CRADLE
YOGA
"A Heavenly Experience!"
Featured In
Women to Women
Vol. 9 Issue 5
Page 29
Let Your Joy
Lead You to Healing
What are your joys? Gardening, traveling, singing, playing the piano? Mine include yoga, dancing, and music. Yoga is not only a joy for me; it is one of my self-healing practices, along with meditation and play. Spending time each day in one, if not more, of our joys is where healing often occurs.
Tuesday's
Wall Yoga
6:30 - 7:30 PM ET
Drop-In: $10
Six Weeks: $50
CALL: (810) 232-1628
Thursday
Cradle Yoga
6:30 - 8:00 PM ET
Drop-In: $25
Six Weeks: $120
CALL 810-232-1628 to reserve your space and find out how you can get a FREE session (limited time only)
Private Session $150
(1 1/2 Hours)
Up to six people may attend
I also work with Special Needs Children and Adults.
Please come visit my remodeled studio!
"CRADLE YOGA"
Studio
RESEARCH
RESEARCH ON ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS, CLOSED-HEAD INJURY CLIENTS, STROKE & CANCER SURVIVORS, MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS AND OTHER SPECIAL NEEDS POPULATIONS CONDUCTED THROUGH GENESYS CENTER FOR GERONTOLOGY
Healing Arts Programs
As coordinator and facilitator of “Creative Healing Arts” Therapy workshops at both locations of Genesys Center For Gerontology in Flint, Michigan for over the past two years, I have worked with Alzheimer's patients, stroke survivors, closed-head injury clients, mentally retarded adults and one young woman who survived two brain surgeries.
As anArtist/Educator for Very Special Arts - Michigan since 1993, my background involves designing and teaching creativity classes to various special needs populations, including cancer recovery patients, developmentally impaired children and adults, troubled teenagers, survivors of suicide and the homeless.
The “Creative Healing Arts” Therapy Workshops I developed for Genesys Center For Gerontology consisted of:
¤ Doodling
Making random marks on paper
¤ Drawing
Using pens, colored pencils and felt markers
¤ Writing
With both our dominant and non-dominant hands
¤ Painting
Mainly acrylics, on a variety of flat and three dimensional surfaces
¤ Sculpting
With various clays, papers and natural elements
¤ Passive and active listening
To songs, music and poetry
¤ Dream Analysis
Both discussion and writing down our dreams
¤ Hypnosis
Guided relaxation/visualization/stimulation exercises and positive affirmations recited aloud as a group
This project was originally part of a “Healing Arts” pilot program, specially designed for Genesys Center For Gerontology's Adult Day Care clients, funded through a grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA). The Flint Institute of Arts wrote the initial grant, which was submitted to the Greater Flint Arts Council, the organization serving as the Region V Regranting Agency for MCACA.
According to the grant, in this program “...participants utilize right brain creative abilities to tap the healing power of artistic expression. The Healing Arts Program addresses right brain creative abilities for individuals who have left brain cognitive losses...Participants at Genesys Center For Gerontology Adult Day Care program come from all walks of life. They are ethnically and culturally diverse. They share one common denominator, and that is a debilitating illness, often accompanied by memory loss...Anyone interested in tapping their inner creativity can benefit from the Healing Arts Program, especially those who suffer from cognitive losses or speech impairment.”
It goes on to read, “This effort to reach a non-traditional audience for the arts by coordinating services with the medical community has far reaching applications...Chronic sufferers of such ailments as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and brain injury benefit from this type of therapy both physically and emotionally. For example, Alzheimer's disease specifically targets memory cells in the brain. By using the unaffected areas of the brain to offset the affects of the disease, the individual may gain additional memory retention...The long term goal is to expand this concept to include other members of the community who are hospitalized or reside in nursing homes.”
I was contacted by the Flint Institute of Arts and hired to develop and conduct a workshop program designed to stimulate the healing process, using right-brain activities and creative self-expression as alternative therapeutic tools.
Research in the area of alternative and complementary therapies, especially in special needs populations, is growing. I designed a set of pre-evaluation and post-evaluation sheets to gauge the progress of these gerontology clients. I was surprised at the results.
