[For Seniors] Let's try customizing the usual Pa-Ta-Ka-Ra exercises!
It seems that many senior care facilities incorporate the “Pa-Ta-Ka-Ra exercises” before meals and at other times.
These are important oral exercises for older adults, using the mouth and tongue while vocalizing “pa, ta, ka, ra.”
The “Pa-Ta-Ka-Ra exercises” help prevent aspiration and support enjoyable conversation through training the muscles around the mouth.
However, doing the same routine over and over can start to feel monotonous.
So let’s try a modified version of the “Pa-Ta-Ka-Ra exercises”!
This time, we’ve gathered ideas with creative twists, such as adding hand claps or turning it into a parody song.
We hope older adults can enjoy their oral exercise time as well.
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[For Seniors] Let's try customizing your usual Patakara exercises! (21–30)
Patakara Dance You Can Do While Seated
This song celebrates the expected benefits of the “Patakara Exercises,” sung to a festive ondo rhythm.
With hand movements that get the whole body engaged, aim for smooth mouth movements by clearly pronouncing the “pa-ta-ka-ra” lyrics.
The moves are very simple and focus on the upper body, so they can be done while seated in a chair.
Because the drumbeat makes the rhythm easy to feel, try to catch the beat while also focusing on clear pronunciation.
Patakara exercises in a spring brook
Here is an introduction to the Patakara exercises that you can do while singing.
By pronouncing “pa,” “ta,” “ka,” and “ra,” Patakara exercises help train the muscles around the mouth and the tongue.
Some facilities have even incorporated them into their daily routines.
Using familiar songs for older adults, such as “Spring Brook” (Haru no Ogawa), makes it easier to participate in the exercises.
“Spring Brook” has a gentle melody, so it’s well-suited for these activities.
Choosing songs that reflect the seasons can also help older adults feel the change of seasons.
Why not try adding this to your usual exercise routine?
[For Seniors] Let’s try arranging the usual Pa-ta-ka-ra exercises! (31–40)
Exercise to the Sazae-san theme song
In this video, we do oral exercises to a familiar song.
Even though they’re called exercises, it’s important not to start moving your body abruptly.
Just like Radio Calisthenics, begin with deep breathing, then rotate your neck forward, backward, and side to side, raise and lower your shoulders, and move on to exercises for the tongue and around the mouth.
Moving the tongue and massaging the cheeks and neck helps stimulate saliva, which makes chewing and swallowing smoother and helps prevent aspiration.
For the familiar song this time, we’re using the opening theme from the TV anime Sazae-san, which has been airing for over 50 years.
Many of you probably know it, so give it a try!
Gymnastics to the song of Mount Fuji
“Fujinoyama” is included in music textbooks for elementary schools from the Meiji era.
Many older adults have likely heard it or sung it at least once.
Let’s try doing the Patakara oral exercises to the familiar melody of “Fujinoyama.” Convert the lyrics into the syllables pa-ta-ka-ra, and feel free to add more sounds like the p- and t-lines as well.
These use the muscles of the mouth and tongue, helping to train functions for eating and swallowing.
Once you get used to singing the lyrics as patakara, try increasing the tempo and give yourself a new challenge.
Gymnastics with hand gestures
Let’s try adding hand movements to the Patakara oral exercises.
The hand movements are coordinated with the mouth movements for “pa-ta-ka-ra.” For example, you can’t pronounce “pa” without closing your lips.
To strengthen this lip-closing action, add a hand gesture that matches the mouth shape for “pa.” For “pa,” make your hand a fist like “rock” in rock–paper–scissors, then open it to “paper” at the same time you voice the sound.
By adding hand movements, even older adults can become more aware of their mouth movements.
The Patakara oral exercises not only train the muscles used for eating, but also enrich facial expressions and help people enjoy conversations with others.
You can also customize them, such as by adding hand movements while producing the sounds continuously.
Exercise to the Mito Komon song
It seems that many older adults watch television.
Some of them probably look forward to dramas, don’t they? Period dramas are especially popular, and among them, “Mito Kōmon” is well-known.
It became a series and ran for 42 years, and its theme song is as famous as the show itself.
Let’s try incorporating the “Mito Kōmon” theme song—familiar to many seniors—into the Patakara mouth exercises! If the oral exercises use a song they know, older adults are likely to find it easier and more enjoyable to give them a try.
It can also help promote communication, such as by sparking lively conversations about the show.
Cognicise exercises and patakara exercises
It’s a program that trains the whole body while thinking, combining complex foot stomps and handclaps with the articulation of “pa-ta-ka-ra.” It starts with a simple flow of pronouncing “pa-ta-ka-ra” in time with the steps, then gradually becomes more complex by adding handclaps.
The key to adjusting difficulty is which letter of “pa-ta-ka-ra” you match the clap to.
Have participants try each letter in sequence so they can feel the increasing challenge.
It’s also important to ensure they don’t focus so much on the clap timing that they lose attention to the “pa-ta-ka-ra” articulation.