Sensory Rooms

What is a Sensory Room?

A Sensory Room is a place where children and adults can explore and develop their senses and skills. The multi-sensory room can have many different features.  Some of the many things often found in a sensory room include; fountains, fish tanks, soft music, many different kids of fun lights, soft scents, swings, bean bag chairs, along with much more.

What are the benefits of a Sensory Room?

A Multisensory room can engage children who can learn through play. From following bright lights, shapes and patterns with their eyes to pressing buttons to make the sensory room change color or even change color to music. Users will become interested in their environment. Also due to the flexible functionality of the multisensory room it can also be used to calm and de-stress.

Who can benefits from sensory rooms?

There are many different populations that can benefit from sensory rooms. The typical groups associated with sensory rooms include individuals who have PTSD, Stroke/TBI, Alzheimer's/dementia, Autism, along with cognitive or physical disabilities.

Ai Chi

The purpose of Ai Chi is relaxation.

 

What is Ai Chi?

Ai Chi is a water movement and relaxation program that has been created to help aquatic practitioners and clients enjoy the water in a flowing yet powerful progression.  It is an efficient exercise program that increases oxygen and caloric consumption simply with correct form and positioning in the water, it is a perfect relaxation technique for highly stressed, over-challenged clients, and it is ideal for creating improved range of motion, balance and mobility.

Ai Chi is performed standing in shoulder depth water using a combination of deep breathing and slow, broad movements of the arms, legs, and torso.

Participants are introduced to basic concepts of “Eastern Thought” such as circular movement, breath control, tranquility and moving with nature as they experience the upper extremity trunk stability and lower extremity movements and learn proper pelvic mechanics.

Appropriate Patient Populations

Ai Chi has been successfully used with pain management, scoliosis, carpal tunnel syndrome, hypertension, CVA, fatigue, eating behaviors, weight control, breast cancer patients, balance deficits, type II diabetes, back pain, cardiac and pulmonary rehab, COPD, cancer therapy, arthritis, fibromyalgia, congestive heart failure, fall prevention, prenatal, menopause therapy, immunodeficiency disorders, orthopedic problems, mastectomy, RSD, MS, migraine headaches, anxiety and depressive disorders, and anger management.

Long Group Activities

During class three groups presented their long activities. Our group did rhythm/music and the other two groups did arts/crafts and challenge-based activities. I really enjoyed the arts and crafts portion of the nights. For the activity we created altered books. We took old books and used different arts and crafts techniques to create our own unique book. There were many different stations set up that had innovative ways to decorate our books. There was a bubble blowing station with paint, a pop out window art station, and many more. Each station was very innovative and creative! I found that the class really got into this activity and the time really flew when we were making our books.

This is a fun activity that could be used with many different populations. It would be great to do this activity for kids, young women with eating disorders, youth-at-risk, geriatrics, along with many more. This is such a great activity to do because a lot people would enjoy doing this and it can easily be adapted to different populations. When working with children it would be beneficial to keep the arts/crafts at a simple level. Choosing options that don't involve a hot glue gun or x-acto knife would create a much safer environment. By doing this activity I learned all about how to create an altered book along with what populations it would be most beneficial for.