Ray, in our program I had to coordinate all activities within a tiny
budget, and music as therapy or pass-time/entertainment were the most
expensive items on the agenda. I therefore could only possibly comment
in a most elementary way on what I observed of a bi-weekly one-two hour
sustained effort, and alternate weeks of the musical CDs whose feature
length of film would average about 50 minutes or so of song and dance.
Seniors are interested in music therapy, professional or informal, as
long as they are having fun. In therapy sessions, percussion instruments
are obviously the easiest, and most readily conspire to encourage new
skills as they rotate individual instruments round the ensemble. A sound
created is a thing, a chronic surprise and intrigue, immediately
satisfying, and as skills grow, group satisfaction and interaction
spills into the room. Rhythm guides their mood, but reaches their very
being, awakening familiar laughter, and allowing them to be carried away
where ever the beat takes them. Abandonment of self-consciousness is
more easily attained with an elderly group because they were raised on
music.
But once the rhythm is established, giving voice is the natural
inclination for fullest expression. (Bodies moving would be even better,
but they would break hips soon enough.) They have lots to say about love
and stuff and words meanings will be acted out more openly with
instrumental accompaniment in their own two hands. Sure, the songs are
the usually old time tunes up to the Beatles (they should include more
modern melodies that seniors sang along with the radio as their kids
were growing up, as well--many will complain about tired tunes and the
drawn out rhythm) but their common themes are what runs through most
thoughts of longing in a retired bundle of emotions. They cast off, in
these sessions, many deeply harboured resentments for one another as
group accomplishment is realized. Politics at seniors' residences can be
extremely damaging to fragile souls, and such activity, managed by
professionals from the community rather than from within (too much like
family) can encourage inclusion while breaking the barriers of ego
posturing. Recorded progress feedback and a CD recording of their best
work together brings pride and fosters belonging. I would think that
Sony personal composing recorders would be beneficial, so that people
could further build on their confidence, and exercise possibilities.
Seniors have generally tired voices, diminished or barely discernible,
flat or overly loud. This all starts to blend as things progress, as
long as they like what they're singing. For those whose voices have
difficulty, the key or rhythm is often the thing, but some good old
spinal alignment a la Alexander Technique is helpful too. I don't know
that they are stressing physical composure enough as a means to an end,
but a lot of that works itself out, too, as people's bodies adjust into
relaxation. Like bio-feedback from the Seventies was promoting as ways
to overcome pain. I believe that if finances are in place, better
physical workouts are helpful. Old people still want to dance, or even
move differently from what habits they've grown into, but a well
appointed facility would provide sturdy supports and staff to assist. No
matter how humble, it's still in the doing. As with art as therapy,
which I introduced to this group--but art does not attract the numbers,
for physical demands or skills, and though extremely beneficial, will
usually only be so if the person had previous inclinations, or is very
open. Those suffering from Alzheimer's have ego boundaries firmly
entrenched, and it takes a great deal of coaxing for them to pick up a
paint brush if they're not guaranteed an attractive finished product, so
they lose on the process part. They may glean some pride if the brush is
applied to a sail boat or bird house, as in crafts, and then you get to
regularly remind them whose handy work was responsible for that piece
they're admiring. But music is immediate, certainly less taxing, and you
can get into the mood easily. With music, brain works creatively from
within, as well as reactively from the external world.
Perhaps this feeds one of the strongest of natural and healthy
addictions. Perhaps it affects our emotions not unlike chemical
addiction, but instead of causing demise from over-feeding, builds
healthy new receptors whose cells just get smarter? Emotions produce
peptides or MOEs--molecules of emotions, that dock in receptors in the
cells. The more you get, the more you crave. Music receptors are waiting
expectantly for those emotions, and we give them MUSAK if they're lucky.
Musical junkies? Us? Yes, us!
Now, when you have seniors who have been dealing with various harmful
and often addictive drugs, even morphine, they've built up an enormous
number of docking sites for drugs which make them very edgy and tired.
