Greeting Note for IBRC2023
		Prof. Mieczyslaw Pokorski Foreign Director of the International Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy (IBRA) Poland

Greeting Note

It is with great pleasure that I hear about the next IBRA Conference to be held in Tokyo in the summer of 2023. I have since long been an oversee member of IBRA and attended many conferences before. I follow the IBRA activities whose overreaching aim has been to spread knowledge about the necessity to introduce changes in the rehabilitation paradigm due to increasing needs linked to worldwide society aging. I am honored to be part of the concept of “motivative exercise” developed by Takizawa Shigeo, the founder of IBRA. It is due to his vision and undaunting scientific and organizational efforts that the concept has taken foot at the international rehabilitation forum. The concept centers on the patient’s well-being and better functional recuperation after neurological episodes by involving the patient in the rehabilitation process. Motivative exercise is posed to go much beyond that being useful not only in neurological episodes. In central and peripheral neurodegeneration and neuropathies, “motivative exercise” opens a new avenue of an antiaging strategy. The preventive effects of “motivated exercise” cannot be underestimated as physical rehabilitation improves not only physiological health but also cognitive health in healthy aging. Physical activity is now considered a dementia protective factor building resilience to neurodegeneration.

The activities of IBRA have been increasingly recognized at the international forum. Not long ago, we organized an international seminar and workshop of IBRA under the aegis of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. The seminar, organized at the ZOOM platform due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, presented the achievements of IBRA in the rehabilitation field. I am pleased to come to know that IBRA-designed lower limb exercise devices for rehabilitation are underway to be recognized in Japan as medical equipment, which opens the way for their wider domestic and international use. These easy and user-friendly devices may help engage in “motivative exercise” and help perform further controlled trials with larger samples of patients. It is great news that the mass production of devices is scheduled to start soon. I take with thanks and pleasure your invitation to be a member of the Development Committee for mass production. I will put the devices to work on patients. I am also pleased to hear about the ongoing IBRA conference In Tokyo in July of 2023. This time, I cannot participate due to my other obligations. I hope there will be another opportunity to meet you all in the not-too-distant future. I sincerely wish you great deliberations at the conference. I am sure the conference will be as active in setting further ways of scientific progress with the concept of “motivative exercise” and its practical use as ever.