quite anger, that’s too strong, but certainly annoyance and righteous indignation.

For whatever reason - probably due to an ongoing practice of mindfulness - I saw that my emotional response came not so much from the actions of the other driver as from my views regarding proper driving behaviour. I thought this driver should not have behaved this way. It then struck me that my opinions are the source of a reasonable amount of my reactivity. That is, the rules, beliefs, views - whatever word you wish to use - which I construct, then carry around in my head. When others don’t conform to my beliefs regarding ‘correct’ driving behaviour, political views, social etiquette or anything else at all really, then there can be a response from me. This is usually

a cascade of thoughts about how they should behave, and perhaps that they deserve a good ticking off.

How much negative emotional energy do we expend on being angry, righteously indignant and so on because others are not conforming to our views? How much of this is necessary? We can turn ourselves inside out with such emotions, but to what end?

It’s not just external events and other people that can result in our having negative emotions. Fear, depression and anxiety can also arise from our views and opinions of ourselves. We may think we should be good at doing certain things and judge that we are not very good at doing them. Or we may believe that we are not a ‘real man’ or ‘real woman’, that we don’t live up to our expectations, or those of others - that in modern terms we are a ‘loser’. When we are unmindful we have little, if any, choice about how we think and feel - we are like puppets dancing to the tune of our conditioned mind.

However, what if we didn’t think we needed to be good at a particular activity, or if we recognised that our theory about how to be a man or woman was no more than an opinion, coming from wherever - the media, our

Views - AConstruction Job

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parents or our spouse? What if we saw that these views had no more reality than any other type of energy wave passing through our mind? Well, there would be no grounds for feeling depressed or anxious. When we are not mesmerised by our thoughts we can see that ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are merely mental constructs.

(It must be noted here that the illness of clinical depression is more complicated than simply a relationship between thought and mood, though it is still a part of the mix.)

It is almost impossible to stop thoughts from arising, so there is no point in trying to do this. But anyway, we don’t need to stop thinking, we just need to see that through our thoughts we are constructing the reality we live in. We are in fact free to construct any view we want concerning ourselves and the world around us. However we don’t see we have such freedom because we have been so conditioned, so thoroughly trained, to believe in our thoughts.

We can respond to life without being caged by our views, rules and opinions. When we are able to do this life flows more easily. The world and everyone in it will still go on thinking and behaving as they do, but we will not have to feel the need to put them right

and we won’t have to put ourselves right - what a relief. Yes, we would need to respond in practical ways, such as swerving our car to avoid an accident, even bipping the horn or improving our own skills and abilities, if we choose to do so.

We can also bring choice to the emotional reactions in the body and the mind. Our emotions and our emotionally driven actions are not hardwired, we can train ourselves to bring them into the orbit of conscious decision making. We can calm these emotional reactions by being aware of the sensations in the body. We feel pressure in the body, heat rising up from the core and are aware of the story of ‘how dare they’, or ‘how hopeless am I’, which are the fuel for anger, righteous indignation and feelings of low self-worth. It is possible to feel these emotions arising, but make a mindful decision not to feed them by believing in the stories which carry them. When our emotions don’t have a vehicle to travel in - that is the story, the view, the opinion - then they simply self liberate, they dissolve. We need to bring a soft, kind hearted awareness to our body. Feel the emotions manifesting, be with the feeling of tightness in the abdomen, constriction in the chest or throat, stiffness in the neck, or wherever it is that your emotions

Jim and Gill in Wiltshire Crop Circle

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manifest. You are not attempting to rid yourself of such feelings - you are letting them play themselves out and are simply observing the process. You open to these, often uncomfortable sensations, keep releasing, letting the energy flow, letting thoughts fall away, over and over again. This is training in uncoupling yourself from the hold your thoughts and emotions have over you.

We may have trained ourselves, unknowingly, for most of our lives, to think and act in certain ways. But now we can train to change these ways of thinking, and more importantly, we can train to see through our thoughts rather than from our thoughts.

Mindfulness is awareness of the process of consciousness. When we are unmindful we are caught in the content of consciousness. When we are caught in the content of consciousness, we believe whole heartedly in our story, we then live via this story. So we are not living our life, we are living a story. What is this story? It is the product of our conditioning, the hook of habit, driven by fear. We fear letting go of our belief in thoughts, as if to do so would result in the very ground we stand on disappearing, causing us to free fall, tumbling down into nothingness. We hold onto our

thoughts, views and opinions like a person drowning in a raging river holds on to a low hanging tree branch. But this is more of the same, more of the mind constructing its reality and keeping us captive. If you don’t believe me, stand back and watch a couple of people expressing their opinions. Feel how much emotional energy is present. It is usually disguised, given a socially acceptable face of presentation, but the energy is there and it can feel like life or death for the participants at times. Haven’t we all been there?

