[ad_1]
Retired teacher and artist Barbara Salsberg-Matthews explains how she was first fascinated by pantomime and how she uses her love of the art form to help those with Parkinson’s to ‘live life to the fullest’. I will tell you what I did.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with Parkinson’s disease.
Based in Toronto, Canada. I started pantomime when I was 16 and fell in love with it. Seeing the French actor and mime artist Marcel Marceau live, I was completely mesmerized. In high school, I was fortunate enough to be taught by a very talented pantomime and became her assistant. She had so much fun that she ended up forming a theater company and touring for about seven years.
He then studied experimental theater in Paris, France and eventually became a high school art and theater teacher, teaching improvisation and visual arts. After that, I worked as a corporate trainer. This included teaching using all senses so that corporate learners can work more effectively in teams. After serving as director of visual arts at a school in Toronto, I retired and moved to a nice little town to fulfill my dreams of traveling and painting.
One day my hands started shaking. When he was found to have Parkinson’s disease, things took a turn for the worse. The news was pretty devastating. I cried; I couldn’t believe it. I kept saying it was just a tremor or a pinched nerve. But it was Parkinson’s disease. So I had to rewrite my future. I decided to focus on the legacy I could leave behind, whether it was by participating in research trials or teaching mime as a therapeutic tool to help people with other illnesses.
How did you first realize the effects of mime on Parkinson’s disease?
I was reading “Healing the Brain” by Dr. Norman Doisi. In this chapter there is a chapter about a man with Parkinson’s who was retrained to walk normally by slowing down his walking movements and then speeding them up. Realizing that, I thought:
I often hold a glass, and my right arm is weak and I spilled water without knowing it. So I visualized an immobile puppet in my right hand, holding that image. I practiced imagining marionette strings while walking and gesturing with glass. This has allowed me to retrain my body. Now most people would see me walking and not know I have Parkinson’s disease.
Later, I discovered that there was a pantomime artist named Rob Mermin in Vermont, USA, who also had Parkinson’s disease and taught pantomime to people with Parkinson’s disease. He gave me a blessing to develop the work he was doing. This has led me to help give first-hand talks and workshops on how mime can be used as a therapeutic tool for people with Parkinson’s disease.
How can mime help people with Parkinson’s disease?
I use three techniques when teaching. It focuses on fine motor skills so that people can learn how to control and separate every part of their body, including the face. Next, images that help overcome mental resistance are very important. The last technique I use is his motor memory People may think of this as “muscle memory” but muscles don’t remember. What the brain remembers is repeating actions over and over again.
By applying the illusion of pantomime, I found that I wasn’t trembling when I was doing this. I was able to walk without dragging my feet. When I was teaching, people would come up to me with big smiles and say, “Wow, that’s fun!” or “I wasn’t shaking when I was doing it.” I love seeing people’s smiles and I love seeing the changes that can happen in one workshop. Most of all, I love comedy. I have a lot of fun
Encouraging others to learn mime is important to me because not many people can teach mime. I would hate to lose this tool.
Do you have any advice for someone recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease?
we need to laugh more It’s been a tough time, but it’s also good to find moments to play and enjoy life. Life is not a rehearsal. When I give workshops, I say, “I’m not my disease. How can we leave the world more beautiful?
Lead Image Credit: Carrie Branovan
need to know
Barbara Salsberg Mathews is a retired teacher and interdisciplinary visual and performance artist based in Toronto, Canada. Barbara is currently working with a university in Ontario, Canada, to incorporate pantomime and Parkinson’s into a new program on Therapeutic Health and Arts. encourages everyone to get in touch at mimeovermind@gmail.com.
For more information on how to live with Parkinson’s, visit the Parkinson’s Europe website.
read more:
“Without Parkinson’s disease, my pasta would never have been art.”
“Boxing keeps me going”
return
[ad_2]
Source link