Q & A
(√) Was WTM tested?
Yes. For thirteen years Catherine Rosasco-Mitchell and a team of educators refined and tested the techniques at four elementary schools (Hawaii Preparatory Academy’s lower school, Parker Elementary School, and Waldorf School in Hawaii) and for eight years our pilot school, Kohala Elementary (2008 to 2016).
(√) Does movement organization affect behavior even if a child acts normal?
Yes. Even healthy functioning children use movement to develop perception and sense of self. Everything they do, think, and feel involves motion inseparable from attention. However, desire and actions don’t always match. For example, imagine a baby who sees a bottle on the floor. Although the feet and legs move, the baby doesn’t propel forward to get the bottle. This fumbling stage is crucial to how the child learns to function throughout life. The nature of a baby’s actions is continually negotiating between the brain and body to find ways to achieve success. Movement helps the body organize parts. The results? The “fumbling about” is the developmental progression that sets up the foundation of alignment, balance, and coordination. These aspects of movement also contribute to a healthier development in behavior, self-confidence, and character.
In WTM, we use movement not to achieve a motor skill but to enhance the nature of the synergy between the mind and body. The action is trying to integrate the body, senses, and mind. More importantly, the movement gives the child a tangible sense of being in a body. When we ask them to lie on the floor, many children cannot feel their bodies and tell us that nothing or very little is touching the ground. Surprisingly, when children learn to feel their bodies, it’s like finding their best friend inside.
(√) What should I look for in children’s movement?
Look for awkwardness in movement patterns. We are looking for movement patterns that may be challenging how the child wants to operate versus what is operating. For example, are their two eyes tracking with each other? Do they use only one leg when they crawl? If your child can walk, do they seem balanced when walking up or down steps? Movements beyond exercise have patterns. We usually think of movement as exercise. However, how we move communicates to the brain in how we think. We move according to the behavior of every emotion and thought. We move to find and organize balance and coordination. The results? Physical movement patterns give the brain biological tendencies for mental development.
Henry, a five-year-old boy couldn’t listen. Instead, Henry would crawl under a table or disturb another classmate. He was walking up the stairs one day, and I noticed he was not steady on his feet. His movement had a similar awkwardness as a child with CP (Cerebral Palsy). Henry would grasp for the railing with every step for balance. Instead of playing on top of the mat, Henry wanted to crawl and roll underneath the mat, disrupting the whole class. His instinctual movement under the mat showed it was necessary to give him a sense of tactile contact against his legs. Movement behavior is a clue of how to help a child’s brain. Henry would run into the classroom and lie down under the mat. One week I grabbed his feet to see if there was a sense of organization in his body. There wasn’t. He would put his feet in my arm’s reach each week following. The biomechanics of his movement patterns were disengaged from his feet into his torso. For the next six weeks, I stimulated actions to help his body feel his movement. Once the nervous system senses the movement, it reeducates the pattern.( Science )That pattern is tied to his cognitive behavior. When the movement became graceful from his feet through his spine, he started to talk in class for the first time in nine weeks. Not only did he talk, but he also followed directions.
A natural reaction of an adult is to tell the child to get out from under the mat and sit still.” However, there is a critical perspective to consider about Henry’s movement. Instead of viewing misbehavior as an act of manipulation or trying to push buttons on another, the WTM method helps the child feel the organic intelligence of the movement pattern. When the system senses the nature of the movement pattern, everything improves. When the body-brain relationship develops a sensory type of awareness, so does the behavior, the brain function, and the child’s relationships with others. Here’s information about the Feldenkrais work or the Science behind the body-brain. Look up the Feldenkrais Guild to find a Feldenkrais® Practitioner near you.
The takeaway from this example is for parents and teachers to step back long enough to observe and wonder about the movement and ask themselves what the action is showing them about what the child needs. The awkward movement can lead the professional to help the child find a solution. Wonder as a parent how to uncover what the movements are trying to do to help the child.
If the child has difficulty sitting for long periods or has awkward movements, there is something the body is showing that contributes to hyperactivity. Researchers in cognitive sciences, Stewart Mostofsky and Dav Clark, note a relationship between movement patterns and cognitive dysfunction. Here is a link to a talk held at Harvard sharing the research behind cognition and the body.
(√) What do you mean by the “biomechanics behind psychology?”
Biomechanics of psychology is the awareness of the Sensory Body (SB), or as scientists may call “proprioception”, “body ownership”, or “neural elasticity”. Since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a “great divide” between brain and body that still shapes our education and healthcare systems. Although scientists around the world recognize that there is a foundational, integrative unity quality between motion and cognitive development, the community does not know of it. How can movement change the demeanor of a child? What effects does motion have on mental disorders such as attention deficit? The science behind the biomechanics of psychology deserves some attention. We need bridge builders between research, classrooms, and medical offices.
When the word “mind” is used, we think of thoughts. When the term “body” is used, we typically think of the physical structure of bones, flesh, and organs. The Biomechanics of Psychology is neither and both. The gravitational field, motion, speed, and timing in an action tie every part of emotions, sensing, feelings, and actions through sensation. Together, movement triggers a chain reaction of impulses in the muscular-skeletal impressions. These impressions become conversations of motion recorded into the body, influencing the mind. In other words, the biomechanics of psychology is the hidden brain behind perception.
When the word “awareness,” is used it means the experience of sensory knowledge; sensations, actions, organization in motion married to the brain. To “experience” this awareness termed “Sensory Body (SB),” needs to be taught. Sensory Body awareness becomes a living, breathing flesh of sensory knowledge laying the basis for thought.
If you are an adult, learning awareness of the SB develops when inquiry, attention to motion, state of mind, and structural organization come together. If you are working with children, they learn playful games that bing-bong attention between sensations, emotions, thoughts, and physical positions. The feeling of “inquiry” is the inseparable activity where the body teaches the mind. Think of the body’s physical structure and familiar patterns of actions creating the sense of self, the “I”. In other words, movement wired into the motor sense develops the “who” that is learning.
If a person experiences the structure and action of the body as conversations, a tool that is the greatest gift of living in a body can be utilized. Understanding movement from the physical sensation of the action and the movement can change demeanor, attention deficiency, and perception.