Response about amplitude

Yeah! A comment with a question! We have a real conversation going here!  Claire (a PT from California ) asked how I incorporate amplitude into my daily life in other ways besides the big steps. Now that is a good question! Certainly there are variants of the steps ... Stair steps two at a time, hiking steps, walking steps to match my husband. Since gait is probably my primary PD symptom, these are what I notice the most, but there are certainly other ways in which I should be incorporating amplitude that I have not thought of. But the primary other way that I am working on amplitude is the volume  of my voice. PWPs lose the volume and expressiveness of the voice. There is in fact a program of voice therapy for PWPs called the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment LOUD program and I actually did this therapy some years ago. It involves being LOUD for an hour 4 times a week for 4 weeks, but I didn't find that it helped a lot immediately. It did help me to believe that I could be loud (I got up to 105 decibels!). I do feel that my volume has improved, and I am now more conscious of it every day, but I credit this to another practice -- reading aloud to my husband John. In the past ten years I have read over 70 books to us, the most recent being my brother Charlie's well-received new novel  called The Bookman's Tale. Reading aloud to someone requires adequate volume and clarity as well as expression. This can be a challenge to me -- especially in the car on a noisy highway. But it has become more automatic with lots of practice. And I am aware of the need to speak up in social situations more as well. Just as PWPs cannot judge their decreased amplitude in movement, they also are not good judges of their decreased amplitude in voice volume. I commend to those of you with this problem the art of  reading aloud. If you don't have a spouse to read to, find an elderly friend or a child. Reading aloud is a lost art that needs to be found again!