The Big 4: Pain – Sleep – Anxiety – Depression

I suppose we’ve all experienced at least some of the Big 4 – pain, lack of sleep, anxiety or depression – at one time or another. Or maybe you’re experiencing one or more right now.

Working in the aged care sector over the years, the Big 4 have come up in many of the discussions I’ve had  with staff and residents.

This has motivated me to add them as components to our Aged Care Chair Chi training program. After discussion, Sue and I have decided to add Pain Management to our Level Two workshop and dealing with sleep problems, anxiety and depression to our Level Three workshop.

The Big 4 will be approached from a Tai Chi perspective where practical skills and strategies will be taught to workshop participants. Our ultimate aim is to have this as standard practice in every aged care centre in Australia – we tend to dream big! :)

I’ve delivered over 750 Chair Chi sessions for residents in local aged care centres, and I have anecdotal evidence from staff and residents that these have been helpful in dealing with the Big 4 – which is very encouraging. There are also research reports available that suggest Tai Chi has been helpful in improving a wide variety of physical, psychological and emotional conditions.

To add further value to our program we are now offering a complimentary mentoring session for each participant who completes Level Two and Level Three of the program. So if you complete Level Two you get a free mentoring session and if you go on to complete Level Three you receive another free mentoring session.

These are not additional training as such, but are designed to answer any questions you may have or revise skills for which you’d like a refresher.

The mentoring sessions will be conducted over Skype (or equivalent) at a convenient time. A great benefit as you will have the opportunity to discuss and/or visually cover the skills you’ve learned over a web cam.

For those who may be  interested we are running several Aged Care Chair Chi Training workshops Australia-wide for staff, carers, volunteers or health workers in the aged care sector in 2016 – here’s our schedule.

Our first series of workshops will be held in Melbourne on 21, 22 March and you can register here

I reckon after all those workshops this year I’ll need to catch up on plenty of ‘couch chi’ time. :)