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The healing properties of music have been utilized for thousands of years, but only recently has modern medicine begun using it directly.

A rehabilitation hospital for children in Bethany is on the cutting edge of this new discipline.

The music therapists on staff have a passion for song and a heart for helping others.

But they have something else a degree that means their well-trained gallery takes you to the children's center, a home of harmonic healing.

I don't know.

It's just kind of something that struck me from an early age and really get a, you know, kind of the fever for it.

Plus, he's a needlepoint artist whose canvas is skin, and inspiration is purely Asian.

Oklahoma City tattooist Curtis Fletcher is a master with the needle.

His focus on traditional Japanese tattoos comes from his love of martial arts.

He credits the physical discipline of kung fu for the artistic discipline that has transformed him into one of the most well-respected tattoo artists in Oklahoma City.

I major funding for gallery is made possible by Colin Dwyer, Mecklenburg and Robert Mecklenburg Junior Foundation.

Additional funding by the Kerr Foundation.

Yasmin and Melvin Moran and Simmons.

Osborne and by the Oklahoma Arts Council.

All right.

Good morning, guys.

We're glad you're here to.

Hello to Kyle.

Hello to you, Kyle.

How are you doing today?

How are you, Kyle?

My name is Rachel Nichols, and I'm a music therapist at the Children's Center in Bethany, Oklahoma.

Tyler, we're going to let you use your voice, okay?

And we'll sing whatever we like.

I see you sing.

We sing whatever we like.

I am music therapist is a musician who has completed an approved music therapy program at an accredited university.

We are professional musicians.

We are proficient in piano, guitar, voice and various other instruments.

And we use music and apply it in a clinical setting to work with patients or clients.

Oh, way up north, where.

There's ice.

And snow.

I live the penguin.

In his name was Joe.

He got so tired of black.

Welcome to the Children's Center.

A licensed state of the art 120 bed pediatric hospital opened in 1898 as a home for orphaned children.

Today, the center is a home for the disabled.

Great to be, Tyler.

Good job, Tyler.

Tyler.

We take care of children from all over the state of Oklahoma and even some of the surrounding states.

These children, they come to us because they might need long term rehabilitative care with all different types of challenges that they have in their life.

And the average stay of almost a hundred of the children is about two and a half years of age.

And then we have a traumatic brain injury and a spinal cord injury facility, a rehab facility that the average stay at.

That particular population is about 25 days.

So we have two very distinct populations that we serve here at the Children's Center.

Like many rehabilitative hospitals, the Children's Center employs a host of therapists occupational speech, physical.

But this center has something many other hospitals do not.

Two full time accredited music therapists.

And music therapists needs to have at least a bachelor's degree to practice music therapy that just because you need that training, you need to learn how to evaluate a patient appropriately.

You need to learn how to set an appropriate treatment plan, and you need to know certain research based techniques.

And so just any musician as wonderful as they are, if they want to go play for sick people in a hospital or nursing home patients, that's great.

But we would prefer them not to say they're doing music therapy.

Can you play?

There we go.

Details?

Well, there's definitely a broad range of disabilities.

We have some that have been in accidents.

We have some that are developmental disabilities.

We have some that have been victims of abuse or neglect.

So we have a definite range.

But at the Children's Center, we're very focused on what they can do and not what they can't do.

And so we always really, really we maximize the potential of each child.

Megan Long is the newest music therapist on staff at the Children's Center.

Like Rachel, she has a passion for song, a heart for others, and the training to put those two gifts to work.

Good job, guys.

Music is a full brain function.

If you have brain damage in one part of the brain, we can still use music to retrain that other side of the brain because music occurs all over the place.

Whereas like, if you're the language portion of your brain is damaged, you may lose the language.

But with music you could still sing.

Show to the Lord on earth.

Let us sing to Our Majesty.

Praise to the King.

Aaron Bullock is 16 years old.

When he was 13, he had an accident on a four wheel ATV.

