A stroke patient’s account of his recovery shows that holistic health is much more than the mechanical workings of the body. Images: Supplied.
Connecting with and being in nature are fundamental to this month’s authors – Thomas Graham and Elizabeth Cameron Dalman.
Both books have a significant memoir element. They expound a philosophy of life and work in which being in touch with nature is a key healing and creative force. Both provide detailed accounts of the writers’ practice. Yet, one is about matters often confined to medical literature, and the other is an important work in the history of Australian dance.
Thomas Graham’s Let’s Go for a Walk: Rebuilding Body, Mind and Spirit after a Stroke, with illustrations by Slobodanka Graham (published by BG Publishers Australia in 2025), is a thoughtful account of the author’s experience during and after his stroke.
The book has three parts. The first is a diary in which Bobby, his wife, recounts the minutiae of his stroke, hospitalisation, treatment, and slow progress from hospital to rehab centre.
Part two provides insight into Thomas’s staged goals, aspects of post-stroke treatment (including poetry writing), feelings and the process of restoration—a term he prefers to recovery. Here, as elsewhere in the book, we see Bobby’s drawings, another way of depicting information and both her and Thomas’s responses.
Part three is largely Thomas’s poetry, which began as a form of experimental treatment, but which he continues. The section title – ‘Ongoing recovery: body, mind and spirit’ – is indicative of the approach Thomas took to post-stroke life and this book.
Interestingly, what Thomas found through ecotherapy, which includes the practice of sit-spotting or sitting in stillness, just taking in one’s surroundings in nature, was a way to make his recovery a holistic and life-long practice.
The stroke was not just a medically life-changing event, but a catalyst to a bigger shift in Thomas, a passage to nearing the centre of his own spirit’s circle.
A list of references, resources, and courses complete the work, along with the simple message of how to recognise possible strokes and the imperative to act quickly when they are suspected or occur.
Thomas Graham is an articulate and sensitive writer, and this book deserves a place in the popular literature on the subject. It acknowledges that we are all vulnerable, that we are all participants in our own well-being, and that health is much more than the mechanical workings of the body.
The book is available from BG Publishers and The Book Cow at Kingston and Amazon.
This monumental work by the founder of the Australian Dance Theatre is a history of her dance practice, with practical exercises for dance in nature.
Nature Moves – A Dance Practice in and of Nature by Elizabeth Cameron Dalman (published by Dalman Productions, Australia, 2025) has been five years in the making.
It’s a detailed history of Elizabeth’s dance practice, beginning in 1965, when she founded the Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide. Australian Dance Theatre is Australia’s first professional contemporary dance company, and this year, it celebrates its 60th anniversary.
Elizabeth begins by explaining her relationship with Nature as Mother. She then shows us, through words and an extensive collection of photographs, her major choreographies and provides practical step-by-step exercises on aspects of dance in nature.
At 356 pages, it is a monumental work and one that will find its place not only in the private libraries of dancers and Elizabeth’s vast Australian and international network of students and colleagues but also in the state and national collections.
The book will be released in March 2025 and is available by contacting the author at elizabeth.mirramu@gmail.com.
Disclosure: I have been involved in Elizabeth’s book as a designer and consultant since its inception. The beginning of the project was assisted by the ACT Government Home Front Grants during COVID-19, but it proved to be a much larger work.
Barbie Robinson is co-founder and a content creator for Living Arts Canberra, a not-for-profit media outfit supporting arts and community in the Canberra region and books worldwide through its website, podcast interviews and a 24/7 internet radio station at Living Arts Canberra.
Loading ...
