INFORMATION FOR THE THERAPIST

_______________________________________________________________________

Magic & Occupational Therapy

HEALING OF MAGIC provides the therapist with a valuable new tool to motivate clients to become more involved in their treatment.

“Using magic as a therapeutic modality empowers therapists with an exciting new tool to help clients achieve functional/measurable goals.”
* Debbie M. Fisher, MS OTR/L CHT

The applications of HEALING OF MAGIC address the entire spectrum to include developmental disabilities, mental health, physical disabilities, gerontology, and specific disease related deficits. For many years, magic therapy as successfully been used in acute care, rehab, outpatient hand therapy and pediatrics.

The movements required to learn simple magic tricks help clients regain lost physical skills while increasing motivational levels and self esteem. In this form of therapy, a magic trick can be what leads a patient back to a functional life.

Occupational therapy uses a variety of activities to help clients achieve competency in the every day things one must do. One of the biggest challenges therapists face is keeping the client motivated and engaged in the process.

The simple things – zipping a zipper or buttoning a shirt – are not very motivating. While these tasks are essential, they are not much fun or interesting. Clients can quickly lose interest in these types of activities which translates into less than satisfactory results.

Learning magic tricks, on the other hand, can be both engage and continually motivate the client with each new trick. And because all the tricks in the HEALING OF MAGIC program are designed to improve physical, psychological, perceptual, or social functions, the client’s rehabilitative progress is more quickly achieved than in some traditional methods. Each new trick builds on the skills of the last and, once mastered, clients can share this new-found ability with family and friends.

As a result, clients spend much more time voluntarily on acquiring complex and sequential series of motor skills that they might otherwise simply tolerate. They continue to practice the moves required to do the magic routines; and with each repetitive movement, the skill is mastered translating into better results more quickly.

::BACK TO TOP::

Magic & Behavioral Disorders

Achieving mastery and control over the environment is an important developmental task to experience during adolescence. Magic can be a creative tool to assist in achieving this goal. Offering an outlet for self expression, self identity, and appropriate communication (even with the most non-verbal adolescents), magic can be used to capture their attention. Studies have shown that the use of magic with this population resulted in an increase in one’s sense of mastery, enhanced comfort level in social situations and improved confidence in the performance of adaptive and functional tasks.

When used as a group activity, participants learn a magic trick and perform it for the group using their own dialogue or patter. This process encourages and develops assertiveness, leadership skills, problem solving skills, and increases appropriate social interaction.

Psychologically, magic can raise self-esteem, encourage independence, provide social experiences, and enhance communication and management skills.

Additional therapeutic goals that can be achieved utilizing magic therapy are improve concentration and task follow-through; problem-solving; perceptual skills in spatial relation and form constancy; self efficacy and self esteem; following three/four step commands and complex directions; improve mood and appropriateness of affect; and frustration tolerance.

This type of therapy may prove effective in treating various other behavioral disorders including Substance Abuse, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD/ADD, Depressive disorder/depression/mood, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Schizoaffective Disorder.

HEALING OF MAGIC is currently exploring research opportunities to document the effectiveness of using magic tricks in the treatment of behavioral disorders.

::BACK TO TOP::

Benefits of Magic Therapy

The Occupational Therapist concentrates on specific problems resulting from a medical problem that interferes with a client’s independence and productivity. Together the therapist and client work to attain improvement in many areas. The use of simple magic tricks from the HEALING OF MAGIC program can assist in:

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS: range of motion, strengthening, and balance in the upper and lower extremities.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS: dexterity, eye-motor coordination, speed and accuracy, object manipulation.

PSYCHOSOCIAL: self efficacy, self esteem, group interaction, interpersonal skills.

ATTENTION: concentration, task follow-through, memory.

PERCEPTION: visual (form discrimination, form constancy, spatial relations, figure group, eye-hand coordination), tactile, proprioception, kinesthesia.

MOTOR PLANNING: being able to plan and know what steps are necessary for a particular movement.

COGNITIVE: following simple and complex directions, memory, planning, sequencing, organizing, problem solving.

::BACK TO TOP::

Magic and Education

As educators, the most important aspect of our work is to help childre prepare for a bright and challenging future. But if we don't also teach our children how to deal with life's difficulties, many simply won't realize their potential. And for those students who face additional challenges - ADHD, LD, SLD, NLD, Austism, or any number of other physical and/or psychosocial obstacles - our job as an educator may include finding strategies to move them into becoming a more competent learner.

HOCUS FOCUS is a student-centered, experiential-based educational approach that utilizes the art of magic (simple magic tricks) in the context of empowering an empathetic, professional educator/student relationship with the fundamental goal of student growth and development. It is a systematic approach by which students learn to focus and accomplish specific goals and objectives by learning magic tricks - simple tricks at first and them more complex tricks as they progress - and then exploring the benefits of each one.

HOCUS FOCUS can be used along with a traditional academic curriculum and can encompass a variety of techniques and instructional strategies. It is designed to assist children and adolescents with learning disorders regardless of their specific strengths and/or weaknesses.

HOCUS FOCUS is a comprehensive "special education" curriculum available for use in schools or therapy sessions. The course study was developed in collaboration with national experts, teachers, and therapists/clinicians. The program is grounded in educational concepts, i.e. Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning and Levine's (2002) Neurodevelopmental Function.

