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| The CECD Conference Crew |
What an honour it has been to spend three wonderful days in the company of so many lie minded individuals and to learn, share and inspire one another in our practice.
The CECD conference ran over three days at a beautiful hotel in Penticton BC. With speakers from across Canada, UK and Australia it was great to get the feel for what practice currently exists, what the global barriers to more accesptance of the arts as a healing and transformative practice are and to gain practical tips on how to launch and develop our Dementia programme.
Key highlights for me were presentations from Dr Julia Clark, a neurologist who spoke eliquently about the control of movement at brain level and who communicated wonderfully the immence benefits of music therapy as a healing tool for movement disorders. Making it clear that many people living with Dementia also have profound movement disorders, generally manifesting themselves in the inability to move, Dr Clark introduced me to the "Piper Rhythm" and how through a strong and regular beat music can actually replace the bodies natural movement rhythm.
( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6869036 )
Dr Clark went on the share that whilst in a movement disorder the body is producing decreased levels of Dopamine and Serotonin that listening to certain types of music, particularly Mozart, the body increases its release of these hormones!!! Music is medicine!!! Amazing
I also thoroughly enjoyed meeting and hearing Dr Richard Coaten. Richard is also a WCMT Fellow for 2010 and ironically lives 7 miles away from me in the UK, in Halifax. Hilarious that we came this far to meet and Sam and I have been really blessed to spend time with Richard, his wife Mary and their gorgeous daughter Amy.
Richard presented work on embodiment through movement and dance. It was wonderful to get the opportunity to not only hear, but also to feel the wonderful effects of the work that Richard is doing. It was during Richards presentation and then also through the words and ideas of others that I began to feel strongly that everything in Dementia care, and in our creative work within it has to be to do with connection. That without the connection we will never find the soul of the person trapped in the unmoving, un remembering body, and that without it we cannot reach or share or indeed heal and comfort.
It was wonderful to begin to recogonise that my journey into creative expression within Dementia Care actually holds vast synergy with my own creative journey, that within the practice of making and communicating and within my discovery of reaching my own inner peace I am already beginning to understand how Purple Patch will grow strategically.
Penticton is a wonderful location, we are staying in a lovely hostel, Sam is having a great time hiring bikes and hanging out. We had a wonderful time yesterday with the Coaten family in Kalona, and are both excited to return to Vancouver tomorrow for more frollocks and perhaps more sushi!
Love and Light all.
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