Zumba in a wheelchair: paraplegic and overjoyed
There are places where you are immediately by you. Where life is too easy for formality: in the holiday club, in the gym. Or where it is too difficult to keep your distance: self-help group, emergency room. In the Zumba lesson of Rehaklinik Godeshöhe in Bonn, both apply.
One Thursday in spring, 11:15. "Are you all well?" Calls trainer Conny Runge. Blonde braid to neon-colored shirt, wide smile, slightly Saxon tongue strike. The hall floor is green, through the windows pale light penetrates into the basement. Salsa brass sets blaring from the speaker. Hands move through the air, sometimes timidly, sometimes skilfully. Shoulders rotate rhythmically. As if the participants could jump up and dance every moment. But that will not happen. The five men and three women will probably never be able to move their legs again. You are sitting in a wheelchair. Just like her trainer.
"One likes to say carelessly: If I was a paraplegic, I would kill myself.? Conny, 40, shakes her head in amusement as she thinks of her own former self. She was 19, swung her legs in the carnival club of her home in Lusatia as a spark, studied sports, was seriously in love for the first time. A life in motion, to the full stop: a party, the window open, Conny on the ledge, an acquaintance who scared her, so she lost her balance. Four meters deeper, she bounced her spine on a concrete pillar, at the level of the seventh thoracic vertebra. When her friends came running, she asked: Take my legs on the floor, they are so funny. The others looked at her horrified: Conny, they are down! Instinctively, I knew I would never walk again.?
But, seriously: kill yourself? No question for the daughter of a sports teacher couple. "I have the fighting spirit from my father, the emotional from my mother. I just wanted to live.? Even though she had to say goodbye to a lot: crop tops, 15 kilos of leg muscles, even from her first big love:? I pushed him away, said: look at me, what do you want with me ?? The boundaries of their world were different now. Between? Rollis? and? pedestrians ?. Between before and after.
A new life in a wheelchair
Now everything is back up. Conny saddles for a degree in mechanical engineering, gets a car with handgas, lets her friends party and picnic, trains her new life as if it were an Olympic discipline. And something else drives her: the sport. She practices Lanzarote for a recumbent bike marathon, sings mantras at Kundalini Yoga, plays basketball. She enjoys life a lot, it is never the right thing. The bike takes too much space, from the basketball hurt her shoulders and wrist. Yoga? Nothing for a lively woman who speaks and gesticulates as if she came from Palermo instead of Saxony. Then she befriends the physical therapist Jacqueline, who gives Zumba courses for neurology patients and Conny invites. Bämm? Hit. "The music, the joie de vivre, and above all a sport that you can do anytime, anywhere? I was really hooked right away. And I came up with my own choreographies that only need arms and shoulders.?
It does not stay with you. Conny wants to lead courses, alongside her job with a rehab technology company. But in Germany, everything has its order, even fitness funsport. If you want to work as a Zumba trainer, you need a certificate. And so, on a late summer day two years ago, she stands with her wheelchair in front of a training hall. In front of it a few steps, but no ramp. "Me down there and 40 pedestrians looking down on me. All the same question in view: What's up here? That's what I asked myself at the moment. But if you call Conny Runge, you will not fail so fast. Certainly not on a staircase. Two days later, she has her certificate, shortly thereafter she organizes with her friend Jacqueline the first Zumba inclusion party in Germany: dance steps for the pedestrians, arm choreography for the wheelchair users, Brazilian cocktails and cheese balls for all.
Like a phoenix from the ashes
11:45 clock. Conny clenches his fists, boxing in the rhythm of the music: "Yes, let it out! Against everything that makes you angry !? That often the most everyday desires are unfulfillable, for example. A day without bladder catheter, an afternoon on the beach, spreading the towel, running in the waves. When Conny throws up her left arm, she sees a bird's head tattoo under her armpit. A phoenix rising steeply from the ashes. Another girlfriend has designed it, graphic designer, also a wheelchair user. Boxt Conny with her right, exposing the image of a spear from the movie "Avatar". The hero story of a paralyzed ex-soldier who exists in a parallel world adventure. Strong message, strong pictures? and pretty sexy. This is also what her friend Reiner thinks.With her she makes jokes about her "dangling legs", her "drumsticks", because she knows: he loves her from head to toe. As a whole woman. Can she enjoy sex? And how:? Neck, neck, chest, the whole upper body becomes the erogenous zone. And is not the most important part of the body anyway the head ??
Phnatomfreude instead
phantom pain
Conny Runge originally came to the Godeshöhe in Bonn as a patient, a few months ago. And she left as a trainer. During a spa visit, she brought the therapist closer to her favorite fitness. Exactly what they were looking for: new, cool sports offerings, which not only get the body, but also the soul in motion. Exercise is important for rehabilitation patients because it stimulates circulation and digestion, prevents pressure points on the skin, relieves tension. Above all, it is the best antidepressant. Chemical free and without side effects. Healthy people know that too. Jerk off the lovesick, skip the job frustration on a punching bag. "Zumba is sometimes like moments when I feel my legs again. I really notice the nerve impulses, explains Conny. When missing limbs seem to hurt, is it called phantom pain? maybe there is the opposite. Phantom joy.
DISEASE is a great leveler, sport too. The over-40s with pink shoelaces, the young Muslim woman in a headscarf, the older gentleman in a silk scarf and a pastel v-neck sweater? Bodies that fight together back to life, sometimes more, sometimes less skillful. It does not matter what you deserve, what you believe in, what you see on your business card. At the same time Conny feels her fate as something special. As a task, but also as an opportunity. "Without my accident, I would have continued to study sports and perhaps now would be one of many. So I am the woman who brought the wheelchair Zumba to Germany. And that's just the beginning: Why not offer hours for children and teenagers? Train trainers abroad?
12 o'clock, cool-down. "That was better than eight weeks of rehab ?," says a woman with purple trousers. ? What a wonderful world? is on her T-shirt. The boxes are still filled with happy trombones, trumpets and bongo drums. But if you listen to the Spanish text, the words are sadly sad: "Oh, let me forget this pain that makes me cry !? The easy and the heavy? they do not just fit together well in music. But also in life.
