Sing-Play Way | Sing-Play Classes for Children | Judith Muir

 This is an integrated approach to music-making that fosters personal development as well as skill acquisition. It offers us a lifetime of enjoyment and satisfaction.

Sing-Play develops the ear, so no music notation is taught in the beginning.

We learn how to hear more accurately and be able to replicate what we hear, either vocally, or on our instrument.

We learn to trust that if it doesn’t sound right we are correct, as well as how to self-correct.

Sing-Play helps us to feel how music moves in many different ways, depending on the genre. We learn to play the rhythm of the words in songs and how moving as we play helps our music-making.

Sing-Play helps us to connect to the music inside us and bring it out. As we already hear the music it becomes very easy to master the specific technical aspects that each instrument has, so we are making-music that is fluent.

Sing-Play helps develop our memory for new songs and remembering songs from many years ago.

Sing-Play is an organic process, during which we often discover limiting ideas, or memories of what other people have said to us, and teaches us how to release them so that our music-making becomes freer and nurturing.

For more Information : Special Needs

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Chair Exercises Can Help Those with Stability Issues

Sometimes Barbara Schutzman exercises while standing. Other times she does her workout from a chair, like during Mary Beth Perfas’ Sit & Stay Fit class at Northern Dutchess Hospital Women’s View Center at the Healthy Annex in Rhinebeck.

“The fact that she’s able to address almost the entire body based on using a chair is wonderful,” said Schutzman, 75, of Rhinebeck. “It’s quite a workout.”

Exercise and physical activity, reports the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus, are good for seniors and nearly everyone else, including endurance routines for better breathing and heart rate, strength exercises for stronger muscles, flexibility programs to stay limber and balance training to help prevent falls.

And yet, while fall-related injuries send more than 2 million seniors to the emergency room each year, it’s a fear of falling that causes many seniors and others with physical limitations or balance issues to avoid exercising, even while it can improve balance and overall fitness. One way to minimize worry while working out is by doing so while sitting in a chair or holding on to one.

“There are a lot of chair exercises and this is perfect because some of (my students) have limited mobility,” said Perfas, who developed her Sit & Stay Fit class with chair-based exercises as a less intense option for seniors and others.

Best, said Perfas, is exercising in chairs without arms to allow for a full range of fitness routines, including those for arms, legs, feet and ankles, the neck, shoulders and the back. Perfas sets her hour-long sessions to music and directs her class to do as she does by lifting their chests, scooping out their arms, turning their torso and more, allowing each person to go at his or her pace whiling encouraging them to challenge themselves.

“They need a little support,” she said, of her students. “It makes them feel good to know (the chair) is right there, in case they fall.”

Schutzman said Perfas’ workout is less taxing because it’s done while seated or holding on to a chair, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sweat-inducing.

“It’s a class like this that keeps you agile,” she said.

Judith Muir, an Alexander Technique movement specialist and teacher based in Verbank, said chair exercises can help people with stability issues and physical limitations due to age or disabilities, regain their balance and improve their mobility and flexibility.

Read More click here: Alexander Technique Teacher