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What We Do   |   How to get Appointments, Classes   |   Patient Comments    |   Benefits   |    Get Your Life Back   |   Free Fix Pain Summaries   |    The Fitness Fixer™    |   Books, Gifts 

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What We Do -  Summary of My Work

Not all Exercise is Medicine. Not all Medicine is Healthy.
We Change That:
The real health care reform

Making someone give up activities they love isn't "Health Care." Neither is limiting daily life movement, or using a cane, orthotic or brace as a "fix"- an approach called "Limit the patient to limit the pain." It isn't healthy or effective rehab (or good use of your time) to go for repeated treatments but have pain return and be told to live with it. Instead, I developed methods that use your real daily life, your normal activities, and the sports you love, to retrain movement habits (function) so that all you do, from straightening your standing and walking, sitting at the desk, cleaning the house, taking the stairs, and bending for things, to your sports, work, and exercise, are doable, healthy, and fun again. We stop causes of pain and limited movement. Then your injuries from previous unhealthful movement habits can heal. You get healthy biomechanics built-in to all you do. This is all called functional medicine, fitness as a (real) lifestyle, and functional training. This is different from doing sets and reps of exercises, then going back to injurious movement and bent up positioning in daily life.

Beside neck and back pain, shoulders, knees, hips, ankles, and feet are welcome: Herniated and degenerating discs, sciatica, low back pain, hyperlordosis, upper back pain (cervical pain) and rounded upper back and shoulders (kyphosis), upper crossed syndrome, nerve impingement (pinched nerve), facet pain, forward head, muscle tightness and strain, overstretched muscles and fasciitis - These are not diseases, but injuries that you can fix. We also improve your physical capacity and health, and check for unhealthy habits of life, food, medicines, and medical care. You can be fitter and healthier than before.

Making Medicine Healthy. I pioneered functional fitness and medicine and developed these methods. They combine tested therapeutic rehab modalities with innovative techniques that you put into practice to relieve pain and improve your looks and health right away. The idea is to get you off pain pills and constant treatments, and back to your life, better than before. This is not "alternative medicine." This is standard of care, evidence-based sports medicine techniques, with the added benefit of being from a primary source, applied to real life - where you actually need it.

You don't have to do sports or be an athlete to get better with sports medicine. Retraining movement habits (better biomechanics) in daily life is built-in fitness as a lifestyle and injury prevention (functional fitness medicine). Rubbing a tennis ball or foam roller will not fix the source of problems. I do not consider it health care to go for repeated treatments or sets and reps of rehab exercises, then have pain chronically return. I teach you specific skills to stop the problems and improve function the way you need it in real life so you can get your life back, better than before.

Athletes use these methods to directly retrain their sports and exercises to be both healthier more effective at the same time. Good biomechanics is a powerful athletic performance enhancer (retraining actual function). I show you top training methods and innovations, to go higher, faster, farther and prevent future injury.

Elders. Becoming slower, stiffer, unsteadier, and weaker as years pass is more from lack of specific healthful movement than an inescapable aging process. I teach techniques to restore upper back mobility and normal kyphosis, leg strength and balance, healthy knee and hip dynamics, and disc spacing associated with functionally younger age. Skills, not pills - I show you how to make it possible to straighten out, gain balance needed to get off a cane, stop painful musculoskeletal habits so you don't need pain pills in the first place, and improve strength and mobility to have your life and independence back.

Clinicians learn these techniques to reduce preventable hospitalizations, readmissions, emergency room visits, and to improve health outcomes for patients from youth to geriatric. These are major Health Care Reform Initiatives that will be required in hospitals, care facilities, and teaching centers.

Adventures: My years in the lab were devoted to healthier ways to survive - not only injury, but extremes in heat and cold, altitude and underwater, high g-Forces, top training modalities for military and athletes, and disturbances in movement. More on me and my work is on my Adventure page.

Black Belt Hall of Fame 2011 Seminar Students - Top 10 Injury Prevention Techniques

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How To Do It -  Appointments, Free Readings, Classes, Books, Our Resort