The purpose of this curriculum is to provide teachers with a visual, exciting, and motivating way to allow students to safely explore skill levels, improve existing skills, and develop new ones. Each lesson combines education and imagination to help children improve their abilities in planning, sequencing, organizing tasks and movements, fine motor skills, gross motor function/coordination, concentration, memory skills, and much more. And, most importantly, HOCUS FOCUS is fun!

More information is available on this curriculum at www.HocusFocusEducation.com.

The use of magic in the classroom can also provide other educational factors as described below.

EDUCATIONAL FACTORS AND ELEMENTS OF MAGIC THERAPY
David Levin, Therapist, Inner Harbour Hospital, GA
Kevin Spencer, Healing of Magic, VA

Magic Therapy has been successfully implemented in school systems across the nation. Working with Special Education Instructors and Therapists, the use of magic tricks has helped students develop fine and gross motor skills as well as concentration, following simple and complex directions, task follow-through, communication and socialization/interpersonal skills, and numerous other objectives.

The following are the theorized educational factors and key elements of utilizing magic therapy for the purpose of student growth. The factors and elements are not mutually exclusive and may be useful in a variety of classroom settings or guidance programs. The descriptions that follow provide ideas only that may help promote magic therapy activities in the schools or classrooms on a psychosocial level.

RAPPORT BUILDING

Magic therapy may provide a simple means for the Educator to connect to the student and deliver a particular lesson, whether academic or social/developmental. Magic tricks are an appropriate means of removing boundaries and providing “comfort zones” when Educators initially get to know the student and may help Faculty appear more playful and approachable (Gilroy, 1998). Magic therapy activities are highly engaging and tend to capture and hold the attention of children very quickly.

EMPOWERING THE CHILD AND SELF-ESTEEM

After using a magic trick in a classroom setting, an Educator may choose to teach the students the method. The Educator is not only teaching them a new skill that they can repeat for peers or adults but, by learning to do something that others may not be able to accomplish, the performer/student achieves self-efficacy, self-esteem, and self-confidence.

INSTILLING HOPE

Instilling hope may transpire when solutions to personal difficult situations seem to work out in the context of the trick. The illusion may help to symbolize optimism, the possibilities of change, or turning negatives into positives. The magic therapy Counselor may incorporate what Purkey and Schmidt (1990, as cited by Spruill & Poidevant, 1993) referred to as the “plus factor.” The plus factor is the notion that even the most difficult situations can be made to seem easy. This conceptualization may be particularly helpful for student who have felt inadequate or have depressive symptoms.

METAPHOR

Using the magic trick as a metaphor for a specific lesson may promote heightened teachable moments by promoting social/emotional development and health/wellness in children (Gilroy, 1998).

For example, magic tricks that “break out” or “escape” can represent overcoming obstacles and achieving goals. According to Spruill and Poidevant (1993), the use of magic objects and actions can metaphorically represent information that is not easily accessible to children and can bring to the surface heretofore unspoken thoughts and feelings.

REFRAMING

The concept of reframing allows one to look at things from another perspective. Magic tricks provide a context that can teach the skill of reframing. The Educator may assign students a week of trying to figure out a particular trick, then process what it was like to “think outside of the box,” and apply this skill to their own challenges. Magic tricks provide an excellent basis for problem-solving, frustration tolerance and task follow-through.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

The Educator can model appropriate social skills when performing magic. This educational factor allows Students to practice or perform an illusion with peers or adults in order to exercise appropriate interactions, practice giving and receiving feedback, and practice presentation or assertiveness skills versus aggression. This may be an effective way for Student who enjoys excessive attention to receive it appropriately. In addition, the concept of magic tricks may also be used to talk about perspective and how two individuals may perceive the same situation differently.

GROUP COHESION

Magic tricks may be an effective ice-breaker for new classes or small counseling groups. The Educator may perform a trick in which teamwork is necessary in order for the effect to work. Students may also be given particular roles prescriptive to the particular dynamics of the classroom.

ASSESSMENT TOOL

Magic therapy can be used in conjunction with established techniques and testing to help gauge or assess for certain learning disabilities. Monitoring the response to certain magic tricks may be effective in highlighting depressive symptoms, hyperactivity or attention challenges, and frustration tolerance/anxiety concerns (Gilroy, 1998).

For example, a Student struggling with hyperactivity or poor impulse control may insist on the trick being revealed or may shout out their theory about the secret.

ACADEMIC LEARNING

Many tricks may help students practice cognitive skills – such as following complex directions, sequencing, memory, conceptualization, and problem solving. Furthermore, tricks tend to involve colors, numbers, alphabet/reading, and mathematics.

TRUST BUILDING

Using magic tricks may allow Students to process how it feels to be fooled or how if feels to fool someone else. It may provide an opportunity to discuss good secret versus bad secrets. In a counseling relationship, the Counselor may gain leverage with the child by revealing the illusion in an effort to encourage the Student to be open about potentially guarded or sensitive information.

RECOGNITION OF BOUNDARIES

Magic tricks may help Students practice the demonstration of appropriate boundaries by setting clear rules and guidelines magic therapy sessions and related activities. Students may have to process their impulsivity mishaps and acknowledge the concept of the Magician’s own personal space as well as their own. The idea of asking permission before performing a trick for someone can be used to highlight benefits of this element.

REMOVING BARRIERS TO LEARNING

Specific issues may be addressed by using magic therapy activities such as reinforcing lessons about the dangers of drugs and alcohol or the “misdirection” of advertising companies (Gilroy, 1998). The activities may prove useful for Students struggling with issues of grief by processing loss in terms of where something goes when it “disappears.”

::BACK TO TOP::