Although much research is being done on Parkinson’s it is agreed that at this time at least the cause of PD is unknown and that the disease can’t be
cured. It is also agreed that both exercise and music are key to improving some of the classic symptoms: tremor, motor control, rigidity and postural
instability.
BONNIE PRUDDEN MYOTHERAPY: However, with forty-five years of experience under my belt, I know that when Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy®
treatment is given these symptoms not only improve faster, but the improvements also last longer. Throughout our life we gather what are called trigger points, irritable spots that get into the muscle when it is injured in some way typically through overuse, or misuse. Examples are accidents, birth, occupations, sports and hobbies. Disease can also lay down trigger points but more likely the stress which comes with the diagnosis, lights up the existing ones. When the trigger points “light up” so to speak they cause muscle pain, stiffness and inflexibility. Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy treats the muscles and restores function. It is a combination of pressure to the trigger points, which relaxes the muscles and Corrective and Homework exercises done to music that retrain the muscles.
MOVEMENT: Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy treatment relaxes the muscles and allows you to move more freely. Passive exercise is done on the table
and Corrective Homework exercises are assigned to be done throughout the day. No matter what the disease you must keep moving. You must keep as many joints as possible going through full range of motion. Moving is what keeps your circulation going, and bed rest slows you down. You dare not get to like the ceiling. Not only that but lying in bed is tiresome and starts calcium leaching out of your bones. Intermittent exercise is better than a one hour program done once a day. Five minutes here and five minutes there throughout the day keeps reminding the muscles of their important job. Like children muscles like variety and like children they need to be reminded constantly.
MUSIC: Bonnie Prudden exercises are always done to music. As with most things not one type of music fits all. The exercises should be done TO music NOT just used as background.
In his book MUSICOPHILIA: Tales of Music and the Brain Oliver Sacks tells us Parkinson’s patients could not easily initiate anything but almost all of them tend to respond in some way to music, can be drawn into dancing, can dance fluidly and can sing loudly and clearly. Music modulates the stream of movement or speech, giving them the steadiness and control they so lacked. Music resists all attempts at hurrying or slowing, and imposes its own tempo.
In This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin tells us that “Music affects our brains, minds, thoughts and spirit and
music is distributed throughout the brain. Music listening, performance, and composition engage nearly every area of the brain that has so far been identified and involves nearly every neural subsystem.”
Bonnie Prudden says in her After Fifty Fitness Guide, “Music seems to bypass all kinds of problems and will even make pussycats out of jamming, jerking, palsied muscles. Music reaches past the here and now and carries people to other places and other times.”
The German Romantic writer Novalis said: “Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.”
Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy and Corrective Exercise to Music: When Bonnie Prudden Myotherapy treatment is given these symptoms not only improve faster, but the improvements also last longer.