After forty years of researching the human body to consciousness, this program (serendipitously) was created. The Wellness Through Movement (WTM) program was designed and tested in the trenches of five elementary schools (2006-2014) of the Kohala communities. Kohala Elementary, a pilot school, is a public school of below-poverty classes in the rural areas of the Big Island.

Research before working in an elementary school involved treating chronic conditions of adults. Since 1987 tens of thousands of people’s muscular-skeletal patterning were analyzed through the Feldenkrais® Method.

The WTM movement lessons adapted methods of the Feldenkrais® work with developmental movements and the physical education standards required for the United States elementary schools. 
Three programs were created and made available:

• A school-wide program, Get Sensational Attention
• A book, Part I, A New Sensory Self-Awareness
• A physical education program Part II of WTM

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

Chronological Order of Research and Testing:

(1987-1990 Feldenkrais Training)

1987-Present Feldenkrais® Practice

2005 Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Lower School, with Physical Education Teacher and Co-Creator of WTM, Susie Jones, with special thanks to Hope Soo
2006 First pilot class Hawaii Preparatory (fourteen weeks) 
(2007 Schools Attuned Training)
(2007, Brain Gym Training)
(2007, Yoga Ed Training) 
2007, April 12 -April 25, and January 15 lessons segment program HPA 
2008 – 2014 Kohala Elementary 
2008 Hawaii Preparatory Academy
2008, August 15, Intro to Kohala teachers 
2008, September 10, Introduction to Parents at Kohala Elementary 
(2009, Trained/Teamed with Schools Attuned)

2009 WTM physical education teacher Kohala Elementary 
2010, Hawaii Association for Physical Education Recreation and Dance Presentation 
2010, Kohala after-school program, one week, 25 students 
2010, May 7, Hawaii Association Physical Education Presentation 
2010 – 2011, Kohala Elementary School Breaks 30 sessions 
2011, Kohala Community School Meeting

2011 Intro at Kohala elementary¬ Festival/Spring 
2011, March 14th – 18th, Kohala spring break 
2011, September-May Parker School, Donna Rohr 
2013-2014, Research team: Feldenkrais In Schools Hui in Schools (FISH)
2013, Waldorf School Kohala November 29 
2014, the Last program at Kohala Elementary
2014- 2015, June 2014 – September 2015, video animation program produced– Get Sensational Attention, school-wide program 

Movement Intelligence, Attention, and the Sensory Body (SB)

Introduction

We teach through the body to the brain. Some people must run to think, walk to listen, or move to talk. Movement is not merely a mechanical action – especially for children. Movement is also an intelligence that cultivates perception, attention, and executive functioning. (Clark, Schumann, and Mostofsky, 2015). This “intelligence” I will call the “Sensory Body (SB),”  or what scientists may label “body ownership.”  (Erhsson, H. H., 2012)
We use movement to explore spatial awareness, internally and externally. Structure has a sense, living presence has a sense, and action has a sense. Together, it senses orchestra development. “Signals from this sensory orchestra are sent by afferent nerves through the spinal cord to the somatosensory, motor, and parietal cortices of the brain, where they continuously feed and update dynamic sensory-motor maps of the body. This major intelligence of the body [this inner teacher] has missed the attention it truly deserves.” (Smetacek & Mechsner, 2004, p. 21).  The “maps” of the body ride on motor patterns.

Nature uses movement haphazardly is used to develop an awareness of a SB.Consciousness of this process changes the trajectory of its development. Through movement games children’s attention is pointed towards changes in their bodies to changes in their moods. Movement is not an exercise to achieve an action, but the organization of action to sense the functions trying to establish or established in the nervous system. Movement becomes s a tool for exploration of awareness.

Start with spatial awareness outside of the body. Through movement, the narrow the senses to inside the body and how body parts create movement functions. This is the awareness that senses the connection of the SB. The SB gives birth to one’s “way” of being. In other words, the SB bridges information from the motor, sensory, and memory association areas (of the body) crucial to feeling how one thinks and behave. The experience of this synergy shifts perception. Through motion, brain function improves. More importantly,  hearts expand, peace returns, and self-awareness finds a way to use the body to guide life.

Could the awareness of the SB be what stimulated improvements in children’s behavior and cognitive disorders? 

Could this process be scientifically proven? 

