A Brief Guide to Understanding Health Insurance Jargon

(©flickr.com/photos/waithamai)

Wholeness In Motion is proud to have an in house billing department. We accept a variety of insurance plans including medicare, workman's compensation, and motor vehicle accident claims.  Here is a simple guide to help make your insurance and billing experience with us as smooth and effortless as possible.

The Basics: Common Types of Insurances 

1) Personal Health Insurance (PHI): This is insurance you get through your employer or purchase on your own. It's commonly used for routine health care. Some PHI's require a referral or prior authorization from your primary care provider/doctor. Most insurances cover physical therapy benefits ranging from an average of 20, 30, or 60 visits per year.

Here are the Participating Providers for Wholeness In Motion:

*Blue Cross/Blue Shield

*MODA (specifically the ODS + network)

*Cigna

*Lifewise

But wait! If you don't have a PHI with one of these providers, you may have benefits available to see us through your out of network (OON) benefits. This could actually be a very cost effective choice for you. 

2) Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA): When you are in a MVA your auto insurance is billed which includes health care costs in the event of an accident. Most MVA claims do not require a referral for physical therapy services. Remember to fill out a PIP application, received a claim number from the auto insurance, and of course know the date of the injury prior to your first appointment with us. In the State of Oregon you have 1 year to receive treatment from the date of injury or you can receive $15,000 (whichever comes first). 

3) Cash/Self Pay: Clients that are uninsured or don't want their insurance billed due to high deductibles or other reasons often pay cash.

4) Workman's Compensation (WC): A workman's compensation claim is usually filed when you are hurt while working on the job. Wholeness in Motion does take WC claims depending on their claim status and authorizations/referrals. You are going to want to know if your claim is open vs. closed. If it is open then it is accepted by the WC insurance carrier and you are/can actively receive treatment. 

5) Medicare: We do accept Medicare. Remember to get a referral from your healthcare provider.

What to do before scheduling your visit with Wholeness In Motion?

 It's very important to be familiar with the benefits of your insurance plan prior to scheduling your appointment. The billing department offers insurance verification as a customer service courtesy, but it is always helpful that you know what coverage you have. 

Many thanks to our billing staff, Elly and Joy, who greatly help all of our clients with their insurance and billing questions on a daily basis.

Now Offering Awareness Through Movement Workshops and Classes with Israel Sostrin

Poised to Move:  
An Exploration of Posture & Action

Three 2 day Workshops! Fridays 6pm-9pm, Saturdays 10am-3pm

May 16 & 17

June 6 & 7

July 11 & 12

Six Optional Weekly Follow Up Classes will be offered: See Schedule Below

These workshops will offer a supportive & enjoyable atmosphere for learning how to cultivate personalized movement mastery. There will be a focus on enabling each participant to successfully develop their new-found skills & insights beyond the workshop. Bring your curiosity and wear comfortable layers of clothing you can easily move in.  Please note instructor's statement below.

These workshops are specially designed for:
1) Persons who enjoy learning
2)  Persons turned off by traditional exercise but who value personal fitness
3) Fitness Enthusiasts who love improving their movement quality
4) Persons who want to experience a more youthful, able body
5) Movement Professionals

*No experience necessary.
*CEU (Continuing Education Units) offered.

Upon completion you can expect to:
1) ... redefine posture as a dynamic organization versus a static position
2)  ... understand how your improved posture leads to greater ease, joy & confidence in everyday movements.
3) ... have new insight into perceptions of a limited body versus a capable body.  (Including redeeming the common scapegoats of: too stiff, too old, too much arthritis, too heavy, too weak, etc...)
4) ... be competent in using movement learning/practices for pain relief, promoting well being & performance enhancement.

                                           

Israel Sostrin is a licensed physical therapist, a certified Feldenkrais ® Practitioner and student of Spacial Dynamics ®. His work supports people in need of injury rehabilitation, performance enhancement, & pragmatic insights for personal growth. His highly personalized approach utilizes a gentle and insightful form of movement re-education to facilitate greater ease, self-confidence, & balance during everyday movements.

