Every teacher knows each child learns in their unique way. Teach children to help you know “who” is learning. It’s a feeling of inside out. Help children build a bridge to their worlds and you as a teacher will have an easier job.
Did you know …
“… children are feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel?”
— Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., Harvard
What is WTM About?
You teach from the “outside,” while WTM teaches from the inside. Together, they work better.
Children’s physicalness creates more about who they are than they know.
We help them help you.
Give Me Details
For children 5-10 years of ages see below. For children older that ten see this new page.
STRESS
( √ ) I can’t add one more thing to my plate but I need help.
Don’t worry. We found that it was best to get the elementary school principal to lead what we call, the Get Sensational Attention program. We have a program for the schools, however, applying it at home is key. This program helps children learn from inside, and is proven effective for “character and academic achievement” according to our pilot school Principal Danny Garcia. Talk to the school counselor, they too can help. Teachers have to teach the method, but it is a school wide cooperation.
Click The School can Help You
(√) I am running out of patience. Help!
A Gift for You!
Click Take a WTM Break
This gift is a lesson while lying down with eyes closed
Do it before bed… even in bed, and enjoy. If you want your systems to get rejuvenated, do the lesson daily for two weeks.
This lesson is an adult version of a lesson called, “Pancake Body,” ( p. 40 of the book A New Sensory Self Awareness), foundational to introducing the Sensory Body.
( √ ) My students come full of emotions: mad, solemn, or even tearful. I can’t get them to be present.
Cutting-edge research understands it is crucial to understand that children learn from the foundation within their whole body-and-mind. It’s hard to teach math and reading when there is all this internal dialogue of emotional turmoil. Address first emotional turmoil in a new way before moving into academic learning. Teach the child how to use the body to help calm and center oneself. Often, we say, “Take a deep breath…” Children have a hard time understanding what they are feeling. Take it further and help the child feel the body and the emotions are “heard.” Once the internal dialogue is in awareness, a child becomes present.
What is essential to understand, even though the body sends more information to the mind than the brain, children need to be taught how to recognize the feelings in their body and use them. As the body ages, the child uses what they feel inside because the body will share when it is time to change. Learning how the body helps the brain, the children feel how to stay engaged, and be self-directed. Children organically begin to sense their uniqueness if taught this magical world inside. Usually, the value of this “sense of self” isn’t discovered until the twenties or sometimes never. Learn as a child one’s uniqueness, and it will improve with age.
Imagine, if in seconds, children could calm down their emotional reactions and identify their emotions. The frustration, sadness, and anger can find a way out of turmoil. As a result, the children can focus their attention on themselves and how they effect others. There becomes a sense of groundedness that increases their ability to reason. Learn more about the nature of the systems in the body to help children listen. (refer to GSA)
Frustration, confusion, or just feeling overwhelmed can shut down anyone. Whether it is at the dinner table, in the playground, or at a classroom desk learning to feel how their bodies affect their reactions can, within seconds, change a situation. Emotions calm and a clear understanding from whole field inside to what is going on opens. The Get Sensational Attention (GSA) program is how we help children find this field. GSA has been tested and proven effective with hundreds of children for personal growth, communication , and learning with children for years to come.
Biological impulses set life’s trajectory, and we don’t know it. Teach children an awareness of feeling their bodies and a new orientation to learning unlocks their unique treasures to life. This “awareness,” from the body to the brain, is a skill that needs to be taught. In the science, the most important point is children feel their bodily sensations more than thinking. If they can identify these sensations, sensations will teach them how they need to learn. As a Feldenkrais® practitioner for the last four decades of research, sensory-motor awareness has helped with learning, attention, listening, emotional reactions, and cognitive and behavioral challenges. Reeducate an overactive sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight reactions), and the child improves. “Reeducate” means using the nature of the systems to change how the sensory-motor system functions with the brain. Experience the nature of the whole system (mind and body), and changes are sustainable and improve with age. ( Science and Biomechanics of Psychology)
LISTENING
( √ ) My students don’t listen well.
Often, if a young student (4 to 10 years old) is not listening, believe it or not, it is not intentional. Younger students feel through their bodies to listen. For young students, listening is a whole-body experience. The body carries a type of intelligence through the dialogue of sensations, both physical and psychological. For example, students may love getting buried in the sand, rolling in the waves, and playing through movement, but they must be made aware that this movement is helping development and listening. How? Teach them to feel what changes in their body that change their moods.
