ANAT BANIEL METHOD® NEUROMOVEMENT® / FELDENKRAIS® LECCIONES DE MOVIMIENTO PARA NIÑOS CON NECESIDADES ESPECIALESAMERICAS EUROPA ESPAÑA ALEMANIA AUSTRIA

For Yourself, and For the Child:
Movement Is Life

We all move. The human brain is organized through movement, and during waking hours it is occupied mostly with movement. In this sense movement is the language of the brain. Thus, movement is a great way to communicate with the brain.

Yet, as adults, how aware are we at any given moment of the intention, quality, and outcome of our movements?

Now consider a child with developmental challenges. Many diseases and disorders of childhood interrupt the normal conversation that needs to take place between the child's brain and the world around it. Lack of full and free movement is a common element of these challenges. Yet, normal child development is a progression of learning through movement; the brain must know certain things before subsequent development can occur.

With training, practice, and a dose of patience and perseverance, parents, caregivers, and practitioners can more deeply appreciate and embody these learning principles, first for themselves. We are then more empowered and effective in using directed attention, intentional movements, and kinesthetic experiences to help start that developmental conversation with a child's nervous system.

This gentle process can provide the child's brain with the information, experiences, and conditions required to gain the missing elements upon which skills are built. Developmental gaps caused by various conditions and traumas get filled in, and the child can then spontaneously learn to do what he or she couldn’t do before. New developmental trajectories become possible, and new horizons unfold.

The child’s brain is almost always available for potent learning, regardless of the developmental challenge or diagnosis. When we learn to move with a child in ways that evoke, frame, and cultivate this experiential learning, we discover new developmental trajectories ― the new horizons ― that may be possible. This profound appreciation ― that a child’s current neural map is not the territory ― is key to our successful support of the child.