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Clarinetherapy
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Clarinotherapy

SITE OF THE WEEK

Two dogs, a musical instrument and a former police officer. It all adds up toe one of the oddest new companies in the Seacoast.

 

 

VISIT the offia; Clarinetherapy web site

THE NUTES & BOLTS

Feeling ill? Just take two greyhounds and a clarinet solo -- and call me in the morning.

That’s the standard prescription from Karen Johnson, a certified music practitioner and owner of Clarinetherapy. Johnson, a former Portsmouth police officer, has found a new way to serve and protect the community. She plays her soothing clarinet to the elderly. And where Karen goes, her greyhounds follow.

Pets, science now confirms, can not only "heel", but can heal. Contact with calm, loving animals lowers human blood pressure and heart rate. Their touch releases endorphins and improves immunological response. Registered "therapy animals" are routinely used to comfort sick children in hospitals and warm the hearts of hospice patients. Karen’s three greyhounds – Rumford, Gabby and Butch – have been certified by both Therapy Dogs international (TDI) and the Delta Society.

"I always ask the dogs if they want to do this kind of work," Karen Johnson says, and means it. "When I say we’re going to a nursing home, Rumford may not come downstairs. The boys always want to work. They love the music. They love the people. One loves polkas. One loves Bach."

Karen took up with greyhounds two decades ago when she learned that hundreds of former racing dogs were being put down. Since then, efforts to save greyhounds have improved. She says they are, in contrast to common wisdom, mellow, intuitive and not high strung.

In her thirties, while on the police force, she took up the clarinet and began performing solo for small groups. She also teaches clarinet lessons and plays with a trio. Music, she notes, is an ancient healing modality. Her instrument of choice is not percussive, not chordal, but simply melodic, playing tunes much the way the human voice sings. Elder patients often break into song when she plays, remembering tunes familiar from their younger years. And the link from dogs to music to police work is not as strange as it may appear.

"Cops work with so-called "loser" populations," Karen says. "The elderly are throwaways in our society. The dogs are recycled runners."

When Karen found her views at odds with the police department after 18 years, she discovered her new career.

"I make no claims of curing anyone," she says. "People get stuck in physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. Healing, ultimately, is about moving on from the hurt that you have right now. Music is about being in a better place."

" I’m just a facilitator," she explains. "When I was a cop I was a facilitator -- trying to get people to make decisions for themselves rather than make them do what I wanted them to do. Which is why I didn’t work out in the police department."

THE WEB SITE MAKER

At first glance it looks like a joke. The Clarinetherapy.com web site shows the outline of a dog and a clarinet. There must be some mistake. Even the colors on the homepage clash – purple, lime green and blue – and subliminally reinforce the message that something strange is going on here.

The seeming disharmony of content and color are purposeful. Karen and web designer Ronald Gehrmann are making a point. This service, they are saying simply and clearly, may seem strange at first, but stop, think, and consider this alternative healing process.

"I feel that, these days," Ronald says, "for any business a website is comparable to a tri-fold brochure was a decade ago: You cannot afford NOT to have one. It should be simple, and it should not cost an arm and a leg to design."

Ronald Gehrmann, owner of Metaglyph Communications (metaglyph.com), seems always to find the most metaphysical customers – a garden artist, a lute maker, "organic" women’s fashion, writers, painters, musicians.

Karen is thrilled that, once her site was created, that she can keep it online for as little as $20 a month.

THE UP SHOT

Karen Johnson has a large magnet on her refrigerator at home that reads: "I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it."

The joke, of course, is on us. Karen’s quirky approach to business usually gets a double-take, and in advertising, that is a very good thing. In a world where products and services look terribly alike, it never hurts to be different.

I once served on a committee to hire an English teacher in Exeter. Faced with a dull stack of resumes to assimilate, we all laughed at the single candidate who had submitted her vita sheet on purple paper, breaking all the rules. But more than a hundred resumes later, guess which teacher we hired? Yup, the one with the purple resume.

In most cases, we buy the same old stuff in new packaging. What, ultimately, is the difference between a Coke and a Pepsi, or burgers from MacDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s? Karen Johnson, however, is selling something that no one else offers, and based on her steady work schedule, she may be on to something. She charges $50 for a one-hour session (the dogs "volunteer" for free) and routinely makes the rounds to Langdon Place, Riverside Rest Home in Dover, Edgewood Manor in Portsmouth and elsewhere. She also works with young children. Some question whether her work is really therapy or simply entertainment. Karen says the proof is in the pudding. Patients respond to her visits – some sing, some dance, many seem to come alive to the sound and touch.

"We’re an empirically oriented society and we’re uncomfortable with the metaphysical," Karen says. "I think this world is missing some very essential things and I feel I can offer those things."

One missing essential, Karen says, is a lack of unconditional love. Her music and her dogs, she believes, offer that. They work together through sound and touch, using no words, reaching toward elderly and Alzheimer patients who too, have left the world of words behind.

She plays sometimes in the hallways, moving down the corridor like the Pied Piper, then into different rooms, performing for individuals or small groups. The patients learn to anticipate her weekly arrival. The body knows, she says, and begins to heal in anticipation. She leaves people more relaxed than when she arrived.

"Working with groups," Karen says, "is like taking a needle and thread and connecting one person’s energy to the next."

Karen offers a poignant memory of a visit to a Seacoast nursing home. She was playing the old tune "Mary’s a Grand Old Name" when an ancient woman came slowly toward her. The woman’s name was Mary.

"Excuse me dear," Mary said to Karen, "but I have to go see God now."

Mary walked by and over to a table, Karen says. Within a minute or two she died. Karen later played a song for the others to help spirit Mary on her way.

"I felt that I had witnessed a miracle," Karen says, remembering.