Our art-therapy laboratories are made of a lot of laboratories that aim to bring out every participant's expressive richness. One is invited to take part into these activities, by giving life to new energies. Artistic and creative activities can help our Guests to rehab after a surgery or simply can make someone's life better. We have called this kind of activities "Art-Therapy" or "have fun with the senses", because they involve all the five senses: touch, hearing, smell, sight, taste.

Among our activities: salt dough, colored salt, painting (are also used different kind of colors: colored pencils, crayons, chalks, tempera, pastels), wool works, puzzle, cooking, paper works (like origami), collage.

It is a not drug therapy that allow to reduce and manage some behavior disorders that come out with the Alzheimer. Travel is an escape moment, a travel into memories, into the past that becomes again the present and gives again calmness and wellness.
The project born by the consideration that, by who suffers from the Alzheimer, a indoor space is considered as a container space that increases the separation from reality, making even more strong the wish to escape and by giving life to behavior disorders.

This technique has been imagined for who has intellective disorders according to researches that talk about positive reactions when these persons are in spaces where their senses are stimulated. Our patients are exposed to a calm and stimulating space, that is called "Snoezelen Room", that means "Multisensorial stimulating room", that uses bright effects, sounds, music, smells. It is a usefull space where to activate relaxing dynamics.

It is equipped with a sensorial bed called "music bed", that can be used in two ways. Low, comfortable, it is made in a particular material with microspheres that activate a special relaxing massage, a kind of come back to the mother womb. Furthermore, it can be joined to a stereo and can vibrate at the sound of the music, and can change according to the empathy of our Guests or with some rhythms.

It is used with some benefits to calm anxiety and as preventive therapy that aims to relax.

Sand game, called "Sand Play Therapy", is a method that has been developed from an original application of the thought of children and adults. The material that is used to work with this method is made of a corner with shelves where are ordered a lot of toy-model objects, into different categories (human beings, animals, houses, vehicles, trees, etc.). This material is used by the patient into some boxes that are filled with sand.

The central idea of this kind of therapy is the concept of "free space" and, at the same time, "protected space", that can be lead to the alchemic term "Temenos", a place where all the divided parts of a personality can be reunited and where new possibilities can be experimented and where one can discover a new dimension of oneself.

Aim of the motivational therapy is that of help an elder person to discover again his skills and abilities.

"Every organism is moved by an inner tendency to develop all his potentiality, to promote his preservation and enrichment" (Rogers e Kinget, 1965).

The laboratory is coordinated by an occupational physiotherapist that also takes care about the entertainment by giving life to "groups of friends".

Doll therapy is a not drug therapy, a supplementary method and not alternative that help to reduce some behavior disorders. Thanks to the assistance, the maternage of the therapeutic doll, one can activate tactile and emotional relations.

It works on these behavior disorders: angst, sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, nervousness, apathy.

It also stimulates emotional processes, dialogue and relational skills, it makes easy to relax and stimulates memory skills.

Stimulating activity that allows to one to feel still useful and able. It stimulates sight (nature is indeed rich in colors), smell (nature is also rich in smells), touch (one has to use his own hands to seed and harvest). This laboratory has been planned because almost all our Guests are farmers.

We have made big tanks where it is possible to seed and, both the Guests on a wheelchair and not, can participate in the seeding, the caring of the plants and, at the end, at the harvest.

Here are made some stimulating exercises to reduce cerebral aging and dementia. These exercises are made according to a book by Erickson, from whom our laboratory takes its name.

The programme starts from an approach that put one at the center of the treatment and expects a total support, all along the rehabilitation. The beginning of the therapy with the rest of the group offers chances to stimulate conversation, by giving life to an emotional involvement that allow to a person to talk about himself in connection with the others.

“Up with reading! Adventure is going to start!”
Books are wings that make one able to fly.
Books are friends that keep company.
Books are dreams.
Books are joyful moments.

Using these words we introduce our reading laboratory, a place where people can find or find again their passion for books, a place where to share one's passion for reading.

Reading as a tool thanks to which express one's emotions, that give meaning to life: often the elder person who is far from home feels a unique, big emotion, the sadness and the feeling of being unuseful. Reading together gives the chance to recover, through histories, talks, daily facts, those emotions that one believed were lost.

"If a man does not walk with his companions maybe it is because he listens a different sound. Let him follow the sound he listens, both if it is rhythmical or not" (Thoreau).

Music therapy uses music as a communicative channel. Through the music one can dialogue with the person one has to take care of. Music is used to directly influence body, senses, emotions, thoughts and behaviors of an elder person or with dementia disorders.

Musical activities and the music we propose, are choosen to support and head for the needs of every person. The singing and listening of songs are used alone or combined, it depends on the person, his needs and the target that has to be reached.

Theater therapy is an active path that involves the care and personal growing, by performing his life, into a group, with the support of some theater principles. It involves all the five senses, the proprioception and one's voice. It works through the explanation of the main characters but involves a meticulous pre-expressive training, that is needed to create our someone else.

Theater therapy is a therapy based on artistic mediation, based on the art of theater and adopted into clinic and social contexts even in a preventive, educational and healing way.

The aim of every theater therapy session is to make harmonic the relation among body, voice and mind, in relationship with the other, himself and his own creativity.

Neuropsychological judgement allow us, through the clinical conversation and some tests, the collection of all that information useful to make a cognitive rehabilitation or a mental gym programme.

The clinical conversation with the single person and his family gives us the possibility to know his personal and pathological history. The allocation of standard tests will help to have exact information about someone's cognitive deficit.

With the collected information it is then made a cognitive rehabilitation programme that aims to improve or preserve cognitive abilities.

The person interested will do some checks all year long to evaluate his situation compared to the programme he is following.