Ulrike Pawlas
The Alexander Technique and Alzheimer-Demenz
My mother suffered from Alzheimer Demenz desease. I started to practice hands on Alexander work with her. She opened up, her eyes became clearer and she smiled. Something in the approach helped her to reconnect with her identity and parts of herself that perhaps she felt that she was loosing or had lost. Subsequently, the manager of the elderly people home saw the positive results and asked me to work with other residents. I reconciled hands on work, dance and recognisable music, together with my singing voice. I also danced solo to stimulate and encourage individual responses and worked to bring respect, joy, love and dignity together with contact. The people taught me, how vulnerable and sensitive the human being really is, especially if the brainactivity is not working sufficiently to "protect" us. I learned more about our possibilities to use inhibition and direction to come in contact with ourselves and therefore to come in contact with others. This moments of contact, inhibition and direction are visible in the film 2004 produced by DR.Phil. Mechthild Rickheit, who is also an Alexander Teacher.
In this presentation I would like to show this film about my work and discuss it afterwards. I also would like to speak about the relevancy and importance of the work to improve the lives of older people in care.
Ulrike Pawlas was born 1954 in Hamburg. She studied arts and certified as a dance teacher at Lola-Rogge-Schule in Hamburg. She trained and worked as a Gestalt therapist for many years, combinding dance and therapy in her own practice. Since 1994 she is a Teacher of the Alexander Technique trained by Chris Stevens and Nadia Kevan. As from 1995 mother of a son. She is assisting Walter Tschaikowski in his training course in Hamburg as well as Nadia Kevan in Cologne. In 2005 Ulli Pawlas opened her own training course in Hamburg.
Due to her mother's illness, she began working in 2001 with people suffering from Dementia, using the Technique, dance and voice. Mechthild Rickheit, Alexander Teacher, produced the film "Alexander Technik bei Alzheimer Demenz" in 2004 which shows the work in process. As a result for her longing as a holistic approach she came across Zen meditation and is still learning from a Zenmaster, practising meditation and archery. Ulli Pawlas is living in Hamburg.
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