

Star Wars
Cinema Therapy:
A New Hope for Parkinson's disease
We studied Luke's classic Hero's Journey against what it means to have PD in our first two iterations of the Day One program. The programs were funded by the Parkinson's Foundation community grants and resulted in an academic paper published in Heroism Science.
Write your Success Story
Check out what previous and current Cinema Therapy students have written or are working on.


Rewrite your Parkinson's narrative with the power of
the Force and the Hero's Journey
This evidence-based, clinically-tested writing program is open to people with PD, their care partners, family members, and friends. We meet online for 90 minutes, once per week over the course of 16 weeks. Participants will write one page per week about their experience and share it on a password-protected Google Drive with classmates. Each participant is also expected to read and leave feedback on two of their fellow classmates pages as this is an ensemble-based program. We will start each session by moving to music that is themed to the stage of the Hero's Journey, then play improvisation games that support our growth, understanding and connection to one another. We will also watch clips from Star Wars that demonstrate the Hero's Journey. All sessions will be recorded so that students who have to miss a session at its scheduled time can catch up at their convenience.
A New Hope: Stories from the first
Day One participants
















