Bridging into Education and Healthcare
Catherine Mitchell Cathy Kerr Carolyn Palmer
The Sensory Body, Learning, and Healing
Brown University professor, Cathy Kerr and Catherine Mitchell joined together to discuss her meeting with the Dalai Lama and the Sensory Body. The focus was on connecting the Sensory Body awareness to health and wellbeing. After forty years of research with the Sensory Body, Mitchell noticed physical ailments of chronic conditions improving.
The current focus today is supporting teachers and researchers in the fields healthcare and education with the Sensory Body.
Movement and Cognition Conference, 2018, Harvard
Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)
Presenters: Catherine Mitchell and Carolyn Palmer
Lesson Plans with Sensory Body
SRCD Sensory Body Poster Presentation & Narrative Outline
Vassar professor Carolyn Palmer and Catherine Mitchell worked with cognitive behavior and child development with the Sensory Body. Their presentation at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) focused on lesson plans and improving Sensory Body awareness.
Presentation showed the differences in lesson plans being taught with and without the Sensory Body. The sequence of the lesson is key. Teach children the differences in how their bodies feel to their level attention span and attitude. What part of the body is connected between the body and brain? Feel the body and how it changes before and after movement. Then, after and before a movement, note what parts of the body changed and help children sense those parts of them when they tighten. (See the lesson Pancake Body)
After looking at the poster, do you want to feel the Sensory Body? Try to get a sense of the sequencing to a lesson. Think body! What does the body sense? What are the the subtle changes within the internal space of the body? Did thinking, feeling, and acting change before and after the movement? How does the body influence ambition, confidence, inhibition, and attention? The answer to all these questions is multi-sensory intelligence to motion. Movement and the sensory body are foundational to development and cognitive functioning.
The Sensory Body is learned through movement and attention for the young and old. However, what is going on inside people’s body is illusive. (See Body Ownership research and the Rubber Hand Illusion). Movement of the body is what develops perception of the self and the outer world. Movement forms behavior, and behavior forms perception. Sensory Body is the embodiment that creates inclinations and finds identity of the self.
Supporting Research from SRCD Research Presentations: James P. Curley, Rahia Mashoodh, Cate Jensen, Emily Jordan, Zoe Donaldson, Marija Kundakovic, and Kathryn Gudsnuk from Columbia University are looking at stress response, social behavior, learning and memory; Carla Calvin and Karen Bierman from Pennsylvania State University are looking at interpersonal coping skills; George F. Michel from University of North Carolina at Greensboro is looking at motor development and psychological development; and Melissa Clearfield and her team from Whitman College are studying behavior, posture and communication to cognitive development. And the most impressive research was Nina Leezenbaum and her team from University of Pittsburgh who are looking at physical posture and movement to detect early signs of autism.
Elementary Schools & the Sensory Body
Get Sensational Attention (GSA): elementary school program that gives step-by-step lessons introducing the Sensory Body.
BACKGROUND: Wellness Through Movement ran for a pilot program for eight years as a physical education program based on developmental movements, psychology, and the Feldenkrais® Method. The movement taught awareness of kinesthesia. Kinesthesia is a bodily sense of space involving movement and organization of body parts. The strategies taught participants how to find the uniqueness in each individual’s perception through kinesthesia (and the Feldenkrais® Method).
Procedures were tested and revised over the eight years between 2006-2014, three years in private and five years in public elementary schools. The 500 children from the island of Hawaii who applied these lessons came from multicultural backgrounds, and 57% of them were below poverty levels. Class sizes were in groups of six to twenty participants, ages five to ten.
The interest of SRCD was sparked by the results of this program and children with attention disorders. When neuromuscular motor patterning was reeducated in these children, attention and character changed .Improved behavior sustained for six years after the program was over. (See Testimony, Principal Danny Garcia)
The studies with ADHD children and movement would benefit the most from the strategies. Strategies were tested and proven effective for children with behavioral challenges, attention deficits, and general well-being.)
About Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)
These were the studies presented at the SRCD conference, with over 10,000 attendee and 300 pages devoted to presentations. Only three research studies explored the depths of how embodiment influences the brain and perception.