Workshops - Caregiving, Rehabilitation, Play

    Caregivers often find themselves playing a role they don't like, in a script nobody likes. Directors of improv theatre help actors be aware of the possibilities and potential of the drama they are in. We present a model support group for caregivers who want to play their role with more confidence when 'the curtain opens' - every day.
    Part 1: Caregivers may assume the person they care for cannot be a delight, when in fact that person can come to life if someone will connect in play. Caregivers may assume they themselves don't have what it takes to bring out the playful spirit in the person for whom they care. Learn to discover opportunities for informal play inherent in the moment, and learn structured theatrical games perfect for caregiving. Play need not take time - you can play while fulfilling caregiving tasks. On the other hand, play can make spending time together enjoyable. Discover ways to connect.
    Part 2: Experience home as a play you create with your family about your family. Create models of your family dynamics; examine what may drive your family systems. Play with paradigms. Immerse in imagination - and put new possibilities to the test. This process creates the context for collaborative exploration. Ask: What needs to happen for there to be real change in these 'characters'' stories? What needs to happen for you to advance your play?
    Part 3: From Creatures of Habit to Creators of Habits: Perhaps with your partners-in-care, try this workout. Beyond going through motions, work the imagination and let imagination inspire movement - part routine, part improvisation. Playfully change the unconscious - grow in freedom from 'automatic pilot' through observing thought and speech and movement patterns, and trying on new identities.
    In this workshop, using your experience, we will create a play.

Do many hands make light work, or do too many cooks spoil the broth?
Are you stimulated by others, or do they bog you down?
Are you a team player or an independent visionary?
Can we create the world we want, together?

This Playback Theatre workshop will engage you in the turmoil of deciding if you really want to collaborate with your co-workers, your family, your friends. Do you trust the group process or is it easier to just do it yourself? Can you get your voice heard when you collaborate? Can you even find your voice in a group? Do you really want to hear another voice? What if your idea is the best? When is it time for efficiency? Is the team worth it? What is gained? What is lost?

If your family is a band, what kind of music does it play? If your home was set to music, what would it sound like? Perhaps it is a set piece, with relentlessly repeating patterns. Improvising musicians create change together - establishing new rhythms, identifying and changing keys, changing patterns, playing with staccato and legato, dissonance and harmony, tension and resolution. Can carepartnering be like improvising music? Can home be experienced as a band - playing together, in both freedom and unity? What if only one person wants to play in the band?
Participants learn musical games that can be played in the home - games which develop musical skill, intelligence, and creative ability; games which can reframe the entire day.

    The discovery of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity has generated some hype, but also real hope. In the words of Alzheimer's Canada's Dr. Jack Diamond: "the more of this 'social stimulation' a person with Alzheimer Disease gets, the more likely it is that their surviving brain cells will be induced to sprout and restore lost connections with other nerve cells".
    Neuroscientists and gerontologists properly praise computer-based games for the brain, even though neuroscience research shows that neuroplasticity works best when activities are (a) embodied, and (b) in an enriched environment.

"Putting marmosets in a plain cage - the kind typically used in science labs - led to plain-looking brains. The primates suffered from reduced neurogenesis and their neurons had fewer interconnections. However, if these same marmosets were transferred to an enriched enclosure - complete with branches, hidden food, and a rotation of toys - their adult brains began to recover rapidly. In under four weeks, the brains of the deprived marmosets underwent radical renovations at the cellular level. Their neurons demonstrated significant increases in the density of their connections and amount of proteins in their synapses." (Kozorovitskiy, SEED).

    Research by Helen Mayberg at UofT (and separate research by Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA) shows Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) can re-wire the brain, changing the brain physically.
    Contact Improv Dance and Improv Theatre Games can be forms of CBT, but are embodied, accessible to people of nearly all abilities and financial means (e.g. $5 for 2 hours, or free at home), & fun. Participants move beyond catastrophe thinking, overgeneralizing, and jumping to conclusions. Default patterns become alive with choice points, and our sense of what's possible is brought into contact with reality (in both directions - expanding limited beliefs and grounding impractical fancies).
    Contact Improv dance is practiced by people who are blind, in wheelchairs, have Parkinson's, or are in rehabilitation from spinal cord injury, and is also danced by elite dancers. Dance jams are integrated - elite dancers grow by dancing with people with limited mobility.
    Stereotypically, staring at a computer screen is the opposite of an enriched environment. Yet an engaging computer experience can be more rich than staring at a wall, a flowering plant, or a subway full of passengers, and a computer program that is finely tuned to your mental activity / that engages your attention is richer than a going-through-the-motions dance. Still, dancing at the edge of your abilities, with attention focused on and through your 'fear spot', engages more of the brain's attention - potentially the entire sensorimotor cortex (both sensing and moving), the visual and auditory cortex, emotions, imagination, and the 'whole self' (values, spirituality, etc), as they come into play in creative expression. Similarly, it's nearly impossible to do improv theatre without total attention.
    Dancing and improv theatre don't develop "cognitive reserve" if they are executed at only a casual level. "Growth only really comes at the point of resistance." It has to be working at your edge - the boundaries of your abilities - whatever they are. While computer-based brain games are a helpful complement to serving needs for brain health, it would be a mistake to miss out on activities which can have greater neural impact. Besides, embodied social games are more physically healthy than most computer games (for the cardiovascular system, muscles, bones, and coordination). And they are fun, so people feel better about doing the activity, and choose to continue the practice.
    Contact Improv Theatre can be a growthful playground for adults. P.S. Staying open to the 'opposite side': Dr. Douglas Gentile and team studied new surgeons who played video games and who don't, and found video game skills were a significant predictor of surgical skills.