1. Start right now with free summary articles. No ads for silly fitness products, no sales pitches. Solid info to learn to fix and prevent your own pain. Scroll down this page or click Start right now for the list of articles.
2. Rare private appointments or classes in-person with Dr. Bookspan by special arrangement. Motivated fun people can fast-track their recovery and train directly with Dr. Bookspan. Executive appointments, around an hour and a half each. Includes consult, assessment, full learning and practice of methods to improve during each session (not taking 6-8 weeks). Appointments for people coming in from out of town, best is to come stay at a downtown Philadelphia hotel. Enjoy the city. I meet you ar the hotel gym or meeting room on variable convenient days and times - the link at the end of this section gives hotel ideas, maps and needed info. Locals can check if I am available at our downtown Philadelphia martial arts center on selected Thursday evenings 7:30pm-9pm, with occasional Monday nights 8pm-9:30pm, (or send me tickets to your cruise or beach location). Style is educational, with much information as well as physical practice. Private certification work and personalized classes for your group also possible. My credentials here. To write for consideration for appointment or classes: In a nice note, indicate how you already use and benefit from my work, and how you would make our time well used, appreciated, and fun. Indicate if you are traveling from out of town for my house-call to a downtown Philadelphia hotel, or want to come to the center (Mon or Thursday evening), and a few preferred dates - appointment@DrBookspan.com. Click this additional info first before writing - for appointment info, hotels, fun Phila events during your stay, map & directions, more.
3. Contact Dr. Bookspan to personally answer your questions through Individual Care.
4. Learn in a group class directly with Dr. Bookspan - Fix your pain and learn healthy real life movement skills to increase function and prevent injury during all you do. Classes for physicians and military, trainers, and lay public. For info about bringing me to your private group, click the Projects page. To come here with your group for personalized workshop, see #2 above.
5. Earn Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine certification in top methods. Learn directly with Dr. Bookspan in group workshops (#4) or private training (#2 above).
6. Find your answers among almost 800 short articles on my free on-line health compendium The Fitness Fixer™ - Search The Fitness Fixer Index.
7. Read Inspiring Patient Stories - patients fixed their back pain, foot pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, fallen arches, and neck pain, and went on to happy, healthier lives using these methods. Not testimonials, but tutorials so you can do it too.
8. Get the books - The info you need, easy-to-read, portable, fix-it.
9. Share This Page With A Friend
10. Open Our Center. I was the first to put healthy fitness programs on cruise ships. Previously, no one thought of resorts and cruising for activity. I first developed techniques to change unhealthy standard hospital and rehab techniques. I pioneered functional exercise and fitness. My dream is to head up a center of true health. Fresh air and sun and my top, cutting-edge classes and methods. Maybe conferences and master classes at your campus or center? Get in touch to make this happen - See Project 5.
    

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What Patients Say

Dr. Jolie Bookspan is the "St. Jude of the Joints. If there is a way for you to get better, she'll find it.
- Dr. James Mann, Surgeon Podiatrist, Joslin Clinic Harvard School of Medicine.

Despite consultations with my orthopedist, two rehabilitation specialists, a sports personal trainer, and a physical therapist,
my best advice for post-operative care of my knee has come from Dr. Jolie Bookspan.
If you want to get on with your life, she is the door.
- Green Beret Lt. Col. R. Kelly Hill, MD, Swat Team Leader, Physician


I had been in PT for 2 years before coming to Dr. Jolie Bookspan.
I can't remember one day when I felt as good as I did after the first day with her.
- Camille Simms

More Comments

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Why Learn From A Researcher?

As a physiologist (person who studies how the body works and why), I develop the techniques that physicians use.

I worked years as a military and university researcher in environmental physiology, which is how the body functions in the heat and cold, at altitude and underwater, breathing many mixtures of gases, doing different forms and intensities of exercise, and all kinds of injuries.

It's important to understand why things work. If you don't understand, then you can't think for yourself, and all you can do is repeat the mistakes of your teachers, who were repeating what they learned in a book from other people who just were repeating what they heard...

You can quickly learn and use what I spent my life researching so that you can be happy, free of pain, and able to do all you love that is good. Scroll down for free summary articles and fix it right now. Click the CLASS page to come learn more with me, and get certified through the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM).

I fix pain, even injuries top docs told people they had to live with. I develop techniques that make top athletes go higher, faster, farther. What do I do that makes tough military guys cry? Click my Adventure Research page.

 

Photo of Dr. Jolie Bookspan, barefoot climbing, by Paul Plevakas

"Thanks for all that you do for these athletes."
- Joseph Estwanik, M.D., FACSM, Orthopaedic surgeon,
Chairman of Ringside Physician's Course U.S. Olympic Training Center, National Physician of the Year, USA Boxing, 1997

2012 Black Belt Hall of Fame Students - Top Spine Injury Prevention Technique

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Get Your Life Back and Enjoy It

We put the Fun in FUNctional. It's the Health Care Reform School. We call it Fixa U™  Go team! When I read medical studies that claim positive medicinal effects from humor and laughter, they are numbingly humorless. When I visit medical fitness programs and gyms where people are exercising for health, everyone looks miserable. Then you have people like my Mom, a professional dancer. One of the classes she teaches is tap dance for senior citizens. She named one of her lively groups, "The Clogging Arteries." Another is "Tapaholics Phenomenous - We Do More Than 12 Steps."Our backup singers are "The Fifth Dementia."  Our Muses are the human conditions, Absurdities, Stupidities, and Inanities. We treat Irony Deficiency Disease. Josh Billings (pen name of humorist Henry Shaw) summed it up, "There ain't much fun in medicine, but there's a heck of a lot of medicine in fun."     Here's my Mom (83 year old at center) and some students at the end of a 24 hour tap marathon.		Dr. Bookspan volunteering at a Red Cross Blood Drive, and having a laugh with some friends Juggling with Mike LeRoy, juggler extraordinaire, who developed neck and shoulder pain from balancing bicycles and refrigerators on his chin. I fixed his pain and we enjoyed juggling together.

