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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

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