UCLArts and Healing

A new documentary shows the powerful effects of ipod music on the memories of Alzheimer patients.

Click here to view an older adult reacting to music from his era.

Click here to view longer footage from the documentary.

The National Endowment for the Arts study reports these and other positive outcomes associated with high levels of arts exposure for youth of low socioeconomic status.

Click here for the full report.

Music is becoming a more integral part of integrative medicine. This article describes how music practitioners work with medical professionals to relieve pain, bring peace, stimulate movement, elicit speech, facilitate cognition, and offer self expression when words are not enough. Improved treatment outcomes lead to cost savings.

Click here to view the article.

UCLArts and Healing’s Beat the Odds drumming program was the featured article on the front page of UCLA Today, faculty and staff news, for a week beginning January 26, 2012.

Click here to view the article

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced a new federal interagency task force to promote research on the arts and human development. The Department of Health & Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Education are among 13 federal agencies and departments seeking to advance research on the arts and well-being across the lifespan:

• HHS/Administration for Children & Families
• HHS/Administration on Aging
• Department of Education/Office of Innovation & Improvement
• NIH/National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine
• NIH/National Institute on Aging
• NIH/Office of Science Education
• NIH/Office of Behavioral & Social Sciences Research
• NIH/National Institute of Child Health & Human Development
• NIH/National Institute of Mental Health
• Institute of Museum & Library Services
• Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration
• National Science Foundation/Science of Learning Centers
• National Endowment for the Arts

Click here to view full announcement
Click here to view their report

A CNN.com article published Monday Jan. 2 about a new fitness program combining aerobic exercise with drumming referenced research on the benefits of group drumming by Ping Ho, founding director of UCLArts and Healing, who is quoted. The article received top billing by UCLA Media Coverage for the first report of the New Year.

Click here to view the article

You’re thinking too much.

The words of my longtime jazz-modern dance teacher, Reggie Brown, popped into my head as I tried to figure out the steps in a random Zumba class at the gym for the first time ‒ at times with two left feet.

When I simply mirrored the moves without trying to figure out how to execute them or worrying about how they were going to look, I discovered that I was able to do them “right” and stay in sync. I felt as if I were learning in the manner of a young child again. Perhaps our facility in mastery of language and movement as children is related to lack of self-consciousness or judgment.

This principle was clearly demonstrated in the Academy-Award winning film, “The King’s Speech”, whereby King George VI discovers his ability to speak fluently when moving, making sounds, or listening to music. Thankfully, the ability to express who we are through movement and sound requires only what we possess from birth - a body and a voice.

Interestingly, I have observed that it is generally difficult to get people to move spontaneously. Next after that, it is a challenge to get people to sing. In these fundamental realms may lie our greatest areas of self-judgment.

The Winter 2011 (volume 11, number 2) issue of UCLA Total Wellness Magazine, a student publication, focuses on integrative medicine and features an article entitled, “Healing the Mind through the Arts”. The article (on page 31) offers an overview of creative arts therapies as a field as well as a synopsis of the specific realms of dance/movement, visual arts, writing, music, and psychodrama/drama therapies. To view the article, click on the following link: Total Wellness Magazine

“How Group Drumming May Improve Low-Income Student Behavior” by Meredith Melnick in TIME Magazine online - December 9, 2010

UCLArts and Healing instructor, Rachel Ballon, PhD, MFT, shares her perspectives on the writer’s inner journey in this brief transcribed interview: Writers Inner Journey Interview.