Research shows infants missing some developmental movement stages are predicted to get cognitive disorders. (Zuk, 2011) However, trying to make infants (or children) achieve movements differs from how the brain works. Movements must give the sensation (a body awareness) where and how the movement is awkward and lacks balance and organization. Dr. Feldenkrais shows how the physics of motion meets the brain and cognitive function. Gravity, weight, and pressure are also important variables to introduce in motion. The movement must teach awareness, “awareness” from experiencing an action. More critically, movement not being achieved must also be sensed. It is in the sensation of awkwardness and lack of ability the nervous system figures out how to take over.

The Wellness Through Movement (WTM) lessons were based on developmental movement, in addition to the Feldenkrais® work. The focus of the lessons is let the children play, not knowing their bodies are sensing a language of motion. We don’t want to get their brain into “thinking.” Everything in a lesson focuses on watching what the body does to the brain.

With movement and attention, awareness from the experience is incredibly more effective for attention deficit challenges. Over five hundred Kohala Elementary school children experienced the Wellness Through Movement (WTM) lessons. During the school day, children were exposed to turning their attention to the No Place Like Home Breath, the school called “Pono Breath.” “Pono” means make good. In addition, their physical education classes adapted WTM methods and met the physical education standards and academic curriculum for elementary schools.  See this video for a scientific overview to get a “feel” of how Part II of the program worked that changed attention disorders.

For children, movement intelligence is easier to learn (not as a thought or idea, but as an experience) than with adults. Changes in cognitive disorders’ just as the ability to verbalize their thought, follow directions, and develop executive functioning, were measurably significant. According to Principle Garcia (2008-2014) at Kohala Elementary and the parents, social-emotional behavior and general well-being. School-wide bullying incidents disappeared for the three years after we left the school. We are unsure what happened after the three years because the principal also left the school. 

The process of a lesson had the intention to change the common notion of movement as “an exercise” to movement as a  “sense of being and a language of becoming.”  In other words, it was the movement that became the teacher. 

There are three ways to understand the WTM lessons: 

The first way is to take the words literally. 

The second way is to feel the relationship of the inner world to the outer world. 

The third way is to understand from the experience. 

The term’ experience’ in this context refers to a direct, personal encounter with the lesson content. This type of engagement provides a profound understanding of the process. To fully grasp this, try this straightforward lesson .

The SB is learned through experience. An awareness develops from inside the body, and through its structure and sense of motion, and with the outer world. This process means demonstration of a movement was rarely used. The SB is a type of “perception,” a sixth sense. Call it “body-ownership,” or the SB senses body-form as a cause of identity itself. Movement is used to witness processes of subtle yet familiar qualities in the motor sense related to behavioral patterns. For children, the motor sense is not viewed as just a feeling of muscles and bones but a physical sensation to how they feel emotionally and mentally. Again, this understanding for children is not intellectual. Over time, movement organically and creatively clarifies an appearance of the self through the motor sense. 

Learn “how” to introduce movement activity and develop the use of SB awareness. Look at the video overview, Six Body-to-Brain Strategies, to get insights into possible reasons why this type of body awareness helps achieve long-term results and the comments to questions received over the years from scientists and school administrators. 

The information shared below is intended to help researchers and movement specialists adapt this type of movement in research and understand new ways to improve behavior, cognitive development, and body ownership. Most importantly, techniques to learn the SB will guide children to become more responsible for their behavior and well-being.

Further Discussion Stuart Mostofsky, Kennedy Krieger & Cathy Kerr, Brown University

Researchers know movement helps the brain, but how does movement create perception? First step to answering this question is with the question: if movement is recognized as crucial for cognitive development (Boring, 1930), why can’t we feel the relationships of movement to cognitive or perceptual development? 
The science of “Body Ownership” may be the answer. (Burin, D., Pyasik, M., Salatino A., and Pia, L., 2017)

When asked to lie on the floor and feel what was touching, many didn’t know what you were talking about or said, “Nothing.” Like infants, many children did not know their arms, legs, back, or spines. Movement, attention, and space inward were used in conjunction with every lesson to help participants begin to feel their bodies. 

Movement is life. It is nature’s way of teaching wholeness and the interdependence of every part of the body and mind to our immediate environment. We used movement as a teacher to feel how the children’s bodies influence the way they listen, communicate, and perceive current circumstances. 

