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Thursday, 18 March 2004
Magic therapy for hospital patients
- The New Paper
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MAKING coins vanish won't make their pain go away.
But it helps.
That's why magic is being used as therapy at Ang Mo Kio Hospital.
Every Saturday, volunteers spend an hour with patients, teaching them simple tricks using props like ropes, balls and handkerchiefs.
When Mr Tan Ding Hong, 22, is discharged, he will have a magic trick or two up his sleeve.
Confined to a wheelchair by a knee injury, Mr Tan was enthusiastic about learning from the volunteers.
'It's interesting,' he said. 'I'm going to show my nephew and niece when they visit me. I hope to continue learning even when I go home.'
Occupational therapist Tim Xu said magic therapy offers many benefits.
'The patients get to socialise. If they get bored they can get depressed, so the aim is to get them out of bed to do something else,' Mr Xu said.
'After learning the tricks, they practise to show other patients. I also find they are more motivated about normal physiotherapy sessions.'
The volunteers are part of a pilot programme called Project SMILE 2 - A Healing Touch.
MASTERING TRICKS
SMILE stands for Sharing Magic In Love Everywhere, and it was started in March 2002 as a community arts project by Touch Community Services.
Participants were taught magic so they could perform for the needy and disabled.
Some of them later began to teach the patients.
The New Paper attended one Saturday session.
Using a mix of Mandarin and dialects, the volunteers got patients to stretch their fingers and raise their arms while learning a trick.
There were frowns of concentration as the patients tried to bend their wrists and smiles of accomplishment as they mastered the trick.
Mr Ow Jeok Keow, 74, said in Mandarin: 'It's good to practise with our hands to get back flexibility and strength. The tricks are not difficult to learn, and I practise them every day.'
US entertainers Kevin and Cindy Spencer, a husband-and-wife team, found that magic therapy benefited children and adults with strokes, arthritis, spinal cord injuries, mental illness, cancer, chronic pain, severe burns and learning disabilities.
Like them, Miss Priscilla Khong, 23, is a full-time magician who teaches magic.
When she's not travelling to perform the musical, Magic Of Love, she finds time to teach at the hospital.
She said: 'It's really cool to see their faces when they manage a trick. It's enjoyable because it's not normal therapy. They learn a creative skill in a fun way.'
The volunteers go through the tricks over and over again so the patients can remember the sequence of actions.
When project manager Daniel Gan explains how to do a trick, he also motivates patients by stressing how the actions can help them.
'You need to have patience because their motor skills are a bit slow,' Mr Gan, 36, said.
At the end of the session, the volunteers fill up therapy charts for each patient, noting what trick has been mastered. The patient progressively learns more difficult tricks during the hospital stay, which averages about a month.
Volunteer Eddy Oh, 50, wants to help stroke patients because his mother suffered a stroke.
Mr Oh, a financial planner, said: 'After she passed away, I wanted to continue working with stroke patients. Using the magic I've learnt in this way is meaningful.' |
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