practical living
Stayin’ alive
Photo: ACH Group
Music, old and new,
encourages older
people to stay active
Jodie Roberts interviewed
by Megan Tran
S
taying active can be a challenge for most people, but one
group that may find this more cumbersome are older
people or those with dementia.
ACH Group has started a program where residents are offered
music-based exercise classes to encourage them to remain engaged.
Dementia co-design consultant Jodie Roberts said doing group
exercise sessions that are light-hearted proved to be a success.
“It really shows how important movement and music are for
people living with dementia,” Roberts said.
The class is run by the home’s personal trainer Denis Pick,
whose mother, Ruth, became a resident at the facility in 2009.
Pick heads to the home equipped with hula hoops, balls and
stretch bands, as well as a CD loaded with music that crosses
cultures and eras.
The music used includes Jimmy Barnes, Justin Timberlake, and
Arabic and Irish traditional music, along with Ed Sheeran and Elvis
Presley.
Roberts said she initially wanted the program to focus on ‘old
school’ music, however Pick had other plans to use more modern
sounds.
He said the team started using music as a way to energise
and animate people and found the different types got varied
responses. “I find that when I play music from the 1940s, it elicits
an emotional response, whereas if you play ACDC or Cold Chisel,
you’ll get a physical response – people will move their feet and
clap and respond to the rhythm,” he explained.
Roberts said she wasn’t confident about going down that
path, but added: “I need to eat humble pie – it works.” Aged
Care Insite spoke with her to hear more about the responses the
different types of music evoke and what plans the provider has to
expand the program.
support unit. And he volunteered on our onsite gym for some
time and it wasn’t long before we realised that he had quite an
engaging personality. And so he was employed by us. And he
wanted to give us something back for the, what he describes as,
the brilliant care that was given to his mother while she resided
with us.
So, he decided that he wanted to come back down to where
she used to live and help all the other people with dementia
remain engaged in exercise and activity and make it as fun as he
possibly could.
There’s a saying that music transports you to a time or
memory. How do you think this helps those with dementia?
It definitely helps. As you know, there’s some great research out
there that shows the benefits of music and I think you would
probably have experienced it yourself where you can hear a song
that you haven’t heard for years and it suddenly transports you
back to that very place where you’ve heard the music. And it gives
us all your senses. You can even smell things that you used to
smell at that time. So it’s extremely powerful.
But what’s interesting about this is that I was interested in
Denis using music that provokes emotions and memories. But
from a personal trainer point of view, he had his own ideas
about not going down that path and instead evoking movement
and ... using music that had a real beat so you couldn’t help but
move to it.
What responses have you gotten to the varied music
that’s used?
Once again, I really wasn’t confident in him going down that path
and I basically have to eat humble pie because I’ve seen it so many
times and it does work. We’ve had people joining in the class that
ordinarily can’t mobilise because of their condition and their age.
So we still see these responses from them, they are just amazing
and so they will start tapping, just start tapping their finger and
suddenly their whole hand and their whole arm and he uses props
too. So all of a sudden this person that really doesn’t generally
move much is now catching a ball during the exercise class. It’s
really just amazing.
And how has his program impacted staff and residents?
ACI: Where did this idea come from?
JR: We had a personal trainer that had a family member actually
residing with us at the time. His mother was living in the memory
20 agedcareinsite.com.au
It’s held every Friday and it’s actually currently happening as we
speak and it gives the residents their purpose for the day. Friday
is their favourite day of the week by all accounts. And it really