[For those who don’t know these words: “Afferent nerves” bring sensory information from the world and the body to the brain. “Somatosensory” relates to sensations, and “parietal cortices” are the brain’s major lobes on either side of the head. In other words, scientists are saying information sent from the body’s sensations to the brain is foundational to how the brain operates, and needs further investigation. Like primal reflexes, WTM movements are designed to stimulate action in a child to Functional Integrate®, brain and body (See Feldenkrais® Work). Similarly, primal reflexes are designed the same way to trigger sensory signals to push and pull the infant and the attention to map out motor function.]

Motor Patterns of Behavior is Different than Muscle Memory

It is important to clarify the differences between muscle memory and motor patterns. Muscle memory is a movement that knows how to repeat itself. Motor patterns are records of motion in the motor sense related to behavior. In other words, behavioral patterns have motor patterns. Common behavioral patterns in children were stress, frustration, and anger. Changing the motor pattern of behavior makes it harder for the children to repeat the behavior.

The body is a physical record of historical drives. From desires, circumstances, and activities, motor patterns evolve. Children’s desires try to be fulfilled, and successful behaviors get established. As strategies succeed, fine-tuning of motion develops and muscular-skeletal integral for perception. Over time, these movement strategies carve out ways of acting and eventually become a carriage of (sensory-motor) identity.

If movements succeed, how children conduct themselves gets locked into place through their motor patterns. These three-dimensional patterns of action become the physical attire of muscular-skeletal tendencies and persuade how to act, behave, and speak. 

We analyzed children’s movements (in postures and gaites) to see how their bodies may be related to their dispositions. The movement will try to find the balance between the mind and the biological intelligence. In other words, movement negotiates between an intention and action. It is essential to mention some patterns of movements that need to be disregarded and often can’t be let go. At the same time, other actions that serve desires strive to be repeated with no success. Teaching awareness from the SB shows the children how their bodies process information and helps both the body and mind find grace and balance inside and out.

If children can sense their SB, they talk about the “who” inside versus the “who” outside – and change ways of perceiving or making choices. The Sensory Body (SB) is an internal guidance system of sensory activity from the motor-skeletal system. In other words, the SB is a type of biofeedback between structure, function, and attention composed from motion.

When the exact measurement of time optimized efficient change in behavior, “exercise” was sacrificed to train participants’ awareness of their SB. The SB is a different kind of “thinking,” a type of grounding wire (in the human body) that connects the inseparable connection of body, mind, and spirit.

To understand the SB, the unseen and the seen are both important. Long before the mind notices, the SB can sense the beginnings of psychological behaviors through biological sensations. However, movement plus attention must come together. Fine qualities of sensations from the physical structure can bypass an individual’s perception. However, it is more straightforward to utilize the SB when the brain hasn’t entirely developed cognition, as in children.

Benefits of the SB

After thirty years and tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions, the benefits encompassed emotional, mental, and physical health. When taught WTM philosophy in a school-wide setting, benefits with children were sustainable. Eight years after working with the pilot school (2006-2013), Principal Garcia of Kohala Elementary reported this testimony about social-emotional behavior. He continued remarking about a kindergarten student (from 2006) with verbal and physical harassment issues has still showed an improved demeanor not recognizable from the years we worked with him. Similar reports came from teachers and parents about improved attention span and well-being. The most important significant benefit is both adults and children became aware of what they were doing differently from what they thought they were doing.

Principal Garcia used a school-wide lesson called “No Place Like Home” (p. 46, Rosasco, 2013). The lesson used the movement of an exhalation “attached” to the sensation of sound and breath to pull children’s attention inside their bodies. Their perception changed once the children could feel both, from inside the body to the outer world. Emotions got lighter, and reasoning became less reactive. (See No Place Like Home Breath, p. 46, Rosasco Mitchell)

Long-term benefits likely occurred because the community got involved. It is also important to note that our pilot school is a Hawaiian community. The wisdom of an indigenous culture values the relationships among the mind, body, spirit, nature, and community. Because of the culture, and thanks to the parents and teachers of Kohala, the children adapted the lessons to their home and classroom lives. 

Some elementary teachers were surprised to understand how the children’s bodies influenced listening skills. Traditional education tries to pull attention outside of the student. For example, to listen to the teacher, they ask to look at the teacher. Listening to the SB adds children’s unique and personal processes wired into their bodies. Learning is from both inside the body and the teacher.

