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Since watching this, I have been using a variation of this approach with one of my clients who has Alzheimer's. She is verbal but is confused. She has many questions about what is happening to her and why she struggles. 

She often pats herself; does a little dance with her hands on her legs or sings things like "Pa, dum, dum."  I have begun feeding these items back to her. She giggles. It continues for a few moments as a game of me doing what she does or me inviting her to mimic me.

Because she is confused about who she is or where she is, she has found some behaviors that organize her in the space. She will take a lot of time to place her coat on a surface and arrange it.  Patting the coat and talking about the process as she does it and then finally declaring, "So there!"

She generally wants to see and touch everything I have in my office, except the skull which she finds very disturbing or scary most days. Sometimes though she asks me if she might like that thing - pointing to it. On these rare days, I ask if she would like me to look at it with her. She will consent and I will explain about how it helps me work with her and others. 

Some days she declares she only wants to have fun. So we spend a lot of time playing. Coloring. Singing. Doing the rhythmic Old Mary Mac hand game. At times she wants me to touch her in the traditional Feldenkrais Functional Integration way but just as often she lets me know that I should do nothing with her other than perhaps hold her hand or cut her finger nails. When she wants me to stop she says, "That is very good."

Some years ago when she already no longer remembered any of her children's names and usually called them old friends, she brought me a gift. It was a framed picture of her from the back walking down a lane next to a field of sunflowers. When I asked her to tell me about the picture, she said haltingly, "I wanted you to have this. We don't know where I am going but we can see it is someplace good.  I might not be here tomorrow but you will have this."

These days she looks at the picture and ask me who it is and how I got it.

with much gratitude for the sweet human journey

Cynthia Allen