Dr. Masi Reynolds—The 7 Keys to Unlocking Faster Recovery

You know, one of the things I see is when in the house design space is that what we do a lot of is we do a ton of trying to make people's lives easier.

And how do we create spaces that make them feel more joyful? And not everybody gets to live in a custom home.

Everybody should.

But we're not at that stage yet where everybody can live in a custom home.

And then the other thing is, is they don't know themselves often well enough to know what they should be doing for themselves.

And what, you know, I know people who built a home in their 60s and they made sure their bedroom was upstairs.

And I'm like, why did you do that? And they said, because if we stop climbing stairs...

we're gonna lose something in our life.

And we're prepared for the hardship of the stairs over not having them because we know of our health, where we're conscious.

And another client I designed a house for And I remember saying to him, you're going to break yourself.

So I've got to take the steps out of this bottom level because you go so hard at life.

You're going to come off your motorbike.

You're going to do one sport thing.

You're going to break yourself.

There's going to be times you're on crutches.

There's going to be times you're on this.

And with the way you push so hard in life, I'm designing it so that you will always have the mobility around the house while you recover.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

That mental thing, but making life easier is one thing, but making life softer and not being able to drive forward, that to me is the loss of not being able to participate in it.

Absolutely.

And it's funny, the connection there, I never really thought of it this way with your design background and how you just described how you approach it is in a way similar to how I approach injury and recovery with patients.

And I think how I transitioned from being a very reactive practitioner, an orthopedic surgeon who fixes something that kind of comes in.

whether broken or torn or arthritic to me, transitioning into how do we heal better into how do we even prevent that injury from the very beginning to how do I empower myself my patients in my community to understand that they very much have a say in not only their prevention and their injury and their recovery but how they move and how they physically show up in this space right and what i mean by that is what does your habits look like what are you doing like how are you recovering what does your mind look like all the different things that all come together that we don't always think of as part of influencing how we show up in this space.

And so, yeah, it is really cool because you see that transition from a patient who's looking at me saying, oh, you just fixed this to, oh my gosh, I have agency in how I respond to your care and I can actually continue to move better and stronger my whole life as long as I'm an active participant and not just passively going through this space.

You know, one of the things I see is when in the house design space is that what we do a lot of is we do a ton of trying to make people's lives easier.

And how do we create spaces that make them feel more joyful? And not everybody gets to live in a custom home.

Everybody should.

But we're not at that stage yet where everybody can live in a custom home.

And then the other thing is, is they don't know themselves often well enough to know what they should be doing for themselves.

And what, you know, I know people who built a home in their 60s and they made sure their bedroom was upstairs.

And I'm like, why did you do that? And they said, because if we stop climbing stairs...

we're gonna lose something in our life.

And we're prepared for the hardship of the stairs over not having them because we know of our health, where we're conscious.

And another client I designed a house for And I remember saying to him, you're going to break yourself.

So I've got to take the steps out of this bottom level because you go so hard at life.

You're going to come off your motorbike.

You're going to do one sport thing.

You're going to break yourself.

There's going to be times you're on crutches.

There's going to be times you're on this.

And with the way you push so hard in life, I'm designing it so that you will always have the mobility around the house while you recover.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

That mental thing, but making life easier is one thing, but making life softer and not being able to drive forward, that to me is the loss of not being able to participate in it.

Absolutely.

And it's funny, the connection there, I never really thought of it this way with your design background and how you just described how you approach it is in a way similar to how I approach injury and recovery with patients.

And I think how I transitioned from being a very reactive practitioner, an orthopedic surgeon who fixes something that kind of comes in.

whether broken or torn or arthritic to me, transitioning into how do we heal better into how do we even prevent that injury from the very beginning to how do I empower myself my patients in my community to understand that they very much have a say in not only their prevention and their injury and their recovery but how they move and how they physically show up in this space right and what i mean by that is what does your habits look like what are you doing like how are you recovering what does your mind look like all the different things that all come together that we don't always think of as part of influencing how we show up in this space.

And so, yeah, it is really cool because you see that transition from a patient who's looking at me saying, oh, you just fixed this to, oh my gosh, I have agency in how I respond to your care and I can actually continue to move better and stronger my whole life as long as I'm an active participant and not just passively going through this space.