A NEW WAY
OF HEALING.
MUSIC TAMES THE WILD BEAST ISN’T JUST WORDS…IT’S A FACT.
Our goal is to improve the quality of life for seniors by enabling them to lead a long and productive life free from illness. To prevent disease and optimize their health, it is important that seniors learn how their nutrition impacts their physical and mental health, how to eat to maintain a healthy weight, how to perform exercises that are age appropriate, and how to keep their minds sharp.
Music tames the wild beast isn’t just words; it’s a physiological fact. Research shows that music has a calming effect on the mind and body. The harmonics in music affect mechanisms in the brain and adrenal glands causing stress relieving hormones to be released. Stress can impair an individual’s metabolism and contributes to weight gain, depression and decreased mental functioning. When music triggers these hormones metabolism along with memory improves and depression lifts.
Discussing the topics of nutrition, weight loss, and exercise can be stressful. Seniors, in particular, may feel defeated by their health status and inability to lose weight. This can lead to disinterest in exercise or stress due to the difficulty of performing exercise. Memory function can be affected by poor nutritional habits and lack of oxygen due to decreased blood flow. Depression can set in when seniors feel they are shut-in, alone, unable to perform everyday chores, or their memory is failing them. It all becomes an interlinked, vicious cycle.
We use music to lure our audience into a receptive state where their minds are open, and their attention is peaked. Once they are fully alert and relaxed, we work together to build a greater understanding of the role that nutrition, diet, and exercise play in a healthy elder lifestyle. Taking the concept one step further and magnifying the stress relieving properties, I turn the audience into a community where members are welcome to become music makers themselves.
Each of the six weekly sessions in Music to the Mind combines singing, lecture, group exercises, and homework assignments designed to further knowledge of a healthy lifestyle. At the beginning of the six weeks, participants will perform a self-assessment relating to their practice of healthy habits and set goals for change. At the end of the six weeks, we will revisit these goals, assess success levels and create new goals. Each unit in the class will have a handout designed to remind the participants of activities they can perform to maintain their healthy lifestyle.
Each class can be audited as a stand-alone unit of thought. However, the course is structured to be a cumulative experience with concepts building from class to class.
At the end of six weeks, class participants will be more RELAXED and MOTIVATED to get up and DO SOMETHING GOOD FOR THEMSELVES each and every day.
