Introduction

This article focuses on the practice of Musical Hydrotherapy, the synergy created between the artistic encounter, sound and wellness, and how it applies to working with children with special needs.

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The two ways art manifests in our lives are by creating it or by encountering it. In a holistic worldview, where experiences we regard as positive affect our wellbeing positively, it is self-evident that art plays a part in our wellbeing as a society and as individuals. But let's unpack that a little.

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Creating art

The process of making art has gained significant recognition in promoting wellbeing and positively impacting mental and emotional health.This process of discovery, at times cathartic, and emotional or soulful expression facilitated by the creation of art work and its presentation, enhances focus, coordination, a sense of planning and a sense of achievement. 

 

These are all positive steps towards developing self-esteem and improving wellness. The communication that is involved in art and craft making can help the artist deal with conflict and unresolved issues as well as opening a channel of communication with their surroundings. These are just some of the benefits of art making that go towards enhancing one’s wellbeing.

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The encounter with art

The experience of an art exhibition or music can be a nurturing and profound encounter. It can launch one into an introspective reverie, it can excite, inspire ideas and illuminate different perspectives on reality. It offers a shared realm that is missing from our day to day efficient need. A type of escapism that enraptures the self, a good artistic encounter can catalyse our imaginative processes. The artistic encounter contributes to innovation in culture, appeals to our need for social and personal identity and helps forge it.

 

The stimulation and nourishment, which the encounter with art offers, do not clearly spell out health or well-being, apart from the general enhancement of one's experience of reality and the self. This is clearly a precious and meaningful benefit, but is it an intentional remedial effect? 

 

The art world generally distances itself from wellness, perhaps because culturally the art formed around wellness has a particular aesthetic that has been kept quite limited in scope. For example, music that is played at various alternative therapy treatment rooms or that accompanies various wellness apps.

 

In particular, music, of all the encounters with art, has the strongest association with wellness. There is research that shows how particular frequencies or chord progression, and even music from particular composers can enhance wellbeing, a claim which I find too steeped in cultural biases to be universally true. However generally speaking, “Music impacts the brain by… reducing stress, pain and symptoms of depression as well as improving cognitive and motor skills, spatial-temporal learning and neurogenesis, which is the brain’s ability to produce neurons… people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s also respond positively to music.” http://tinyurl.com/2wvevmps 

 

The music I create for Musical Hydrotherapy focuses on a variety of sonic textures, not fixed by particular set rhythms or harmonies, it invites the listener to creatively engage with the music through stimulating the imagination. I also include sonified brainwave theta frequencies (3.5hz - 7.5hz) in the music at times to underlay the mix and subliminally entrain the listener’s brainwaves to these frequencies that are prominent in times of introspective focus and light sleep.

 

I curate a playlist made up of music I made, and music made by other musicians, selected for its creative merit and ability to create, guide and accompany the journey of relaxation and introspection to bring the listener close to a hypnagogic state, which relinquishes the need to control the situation and allow for the water and the aquatic body work to do the rest.

 

This practice relies on creating a space for reception that lacks opportunities for distraction.

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Spaces

Spaces of art and of treatment have a long joined history, harkening back to societies where the shaman is the healer as well as the storyteller, enrapturing their ‘audience/patients’ with an audio and visual ritualistic experience, perhaps around the fire, the artistic and therapeutic journeys intertwine. 

 

The space is fundamental in creating the context for the treatment. There is a natural sensibility in the overlap between the spaces of artistic encounters and the spaces of healing. In art presentations, the environment determines the context of the art work and the way the audience will approach it. Lack of consideration of the audience’s journey affects its reception of the art piece. The clinically white-walled gallery tries to reduce the effect of the exhibition space and focus on the piece in its supposedly purest form. We have all experienced various waiting rooms and lobbies. The more successful ones make some effort to create a pleasant experience to lower our guard and assimilate us into the environment so that we can be more receptive for what follows. Interesting to compare the minimalist design of the white cube gallery with that of a doctor’s waiting room.

 

For a treatment to be effective, the recipient of the treatment has to be receptive and welcoming. The environment of the treatment is very much part of the remedial effect. Consideration of the patient’s environment of treatment would result in the patient being more likely to invite the intervention than to put up their guard, defending their vulnerabilities.

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Musical Hydrotherapy

Our experience shows that unifying the space for art and the space for treatment in such a relaxed environment can have a very positive effect on the recipient’s wellbeing. 

