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ARTON PROGRAM - The therapeutic power of the group
Creative projects involving group work - general musical performance or group painting, collage, sculpture - are useful in helping to explore and strengthen social...
ARTON PROGRAM - Music therapy
In ARTON sessions, creating a piece of music or a song is an emotional experience of coping and satisfaction for the participating children. They make friends with the work process just as they make friends with the drawing or sculpture they create. Thus, the alternative experience through art, which poses challenges to the child's daily trials and habits, will end here with a truly unique solution - a finished piece of music.
In today's visually oriented society, we are used to connecting the imagination only with visual images. And because we perceive the term "image" visually, we tend to underestimate the other sensory aspects of the imagination. In fact, people usually imagine not only images, but also sounds, rhythms, movements, speech and moving pictures, even tastes and tactile sensations. The movements, words, visual images, actions, sounds and rhythms that we feel in sleep or fantasy, for example, can be defined as different modalities of the imagination. Dance as an art is the most ancient form of healing in the history of human civilization and is always included in our sessions whenever conditions allow. In these cases, dance heals both as a movement and as a tool for children's self-expression.
Music therapy is an important part of art therapy, which affects the emotional, intellectual and volitional spheres of the personality. Music can be used as a stand-alone method, but it can accompany or serve as a background for another art therapeutic approach. Our team uses music and musical improvisation as a basic modality in group music therapy sessions. Working together through the language of music, children develop a new experience of communication and interaction. Here, as in the art sessions, one can trace an example of a process in a group working together in the therapeutic experience of creating art, in which participants manage to create order from chaos and increase the scope for play, in this case to create musical work. As a result, all children experience a new sense of adequacy in their relationships through the distancing function of musical structures. In our music therapy sessions, one of the most commonly used instruments is the percussion, percussion instruments. They allow more effective contact with the body, as they stimulate the long bones of the upper and lower limbs through rhythm - a parameter in music that supports the mental inclusion of different parts of the body and integrates them on a mental level. Percussion instruments are easy to use and play, have a simple structure and allow easy overcoming of difficult activity sometimes in some children. In addition, they have remarkable timbre properties, which in turn allows an attempt to compose a melody.
Music therapy sessions are a successful method for combating stress during long hospital treatment, with physical fatigue and mental stress, they facilitate the verbalization of patients, provide a good emotional climate and promote the activity and imagination of sick children. Music, especially freely improvised, where language skills do not interfere, allows the achievement of deep communication of the child with his subconscious, with the inner peace of mind.
Often our music therapy sessions can also include listening to specially prepared and organized musical sounds that have a beneficial effect on the human body. Children who are not able to take an active part on this day are happy to be present in the hall only as listeners of selected musical works. An important point in the sessions of music therapy under the ARTON Program are the special musical performances of the music therapist for children in bed, in serious condition.
The success of music therapy depends on the child's susceptibility to music. Therefore, invaluable in our work is the relationship between the musician and the patient, which is deeply emotional and personal, based on mutual trust and support. It is this union that makes the process healing, sought after and expected by patients.