Go with you.

Pretty good.

I stayed in my friend's grandparents house and I went fish and things.

And then I had a four wheeler and I was driving it and I had no helmet.

Uh, for a while, I.

And I hit my head real bad.

Erin was in a coma for six months.

He'd suffered a stroke when he hit his head, affecting his ability to control the left side of his body and his ability to speak.

When he first started talking.

He had a lot of word finding problems, which is very common in brain injuries.

He it's almost like he knew what he wanted to say, but he just couldn't get the words to come out.

And so we found out and we worked with the speech therapist and co treated together with him.

And we tried some familiar songs that he used to sing at church like praise songs.

And so even though he had a hard time just even telling you his name was Aaron and what day it was and where he was at, he could sing almost.

He could start filling in.

We started filling in one word at a time at the end of a phrase of these familiar songs.

When I can talk, I always wanted to be able to talk and be normal like I used to be.

After two years at the Children's Center, Aaron is back home attending school and as you can see, talking up a storm.

Right down here.

I you bringing the smack down?

We can try.

I have a question.

Where where I am.

We are on TV.

For most of the medical staff here.

Working with music therapists is a new experience.

I don't think.

I really knew what it was when I first started working here.

I think I thought that you just sing songs and everyone's happy.

I didn't realize how therapeutic it really was.

And, um, some of our kids, not Tyler, but some of our kids that have traumatic brain injuries or strokes that are on the left side of their brain.

A lot of times they have lots of problems of speech and language and music therapy helps pull in that right hemisphere melodic type aspects.

A lot of our kids are having trouble with speech and language can start singing and all of a sudden it just comes out.

It's really amazing.

Oh, there's your voice.

I think we try to make things.

The therapy fun and functional at the same time.

That's why we love working with music therapy, because they've got fun and functional things, you know, being able to reach.

Overhead not only helps to.

Facilitate extension while you're standing or standing up straight or she's not realizing what she's doing by, you know, tapping the cymbal or tapping the drum.

And so we can get that kind of response without her feeling like it's work.

Up, up, up, up.

Paul, Paul, Paul.

Oh, okay.

Ready to sit down?

This is Kyle and he is 14 years old and he's I've been working with him since he came to the Children's Center about three and a half years ago.

Kyle has a trick, and so air goes in and out of his track and not over his vocal cords.

So he cannot vocalize.

So he can't talk to you.

But he is very expressive with his face.

He smiles and can maintain eye contact.

He's really good at that and say, Hi Kyle.

And he uses what we call AC devices for communication and we're working on helping him learn how to use those purposefully since he can't talk.

And what he has by his head is a switch attached to a slim Armstrong and the slim Armstrong helps us position it in a exact way for him.

These music therapies have brought a whole new element to the therapy of these children.

And so the last few years we've had licensed music therapists.

That's work directly with the kids, and it's been an invaluable experience for the kids.

We use a digital guitar a lot with the patients because it's a little safer and it's easier and it's smaller.

So it's a lot more work for Kyle to get his arm to do what he wants it to.

So this is really motivating.

He thinks it's really fun to strum the guitar, so I just help him with the initial placement and then he does the rest.

So we're strengthening his arm strength and coordination, working on that.

So it's a little more difficult for him to control that.

But he's done.

He's made a lot of improvements.

He's doing really good.

You go into a setting where a kid that you look at a child and you think this kid might be in a comatose state and is not really responding to a lot.

And Rachel can play that guitar or have the drum set and you see smiles and you see response through the music that you don't see through any other type of stimulation.

They say everything old is new.

Again, music has been used to heal for over 5000 years.

There are references in the Bible of David playing his harp for King Salt, as with his headaches, but only recently has music therapy been deliberately utilized by Western medicine.

So it's actually was established as a profession back in 1950.

As a result of using music in veterans hospitals.

And of course, the veterans were coming back from World War Two.

They were dealing with a lot of physical and also emotional issues, psychological issues.

