Music Therapy, Juno Award Winning Songwriter and Music Therapist Offer Music for Rest and Stress Relief

David Bradstreet

posted by: Cheryl McLean
Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education Journal

I was pleased to hear recently from Juno award winning songwriter, musician and producer David Bradstreet, a multi-talented artist with a special interest in the intersections of the arts and health.

David is widely known as a composer, songwriter and vocalist with nineteen albums bearing his name, a high profile Juno award early in his career and subsequent Juno nominations and music credits including film and television scoring, and record production for a variety of artists from Jane Siberry to Colleen Peterson.

When you hear the name David Bradstreet you might remember his well known song "Renaissance" (Let's Dance that Old Dance Once More). I had an opportunity to hear David sing "Renaissance" at London Ontario's "Home County Folk Festival". If you've heard the song, you may feel it is like a waltz you have always known, stepping in time through life's passages as it moves, a song that recalls the lives of two people in love and their many years together.

In addition to songwriting, performing and producing music for film and television, David has
an interest in the power of music to heal and bring comfort to seniors. After working with the successful company "Solitudes", he began playing and recording music designed for therapeutic purposes to help address sleep deprivation and for stress relief and, working with associate *Amy Clements-Cortes, a music therapist at Baycrest Centre, David launched a new recording company called "Theramusic".

Relaxing music can help slow down heart rate, breathing, thinking and can enable a person to reach a deeper level of rest and tranquility. A study published in February 2005 in The Journal of Advanced Nursing found that listening to soft music at bedtime assisted older adults to sleep better and longer.

I have been listening to the two CDs "Therasleep" and "Theracalm" for the last few days while working and when journaling at night before I go to sleep. There may be an additional creative benefit to "Theramusic" as well. I have found the music helps gently release stress and tension and it has a "sustaining or "flow" quality that opens the mind for reflection and creative thought.

Congratulations to innovators David Bradstreet and Amy Clements-Cortes, for using music to heal while developing drug-free techniques to help enhance care and induce relaxation and sleep.

Go to Theramusic Website for More Information

*Amy Clements-Cortes is a graduate of the Honours Bachelor of Music Therapy Program at the University of Windsor with a voice major and a Masters in Music, University of Toronto. In addition to her research and therapeutic work Amy also runs her own vocal studio.
See http://www.notesbyamy.com/aboutamy.html for more information.

Creative Responses to Death and Bereavement , University of Western Ontario, Registration for Spring 08

Creative Responses to Death and Bereavement

University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario
May, 2008

Cheryl McLean

Plans are currently underway to offer the University of Western Ontario course "Creative Responses to Death and Bereavement" on line by May 08 through University of Western Ontario, Continuing Studies. I will be working with UWO helping to adapt new programming and materials for the on line WEB CT OWL version of the program so that the course will be widely accessible and interactive for registrants who frequently include nurse educators, therapists, teachers, social workers, those working in aging and health, caregivers and others with an interest in bereavement counselling and education. Professionals will have an opportunity to learn about the interplay of the arts such as writing, narrative, drama, poetry and ritual in death and bereavement work.



I will also be available to teach the "in class" Creative Responses to Death and Bereavement course which will be offered at King's University College, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Monday evenings starting in early May and running to July from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Register before March l, 2008. This course will be offered as part of the "Grief and Bereavement Studies" program at The University of Western Ontario.

Application deadline: March 1, 2008


For full program details see: http://www.uwo.ca/cstudies/framepostdegree.html
See green bottom rt. sidebar "Grief and Bereavement"

Other information:


King's University College Centre for Education about Grief and Bereavement, UWO
http://www.uwo.ca/kings/academic_programs/centres/deathed/






See video clips #1 C. McLean, Introduction, Creative Arts in Bereavement
Presentation, King's University College, University of Western Ontario
http://www.cmclean.com/movies/cheryl-part1.mov

video clip #2 Arts approaches in health, training and education gaining momentum, King's University College, University of Western Ontario
http://www.cmclean.com/movies/cheryl-part2.mov

"The study of death is truly life enhancing."