There is no raging river, no low hanging branch either, there is just what is happening now, and now is not a thought about now. Open to this nowness by seeing through the mind’s constructed version of reality. You don’t need to react, you just need to be. Be the flow that life is - this is you, this is awareness.

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2014 Winter OlympicsEvery four years the Summer and Winter Olympic Games are held. Alongside these Games are the Paralympic Games for athletes with disabilities. You may remember my article on the Summer Paralympic games in London. This article is focused on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games just held from the 7th-23rd of February.

What I find interesting is the training and commitment that goes into becoming an Olympian. These athletes spend the better part of their lives training for an event which is over in minutes if not seconds. Their dedication is inspiring. Often times their professionalism, dedication and potential is rewarded with funding and sponsorships to help them with their training. When one looks at this, it is the dedication of people to keep striving for excellence in their chosen sport that make them so professional, even though as Olympians they are not paid. There are a number of lessons that one can learn from this. Mainly, being dedicated to a cause and having discipline, that we can achieve whatever we set our sights toward, including rehabilitating from acquired brain injury.

The games in Sochi are the first to be held in Russia since the disbanding of the USSR in 1991.

The Olympic park is located by the Black Sea coast in the Imperetin Valley about 4 km from the Russian border with Georgia.

There is a total of 98 events over 15 different sport disciplines, including several new disciplines, for example, ski and snowboard slope style. Both of which had Australians competing in them including 2010 snowboard gold medallist Tora Bright.

The 1st Winter Games where held in 1924 and took place in Chamond France. It is a far cry from those humble beginnings to the approximately 51 billion US dollars spent on these 2014 Winter Games, surpassing the estimated budget cost of 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, as the most expensive in history. Other interesting facts of the Olympics, are that the torch relay measured over 64,000 km in length with 14,000 torch bearers taking part in the torch relay. The torch relay visited the North Pole and the International Space Station. It is the longest torch relay in Olympic history. There were 88 nations competing this year at the games.

In closing, the 2014 Winter Olympics were hailed to be a great success, Australia winning three medals. I look forward to the 2014 Winter Paralympics at the time of writing this.

By Ed Mahony

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Long before the internet and social media exploded into our lives, it was very common practice for young adolescents to advertise in various publications for a pen pal. At one stage I had about five pen pals around the country and even one in Czechoslovakia. We corresponded for a while but these all disappeared over time.

At the time I was living in a little coastal village on the North Coast of NSW. My mother was a keen fisherwoman and often would go fishing on the beach. One night she returned home with her days catch and a surprise in the form of a bottle with a message in it. It said “I am sailing on the SS Mariposa. Please contact me... name & address supplied”. This was a very rare occurrence so it was with much excitement, my mother replied to the note.

It transpired that this man had been on a South Pacific cruise to Sydney from San Francisco, California with his wife and two daughters. As the ship crossed the equator, it was customary for passengers to perform the ritual of tossing a message in a bottle overboard if they wanted to. My mum found it. They exchanged details and it was revealed that they both had daughters of the same age (2 months apart). Naturally, Darlene and I became pen pals. We were prolific letter writers for many years.

A few years later I embarked on a round the world trip. First stop was San Francisco to meet Darlene and her family. I was their guest for a couple of weeks and she had baked a special cake in my honour. It was carrot cake which at the time was unknown to me. During that time we spent a few days in Disneyland and saw all the sights of San Francisco, including a ride on the famous cable car and a picnic up at the giant redwood tree forest, a few kilometres north of San Francisco. Darlene has been to Sydney several times since, twice with her husband and two grown-up children. We still keep in touch and have become very good friends over the years. We don’t write quite as much as we used to due to family commitments etc. but altogether we have been corresponding for 47 years.

Not only has this experience given me great pleasure, it has given me satisfaction in knowing somebody in a different country. We have exchanged ideas and learned more about each other’s culture. In the early days, we shared our lives with handwritten letters which sometimes could take 7 - 10 days to arrive. In the beginning of our friendship, I eagerly awaited the postman’s visits each day hoping there would be mail for me.

I feel these days we have lost the art form of handwritten letters with the advent of the internet and

Pen PalsBy Glenda Chapman

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email. It was more a personalized having a choice of nice stationery and writing style.

These days nobody waits for the postman, he only brings bills.

Lawn mowerEngine growlingChewing my grass.

Clock tickingMy time away.

Car wheels whooshingThe slam of a door.

My rumbling stomachAs lunch draws near.

The rattle of a binPulling up the slope.

An ambulance alertingSomeone hurting.

Chicks tweetingThrough the chitter chatterOf my world.

By Pat LedlinPoem: All Ears

This yummy breakfast delight serves 1.

1 large banana 1 tbsp lemon or orange juice2 dates finely chopped 2 tbsp natural yoghurt2 tsps cooked apple or apple sauce 2 tbsp sugar-free toasted muesliCinnamon to taste

1. Make a shallow slit from one end of the banana to the other, length ways down the banana, in the skin only.

2. Using fingers, gently tease away the skin from the fruit, exposing the banana and leaving it in the skin.

3. Make another shallow slit, approximately 2cm deep, down the exposed fruit's length from one end to the other. Be careful not to cut all the way through the banana.

