This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
cist Moshe Feldenkrais). Rabke says the many benefits of Feldenkrais, which uses body awareness to im- prove one’s mobility and promote well-being, include increased vitality, greater balance and coordination, eas- ier breathing, freer hip joints, and bet- ter sleep. People of any age or physical ability can benefit from the method, according to the Feldenkrais Guild of North America—including those with “chronic or acute pain of the back, neck, shoulder, hip, leg, or knee.” “Learning to be in your body is the greatest gift you can offer yourself,” Rabke says. “We all sit too much, have most of our attention in our heads or on the screens in front of us, and miss out on a huge part of our experience that can come from being present in our bodies. What often prevents us from continuously improving and re- fining what we do is our network of habits”—which we may not even be aware of.


“Then, since I loved to cook, I went to culinary school, which opened a new world,” she says. With that train- ing, she became a pastry chef in San Francisco before launching a catering and event-planning business in New- port Beach, Calif. “I loved ‘throwing parties,’” she recalls, but she soon de- cided to combine food with nursing. She returned to New York City and became a registered dietitian, then earned a master’s in nutrition. As part of the master’s program, she complet- ed a clinical internship at New York University Medical Center—exactly where she had studied as a Skidmore student. “Talk about déjà vu,” she muses.


CARL RABKE ’94 OFFERS STRUCTURAL THERAPIES FOR GAINING HEALTH AND LOSING PAIN.


Rabke, a licensed massage therapist and somatic educator, has been practicing Feldenkrais since 2005. He offers hands-on sessions for individuals and also teaches group classes. His clients range in age from toddlers to seniors. Often the people who come to him are in distress, and he delights in seeing them find relief and experience greater ease in their bodies. Among his success stories are two clients with debilitating back pain who were told their condition was untreatable and they should simply look to pain management. Within two months of coming to him, Rabke says, “one was able to bike pain-free across Iowa, and the other was able to play cello in the Utah Symphony for the first time in years without pain.” While therapies such as Feldenkrais are considered “alterna- tive” by mainstream medicine, Rabke believes bodywork is gaining wider credibility. “There is a good deal of ‘woo-woo’ stuff out there,” he acknowledges, but he appreciates that Rolf and Feldenkrais “were both hard-core scientists and made sure their findings could hold up to empirical scrutiny from their peers.” Rabke’s Web site is bodyhappy.com. —MTS


NURSE OF ALL TRADES Susan Gross Underwood ’69 has never let a road go untraveled. She was “restless, but practical,” she says, when she was drawn to Skidmore’s nursing program, which featured two years of clinical training at a medical center in New York City. She fore- saw as bonuses of the degree both professional opportunity and freedom of movement. Sure enough, after graduation Un- derwood worked in Honolulu and on a Navajo Indian reserva- tion, and earned an MSN in psychiatric nursing.


Underwood practiced as a nutri- tionist, and then more than a decade ago she accepted an administrative job with the New York City-based VNSNY Choice health plan, where she is associate director of quality man-


agement. The plan is a subsidiary of Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the largest nonprofit home-care agency in the Unit- ed States. Serving people on Medicare and those with special needs under long-term and at-home care, Underwood devel- ops methods and criteria for evaluating the quality of the care and of care-management services and oversees compliance with regulations. Underwood predicts that the need for high-quality home


services, especially long-term care, will continue to burgeon as more aging, ill, or disabled people—who may require personal care, medication management, physical therapy, and other servic- es both medical and social— choose to live in the community rather than an institution. Case in point: Under- wood’s current roommate is her recently retired 91-year-old mother. Medicaid redesign should expand long- term care services affordably, she argues, because


SUSAN GROSS UNDERWOOD ’69 SEES TO THE QUALITY OF CARE PROVIDED BY THE NATION’S LARGEST VISITING-NURSE SERVICE.


FALL 2012 SCOPE 27


MICHAEL SCHOENFELD


JOE LAWTON


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72