For Yourself, and For the Child:
Movement Is Life


Excerpted and adapted from
The NeuroHorizons Primer

If we are alive, we are constantly in motion, even those of us with challenging physical limitations or disabilities. Within and around every cell, tissue, organ, and bone of our body countless components of life are in continuous motion. And, every part of the body is connected through movement to every other part. The human brain learns and orients through movement, and our nervous system is largely occupied with these unceasing movements. That is, movement organizes our perceptions, interpretations, feelings, thoughts, intentions, and actions. Our very consciousness ― and that includes new learning ― relies on movement.

It follows that attentive and intentional movement is a great way to communicate with the nervous system, and to re-organize and enhance our life. Put another way, the awareness we bring to the character and quality of our movements ― whether we be adult or child ― will largely determine the character and quality of our experience of life. This foundational concept guides our work with Children With Special Needs.

Yet, many disorders, diseases, and delays experienced by children interrupt the normal “conversation” that takes place between a child's nervous system and the “outside world”. Lack of full and free movement is a common element of these challenges. Any such limitations present a dilemma for the child: Normal development is a progression of learning through movement and sensation, and the child may be missing key experiences that the nervous system needs in order to take a next developmental step.

This is why we often find a Child With Special Needs at an impasse: She may be missing the prior experiences required for optimal learning. If certain interim movement experiences go missing owing to developmental deficits, the child cannot easily sequence her way to the next step. There is no “fast forward” button we can press to simply skip over those experiential gaps to arrive at the desired “developmental milestone”.

Fortunately, it is nearly always possible to use gentle movement and sensory experiences to begin a new conversation with the nervous system of a child. Regardless of the diagnosis or developmental challenge, most young brains are available and ready for such kinesthetic learning and a transformational journey.

We are all born with this capacity for neural plasticity, through which our nerve cells reorganize into new patterns and neural networks in response to environmental factors, social interactions, and novel information and stimuli ― such as the Experiential Movement Lessons we explore first for ourselves, and then offer our young clients.

As practitioners, our starting point necessarily is the developmental impasse at which we find the child. That is, we meet each child where she is, not where we or a parent might think she is “supposed to be”. Through our Lessons we use directed attention, intentional movement, and kinesthetic experiences to help start that developmental conversation with a child's nervous system. Sometimes quickly, and sometimes incrementally, the child's receptive brain and nervous system begin to assemble the information, experiences, and conditions required for new abilities and mastery. New developmental trajectories become possible, and new horizons unfold.

With the practitioner’s insight, skill, and patience, Experiential Movement Lessons can mitigate or even remedy many of the developmental gaps and deficits caused by various conditions and traumas. The child can then natively do, and be, in ways not possible before.

As embodied and relational movement practitioners, both our personal and professional work is about opening these doors ― first for ourselves and then for our clients. We identify creative and meaningful ways to gently dance with the child’s native resources. This is what allows both client and practitioner to move beyond the existing map toward new neural networks. This profound appreciation ― that a child’s current neural map is not the territory ― is key to how we elicit and nurture the child’s native learning process, empowering her to journey toward each new developmental horizon.