 

Since 2010, we have been nurturing an environment of care intended to provide maximum comfort, delivering this artistic experience to children and staff in hydrotherapy pools at special needs school. The practice is carried out in a warm pool heated to 34c, with the standard white lights turned down. Anyone one on poolside is asked to remain quiet.

 

Sound is a signifier of space, cultural and physical, but in the water we perceive it differently. Underwater, the directional sound that gives us a sense of space above the water disappears, collapses inwards. Sound travels 4.5 times faster underwater and is perceived through bone conduction, it is heard as if resounding from an inner voice. There is not a more personal and intimate experience of sound. Floating buoyant in liquid evokes sub-conscious memories of our first 9 months of existence when sound and vibration were our first indication of something other than ourselves, and we were receptive and listening. Underwater, listening becomes a personal inquisitive journey.

 

The personal support from the recipient’s carer is guided to ‘listen’ to the recipient. The practitioner develops a sensitivity to be able to follow their movement or lack of movement in the water with little intervention. More on this element of our practice in Steph Hodgson’s interview here.

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Impact

It is difficult to receive a thorough feedback from most of the children we work with due to their ability to express themselves verbally, so it is not clear what their impression is of the music or the support they receive. It is clear that nearly all of them relax and transform their behaviour during their session. The teachers who know them well remark on the changes they witness and note that they have found the experience to increase self-regulation. 

 

Some children have vocalised along with the music: a pupil from The Village School in North London sang a traditional folk song, which was seen as unusually expressive. From the testimonies of the few children who could express themselves vocally, one pupil from Ashton School in Glasgow said she loved the music and that she had experienced dreams very soon after she first floated. She excitedly recounted her vivid dreams that were triggered by the music and her relaxed state of being. She did this on two occasions. A pupil from Chailey Heritage in Sussex, commented on the music sounding like rainbows.

 

The impact is also noticeable among the teachers participating in Musical Hydrotherapy training, who describe it as ‘amazing’ and ‘mind-blowing’: ‘the best training we have ever had’.  Some teachers say they felt they were taken on a journey by the combination of the music and the practice, others find it incredibly emotional and are deeply touched by it. They are also touched by the, at times immediate, effect they see on the children’s behaviour and their abilities to self-regulate. An effect that no other practice has matched: Deep calm where there was anxiety and avoidance of contact or slight movement; and an unfurling where there was stiffness.

 

There are many of these testimonials and impressions, too many to quote from here. Some we have documented and placed on our social channels (FB, IG) and YouTube page.

It is difficult to receive a thorough feedback from most of the children we work with due to their ability to express themselves verbally, so it is not clear what their impression is of the music or the support they receive. It is clear that nearly all of them relax and transform their behaviour during their session. The teachers who know them well remark on the changes they witness and note that they have found the experience to increase self-regulation. 

 

Some children have vocalised along with the music: a pupil from The Village School in North London sang a traditional folk song, which was seen as unusually expressive. From the testimonies of the few children who could express themselves vocally, one pupil from Ashton School in Glasgow said she loved the music and that she had experienced dreams very soon after she first floated. She excitedly recounted her vivid dreams that were triggered by the music and her relaxed state of being. She did this on two occasions. A pupil from Chailey Heritage in Sussex, commented on the music sounding like rainbows.

 

The impact is also noticeable among the teachers participating in Musical Hydrotherapy training, who describe it as ‘amazing’ and ‘mind-blowing’: ‘the best training we have ever had’.  Some teachers say they felt they were taken on a journey by the combination of the music and the practice, others find it incredibly emotional and are deeply touched by it. They are also touched by the, at times immediate, effect they see on the children’s behaviour and their abilities to self-regulate. An effect that no other practice has matched: Deep calm where there was anxiety and avoidance of contact or slight movement; and an unfurling where there was stiffness.

 

There are many of these testimonials and impressions, too many to quote from here. Some we have documented and placed on our social channels (FB, IG) and YouTube page.

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Conclusion

The old question: ‘But is it art?’ will inevitably float around, as it does. The answer would be, it’s art if you call it art, but for me, the artistic merit comes from fulfilling the experience of communication, of creativity, of subtlety and providing a glimpse into our selfhood and our sense of reality in levels that are beyond the ordinary, and going a step further by combining the space for the artistic encounter with the space for treatment.

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