Instructors Statement: This series of workshops has been percolating for a number of years. The concepts & techniques that will be presented are a culmination of my steady private practice working with individuals as well as my deep roots in the Feldenkrais Method ® and my newer cultivation of Spacial Dynamics ®. I am very focused on providing an opportunity for each participant to not only be inspired by their new-found/developed abilities, but to have real competence in continuing a practice that can be done by anyone, no matter their lifestyle, busyness, financial means, or physical environment at home and work.

Class Location: Bothmer Hall

5915 SE Division Street

Portland, OR 97206

$125 per 2 day weekend course

$20 for weekly follow up classes

15% discount for those who register for a weekend and 2 follow up classes together

Call Wholeness In Motion at 503-231-3633 

or

Email wholenessinmotionpdx@gmail.com to register

Upon registration, please notify us of any concerns you may have about your ability to participate. We will do our best to ensure your comfort & safety. All abilities will be able to participate.

Optional Weekly Follow Up Classes: These follow up classes are focused on providing an opportunity for each participant to develop competence in continuing a practice on their own terms.  These classes will allow you the opportunity to develop your home program by presenting some new material and providing time to explore the questions that arise from practice.

Follow Up Class Schedule:

May 23              Time: 5:30pm - 7pm
May 30              Time: 5:30pm- 7pm
June 19              Time: 6:30pm - 8pm
June 26              Time: 6:30pm - 8pm
July 17               Time: 6:30pm - 8pm
July 24               Time: 6:30pm -8pm


Bothmer Hall: Access to parking lot located in back of building
at the Division St.and 59th Ave intersection

View Larger Map

Getting your Wheels in Motion

With spring time blooming before our eyes, it's time to get our wheels into gear. Perhaps you want to get started on tending to a new garden, give your home a thorough spring cleaning, have more play time with your kids, or get out and hike. It can be challenging to complete all these daily needs if our wheels aren't moving with fluidity and the gears aren't in proper functioning order. 

How are My Wheels Spinning?

So how are all these wheels and gear metaphors supposed to help you in the first place? A swiss neurologist named Alois Brugger (1920-2001) created one of the first 'get your wheels in motion' theories. Through his concept of the Brugger's Cogwheel, he was able to identify how different parts of the spine are interdependent on one another, much like wheels and gears on a bike. If one wheel isn't working properly then the rest of the system won't function smoothly. It could result in more effort to get up those steep hills of a busy life. Brugger related this with posture in saying that poor posture is not caused by how well you can hold a stoic posture with your shoulders back, chest high, and neck straight. Rather, poor posture is caused by a dysregulation of central motor function, our nervous  system. 

What Happens When a Wheel Gets Stuck

I'd like to think of the nervous system as the gears that control the movement of the wheels. Minute changes in the different segments, or wheels, of the spine create what 'posture' means to us. That's why everyone's posture is unique and individualized. 

Brugger stated that one doesn't have to have pain to in order to know he/she has poor posture. The nervous system is magnificent in that it is able to adapt to mostly any input it is given. So when you sit at your computer desk or hunch over your garden bed, your brain accommodates for the positioning. It does this by changing the signals sent from the brain to the muscles, and back to the brain. This feedback loop repeats until the signals being sent to the brain are changed. Pain occurs only when regulatory protective mechanisms aren’t enough to hold the person in their postural alignment. In addition, pain doesn't necessarily originate where pain is experienced. For example, if someone has pain in their mid back it could be because the wheels above or below that segment aren't functioning well. Even though the person may or may not feel in these other areas, the movement of the wheels will assuredly be affected. When the wheels are functioning properly then all the other organ systems can function well too, such as improved respiration and circulation.

Connecting With Your Wheels

Here is a simple movement exercise you can do to connect with the wheels of your spine.

1. Sit at the edge of a chair, feet flat on the floor. 

2. Begin to draw your pubic bone forward and down to allow the pelvis to tilt forward. Allow the movement to start at the base of the spine and initiate the cogwheel interplay of lower spine, middle spine & neck.

