Violin for Wellness

CAROLYN CANFIELD: FOUNDER AND Co-DIRECTOR

In an unusual deviation from her years as a career symphony violinist and chamber musician performer, Carolyn recently earned a Core Certificate in Arts Management through the Arts Extension Service from the University of Massachusetts. This period of immersion served to underscore the importance of forging an alliance of arts and health into all communities and into any setting.

Further qualifications include:

Pippa and I have worked together at Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association in Langley, BC. Together we built Violin for Wellness as a new model of learning through musical entrainment. The day we met, I had my violin with me, and when she learned what I’d discovered on my own with a few of Valley’s clients, she confidently said, “Get your violin. We’re going in the arena”. She immediately understood the power the violin could have for her clients and the extended ways she might be able to treat them. We continue to explore the mysterious connections of music and health.

PIPPA HODGE: HIPPOTHERAPY, PHYSIOTHERAPIST AND Co-DIRECTOR

In 1997, she won first prize at the second Festivale du Film Handi Cheval in France with her video “Analysis of Horse and Human Movement”. Her qualifications include:

“Pippa Hodge has a waiting list of clients that benefit from the hippotherapy modality to treat full spectrum diagnosis. She is a popular conference guest, with recent visits to Greece, New Zealand, U.K., Australia, Canada, and the U.S.”

A founding member of Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association in Langley — east of Vancouver, BC — Pippa Hodge runs a hippotherapy program for children and adults. She has recently partnered with Carolyn to better understand why the live violin voice allows her more treatment possibilities.

When clinical hippotherapy specialist and paediatric physiotherapist Pippa Hodge was asked, “Why live music”?

Why live music for you in your therapist role? “Carolyn’s presence means I can have immediate support by gesturing or asking for certain things as I remain at my client’s side — such as a particular rhythm, sound, or even silence, to affect a response. Walking over to a boom box is impractical as it is not immediate, therefore slowing down or impeding treatment and observation.”

And why live music for the clients: “Music adds an expanded and enriched participatory or interactive element, which we have observed this last year. It is a form of education, not to mention the potential healing taking place at a cellular level.”
“I know the violin helps my clients, because I even feel better at the end of the long day when Carolyn has been playing and engaging with the riders”.