 

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Start Right Now Fixing Your Own Pain - Use These Free Summary Articles:

Back Pain

• How To Fix Your Own Back Pain
• Bad Discs and Sciatica
• Lower Back Pain With Standing, Walking, Running
• How (Exactly) Do Abs Fix Back Pain - You may be surprised
• Secrets of Fixing Your Back Pain When Lifting and Carrying
• Sitting For Planes, Trains, Exercise, Computers, and TV
• Français! - La Révolution Abdominale™ Une Nouvelle Manière de Comprendre et d’Utiliser les Muscles Abdominaux
• Français! - Prévenir le mal de dos en cas de longue station assise
• Español!-! Dolor de Espalda y Que Hacer?
• No relation between hamstring flexibility and lower back pain - why is it mistakenly prescribed?
  

 

WMS medical conference July 2010  Fix Pain class - physicians, military, and smart students

Neck and Upper Back Pain
Upper Crossed Syndrome, Reduced Cervical Lordosis, Forward Head, Rotator Cuff, and Shoulder Pain

• Fix Your Own Neck Pain - Neck, Shoulder, Middle and Upper Back.

 

Knee Pain

• FIX YOUR OWN KNEE PAIN

 

Abdominal and Core Function

• No More Crunches, No More Back Pain - The Ab Revolution™
• Ab Revolution™ Course Syllabus, Research, and Summary
• Lifting and Carrying - Spine Use and Positioning for Healthier Function and Pain Prevention
• Français!  - Une Nouvelle Manière de Comprendre et d’Utiliser les Muscles Abdominaux, La Révolution Abdominale™

 

Healthier, Saner Fitness

• Stretching for Real Life - Functional Stretching, Fixing Bad Stretches, Wonderful good ones.
• No More Crunches, No More Back Pain - The Ab Revolution™ - what abs really do may surprise you
• Why Fitness Isn't Working - traditional exercises and stretches that work against you and what to do instead
• Exercises and Stretches That Hurt Your Back and Neck - Exercise is Medicine? Not all exercise is good medicine. Here are healthy built-in daily live healthy movement skills to do instead.
• Hamstring flexibility is not related to back pain - see why, where the confusion came from  and what to do instead.

 

Mental and Emotional Fitness Training

• Click this page for readers favorites of Dr. Bookspan's Spirit Training for health.

 

Functional Exercise and Fitness Training - Fitness as a Lifestyle

• Bookspan Basics Functional Fitness Training. Fitness Re-training drills for yourself, your groups, schools, teams, battalions, squads, more
• Fitness as a Lifestyle (Functional Fitness). Not fake fitness, reps of exercises, or purchasing training "plans" but making your daily real life into your own mental, emotional and physical playground of strength mobility and health.

 

Do You Speak A Language Not Here?

Translate an article and I will add it here with your name credit. The world will benefit and you will sure learn the information better for yourself. Mail: translate @ DrBookspan DOT com. Bravo!

 

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The Fitness Fixer™ 

Dr. Jolie Bookspan is The Fitness Fixer™
When exercise and medicine aren't healthy - Fix It! 

I don't repeat pop fitness. I research fun healthy innovations (real laboratory research) to change exercise back into health. It's not fitness as a lifestyle if you have to change clothes and go to a gym. I show how your daily life (functional movement) can be healthy in body and spirit.

• Search the Index - Find your topics among almost 800 articles.
• Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TheFItnessFixer   - quick updates, next class dates, reader success stories, contests, World Health projects, more.
• Does Your Top Site Want To Have This Top Feature? Contact Dr. Bookspan to run or syndicate: mail: SyndicateTheFitnessFixer @ DrBookspan DOT com.

 

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Fun Gifts For Healthy Movement

• BackSavers of UNcommon Sense. T-shirts for teachers and slouchers, mugs that remind healthy neck for drinking, AFEM Academy professional clothes and items, more ingenious fun.

 

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Books - Fix Pain, Get Healthy, Go Diving, Have Fun!

• Health & Fitness in Plain English, THIRD edition - How to be healthy, happy and fit for the rest of your life
• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery - with tutorial patient stories in every chapter.
• Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier - Learn lifestyle positioning instead of stopping your life to "do" stretches. Healthier more effective stretches.
• Healthy Martial Arts - For all athletes.
• The Ab Revolution - No More Crunches No More Back Pain, THIRD edition - Breakthrough in understanding abdominal muscle for real life function
• Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine books - Three hard-to-find editions. including the cult-classic Diving Physiology in Plain English.
• Forensics - Dr. Bookspan advises on environmental forensics. She applauds her colleagues' really creepy books.
  

                     

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Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - Howard Aiken

That said, Be Healthy - Respect Copyright Information, drawings, and photos are © protected copyright. To cite this article or any parts, put author Dr. Bookspan, and link to this site DrBookspan.com at the top and bottom of your reprinting. A suggestion to get my books is also nice. No Derivative Works License means no changes to content, wording or links. More LEGAL waivers and stuff here. Back To Top

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