And the doctors and nurses started noticing that when the musicians would come, the patients acted differently.

They woke up, they responded differently.

The first time I came, I was just by myself and I was just playing a solo program for them.

And I wasn't quite sure of the reaction.

And then afterwards one of the caregivers came and said, Oh, the person blinks constantly or that they move their one finger back and forth.

And that's the most responsive had in weeks.

The music therapists at the Children's Center believe it is vital to expose their patients to all types of music.

The Oklahoma City Philharmonic's outreach group, Strings and Stereo, agrees.

They write and perform many concerts for the children here on a regular basis.

Raven pushes.

Their lives and.

Any plans in his yard for.

The string.

Music tends to stimulate the brain's in a way that perhaps other music won't.

It's not too loud, it's not too soft.

And the tone colors are varied enough that we tend to elicit responses.

Most people don't understand that the response might be an outburst, a cry, or some kind of a sound.

That's a good thing.

That's what we want to achieve.

When we hear it's not as if they were completely quiet.

We weren't reaching them.

Those who have seen true music therapy in action say it works.

A steady beat can make it easier to walk.

Reaching to being a symbol can stretch contorted muscles, and a familiar song can overcome obstacles to speech, all of which equals quicker recovery time.

Still, insurance and Medicaid do not pay for music therapy.

That is a battle currently being waged by Oklahoma music therapist and the American Music Therapy Association.

But the Children's Center believes leaders have seen the results firsthand, and for them, there is no going back.

The good Lord above has opened up so many doors for us and made life meaningful for us.

All.

So yeah, I think that God uses people and he obviously use does, but it is also an understanding that is far bigger than any one individual.

Getting to see the children excited about achieving even something that you might think is just a little step is a big deal for them.

And seeing the joy that it brings to them and how it affects their life.

And, you know, when you figure out something that really helps the child to respond, you know, like it's so exciting to see the child progress and improve and to see the impact on the families.

When I think about this place, I'm just so blessed to be here and I'm really grateful that this place is here for them.

I don't think of it as a sad thing at all.

I'm just really excited that we are here and we can provide all of these wonderful services and opportuni Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Yeah, we've had fun and music, but now it's time to sing.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Good bye.

Bye bye.

You guys did really good.

Thank guys.

There's just something about tattooing.

This is a totally different level of art than anything else that I've ever seen.

That I can use to estimate.

I love the fact that you're the whole time.

You're your canvas is actually a person and not something that you can walk away from with.

No way.

My name is Curtis Fletcher.

I'm a tattoo artist and I'm also a martial artist.

Martial arts is like the physical aspect of of expression that I knew, you know, was was suffering.

What I what I, how I felt physically by tattooing all day.

Oh, I got into it a long time ago.

I've been tattooing for six years now and I don't know, it's just kind of something that struck me from an early age and really get a, you know, kind of the fever for it started getting tattoos myself and really just decided that that was something I wanted to get into.

I had a a knack for art as a kid and I just never pursued it because, you know, as a kid I got bored easily.

So but drawing was something that I always did for fun and I don't know, I actually when I was younger, I used to get in trouble for drawing on myself and classmates.

So I think it was destiny.

I guess I never really drink, so I don't know.

I'd say most of the stuff that I was drawing, I listened to a lot of like metal and harder rock, and I loved album covers and I loved comic books.

Those are my two.

Those are the two things that really got me into art.

I didn't ever mess with painting or anything like that.

It was pretty much, you know, just just pencil.

I haven't had any kind of formal training, especially not anything that that, you know, you could put on a resume, that's for sure.

I mean, I've taken a few little art classes here and there, you know, little seminars, but nothing, nothing substantial or anything like that.

It's all been self-taught, pretty much on top of the tattoo business.

I also run a few school.

Martial arts is like the, the physical aspect of, of expression that I needed, you know, I didn't have any other I didn't have any balance as far as that went.

That's something the martial arts kind of inherently brings with it.

