subject: Kamidoro Tama: The Perfect Nursing Home Activity [print this page] Nursing home activity directors and other activity professionals are always looking for that one program that everyone can do and has far-reaching benefits. The Taoist art of kamidoro tama is it. It is sweeping through the geriatric setting. This is the one program that everyone has been waiting for.
The meditation process is good for the body and soul. By allowing the geriatric resident time to focus on something besides themselves, helps them relieve stress, tension, anxiety, and fear.
But kamidoro tama is much more than just that. Someone trained in the Taoist arts can explain the importance of the bowl; the bowl has weight, the bowl has density, the bowl has mass, the bowl feels cool to the touch, the bowl feels solid. The void can also be explained and experienced by the geriatric resident. This is an easy concept for them to understand, but it begins to challenge their cognition and their abstract conceptual thinking. They may begin to question some serious, long-held beliefs, about their place in the world, and what happens to them next. This is the perfect place and time to discuss these matters.
Many people have an affinity towards water. They were baptized in water, they drink water, they bathe in water, they clean with water, they swim in water; water is around them all the time. Jesus even offered Saint Photina the Living Waters at the Samaritan well. Water perpetuates life, sustains life, and harbours life, without it we would all dry up; just like living without Tao.
Adding the warm water to the bowl of toilet paper and having the geriatric residents agitate the water around feels good on their tired old hands. The warm soupy, oatmeal like clumps of paper pulp cling to their hands, even hydrophobic residents don't mind splashing around this primordial soup because it doesn't look like water. Their hands begin to find relief.
The slow process of building the inner tama core, exercises these same tired, old hands. The packing and squeezing and agitating help prevent contractures and improves mobility and dexterity and hand strength. The rolling of the tama helps improve eye/hand coordination, balance and concrete spatial geometric recognition; which in turn helps build/rebuild neuro-pathways for memory recall and memory enhancement, which can help delay the decay of Alzheimer's disease.
Building the outer tama shell of talcum powder creates a pleasing fragrant sense-stimulating experience that may remind some of babies. As they work the talc with their hands, their hands become softer and softer. A playing some soft, alpha brainwave enhanced music can energize or relax or invigorate the residents while creating a spa retreat like environment for them to be in. Keeping the room quiet, talking in hushed tones reinforces the importance of creation process.
When they are done, the residents will have engaged their senses, activated memory recall, powered their brains, used their hands, and connected to the universe in some small way; and they have a small treasure to take with them. When they give these fragrant, delicate, shiny balls of paper pulp away as gifts to family, friends or other residents, they activate a whole new system that holds the power to change the world and become entangled in the lives of others.
Kamidoro Tama: The Perfect Nursing Home Activity
By: Jeff Young
Zaproxy alias impedit expedita quisquam pariatur exercitationem. Nemo rerum eveniet dolores rem quia dignissimos.
