Dancing Hands is a new percussion instrument that is being used with all ages. It comes packaged with a box of 10 pair of hand taps and an Activity Book and CD.  It has been test-marketed over the past year in nursing home activity programs, occupational therapy and special education throughout Indiana and Ohio.  Hand taps were created for music activity with children, but now they are finding their way into a wide variety of age groups and are being used in one-on-one and group therapy.  The product has just been completed and is on now on the market, as of January 15, 2008.

Music Memories Energize the Soul.

I am not a therapist, nor am I a seasoned professional musician.  I am an energetic entrepreneur with a soul full of music and a new percussion instrument.  I made a discovery when I began visiting “the elderly” with music.  Actually, it was something I already knew:  Music is creative energy.  Creative energy reaches the mind and soul.  The mind and soul, in connection with the body can heal.

Dancing Hands is a percussion instrument that simulates the sound of tap dancing.   I have been taking my box of hand taps to nursing homes for tapping sessions  Many, who are in wheel chairs, are doing with their hands what they would like to be doing with their feet.  Each one, of course, displays his or her own style.  We play timeless tunes like, “Give My Regards to Broadway”, and “Little Liza Jane”.  The sounds of tap bring back many memories of perseverance and energy in the challenging times of growing up in America in the 20s and 30s.

The person with rheumatoid arthritis is able to make music with very little effort.  Another one with Alzheimers remembers the tunes and expresses her own inner rhythm.  One  with palsy is putting vibrato into her tapping expressions.  A ninety-two year old man watches as everyone taps and then gets a far away look in his eye as he talks incessantly about so many things  and then he taps lightly, stops, thinks, talks and taps some more.  There is usually one “Shirley” in the group who was named after Shirley Temple and took tap dancing lessons as a little girl.

In test marketing Dancing Hands, I have been evaluating energy and focus levels in weekly tapping sessions one on one.    Bill, age 80, is in a wheelchair.  He has the habit of sitting in the hall whistling and sometimes tongue-clicking songs.  They are songs he remembers from his past, like the theme song from Alfred Hitchcock.   In the past, Bill had played the trombone.  At one time, he did ballroom dancing with his wife.

Now I am sitting across from him, and we are dancing with our hands, tapping back and forth.  I validate him, by copying his movements and then he tries to copy mine.  When the music goes off, we tap back and forth in conversational patterns.  We make eye contact.  We laugh.  His eyes sparkle.  Mine do, too. Now, when his wife visits, she “dances” with him, as he sits alertly in his wheelchair bouncing the taps on the table top with her.  Before, they only listened to music together.  There was no interaction because his words didn’t makes sense most of the time.  Now there is rhythmic conversation and the rhythm makes sense.  There is a spark and it comes from deep within.   Bill’s energy has increases.  It is delightful to watch the interchange of a husband and wife with the language of movement that creates music and meaning.

Paulette is another 80 year old and has a three- year old mentality with poor hearing and eye sight.  All day long she demands and takes from caregivers. There is constant complaining. It was my thought that perhaps she would like to be on the giving end.  How frustrating it must be to be dependent mentally and physically for the essential things in life.  She yelled at me first time I presented her with taps.  I left and told her I would come back another time.  Each time I came back, she was more interested in interacting, using the taps.  Nursery Rhymes were “magic” in this case, because she knew them.  One two, buckle my shoe.  We would go back and forth in an interchange.  She liked eye contact and the movement and sound of my taps around her on the table and sometimes a light tap on the head.  Now a slight chuckle turns into more giggles as we tap-chat musically each week.

I have seen the helpless and the hopeless sitting in rooms and meandering the hall ways of nursing homes.  They need to know that there is still life within.  It just needs a little stirring.  I have a passion to see deep smiles on people’s faces; smiles that come from the heart.

“Music has to come from the heart,” says Ted, my 92 year old pastor friend in a wheelchair.  “Anytime you tap with your hands or your feet, you have to have it in your heart.  You have to get tuned in.”

Yes, Ted, it truly is more than just noise.  Setting aside performance and perfection aside for a while, and making music for pure enjoyment exudes  a colorful rendition of the energy within.  What is within must be released for the sake of becoming whole and healthy.  There is music in every one of us, no matter what our age is.  It is begging to come out.

Laurie Lunsford, entrepreneur and author, graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  She is a certified art educator and has her Master of Arts degree in Education. She has been involved in educating children in a variety of settings for 35 years.  Most of her teaching has been in the arts.  In recent years, she has put extended time into nursing homes, for the purpose of bringing fun and energy to the elderly.  She has three grown sons.

She is the originator and CEO of Dancing Hands LLC, “Tap Dancing Rhythm for Your Hands”.

For more information:

www.dancinghandstaps.com