3. While continuing the motion notice how the movement flows through the torso and mid back...the neck & head.  Utilize Brugger's cogwheel image.  If you can't imagine the cogwheels, stop, imagine the reverse cogwheel action & then reverse it again.

4.  Continue rolling the pelvis forward & backward (tucking tail/lifting pubic bone<>pubic bone down/forward & tailbone lifting) and clarifying the cogwheel effect. 

5) For extra credit, see what this same movement feels like with incorporating the pelvic floor in each direction.

 Repeat 5-10 times in a pain free range of movement.

The Brugger's Cogwheel is just one way of connecting to the available movement that your body has to offer. At Wholeness in Motion, we can work with you on helping to master these movements and how they are unique for you.

Written by: Susan Trancik, PTA

References:

1)http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=18210 (retrieved on 3/17/14)

2) http://books.google.com/books?id=mLMLFOlua3YC&pg=PA353&lpg=PA353&dq=bruggers+cogwheel+posture&source=bl&ots=twnwBG9EWO&sig=s9P7MhdODRHRXBkOrLCw_XXqXbk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UN4hU9XKB4H1oASfoIGYAQ&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=bruggers%20cogwheel%20posture&f=false (retrieved on 3/17/14)

3) http://victoriatheraputicmassage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/8ff6a.jpg (retrived on 3/24/14)

4)https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht5KCSs7JMAoGy77dbgnIuh0gmHnNlbkvemcjXRLch-9NsANcjwQQT8Z2Vml_G-v7CN-EFzSlKi5iBc_DT3e-XHAsqHLCU6-yFjRK0ZWAlVGd8qAB-SAvI2q0lTGYl9ZXPJa8zAsK5jdU/s1600/brugger%20cog%20wheel%203.jpg 

(retrieved on 3/24/14)

Utilizing Your Personal Space

Here is a interesting video by the founder of Spacial Dynamics®, Jaimen McMillan. He speaks about how you can utilize your personal space efficiently while interacting with the world through movement. Israel often incorporates similar topics with clients from his in depth Spacial Dynamics® training. Click here for more information.

Here's an article we would like to share with you that shows it's possible to think and feel differently about your posture.

Better Movement, Better Posture

By Olena Nitefor

“Good posture” is usually believed to entail standing up straight and strengthening some critical muscles to maintain that straightness. (The muscles most often seen as being in need of strengthening are the abdominals and the back of the shoulder muscles.) If you have ever tried to achieve better posture through such means, you probably realized that it is futile, and that in fact even if you can manage to “think” about standing or sitting straight, you forget the minute you go to do something else.

So, should you simply give up on “good posture,” succumb to your slouching, let your shoulders droop and let your neck pull and ache? Is it all just inevitable aging?

I suggest you look at the photos below. The man is 75 years old and has had each of his hips replaced in the previous three years. Compare his posture on the left to his posture on the right. Before taking each photo I had asked GB to point up and to the right. Can you see that in the “before” picture he could not stand properly on his right leg, that when he tried to reach, his chest slumped and his neck got short and bunched up in the back? He looks more ready to fall or sit, than to point upward!

In the photo on the right, GB can easily stand on his right leg, his chest is upright, his neck is long and his head is balanced nicely on top of his spine and legs. Reaching and pointing are easy and he looks much younger.

These are “before” and “after” pictures of GB who received seven Functional Integration® lessons over a period of 11 days. The improved posture was a by-product of improving GB’s movement. GB reported that he could walk more easily and further (he gave up his cane because the pain in his left hip diminished significantly), he found himself more agile in putting on his socks, and his neck felt significantly freer when he was driving. And the postural changes that you see here, he does not have to think about and maintain consciously. Now that is dynamic and usable posture!

(Article from the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education, retrieved on 1/8/14, http://www.feldenkrais.com/method/article/better_movement_better_posture/).

Welcome to our New Website!

We are happy to announce our new and improved website. Enjoy!