Who is Leandri?
“Be who you were made to be, do what you were made to do!”
I love Basset Hounds! To me, they are one of life’s greatest paradoxes: they have sad, droopy faces, they are lazy and gluttonous when given the opportunity, but the moment you step outside, they can become the funniest, most jolly dogs I’ve ever come across! Most importantly, in the moment that big nose finds a scent, their short-legged-skin-rolled-body becomes agile and fast! I call this unexpected change the “Basset-phenomenon”.
The reason the Basset can go from 0-100 in one big sniff, is that when he smells something and follows the trail, he is busy doing what he was made to do – even when he gets tired, the joy of fulfilling his purpose keeps him going. While working as an occupational therapist and rehabilitating patients after losing limbs, having strokes or spinal cord injuries, the same thing was proven to me time and time again: my patients became more motivated and less passive the moment that they realised they were still able to do what they were made to do. The Basset-phenomenon was proven again while training clients who initially did not believe that their bodies were still able to move, grow strong or carry them up stairs or over a distance – the moment that they realised they were able to do what they were designed to do, they became motivated and less passive.
I guess this brings us to the next question: if a Basset hound was made for tracking scents, what was a human body designed for? My answer is straight forward and simple: The human body was designed to move. It doesn’t matter if the specific human body in question is made to run, bend or lift like an Olympian or if it is made to bounce a baby on the knee, carry a child on the shoulders orroam the halls of a hospital – it was made to move!
Over the years I’ve started integrating my occupational therapy experience with my personal training and coaching knowledge, and it always boiled down to the Basset phenomenon: just because a person doesn’t look like the strongest, fastest, fittest or the most independent, doesn’t mean that they can’t become stronger, faster, fitter or more independent like they were designed to be in the first place.
My desire is to share this Basset-phenomenon with the world – where you can still do the things you were ultimately designed to do, even when neither you nor society think you can.
I want to share that joy of movement with the world, because I choose to believe and to see people’s abilities. I want to show and teach people to be aware of their own abilities. And I want to show people that no dream is impossible when it aligns with what you were designed to do in the first place!
