by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/NJJN

August 7, 2008

For those who shrink from the idea of brisk exercise or boisterous dance, Naomi Arad has a much gentler notion of movement. “Even if you’re sitting still, there’s no such thing as stillness. You still have movement in your digestive organs, with your heart beat and your breathing,” she said.

Tapping into that movement, she said, can revive a sense of vitality even in those immobilized by pain or fear of falling. Arad, who joined the staff of Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey in May, works with the agency’s frail elderly clients individually in their own homes, in coordination with a social worker and nurse. She also offers group activities for those who can come to the JFS headquarters on Westfield Avenue in Elizabeth.

Her schedule lists sessions for ethnic dancing, knitting, drama, movement, and dealing with bereavement. The goal in all these endeavors is to help her clients “get back their bodies.” Sometimes, says Arad, who speaks Hebrew and some Spanish in addition to English, just getting people to talk stirs their energy.

The agency first hired a therapist to focus on creative activities for the elderly four years ago, with funding from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. That ended this year, but a $30,000 grant from the Elizabethtown Healthcare Foundation enabled JFS to hire Arad. Another grant for $7,500 from the E.J. Grassman Trust has covered the cost of the equipment and materials she uses in her work.

JFS executive director Tom Beck has been interested in alternative approaches to therapy since his own early days as a social worker in the 1970s. He emphasized how Arad’s work differs from the recreational programs offered to more able seniors at the YM-YWHA of Union County or the Jewish Community Center of Central NJ. “She is working with clients who are not well enough to take part in programs like those, helping people who might be alone and isolated and sad,” he said.

Arad, who was born in Israel, came to the United States with her parents when she was seven and grew up in Fair Lawn. She “came out of the womb dancing” according to her mother. All forms of dance intrigue her, but ballet is her passion. She studied it all the way to the professional level before deciding that for her, fulfillment lay in a slightly different direction.

Recovering from a severe illness as an adolescent, she encountered a “wonderful” dance therapist who helped her regain her strength and a positive sense of her own body. Later, during her senior year in high school, she “shadowed” the therapist as she worked with pediatric oncology patients. Arad realized this was a synthesis of what she loved most — “dance and helping people.”

Breathe through the pain

She majored in psychology with a minor in dance at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, and then went on to do her master’s in dance/movement therapy and counseling psychology at Antioch University in Keene, NH. For the 27-year-old therapist, who has settled in Westfield and is engaged to be married in April, the JFS position is her first full-time job as a qualified dance therapist.

Though reserved at first, as she spoke about the healing potential of movement, Arad became more and more animated and intense. “Dance therapy is so effective because it accesses that core part of human life,” she said. “You don’t need music or anything else; you just need yourself. It can also provide ‘a back door’ to the emotions.”

One of her clients had a stroke five years ago that left her unable to walk and barely able to speak. “She was an artist,” Arad said. “When I ask her what she’d like to do, she’ll point to one of her pictures on the wall and indicate, ‘I want to do that.’”

Arad’s goal has been to help increase the client’s flow of breath, so that she can utter more than one word at a time. Working with her artistic urge, Arad told her to visualize the ocean. She gave her a pastel crayon and held her hands, and in a slow, rhythmic movement, together they laid down stripes of color, back and forth. “She seemed to like it,” Arad said, smiling at the memory.

With a client who had shoulder pain, Arad had him hold out his arms and make small circular movements — “oreos” she called them. She showed him how to breathe through the pain. If you take in more oxygen, she said, it helps you relax and that benefits the heart.

“Because this work is on the body level, everyone grasps it,” she said. “They don’t have to rationalize or conceptualize anything. It works with all parts of the person, helping you to integrate, to repair and make whole.”

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