         Can neurogenesis outpace decay? For a while, yes. Then: Can the 'mind' integrate while the brain 'disintegrates'? Can a person be stronger, clearer, more creative, more loving, more energetic 10 years into Alzheimer's than when it began?
    If an activity is fun, carepartners will engage in rehabilitating play.
    Metaphors connect neurons. When we find analogical relationships between diverse practices, the brain is 'stretched' on both tracks - each track is illuminated by its comparison with the other. In other words, considering analogies initiates 'parallel processing', 'strengthening' neural pathways. To a degree, the cognitive processes required for growing a garden are the same cognitive processes required for managing a business. Specialization is required, but cross-disciplinary thinking develops transferable skills.
    Metaphors not only integrate, but also differentiate (clarify). Instead of studying a mass of unremarkable (forgettable) information, comparing analogues makes differences stand out (neurons grow).
    Bilingual/multi-lingual people withstand the effects of Alzheimer's disease longer than unilingual people. This is especially true for people who live in environments where communicating in either language is an option. One reason for this benefit of bilingualism is because at any moment speakers can choose between alternate ways of expression. Is it therefore also true that this benefit applies to unilingual people who bring choice to their diction and modes of expression? While most people sometimes choose to be polite and use correct grammar, is the benefit greater for people who delight in playing with words, perhaps adopting a 'character''s linguistic mode and finding or creating metaphors to communicate with vivid clarity?
    Even while Alzheimer's disease 'disintegrates' the brain, the mind can integrate. A cross-disciplinary education begets neural pathways that are thicker/stronger, so the brain has more 'cognitive reserve' - each neural pathway can withstand decay longer. And while plaques and tangles will choke some neural pathways, other neural pathways from different disciplines may remain intact. Up to some stage in the disease, people can think about or remember how to do something in one discipline by thinking about an analogue. Nearly everyone already does this. With conscious development, we can do it better.
    Frustrated with repeat patterns, carepartners can be in the same room but different worlds - the 'partners' retreating into internal monologues. The self decays. A 're-minding workout', combining words and movement, rehearses the self, and integrates constellations of experience. Like performers seeing how many plates they can spin, see how many synapses you can fire in simultaneous networks. Experience home as a play / a garden / a business / music / a dance you create with your family about your family. The different streams appeal to different people. Each layer adds richness to home life. Ultimately, all layers merge into one.
    Play enables comprehensive stimulation, and brings a person into the fount of healing - "When I am wholly present, she is wholly present." In our experience, a person can be stronger, clearer, more creative, more loving, and more energetic 10 years into Alzheimer's than when it began.
    This paper is offered to stimulate thought - critical response is welcome.

People tell me I’m virtuous because I care for Mom. How can I call myself a caregiver if I’m polluting the planet? How can I love Mom when she does nothing but consume? Can we integrate care for people and planet? Can I care for Mom by caring for the Earth? Can becoming an ecological household be a fun and meaningful activity for partners-in-care, growing connections as we experience our home and environment as a system? Can I care for the Earth by caring for Mom?

Make connections with people:
How learning the intelligence behind dance can change the way you think and experience, thus enabling better relationships.
Make connections between radically different dance forms:
What Swing & Blues can learn from Contact Improv; What Contact Improv can learn from Swing & Blues.
Make connections in your brain & nervous system:
Learn science through dance.
For schedule: 905-513-6122,

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The "technologies" of humour and imagination can liberate – from constraints and from global conflicts. Humour refuses to suffer the slings and arrows of reality. Can those of us not naturally gifted with humour grow it? Can you be in-the-moment when you’re in pain, or when you don’t know where or when or who you are? Humour is not wit – we create the conditions for humour by love. The Catastrophe Theory of Humour is this: we are set up to expect X, then Y upsets our constructs, and in the moment of insight, seeing the perspective from which Y makes sense, trapped energy is released into laughter. Humour is found in the gaps in our official stories: the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories culture teaches. Deconstructing our stories can be both catastrophic and liberating. Humour does not set up a new rule, but keeps life in play. Humour plays with our mental blocks. We know humour is important - but how can we find it in our chaos? The human species as a whole seems disabled. War games seem our only option. We can be Cain and Abel - together at last.

Human interaction can't be beat for engaging hearts and minds. On the other hand, pets can bring playfulness and love in a way that might not happen with people. Computers? When caregivers are engaged in activities that their carepartner can't participate in, a high-quality digital library can deeply engage a person, guiding an imaginative and emotional workout. Jonathon designed a system where someone with arthritis and poor vision and memory can choose items from a library (audio/video/other), or use playlists pre-set for a progressive journey. The system uses a remote control mouse, and displays on a TV screen.