Sea Therapy
The Sea Therapy for Autism, is a project conceived and developed by the non-profit association ZOE as an initiative for the rehabilitation of people with autism and communication disorders.
The project includes environmental excursions to the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, where, with the use of a sailing boat, people with disabilities, together with "able-bodied" people, can share the experience of the group-crew to break down communication barriers that characterize autism, also throughout the discovery of the landscape and its resources.
The excursions take place with the cooperation of social consultants and experts with different skills.
In addition to navigation, we organize tours in the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, observation of marine and terrestrial wildlife, recognition of plants of the Mediterranean vegetation, and group swimming practices.
Beneficiaries of the project are the autistic persons belonging to the younger age or more socially marginalized, identified in collaboration with some social cooperatives and specific associations.
Our project The Sea Therapy inside the book Ripartire dalla Sobrietà, a cura di A. Ferrari, S. Giusti, Liguori Editore, 2012
Contemplating the seascape is for all of us a highly emotional experience that reactivates a sensory language common to all human beings. This consideration is even more valid for autistic people, who have difficulties in communication with the outside, and in need of stimuli and different languages with which to express themselves and to be understood.
The sea and its environment represent, in our view, a deep change of perception for autistic people, a new context in which the communication urges are coming from the wind, the silence, the imposing presence of water, the constant rebalancing of the body.