The experience of WTM is not a program or tool but a way of life. When awareness of the body-mind is experienced, the child senses an understanding from a personal level. The insight is all their own. When children can feel the clarity of a physical sensation, their thinking has a tangible feeling in understanding their internal dialogue. This physical clarity is like a biofeedback machine helping children share what is happening inside them.
As a parent or teacher, think about this: “Could my student be feeling something in the body that is getting in the way of listening to me? Here is a checklist to help you start to feel how your body and your children’s bodies work together with thinking: Checklist. If you think your students are hyperactive, here are some tips below: “I teach fidgety Kids.”
(√) I want something quick and easy to do if my students aren’t listening.
The program Get Sensational Attention (GSA) is where to begin. Don’t worry, once practiced it is quick and easy. Most importantly, the technique is proven effective in listening and attention span, and improves overall wellbeing. The GSA program is not actually “a program” but a way to set up a cultural way of being in school, classroom, and home life. Once learned, the method finds its way into any school, classroom, or family culture. This program offers elementary steps on opening the student’s inner world of the body to an emotional reaction. Questions in the User Guide develop a student’s ability to communicate clearer.
Get Sensational Attention Program
Proven effective, and both tracks are so EASY
Click Short Track
Click Long Track
HIT: Get the Principal on board and the whole school can participate. Grades and character of the children will improve. Here’s a testimony from a principal here.
If your students are five or older, something quick and easy to do is use deep exhalations but remember to turn your attention to the body. Many professionals have used exhalations to help people calm down. However, if you want the children to grow and change the key is to point attention to bodily sensations at the end of the exhalations. The mind will feel different, but where is that in the body? We aren’t just interested in calming the student. We are helping the student learn a lifetime skill about their well-being.
If you take this process one step further, you will shift behavior. Ask the students to put their hands on the area of the body where the exhalation ends. The feeling of the hand is used to help students attention stay inside the body. Students are then asked to share from that area of the body.
When using “attention with breath,” sensation is learned that it is both a mind and body experience. The feeling in the body can help clarify for the student why they can’t listen. Listening is more than just hearing sound waves through the ears. It is harder to listen if something is troubling inside. Physical sensations of anxiousness and discomfort will happen long before the brain knows something doesn’t feel right.
Once awareness of the body is experienced:
- The student understands a little more about what is going on emotionally
- The emotion can calm down a little easier when there is attention withdrawn from the outside and turned inside the body
- Physical feelings inside are used to help guide the student’s needs
- Within seconds, many children were able to shift emotions and share from the heart
- When they learn how to share, children become happier, supportive of their peers, and listen better.
For sustainable results help children relate to the fun they had learning the lesson.
HITS: To add a sound to the exhalations gives the body a clearer physical sensation, and is more tangible to feel. Instead of relying on the parent to calm the student, the student relies on what is felt inside the body.
As mentioned previously, the physicality of the emotion; however, if, for some reason, students still cannot understand what is going on, they may need a lesson on internal spatial awareness. Here’s a lesson to help. (Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance lesson) Or the student may be too young to sense his body (four years of age or younger).
There are two tracks to the Get Sensational Attention (GSA) program: a fast track and a long track. The fast track helps with temporary relief. The long track adapts body-mind awareness to daily living, thus improving well-being as the student ages.
This is a free program has helped teachers, parents, and families understand and enhance their child’s wellbeing and personal growth.
HYPERACTIVITY
( √ ) I teach fidgety kids.
Why are our students fidgety? Imagine being a bundle of sensations and being told to sit still. We need to be able to control our students, but telling them to sit still can feel like a time bomb ready to explode. Getting exercise or movement does release energy, but there is also a more sustainable solution.
To begin, try to reframe how you look at “movement.” Movement is just physical? Everything you think, feel, or sense involves movement. Build on that concept movement, and over time movement becomes patterns. Patterns of action have an internal dialogue of what was learned in the past. Feel the pattern and the brain develops a perception. Become aware of the pattern and if the pattern is unhealthy you have a chance to chance. In the long run, well-being improves, so does awareness of what we think to what we actually do. The methods we teach have been tested and proven successful. Learn More: Methods link.
