The Lebed Method Focus on Healing Through Movement and Dance

In a previous post, I shared about Aquatic therapy and its benefits for lymphedema patients.

I would like to share another wonderful lymphedema therapy that I think is wonderful and beneficial both in terms of over all physical health, but in helping manage lymphedema.

This is from their page Who We Are

Mission Statement:

THE LEBED METHOD, Focus on Healing Through Movement and Dance, is committed to improving the physical and emotional well-being of breast cancer survivors, those with Lymphedema, as well all cancers and chronic illnesses in both adults and children. Our goal is to elevate quality of life through therapeutic dance and movement, healing body, mind and spirit. Mission Statement: "Focus on Healing is committed to the development and education of Breast Cancer Survivors and to help prevent loss of quality of life due to the aftermath of their surgery and treatment"

The Lebed Method, Focus on Healing through Movement and Dance, is a therapeutic exercise program for women who have had any kind of breast surgery, node dissection, radiation, chemotherapy, Lymphedema, or who suffer with chronic fatigue. Two physicians and a dance movement specialist created this program to help women:

Regain Range of Motion
Increase flexibility in Frozen Shoulder
Work with Balance issues both physically and emotionally
Help reduce swelling from Lymphedema
May help reduce the risk of Lymphedema
Decrease depression
Add to sexuality
Increase femininity
Promotion of positive self image and joy
Weight stabilization
is FUN and EASY to do
No special physical abilities required

Certain exercises can be one of the major preventatives for some future problems for survivors, from one day after surgery to 30 years after surgery. This quality program is needed to help Breast Cancer Survivors thrive once they have survived, with a better quality of life.

HISTORY OF THE LEBED METHOD

In 1979, Sherry Lebed Davis' mother, Rita Lebed was diagnosed with breast cancer. Losing her breast and knowing that this disease had already claimed the lives of her mother and her sister were too much for her. First she stopped smiling, then she stopped fighting. Her brothers and Sherry knew they had to so something for their mother. Sherry had been a professional dancer and teacher for fifteen years, and her brothers are both physician/surgeons and together they developed a medically sound program "The Lebed Method,' Focus on Healing."

For their mother, this creative, therapeutic exercise program gave her back the range of motion in her arm. More importantly, it brought back her smile. Dr. Marc and Joel Lebed and Sherry Lebed Davis, knew they had to give this gift to others who were suffering as their mother had.

Sherry began by working with breast cancer survivors at several major Medical Centers in Philadelphia, one being, Albert Einstein Medical Center in 1980. By 1986, they had published two reports in the American Physical Therapy Journal: ""Physical Therapy and Dance in the Surgical Management of Breast Cancer" and "Dance: A Therapeutic Modality for the Breast Surgery Patient", presented at the Sixtieth Annual Conference of the American Physical Therapy Association.

"The Teacher Becomes the Student" The journey Sherry began with her mother has now come full circle. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, Sherry had found many techniques helpful, but exercise and dance gave her the spirit to live and be able to have a better quality of life. In 1999 Sherry was diagnosed with Lymphedema and Dr. Marc Lebed and Sherry Lebed Davis developed a new program; The Lebed Method, Focus on Healing for upper and lower Lymphedema, which decreases swelling in the affected limb. This program was introduced in 2000 at the National Lymphedema Network National Conference in Florida.

For more information please request an informational packet: info@focusonhealing.net

The Lebed Method

The Lebed Method

14418 47th Place West

Lynnwood, Wa 98037

phone: 1-877-365-6014

fax: 425-742-6873