This would include emotional addictions. There is a tolerance effect in
emotions, but unlike the unhealthy ones like anger and thrill seeking
which desensitize, music restores balance to the stressed out
neuropeptides that constantly scream, "give me more!". Music can help
them to alleviate these cravings, even obviously lessen the need for
painkillers. The frontal lobes hold the thought, activate the neural net
and subsequently signal the internal pharmacy.
I read a little about MOE's and Dr. Candace Pert's work. Though she is
now focusing on developing pharmaceuticals that selectively block
receptor sites for the AIDS virus, she (according to a blurb in /"What
the Bleep do we/ /Know!?" /pursued the "threateningly interdisciplinary"
relationship between nervous and immune systems, developing
documentation of a body-wide communication system mediated by peptide
molecules and their receptors, which she perceives to be the
bio-chemical basis of emotion and the potential key to many of the most
challenging diseases of our time. She wrote the book, /"Molecules of
Emotion",/ which I'd mentioned in earlier posts, and holds several
patents on synthetic neuropeptides, from what I remember.
The local conservatory will visit clients in their rooms, and often
engage family members, while, where ever possible, building bridges to
confidence so that clients can then join the group. Once they're there,
they love it. Alzheimer's probably knows no better friend, but music
participation brings most all out if they're stimulated, entertained,
and physically able. Where therapy is structured for rehab, very
specific stimulative methods will yield measurable results, as you know
better than I, and I cannot comment on such programs beyond my strongest
recommendations because of clearly favourable results.
I worked with assisted living clients--we used the dining room for all
activities, while the kitchen that opened onto the common space burned
up its regular fare, sans air conditioning, and whose demised fridges
ran their own percussive confabulation. I shake my head knowing the
pensioners who once worked for government or education enjoy resort-like
facilities, with up to date programs in therapies of all kinds. The
difference is $700-1000/month and $3-6000/month in rents.
Wish I had more, but Dr. Pert's work should connect you to information
relevant to what constitutes emotion.
Where you ask: Other than for physical infrastructure what new ways of
thinking about value and new sustainable services would you imagine?
I'm presuming you are still talking about music. Otherwise, I might
never finish this email!
If not, let me know, after all, it's in the doing you come up with stuff!
Natalia
Ray Harrell wrote:
I just ordered the Michel Thaut book Rhythm, Music and the Brain
after reading passages from it elsewhere. The issue for me is the
study of what exactly constitutes emotion. Both as a Cherokee and
a Musician, Emotion is generally described as the mask that we put
over what we are perceiving from the Kinesthetic. Kinetics somewhat
but especially the inner sense of feeling. Just as we do with
abstract music, we place stories on the feelings and which stories or
Masks we choose will be mad, sad, glad, scared, etc. Rather than
be stirred to feel fear or caught in love, we have sensations that we
interpret i.e. choose to perceive as a particular emotion. This has
a lot of implications for the way that one teaches tonal character in
singing and acting.
Your description of the work with music therapy and the musicologist's
research into the archeology of music and emotion is changing the way
that we think about the world and as to what constitutes value in the
world when it relates to the purpose of the Arts in the marketplace.
In the case of the Cherokee it has to do with the way the Arts were
used to train the human instrument to have technique, or virtuosity,
to handle the job of forester and in designing and caring for the
forest as a Garden.
This idea is not only coming from my traditions but the work of
anthropologists in the Amazon working with the remnant populations of
Native people has redefined the whole argument around hunting
gathering and pillaging. It seems that these current activities
are the result of the collapse of major population centers of millions
people in the Amazon and not the pedagogical structures that were and
in some cases are still in place. The Anthropologists in Brazil are
far ahead of their North American peers who are still stuck in the old
patronizing place that destroys the objectivity of their
observations. Most of them can't even speak the languages. How
many Canadians speak Indian Languages? In America? America is a
colonial mono linguistic culture that mistrusts someone speaking
anything but English.
But back to the music: I would be interested Natalia in what you
would have designed for the way the Stimulus packages were
constructed?