Six, seven.

And it feels good.

It feels really good to be able to teach something, especially a martial art that helps people in their life, kind of improves the quality of their, you know, of their life and the, the way they look at themselves and the way they view things around them.

And it definitely is an art.

It's something that is a way of life.

It's something that brings definitely of a sense of clarity to me in the very turbulent times.

You know, so that.

You know.

That's that happens by doing the martial arts.

When I actually get around to doing my tattoos, I'm a lot more calm, I'm a lot more, you know, just like, you know, well rested and ready for it.

And most of my tattoos run about 3 hours.

And the reason I do that is because after 3 hours, your pain tolerance is really low.

And that seems to be a better way for me to do it than trying to get the whole thing done all at once, you know?

And it's easier for the customer because they don't have to go through that much pain all at once.

But 3 hours ago, buy for me and what feels like 45 minutes easily, you know.

And yeah, yeah.

I have to constantly think about that because my my canvas is alive and in pain.

So that's one thing you always got to keep in the back of your mind.

I'm sure it's amazing.

You can it in from.

Over and over again.

I'm thinking precision, always making every line as clean and crisp and perfect as I can.

You have to make it look the best you can.

That's to look solid.

It has to heal, right?

It has to have all these things for it to really be a magnificent tattoo.

And sometimes that isn't the best feeling thing for them.

But, you know, I think that's part of it.

It's an endurance race.

You know, it really proves what you get when you see it on TV.

It doesn't look as bad, but they do hurt.

Plus, you know, if the only thing you remember from your tattoo is being in excruciating pain for 5 hours, it may take a long time for you to come back and get another.

He's really great.

I'm really Christian and he's done.

I think like four or five of my teachers now.

And I like I get some skin.

You get a totally different feeling out of putting an awesome piece of art on someone's body than you would out of painting it for them and hanging on the wall.

You know, it's theirs.

You've modified them.

You know, it's that's really cool.

And the person will always carry a.

Part of you with them.

And so that makes it a little bit more intense to me.

I think it's.

It's hard to say, you know, what, the long run it's going to be of more and more people wanting to get tattoos.

But the more people see it on television, the more people are exposed to it, the more people see what can be done with tattoo art as an as an art, the more people are going to start breaking down those stereotypes of of what tattooed people are.

You know, I mean.

Not all you expected, definitely.

And more.

I mean, I do love tattooing.

You know, even when I got into tattooing, I didn't know that I would love it or if it was something I was going to want to do for the rest of my life.

But yeah, I've definitely found my career.

Me for how.

I have people tell me all the time that they wake up every day and look up their tattoo.

It makes them smile, you know, makes them feel good, brings positive energy into their life, you know?

And that right there for me is the best part of it, honestly, is what you are being able to give to those people.

You're giving them a gift that they will never lose.

They can never have it stolen, they can never have it taken away, and it'll never die until they do.

So that's a nice thing to be able to give people.

For more information on any of our stories, go to the gallery page on our website or send us an email at gallery.

It takes two.

Or major funding for Gallery is made possible by Pauline Dwyer, Marilyn Byrd and Robert Macklin.

Byrd Junior Foundation.

Additional funding by the Career Foundation, Yasmin and Melvin Moran and Simmons Old Spa and by the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Where you are now show me if you use your mouth.

I dey ratio in math.

Yeah that's right.

You got that one down here.

How about eyes.

Oh you really need this long.

Look at that.

Good job.

Where are your eyes?

Where are your eyes?

Where are your eyes?

Me if you can lose your eyes.

I dig.

That's right.

Good job.

And where's your nose?

Where's your nose?

That's right.

That's your nose.

Yeah, and your mouth.

Where's your mouth?

That's right.

How long you know your hair?

Where is your hair?

Where is your head?

Where is your head?

Shelby, if you go back to your hair.

For a VHS or DVD copy of this program, please send a check or money order for 20 to 95 to the foundation post office box 14190.

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