'Namaste’ (nah-mah-stay) is a Hindu greeting which means ‘to honour the spirit within’.
Namaste Arts
Well-being Through Self-expression
Dementia
I have an accredited qualification in Dementia and the Arts from University College London and in Understanding Dementia from the University of Tasmania and I am a 'dementia champion'.
Please click on the link above (underlined) to see the course certificate and details of the areas covered.
Helping people with dementia is something close to my heart as my father had Dementia.
I am also interested in dementia as it seems that with our ageing population the number of people affected by dementia is increasing.
Dementia has a lot of stigma attached to it. Many people think they know about dementia, but may only know one person with dementia and not realise the wide variety of ways in which dementia can present itself in a person.
There is currently no cure and so person centred care is very important in order to give the person (and their carers) the best quality of life possible. The creative arts have been shown to be a wonderful way to improve communication and well-being.
Attitudes to Dementia in care are changing. Since Thomas Kitwood first introduced the concept of person centred care in the late 1980s many care providers are trying to see more through the eyes of the person living with dementia. If that person appears to gets comfort from holding a doll, then nowadays this is recognised as beneficial to their well being and that they should be able to choose to do this. Whereas in the past it was seen as demeaning or humiliating to allow this sort of activity.
Person-centered care recognizes that dementia is only a diagnosis of the person, and that there is much more to the person than their diagnosis.
A person-centered approach changes how we understand and respond to challenging behaviors in dementia.
Person-centered care looks at behaviors as a way for the person with dementia to communicate his needs.
Therefore communication is fundamentally important in care for people living with dementia.
'Namaste’ is an Indian greeting which means
‘to honour the spirit within’.
Namaste Care changes the focus and structure of care
given to residents at the later stages of their dementia.
The Namaste Care philosophy was developed by Joyce Simard, M.S.W., she is a private geriatric consultant to skilled nursing centers, assisted living communities, and hospice organizations worldwide. She is also involved in research projects investigating the efforts of Namaste Care™ in Australia and the United Kingdom. She earned her bachelor of arts in sociology and social work from Ithaca College in New York and her master of social work from the University of Minnesota. She also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Alzheimer's Society Info on Namaste Care
My Experience
My workshops are centred around communication,
through various mediums. I have had many enjoyable conversations and silent communications with people with dementia and find that I can usually enter easily into their world, as I try to see things through their eyes. Their sometimes abstract words being almost like symbols, not necessarily the ones you might expect, but there often is some connection, the underlying feeling always being the important thing.
This becomes easier with puppetry and art as a mode of expression.
I first started working with people living with Dementia about twenty years ago. Since then I have been interested in reading and researching about dementia, particularly in the studies and projects which show the benefit of the creative arts.
There is one lady with dementia who seems to communicate most with the 'ol' baldy' puppet character (shown here with another resident). The ol' baldy puppet has an interchangeable sad face and happy face, this lady will watch his every move and silent gesture, mimicking him and reacting to his expressions. Sometimes she will clap her hand on his rhythmically in a sequence of movements. It is lovely to experience her visibly entering his world in her imagination.
Please note that some of the people pictured on this page do not have dementia.
A Safe Space
to Express
Sense of Pride
Examples
A puppetry/drama Project
One of these projects was at Wartburg a care provider for the elderly in Westchester County, America. They started the Mnemonic Theatre Project, a weekly program that encourages playfulness and theatrics for participants in the organization’s Assisted Living Memory Care Facility and Adult Day Services program as part of its award-winning internationally-recognized Creative Ageing and Lifelong Learning Program. The workshops are led by a local college teacher, they have found that their program stimulates brains and enhances fine motor skills, and that improvisational therapy with puppets helps those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.
A Painting Project
The Hilgos Foundation was founded by Berna Huebner in 1999. Huebner enlisted art students to work with her mother Hilda (Hilgos) Gorenstein who had Alzheimer’s. The use of art opened a dialogue of communication that had been closed for years. In memory of her mother, Berna founded the Hilgos Foundation which provides grants to art students who work with Alzheimer’s patients. Students in the Hilgos project, in which “Hilgos scholars” participate each academic year, have served hundreds of people with Alzheimer’s.
The Hilgos Foundation has produced a book and a film “I Remember Better When I Paint: Art and Alzheimer’s: Opening Doors, Making Connections”, it describes how people affected with dementia can be reconnected to themselves and how communications channels can be reopened through the creative arts.The book conveys valuable scientific information on how Alzheimer’s and other dementias affect the brain and how art and creative therapies are often able to bypass the limitations imposed by those changes and reach areas of emotion, creativity, and expression. In this story about the remarkable transformation undergone by Hilgos, a woman with Alzheimer’s, her family, friends, caregivers, and doctors reflect on the role of art in helping her regain her self-esteem and connect once again with those she loves.
The Relaxing Effect of Animal Puppets
“Even people with Alzheimer’s recognize a dog and they see that the dog is someone new in their environment. I think they see it as someone with whom they can interact without any worry,” explains Mara M. Baun, DNSc, a coordinator of the PhD in nursing program at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at the Houston School of Nursing in Houston.
Baun has been researching the benefits of therapy animals for over a decade.
“When they had the pet with them, they had more interactive behaviours".
I find that people generally respond very well to animal puppets. Even when they know that it is a puppet and not a real dog or cat, they will often humour me and enter into the fun of stroking it and talking to it. It is often easy to start believing that it is alive as it moves and responds affectionately to their petting.
The great benefit of puppets, as opposed to real animals is of course that there is no risk of biting or scratching, or making messes. I was reminded of this the other day when a lady who is living with dementia was stroking a kitten puppet and started to squeeze its head quite firmly, I was glad that it was my hand inside and not a real kitten, both for the kitten and for the lady, who may have been nipped or scratched.
'Creative Expression and Freedom
'Art in all its forms is an encounter with emotion, a big reason why we need art, not as a luxury and leisure activity, but as a daily balance to our fear of feeling, our fear of the concequences of feeling.'
(Novelist Jeanette Winterson 2010)
'Fear of feeling' as Winterson puts it, may be a common phenomenon, as people say that we fill our lives with being busy, drink or eat more than we should to avoid feeling.
In fact Dementia can often release people from the fear of being creative, or the fear of self expression through art. This is the worry people often have about their work being judged, (as it may well have been when they were a child), this manifests with the words 'I can't draw, .....I'm not an artist.' Often people who have not painted since they were a child, will suddenly realise that they enjoy this activity and discover the wonderful peace and release from this form of self expression.
Because people living with Dementia have lost some of their intellectual capasity they may be thrown back on emotion and so the arts can be a good outlet for the natural reaction to all they are going through.
Art and Craft
People with Dementia can sometimes really enjoy expressing themselves through creative art. Sometimes people will produce some very imaginative surreal images, or they may just enjoy drawing lines and watching where they go.
All creative expression will receive a warm and encouraging response from me. Sometimes I will help people to make the initial contact with the paper by holding their hand with the pencil in it and initially guiding them until they find their own way, This can feel like a wonderful adventure in line and self expression.
A Watercolour Sea
The other day I initiated a drawing for a lady with Dementia, it seemed she didn't know where to start, so I made some marks in charcoal, one large mark made with the side of the charcoal stick resembled the sail of a boat. I spoke to her about it and she agreed, she saw it too, we talked about the boat being on the sea and she became inspired to make wavey lines like the sea. She used turquoise watercolour paint dropped onto wet paper and watched as the paint swirled and flowed onto the paper totally absorbed and fascinated by what she was doing.
Many of the people shown in these pictures
do not have Dementia.