For example, a third-grade girl felt frightened about reading and held her breath without knowing it. After learning the SB, she noticed that she stopped breathing whenever the teacher said, “It’s time for our reading lesson.” Anxiety caused a lack of movement in her chest and breathing, making it difficult to hear the teacher. With the No Place Like Home Breath, she learned what was happening inside and why she couldn’t read. (p. 46, Rosasco, 2013) In other words, the movement in her body allowed her to sense how she was not processing the information. When she told the teacher, they reviewed the lesson “No Place Like Home Breath.” After the lesson, she directed her attention inside her body and could listen to the read lesson. 

***

Please note: When first learning about the SB, we taught children the lesson, “Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance.” (round three, p. 42, Rosasco, 2013) The lesson taught children how to keep attention inside in a playful way. Playing is learning from inside (the SB) and is much easier. Once the children play with the sense of the SB, adapting it to the classroom demands is easier. 

Similar testimonies came from adults over the past forty years. Adults reported improvements in chronic ailments and immune systems. These people improved because they could sense their physical structures in relation to their behaviors,and changed. (See Testimonials)

The SB is learned through movement and three functions:

1. Body awareness

2. Dual attention

3. Awareness of Difference in the Physical to Differences in Perception

Once these three functions are clarified, a subtle archeological-like physicalness is revealed. 

There is No Wrong Movement

The most difficult challenge for movement teachers or researchers is remembering there are no wrong movements. Movement is used as an artist’s palette of discoveries and possibilities. 

Like in nature, the movements of infants fumble about until they succeed in the action. There is no judgment in the infant, just an innocence of exploration. WTM movement, like in nature, is always intended to help children learn about themselves. Teaching movement is usually done by “modeling” a movement, so it is done correctly. In contrast, with WTM movement, time and space allow children to explore how their own bodies move in relation to their perceptions. This learning from inside is probably one of the few opportunities young children get in a school day.

Here’s one way we used movement to help the children explore possibilities. We gave a movement and watched if all the children did the movement suggested. If one child was doing something different, we mimicked that action in the next instruction for the whole class. We also watched where this particular participant’s action began and ended. For example, if the original instruction was to move the knee forward, and one of the children lifted her head and looked at her knee to move the knee forward, for the next instruction, we mimicked her action by asking all the participants to lift their heads and look at their knees to move their knees forward.

What’s the point? The point of this WTM technique is to show the participants there is no right or wrong movement. The movement teaches the children it’s okay to do something different; however, it’s not okay if they don’t know they did something different. Movement is also teaching compassion.

The intention is to help children experience new ways of looking at themselves (and each other). Movement is used to develop consciousness and explore the uniqueness of each individual, and their relationship within a group. From a “witness” state of the SB, we want children to have no judgment about what their bodies are doing relative to what their minds intended. And by experiencing the different actions of other participants, children learn from both their internal process of actions and their reactions to others. The experience of the movement intelligence is what teaches compassion. The movement helps children compare the (1) differences in their perceptions to the instructions, (2) others’ perceptions, and (3) the relationship of their body parts.

Dual Attention

Another way we introduced body awareness and taught compassion was with what we called, “Dual Attention.” Dual Attention is the ability to sense importance both inside the body and “out there.” In other words, for the children to learn how to take care of themselves they elicited information from dual attention. The more the dual attention was used, the clearer dual attention guided children to fine-tune a grace that restored balance and wellbeing.

Dual attention helps children feel their body-to-mind relationship from the feel of what we call “Home.” Home is inside the body where an exhalation ends. With dual attention, children turn their attention inward to Home and speak and listen to others from there. If they could not feel Home inside, they were asked to stop sharing and wait for themselves. This method was especially successful when children were conflicted. They were asked to share only if they could feel “Home” inside while talking. 

From dual attention there was a sense of harmony, and their assumptions about the external world changed more towards the heart. Like in an animal — and with practice — children’s dual attention generates strategies for what is truly needed — and no more. Their old familiar reactions get an opportunity to pause. After slowing down and pausing, children take an exhalation to turn attention inside their bodies and take a step back from their reactions. With dual attention, they are not overwhelmed by their outer situations and find an honest truth in themselves. 

To our surprise, each time children achieved dual attention (especially the five-year-olds) their points of reference came from a deeper place in their hearts. The tendencies of their muscular-skeletal systems returned their attention to their hearts, and from there redefined and classified ways of achieving solutions in kinder, peaceful, and more compassionate ways. Dual attention broadens the lens of consciousness and changes the focus. New ideas from children’s old familiar ways change their opinions of cause and effect. Children learn to use their motor sense to understand an integrity in their behaviors and how they affect others and situations.