MANY OF NICOLE GALLEGOS’S patients, who have just received diagnoses for conditions like Parkinson’s disease, dementia, or aphasia after a stroke, come to her during the most difficult days of their lives. The side effects of depression and anxiety are common in her Corrales Voice & Speech Therapy office, where many need help keeping or recovering basic verbal skills. For these patients, in addition to treatment, Gallegos offers an invitation to choir practice.
“Singing lights up the whole brain,” she explains, citing research that has helped guide her career. “It uses both hemispheres, and it can help harness the power of memory and melody to be able to get sounds out.”
These benefits are just the tip of the iceberg. Studies show that the effects of singing on respiration also provide benefits to the brain and, perhaps most importantly, the social and community aspects of singing in a group are a powerful ward against depression and anxiety. Motivated by these results, Gallegos established Healing Harmonies New Mexico, a free neurochoir, in 2020. The nonprofit provides a space for adults of all ages with acquired brain injuries to come together, sing, and heal.
Nico Candelaria contracted long Covid in 2020, which led to an acquired brain injury that left him with cognitive and memory challenges. The neurological diagnosis often made him feel excluded from society, a sentiment common for both patients and their caregivers. Then his speech therapist recommended the choir to help rebuild neural pathways.
A native New Mexican, Nicole Gallegos always loved teaching music and has worked with everyone from amateur vocalists to Grammy Award winners.
As a kid, Candelaria always liked to sing but was shy about performing. When Gallegos offered him a solo in the choir’s rendition of the Beatles’s “Let It Be,” he felt confident that even if he messed up, it would be okay. “It’s hard to find a community that really knows what you’re going through and is supportive,” he says. “Nicole has built that for us.”
The breakthrough was beyond anything medical doctors had been able to provide since his diagnosis. Candelaria, his mom, and Bentley, his service dog, have been involved with the choir ever since. “It makes me realize that I’m still capable of trying new things and actually being successful,” he says.
For Gallegos, the choir has been a natural extension of her lifelong passion. A native New Mexican, she always loved teaching music and has worked with everyone from amateur vocalists to Grammy Award winners. She fell in love with the rehabilitative power of song in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. Since the choir’s first practice in 2020, it has grown to nearly 50 members, with both in-person singers and virtual ones from as far away as Washington state. They perform regularly, including at a December 1 concert in Corrales and at the annual Parkinson’s Foundation Moving Day walk this past June in Albuquerque.
“It’s also about giving back for the participants,” Gallegos says of the group’s performances at charity events. “I think it can help give people more meaning, especially when they feel like they’ve lost their purpose.”
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