If the students have a severe hyperactive character there is more that is needed.
Every child we worked with had severe behavioral challenges with hyperactivity and needed neuromuscular integration from the waist down. We used the Feldenkrais® method to sensorial reeducate the physical movement. That experience of Functional Integration® changes how the motor patterns operate with the brain, thus changing the brain, too. Part II of the WTM programs has movement games that affect the brain. Check out this link for an overview of what we did in Part II. We did physical movement games that reeducate mind/body movement patterns from the body to the brain. In the games, we used groups of children (ages five to ten), so the children helped the children. Send us your email, and we will let you know when the program is posted. (In the meantime, try out the first lesson of Part 1, Get Sensational Attention. It will help calm your nerves.)
Tips to Add to Your Repertoire: WTM Movement
(√) I don’t have time for these hyper kids. Show me the key to flip their energy?
Hyperactivity is like being a live wire without the ground wire. The results? Students feel over sensitized with no place to go. Temporary tactics are great but not sustainable. To flip the energy, we must help them find the “ground wire.” So much is happening inside them, but they don’t understand it. Being sensitive is not a problem if the child gets grounded.
When there is no ground wire, there are short circuits between movement, senses, and intention. The “ground wire” is inside the body. Imagine students having all kinds of energy, but their bodies won’t behave because they just have to jump, tumble, climb, and run. There is an intelligence in this movement.
First step to flipping their switch of hyperactivity is to flip our thinking. Think of their movement as a morse code. Their actions are trying to describe what is missing to feel whole. There is actually nothing missing. There is just a part of them, a very strong nature in them, they feel but don’t understand. The sensitivity is trying to use movement to synchronize themselves. Synchronize all the senses with feeling and thinking.
Students who have a lot of energy have a gift. If you could bottle that energy, you would be a billionaire. You can’t bottle it, but you can teach it how to be the best they can be in who they are. The questions are, “Can my students learn to use their gifts?” And, “Can’t I learn how to help them find their gifts?” Yes you can. Get a Feldenkrais® practitioner to come in and do Part II of the WTM program. (Send us your email, and we will let you know when it get posted. In the meantime, check out this video: Six Body-to-Brain Strategies, or …
…see the Movement Teachers page for tips with WTM Movement to flip energy.
Can’t wait to begin? Okay, try this…Step back from the need to teach (I know it’s hard, but try) and watch what those children’s bodies are doing. What are their movements and behavior doing to you? If their behavior is driving you crazy, it’s driving them crazy too. Watch the reactions and what movements appear. (Ask a Feldenkrais® Practitioner for insight into these movements.) The “movements” include if they try to get on the ground, under something, or emotional, like how they treat you. Now, rethink what the movement is saying if it were an intelligence. This child is trying to show you these movements to learn something new. These spontaneous movements guide all the lessons, experience the truth and the reason why we do each step. They offer new insights to show them their gifts and where they got stuck.
Traditionally, overly sensitive students who need to move are given sensory stimulus activities (balls to sit on, clay to manipulate, chewing toys) or, in more serious cases, medications to calm their systems. These tactics, though valuable for a time, are often not sustainable, and if on medication, they run into complications later in life. We have to wonder about the possibilities. These children have gifts we (and they) don’t know about.
Over eight years of working with hundreds of children, the students within the spectrum (hyperactive, ADD, and ADHD) needed a sense of groundedness. Literally, their lower bodies were dysfunctional in some way. They felt stable but didn’t know it. They needed to get organized enough to feel solid on their feet. They needed time to find their gifts. From the ground, the feeling of the lower body gives them a sense of stability. This talk of “groundedness” may sound like “new age,” however, look at the research on cognitive disorders and developmental movements. Feeling stable gives them the sense of where they are in space and, from there, a relationship to their circumstances.
