2009-06
2009-06
2009-06
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It’s not much fun having a stroke - and I<br />
speak from experience. However,<br />
Sheffield has some of the best stroke<br />
services in the country and small<br />
miracles are achieved every day in<br />
rehabilitation units.<br />
This is not to under-estimate the<br />
problems being faced by thousands of<br />
survivors and their families, as hospital<br />
support cannot continue forever and<br />
rehabilitation concentrates on basic<br />
survival in the community. Hard work<br />
for everybody with little respite and little<br />
relief.<br />
Because I found art highly therapeutic<br />
myself, I now teach painting to stroke<br />
survivors (I call them my students) as a<br />
volunteer.<br />
Many students are unable to speak,<br />
read or write and some also have visual<br />
problems. Communication with these<br />
people is an uphill struggle, not the least<br />
for the victims themselves.<br />
There has been a fair amount of<br />
research into the arts (music, painting,<br />
creative writing, etc.) as therapy<br />
following a stroke or brain injury.<br />
It is well known that many survivors<br />
with little or no speech can sing whole<br />
songs and be word perfect and maintain<br />
both rhythm and tune. When painting,<br />
many students lose their tremor and<br />
learn to work around visual problems.<br />
One student, a vicar, who had only two<br />
useful words (appropriately “God” and<br />
“yes”) actually trebled his vocabulary<br />
while painting, adding “sheep”, “sky” and<br />
“gate”.<br />
Art and music are the earliest forms<br />
of communication used by humans.<br />
Both are wired into the brain long before<br />
we are born. Babies respond to music<br />
which they heard in the womb, for<br />
months or even years after birth. All<br />
A S<br />
Art can be an important therapy<br />
for stroke patients.<br />
young children are artists unless, or<br />
until, they are inhibited or educated out<br />
of it. Quite often a stroke wipes away<br />
these inhibitions leaving the survivor<br />
free to regain lost skills.<br />
Because they are so primitive, art and<br />
music are buried too deep in the brain<br />
for the stroke to harm them. All that is<br />
needed is the help to unlock the door to<br />
them.<br />
Just as cave paintings led to<br />
numbers, letters and writing, which then<br />
led the way to language, songs and<br />
story telling, it may be possible to<br />
retrace these steps after a stroke and<br />
regain lost skills.<br />
It may be that art is the key to the<br />
door of that secret garden where all the<br />
old flowers are alive but dormant. If so,<br />
all that we have to do is go in and tend<br />
them.<br />
“O you who dwell in the garden, my<br />
companions are listening for our voice;<br />
let me hear it”.<br />
Song of Solomon 8:13 (Revised<br />
Standard Version)<br />
Sylvia Bennett<br />
St Chads Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats<br />
email: office@stchads.org<br />
Church Offices: 15 Camping Lane, Sheffield S8 0GB Page 8 website: www.stchads.org<br />
Tel: (0114) 274 5086