Dr. John (Jack) Morgan

Alzheimer's, Drama and Research, New Performance Seeks to Foster Humanistic Approach to Dementia Care Practice

Ethnodramatic Production to Help Enhance Communication and Relationships

CCAHTE Journal Advisory Board members include leaders in the creative arts, health, training and education as well as researchers and scientists working at the intersections of the arts and sciences. Continuing our reporting on CCAHTE Journal Advisory Board members and their ongoing projects this morning, we present information about a new ethnodramatic production by Pia C. Kontos, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences, The University of Toronto.

Below we present brief excerpts from the paper, “Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer’s, Moving from Ethnographic Texts to Performing Ethnography", Pia C. Kontos and Gary Nagalie, University of Toronto as published in Qualitative Research, 2006. (excerpts published with author permission.)

There were three main goals in developing the ethnodramatic production “Expressions Of Personhood in Alzheimer’s”

1) to provide an accessible presentation of research to audiences of diverse disciplinary backgrounds

2) to recover the experiential immediacy of the body present in the original data-gathering setting, which, in the case of this dramatic production, permits a powerful demonstration of how selfhood is manifested in gesture and action

3) to create a space to engage in a form of social inquiry that resonates simultaneously with critique and the envisioning of new possibilities (Denzin, 1997).

Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer’s is a production that not only re-presents embodied expressions of selfhood in Alzheimer’s disease, but also critically exposes depersonalizing tendencies of treatment contexts and caregiving relationships that are a consequence of an assumed loss of selfhood that is widely associated with the cognitive deficiencies that lie at the core of dementia. It is our contention that this ethnodramatic production has the potential to open a space for seeing the humanity of persons with dementia, and for envisioning the prospect of a truly humanistic approach to dementia care practice.

As part of the development process Kontos created a partnership with ACT II Studio, a theatre school and creative drama centre for older adults, which is part of the Seniors Education Programs in Ryerson University’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, Toronto, Canada. ACT II Studio has a demonstrated history of developing socially relevant dramas for public presentation. Their director, Vrenia Ivonoffski, agreed to provide artistic directorship.

The collaborative process began with a meeting between Kontos, Ivonoffski, and a group of interested actors. All were provided with descriptions of the research participants who feature in the five vignettes. Five actors committed to the project, all having had some personal experience with Alzheimer’s disease, which was agreed upon by Kontos and Ivonoffski as necessary background to sensitize them to the general condition of the illness and, as much
as possible, to the nuances of embodiment in the lived experience of the illness.

The development of Expressions of Personhood in Alzheimer’s is part of a larger research agenda to humanize the practice of dementia care. With the production now complete, we are embarking upon the next stage of our research, which involves the performance of this drama and focus groups we are conducting with nurses and ancillary health care professionals in three different long-term care facilities. It is anticipated that responses to the performance by the focus group participants will serve as a springboard for discussion about embodied selfhood, and how perceiving a broader range of behaviour as meaningful could enhance communication and the development of interpersonal relationships, and how this could ultimately improve the quality of caregiving and the quality of life of those living with Alzheimer’s disease.

Contact info: Pia C. Kontos: Department of Public Health Sciences University of Toronto 11035-550 University Avenue Toronto, ON M5G 2A2CanadaTEL: (416) 597-3422, ext. 7609FAX: (416) 597-7105Email: kontos.pia@torontorehab.on.ca

Qualitative Research http://qrj.sagepub.com/

ACT II Studios, Toronto http://www.ryerson.ca/~act2/activities.html

Remember Me for Birds And True Stories About Aging and Autonomy

I would like to inform our blog visitors that we recently downloaded excerpts from the research based performance, "Remember Me for Birds" about aging and mental health at Youtube.
The original M.A. performance took place for clinicians, geriatricians and social workers at The Rene Cassin Institute of Social Gerontology of Quebec in April 2003.

The research based performance advanced through several evolutions as it became a full one hour ethnodrama which toured for professional audiences, universities and medical schools between 03-05.

See a video clip from the performance about aging and mental health here.

See more performances and visit the blog about the book "Creative Arts in Interdisciplinary Practice" here