For a baby, development in movement starts from the feet up (Thelen and Smith, 1994). Thelen and Smith showed that if you suspend a toddler in a swing and offer a ball, the toddler reaches for the ball with the feet as if the feet were hands. Watch the movement of an infant. Movements from the toes and feet begin with primal reflexes, introducing the feet to the baby and movement into the legs and lower body to the ground. Then, the lower body alignment sets up and helps develop a healthy posture. The intelligence of movement (in the feet) is trying to align the legs with the pelvis. The alignment and organization of the pelvis are the foundation of the spine’s alignment and power in the lower body. If students sit with their tails tucked under (they are on their lower backs) while at their desks, how long do you think they can listen? Stability is not just physical. Feeling stable in oneself helps to listen, which is why groundedness is essential.
When a student feels grounded, the senses pluginto the whole child (mind, body, and spirit). The mind discovers something new about the self. Awareness of their gifts and how to negotiate them in the world and with others like a parent or teacher has a chance to take hold. When grounded in movement, students, once dysfunctional with others and themselves, come into balance and centered. Their awareness is not a thought or idea. “Awareness” is an experience that can compare their effects on others and their differences in addressing the situation.
Teaching students a sense of groundedness begins by first finding their personal space, inside and out. In other words, their sensory bodies. (See the lessons Personal Bubbles Freeze Dance) We teach about the “sensory body” through space and time, just as nature does. Combining attention with the sensation of motion, space, time, and the self are starting to become aware. There are many examples in the book A New Sensory Self Awareness , so let me give you a few tips.
Tips
Every student with behavioral challenges needs help in movement from the waist down. Do these three steps. If you don’t have time, call a local Feldenkrais® Practitioner to come in. Sometimes, you can find a yoga or physical education teacher to do the lessons. OR YOU?
Try this: Ask the student to lie down and tell you what is touching and not touching the floor. Think of the body as five lines: the spine, arms, and legs. How much of the line can they feel? If young, how much is touching and up off the ground? If the children can’t sense much or lie still enough to sense anything, have the student just notice. This lack of awareness could be causing more work for your job as a teacher. When we taught children inside their bodies, they raised their hands and shared their anxiousness, lack of breathing, or discomfort at the desk.
See: Pancake Body (page 40) in the book A New Sensory Self Awareness.
In A New Sensory Self Awareness there are twelve games on Sensory Body you (or your physical education teacher can use).
The second step after teaching how to sense internal and external spatial awareness is to help children become aware of movement tendencies. Often, their bodies know long before their brains that something needs addressing. Certain movements they try to do may be trying to help the body find ways to connect the muscles and bones to the senses.
For example, if a student likes to climb, the movement may be trying to find parts of the body that can help with balance, coordination, and stability. WTM movement would then start with a GI Joe/lizard crawl. The student is on her belly and tries to crawl like a lizard. The crawl will reveal if the feet or legs are engaged with the floor. Are the right and left legs both being used to propel the body forward? The lizard crawl helps the student sense how the lower body parts work or don’t work together.
This is the third step, becoming feeling the physical awkwardness in their movement. The awkward movement is actually a key component to understanding what kind of motion is needed. However, movement organization is not easy to accomplish if the symptoms of the students are severe.
Extremely dysfunctional students need expert hands to help the student’s body sense movement organization between body parts. (Find a Feldenkrais® Practitioner) We got astounding results with the method, Functional Integration (FI). Behaviors from hyperactivity turned to listening, following directions, and sharing.
A Functional Integration (FI®) lesson, a Feldenkrais® method, uses the tactile stimulus of a hands-on session to send movement information through the body. The sessions give these gifted students ways to use their energy in productive ways. They become clear about what they are thinking as opposed to what they are actually doing. They learn to cooperate, and their behavior becomes calm and ambitious. (Book A New Sensory Self Awareness, Part I and (Part II –TBA})
RECap
NEEDS missing in hyperactive students
1. Groundedness
2. Coordination and balance from their lower body
Now, forget everything you just read and go lie down on the ground. How much of your body can you feel? Can you feel the four corners of your body – from the front to the back of your body and from side to side?
There could be a biological need in the action that is trying to calm the hyperactivity. Understanding these biological needs takes time and patience. Here is a checklist to help determine if a professional is needed.
Find a Feldenkrais Practitioner Here
(√) Is there a way to find out if my student may develop a learning or behavioral disorder?
YES! This is a very good and KEY question! Start here with this Checklist. Pay attention to the “5 points” statements. Keep track of your number of points and there will be an explanation below on the list.
