Brain Gym, Educational Kinesiology

Brain Gym is the foundation of an innovative program which involves gentle brain-body movements, self-help, and facilitated processes which were originally used to help children overcome learning challenges.

There are 26 foundational Brain Gym activities. These are the first step and they are usually what people think about when they think of Brain Gym. Many people are impressed--and they benefit--when they learn just a few of the basic 26 activities, because they (often) quickly relieve stress and create a sense of well being. But the 26 activities are only the beginning. Brain Gym also includes many types of facilitated processes, called "repatternings" and "balances", that have been very effective in helping children and adults overcome learning challenges (whether they be academic or something more subtle involving performance of a variety of tasks, including those which are sports-, business-, or people-related).

Let me discuss each component of Brain Gym in slightly more detail.

The 26 exercises and activities can be used alone in the privacy of your home, as a group activity in a classroom or other gathering, or they can be part of a facilitated balance led by a Brain Gym professional to help a person meet their goal. The activities are designed to activate various parts of the brain by mimicking activities performed by infants and toddlers to achieve brain development and integration.

For some people, simply performing some of these activities regularly helps them attain the brain balance they need to achieve their personal, academic, or business goals. People often say that they feel more relaxed, connected, centered, grounded, open-hearted, and/or energized after performing them. But there is so much more to Brain Gym than the 26 activities!

The facilitated processes are special Brain Gym balances and repatternings developed by Dr. Paul Dennison, an expert in early childhood development and learning, and the developer of Brain Gym. The facilitated processes are for people of all ages who require a bit more help than the activities alone provide. These processes utilize the 26 exercises and activities in a unique structured manner which seems to further connect the dots in the brain so that new neural pathways are created to perform the activity which once seemed very challenging or even impossible. Not only children, but even adults who have graduate degrees have benefited from these more complex processes.

The activities and the facilitated processes seem to help in part because they involve movement. Movement seems to help brain development at all stages of the life cycle.

The many steps which are accomplished in utero, infancy, and the toddler years in order to begin to activate the higher levels of brain functioning all involve movement. For example, there is an auditory or movement response to sound and vibration that originates in the inner ear. The development of the vestibular system (which responds to sound and vibration) stimulates the development of the brain stem and it assists with development of the limbic system, which deals with emotions, sensory input, and memory. It also assists development of the neocortex which helps fine motor function and eventually helps us know where our muscles are and how they need to respond to help us move as we wish.

During infancy, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and standing are movements--and touchstone achievements--which build key muscles to help the child perform even more wonderful accomplishments. When an infant lifts their heads, as from being on their tummy or when the infant is facing a parent in the baby carrier, straining the neck to see better is a movement which helps develop core muscles which can be important to later reading. Crawling is a cross-lateral movement that activates development of the nerve pathways between the two brain hemispheres (corpus callosum). This gets both sides of the body working together, including arms, legs, eyes, ears. That helps the senses more fully access the environment so both sides of the brain can move in an integrated way.

Even in old age, it is now believed that people can develop new neural pathways, partly as a result of movement.

Any kind of movement can often benefit the brain, but Brain Gym movements seem to be especially effective because they are based upon research of what we know helps different parts of the brain not only develop but work together in an integrated manner.

But if movement can help the brain, stress can impair its functioning by causing its parts to work in a disintegrated separated manner. This impairs performance.

"Stress" in this sense is broadly defined, having physical, mental, and emotional components. Stress, in this sense, can even include the result of trying to operate even though a developmental step has been missed. (As, for example, in the case of an adult who missed the crawling stage when they were an infant. That adult may well have developed "compensations" to make up for the developmental steps they missed. But the compensations, in essense, create a stress for the system, which must operate more laboriously than a system which has completed the crawling stage.)

Brain Gym's activities and facilitated processes can educate the person's system to behave differently in the presence of the stressor. It helps all parts of the brain work together in a more integrated manner, thus having a positive impact on the outcomes which people achieve.

And that even includes the many adults who are so challenged that they cannot even name what a "more productive, happier, more excellent" life would look like. The unique Brain Gym process can help people get clear about what they want, which is the first step in moving forward to meeting their goals.

Life can be easier and more excellent! You can become all that you can be.

Call today on 301-249-7548.

Brain Gym is a registered trademark of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation. Visit the official Brain Gym web site at www.braingym.org