Other than for physical infrastructure what new ways of thinking about
value and new sustainable services would you imagine? It seems to
me that if we can't imagine a different way then we can't create
one. Thank you for what you posted and what do you think?
REH
*From:* [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Darryl
or Natalia
*Sent:* Thursday, July 15, 2010 10:19 PM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
*Subject:* [Futurework] Music as medicine
I had a client with Dementia whose repertoire of tunes up to, say, the
late Seventies was in tact. She would remind us that she used to sing
on the radio as a kid, and her utter joy at Sing-Along time, or movie
afternoons, where older musicals worked best for most clients, was
delightful. Couldn't remember much past a minute, but a happy
decline--fortunately. We had music therapy through the local
conservatory therapists in prior years, but ours was a small group,
and the funding wasn't there after new rules set in. There was an onus
on us to prove that we could pay 50% for workshops for at least 2
years, and it had to be weekly. We could barely pay for an eight week
run. So we continued to be tortured by Sing-Along, with intermittent
guitar performances or Barber Shop. But the clients loved it, needed
it, and so obviously benefited from it physically because of the
psychological boost and challenge to mind and body, and it was a way
to relate to others they may not otherwise get along with, and they'd
get to see a new face, too.
Memory, however, might just be stored outside the brain. Have to
remember where I read that one! Wait, it's coming back...that "What
The Bleep Do We Know!?" book, page 158.
It reads: /A number of scientists are currently looking into the
proposition that memories are not actually stored in the brain. It has
been found that if you remove part of the brain where a memory
appeared to be located, the memory may still persist! Where is it
stored? Perhaps somewhere at the planck scale, or what some people
might call "the akashic records." The brain might just serve as an
instrument to pull the memories out of the universe. It might be the
local storage, the local disk for the cosmic hard drive where all
memories are stored.
/(Planck scale, currently the smallest distance that can be defined,
at 10-33 centimeters, 10 trillion trillion times smaller than a
hydrogen atom.)/
/
This was inset in the section where Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a prof in
Dept. of Anesthesiology and Psychology and Director of the Center for
Consciousness Studies at U. of Arizona, Tuscon,
(www.quantumconsciousness.org <http://www.quantumconsciousness.org>),
explains that he thinks /"more like a quantum Buddhist, in that there
is a universal proto-conscious mind that we access, and which can
influence us. But it actually exists at the funda-mental level of the
universe, at the Planck scale."
/He is the same fellow who coordinated with Roger Penrose ( proposed
that consciousness comes about when superpositions of neurons within
the brain reach a certain threshold and then collapse--similar to
collapse of wave function due to observation, called objective
reductions (ORs). Hameroff suggested the mechanism by which this could
take place. Together they formulated their *Penrose-Hameroff "OR"
Theory of Consciousness.* Central to the collapse process are highly
intelligent, self-organizing microtubules which serve as the cell's
nervous and circulatory system; they process and communicate, and
organize neighbouring cells to act coherently. In neurons,
microtubules set up synaptic connections, and are involved in release
of neurotransmitters. They organize the neuronets one level up, but
are themselves affected deep within their own structure by a quantum
phenomenon: the proteins of which they are made respond to signals
from an internal quantum computer consisting of single electrons.
These "proteins changing their shape is the amplification point
between the quantum world and and our affecting the classical world in
everything that mankind does, good and bad." Hameroff continues "that
it's the spontaneous collapse (OR) of these microtubules, roughly
forty times a second, that gives a moment of consciousness. Our
consciousness is not continuous, but a sequence of "ah-ha moments". He
says, "Consciousness kind of ratchets through space time in a sequence
of now moments: now, now, now..."
"What The Bleep Do We Know!?" has many amazing contributors, and is
one of the best books ever. It's a great introduction to quantum
physics, and it's not at all dry. Most libraries should carry it. It's
way better than the movies that preceded it, though the movies are
fun. So are the film comments as they go through the contributors.
Natalia
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