For some of the statements, you may need to ask the parents.
CHECK LIST
1. My student is extremely sensitive with one or more senses and doesn’t function effectively in the classroom (such as sounds, light, or touch). (5 points)
2. The positions and alignment of my student’s feet are different. (2 points)
3. My student does not talk or even make noises when trying to verbalize. (3 point)
4. When my student crawls, climbs, or walks, he is not coordinated from one leg to the other. (5 points key)
5. When my student was an infant, she had a difficult time rolling from the belly to the back. The rolling motion was like a solid log instead of a spiral movement. (2 points)
6. When my student was an infant, she could not move to a sitting position on both sides without any help. (3 points)
7. When my student was an infant, and even now, he does not use his feet against the floor in a GI Joe crawl (belly on the ground moving like a lizard). (5 points)
8. When my student was an infant, she did not crawl much, if at all, before walking. (5 points)
9. When my student crawled, he did not move his legs and arms in homolateral and cross lateral movements. When the leg and arm move together forward and back from one side, this is a homolateral movement (right arm to right leg). When the arm and leg move forward and back from opposite sides, this is cross lateral movement (right arm to left leg). (5 points)
10. When I watch my student climb up or down stairs, there is an awkwardness in her balance. (3 points)
11. My student exhibits strange behaviors such as repetitive movements. (4 points)
12. My student changes behavior suddenly. For example, stops talking, or isolates and withdraws from a group. (3 points)
(√) What should I do if my student meets any of the criteria on the checklist?
You can also call the Feldenkrais® Guild to get more information, or email us for a consultation. If the symptoms in the student are severe, you would want a team that consists of a development specialist, doctor, Feldenkrais® practitioner, and counselor. With scores of 12 or higher, get the student into a developmental movement program (such as the “Tutu’s and Me” program). These types of movement classes may help dance, yoga games, or tumbling. It is important to address the issue as soon as possible.
(√) What does movement have to do with emotional and mental behavior?
This topic is the key to Wellness Through Movement. First think of the senses, or physical feelings of emotions (especially in a baby), as movements. With movements, a baby doesn’t think. A baby (like a young child) is a bundle of sensations—these sensations of how the body and mind move educate the development of behavior. The sensations of movement begin to form, and patterns set up. The organization of the patterns are one, both mental and emotional behavior. Organizing the movement to affect the mind/body behavior takes a professional, but when movement is organized, the senses harmonize, the mind settles, and the heart opens. This type of movement is not an exercise. Like learning to walk, it takes practice. To balance the body/mind’s wellbeing, the feeling in the body has to be experienced with awareness of how to feel the movement connected with body parts and emotions. The kids learn this easily because they are so young. The experience of the movement is the education and leads the students from the inside.
If you can wonder about the needs in your children’s movement, you will see how the movement is trying to teach them. Seems simple, but many children are not aware of where and who they are in a situation. Wonder if there could be connections between their movements and their emotions? That is the question to ask, and it will speak volumes far beyond how to discipline and teach the child to learn.
To get the science educators, please see Scientist page or Contact Us.
Astonishing changes can happen in students’ behaviors. Some of the results range from having longer attention spans to being simply kinder and supportive with their peers. With the movement program, even physical conditions improved. With time, the students resourced the methods from the program on their own when needing to handle stress, violence, and depression.
The most significant and sustainable results happen with students between the ages of five and eight; however, adults also reported benefiting from the process. intro program
Please note movement lessons in Part II of WTM were necessary for the most challenging behavior. With all behaviors, we taught lessons in this book A New Sensory Self Awarenesss. (Rosasco, 2013)
(√) Is there an alternative to medication to help my students?
There is an alternative to using sedative medications to manage your student’s behavior. Hyperactive students have little awareness of their behavior and how it disturbs others. Think of your student’s behavior not as misbehavior but as behavior that shows how to uncover the answers of what type of help he or she needs. The movement reveals the internal dialogue between the body and brain. When you help students’ brains feel and reeducate what is happening in their bodies, it clarifies for them how their actions affect others. The WTM methods help students learn the bridge between their actions and their brains by first teaching spatial awareness inside. (Science, Biomechanics of Psychology, & Feldenkrais Work)