4. Gently ease the slit in the banana open and spoon in the dates evenly. Top with apple. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Pour the juice over the apple filling.

5. Wrap the prepared banana in foil loosely but secure creating a boat holding it.

6. Bake in a hot oven for 15 minutes. Approximately 180 degrees C.

To serve: place banana still in its skin in a bowl and spoon over yoghurt and sprinkle with muesli.

Baked Banana BoatBy Pat Ledlin

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Over the holiday season I watched the "baggy greens" win back the coveted Ashes from our arch enemies, England. Five won tests! Truly thrilling!

I remember also the games my brothers and their mates played in our backyard...the thuds against the dented garbage bin, the shrieks and the loud arguments over many rules created on the spot. I wanted to relive some of this excitement and so the movie “Backyard Ashes” appealed to me.

The film is set in Wagga, described as the Garden City of the South, the place where some of our best cricketers were born - Mark Taylor, Michael Slater and Geoff Lawson, to name a few.

To me the film has a true-blue Aussie flavour. Families gathered for a barbeque, the women around the table overflowing with food

and children and men batting the ball. This group of mates worked together as tradesmen employed by a company. Like many factories around Australia, staff were downsized, mates lost jobs and yet, the mateship out ofwork hours supported this group.

The humour and language in this backyard reminded me of the fifties and sixties with many more “great Australian adjectives”! The testy or different neighbour next door can be a challenge for many Australians. I really loved this movie. Despite setbacks, these characters kept their dignity and got on with their lives. Friends were ever present when trouble came and cricket, can still weld families in the backyard.

Go see it. You will not be disappointed.

Be careful, the banana is hot when it comes out of the oven.

Tips:Apple sauce from the supermarket saves cooking apples.

Caution is needed in slicing.

By Pat Ledlin

Back Yard Ashes:Movie Review

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The previous book I read was Graham Nash’s Wild Tales. Some HeadEast compatriots might recognise his name from the legendary West Coast U.S. music group Crosby, Stills & Nash or its next incarnation as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

I think the reason why this book interested me so much was that I was a fan of theirs from early on. My third job was working at a main stream record store, Edels Record’s in Sydney, at the height of their popularity and although my musical taste was mainly improvised jazz and old blues I had an affinity for this genre of music.

The book details the gathering of the first three of them as always very harmonious, whereas their relationship with loner Neil Young was often fraught with Neil’s particular difficulties.Their attendance in concert numbers always remained high through the late ‘60s -’90s; whereas their musical peers audiences slowly diminished.

Primarily, this book is an autobiography of Graham Nash, before he first saw The Beatles play in Manchester, of all places. Graham joined The Hollies, who’s first big hit was the song ‘Carrie-Ann’. Then quite a few years later Graham fled to the U.S. where he

soon met and became good friends with fellow musician David Crosby. Sometime later they fell in with accomplished guitarist, Stephen Stills. The three onstage made an exquisite and harmonious vocal and guitars band, which very soon won acclaim throughout America, the U.K. and beyond.

I found the entire 353 pages of Graham Nash’s Wild Tales pleasing, as it related to a field of interest which was central to my very being at the time! The fact that an early girlfriend of Graham Nash was Joni Mitchell was enormously impressive to me, as I owned six L.Ps of Joni’s, whom I found attractive and her music so meaningful.

The reasons I read it are very evident above and I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who’s inquisitive about the insights and revealing inside information of an earlier era.

Wild Tales By Graham Nash: Book ReviewBy Tony Wilmers

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Art and Culture:By Tony Wilmers

Long Jetty Tony Wilmers©

This township on the Central Coast is named Long Jetty and my digital photograph here is self explanatory. Long Jetty is very near Toowoon Bay and near the home town of my delightful Sunday carer’s residence. I feel supremely honoured to be worthy of about an hour and a half’s drive each way for her on her one day off from being an adoring young mother to come care for me.

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Do you have difficulties understanding social and emotional information after a severe Traumatic Brain Injury? If so, we’d like to hear from you…

Who?Adult volunteers with a severe Traumatic Brain Injury, 18-70 years of age, needed for participation in psychology research at the Brain Sciences Unit, University of New South Wales, Kensington.

What?Our research looks at the role of emotion and social cognition in communication after traumatic brain injury. This is to help us understand why people who have had a traumatic brain injury often have difficulties making judgments about the thoughts and feelings of others in social situations, and therefore have trouble in communicating effectively. Participation involves a variety of tasks including watching videos and playing games on computer, completing questionnaires and other pen-and-paper tasks. Some studies include an MRI scan or EEG.

If interested, please contact….Alana on 9385 3590 or alana.fisher@unsw.edu.au, and give your name and contact details, age and years of education.

You will reimbursed for your time and travel.