Six Body-to-Brain Strategies

 

Movement and Cognition Conference

 Harvard • 2018

Intro to the Presentation

Abstract

Keywords: Children, ADHD, Body-Ownership, Kinesthesia

 

ObjectiveSix Body-to-Brain methods will be presented believed to have improved behavior, and physical and ADHD symptoms.  Strategies enhance the ability to sense relationships between bodily organization and perception. Strategies are designed to be adaptable to movement research and community movement programs.

 

Methods: Strategies, based on the Feldenkrais Method, was implemented in a movement program to enhance both body ownership and re-educate sensorimotor patterns. Strategies were tested and revised between 2006-2018 at a public elementary school with children from multicultural and below poverty backgrounds.  Over 500 children (in groups of 6-22 participants) and ages 5-10 years old experienced these strategies:

  1. Developing awareness in the organic nature of the body and what it wants to do without interfering

  2. Developing awareness of the presence of a physicalness in relation to hearing

  3. Developing awareness of a synergistic attention, sensing your body while attention is outside yourself

  4. Developing awareness of the details in parts and spaces of bodily organization

  5. Developing awareness of how physical changes relate to psychological and cognitive changes

  6. Developing awareness in the relationships between the organization of movements in the body and behavioral patterns

 

Results: Anecdotal observations showed the re-education of movement patterns and the ability to sense links of mind, body, and brain relationship may be connected to improving physical conditions, attention span, and social-emotional skills.

 

Conclusion: These strategies could provide valuable information to how motion affects cognitive processing, and enhance ADHD and body ownership research.  The strategies were designed for community movement programs with the intention to increase dialogue among community members about movement and cognition and acquire the quantitative measures needed to understand the multifaceted processes of movement.

 

Bio: Catherine Rosasco-Mitchell, a Feldenkrais Practitioner, studied the relationship of movement and cognition for forty years and has presented her work at the Movement and Cognition Conference Movementis 2018, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the Feldenkrais Guild Neuroscience Conference.

 

The Presentation

 

Dramatic Results

For Children with ADHD Symptoms

Results Proved Getting Sustainable Improvements

When motor patterns to cognitive orders were detected and reeducated behavior improved  within 24- 48 hours, EVERY TIME!

When the school adopted the program,  Get Sensational Attention, improvements from the movement program, Wellness Through Movement, were sustainable.