Every teacher knows each child learns in their own way. Wellness Through Movement (WTM) isn’t another “program.” Teachers will learn how to help children use what they feel inside as they learn. Teaching becomes a process of learning from the inside out and the outside in. Each person will find their own unique way to build a bridge into the inner world. Help children build a bridge to their worlds from inside, and they discover the heart of who they are.
Did you know children are…
“… feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel?”
— Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., Harvard
What is WTM About?
Children listen from the neck down.
Children can feel emotional if they have a physical instability.
Children can feel hyper if they feel lost inside.
Help children feel inside so they help themselves learn.
Give Me Details
STRESS
( √ ) I can’t add one more thing to my plate.
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. 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 Have the School Help You
(√) I am running out of patience. Help!
A Gift for You!
Click Take a 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.
It is crucial to understand that children learn from the inside out as well as from the outside in. 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 a step further and help the child feel the body and the emotions are “heard”. Once the internal dialogue is in awareness, a child becomes present.
Frustration, confusion, or just feeling overwhelmed can shut down a child. 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.
What is important to understand, even though the body feels the mind, 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. If taught this magically world inside, children organically begin to sense the uniqueness about themselves. Usually the value of this “a 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)
Biological influences set up the trajectory of life and we don’t know it. Teach children 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 needing to be learned. To understand the science, the most important point to understand is when children feel their bodily sensations they can identify how they need to learn. I have forty years of experience as a Feldenkrais® Practitioner proving sensory-motor systems help learning by helping attention, listening, emotional reactions, and behavioral challenges. Re-educate an overactive sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight reactions) and the whole child improves. “Reeducate” means using the nature of the systems to change how the sensory-motor system functions with the brain. Use the nature of the whole system (mind and body) and changes are not only sustainable, they improve with age. ( Science and Biomechanics of Psychology)
LISTENING
( √ ) My students don’t listen well.
Often, if the student is not listening, it is not intentional. Younger students feel through their bodies to listen. For young students (5 to 10 years old), listening is a whole-body experience. The body carries the dialogue of sensations, both physical and psychological. For example, students may love to get buried in the sand, roll in the waves, and play through movement but are not aware this movement is helping development and listening.
The practice of WTM is not a program or tool but a way of life. When awareness of the body-mind is experienced, the child senses what is felt inside the body and how to communicate it. For children, when they can sense the clarity of a physical sensation in thinking gives a tangible awareness of understanding their internal (visceral) dialogue that may be getting in the way of listening. This physical clarity helps the child share what is happening inside.
What is essential to ask as a parent or teacher is: “Could my student be feeling something in the body that is getting in the way of listening to me? Here is a checklist of what to look for: Checklist. If you think your students are hyperactive also see 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) has a quick and easy technique proven effective in increasing the ability to listen, lengthen attention, and improve wellbeing. The GSA program is not actually “a program” but a way to set up the culture of a school, classroom, and home life. Once learned, it weaves into any school, classroom, or family culture. This program offers 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 EASY to do!
Click Short Track
Click Long Track
Get the Principal on board so the whole school can participate. Grades and character of the children will improve. See Principal Garcia of Kohala Elementary School testimony here.
If your students are five or older, something quick and easy to do is use deep exhalations to turn attention inside the body. Exhalations have been shown to help students calm down. The key is to use attention with the bodily sensations of the long exhalations. We aren’t just interested in calming the student. We are helping the student learn what is going on inside the body and how to express it.
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,” the student’s mind and body become a sensation of one. This is the bridge of the body-mind you want to build. The awareness in the body clarifies for the student why he or she can’t listen. Listening is more than just hearing sound waves through the ears. If something is troubling inside or there are physical sensations of anxiousness and discomfort, it is harder to listen.
Once awareness of the body is experienced
- The student becomes aware of what is going on emotionally
- The emotion calms down with attention inside the body
- And the physical feeling inside is used to guide the student’s attention
- Within seconds, the student is able to shift emotions and share
- When they learn how to share, students will be able to listen better.
If a student can feel the physicality of the emotion, he or she understands what needs to be communicated without getting so upset. 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 this process, a fast track or a long track (Get Sensational Attention GSA). The fast track helps for temporary relief. The long track adapts a body-mind awareness into daily living, so improvements continue as the student ages.
This is a free program to help teachers, parents, and families understand and enhance their child’s wellbeing and personal growth.
HYPERACTIVITY
( √ ) I teach fidgety kids.
Why are our students fidgety and need to move? Imagine being a bundle of energy and being told to sit still. We need to be able to control our students, but telling them to sit still to them can feel like a time bomb ready to explode. Getting exercise or movement releases energy but there is also a sustainable solution.
To begin, try to reframe how you look at “movement.” Build on the concept that movement is movement patterns that have an internal dialogue between brain and body, and brain development and well-being will improve. 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. What we did is physical movement that changes how the motor patterns operate with the brain. With Part II of the WTM programs we do physical movement games that reeducate mind/body movement patterns. Part II is designed for groups of children (ages five to ten). Send us your email and when the program is posted we will let you know. (In the meantime, read more below and it will help calm your nerves.)
See Tips for 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. To flip the energy, we have to help them find the “ground wire.” So much is going on 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. Imagine students having all kinds of energy, but their bodies won’t behave because they just want to jump, tumble, climb, and run. First step to flipping their switch 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 try to give them advice, try to change them, without helping them find their gift they will not listen. 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.
See the Movement page for tips on WTM Movement and flipping energy.
To begin, step back from the need to teach (I know it’s hard but try) and just watch what the body is 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. The “movements” include how they treat you. In actuality, these movements are trying to do something new that they don’t know about. These new insights show them their gifts.
Traditionally, overly sensitive students who need to move are given sensory stimulus activities or medications to calm their systems. These tactics, though valuable for a time, are not sustainable. We have to help them wonder about the possibilities they could have… the gifts they don’t know about.
Over eight years, every student within the spectrum (hyperactive, ADD, and ADHD) that we worked with needed a sense of groundedness and stability to find their gifts. The ground, and the feeling of the lower body gives them a sense of stability. Feeling stable gives them the sense of where they are in space and a relationship to the circumstances around them.
Development in movement starts from the feet up. 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 are hands. (Thelen and Smith, 1994). Movements from the toes and feet begin with primal reflexes to introduce the feet into the legs and lower body. Then the lower body alignment helps with the development of a healthy posture. The intelligence of movement (in the feet) is trying to organize the alignment of the legs into the pelvis and spine. This is how a student finds stability. Stability is not just physical. Feeling stable in oneself helps listening and is why groundedness is so important.
When a student feels grounded, the senses can feel plugged into the whole child, mind, body, and spirit. And the mind finds awareness of their gifts and how to negotiate with others like a parent or teacher. When grounded in movement, students once dysfunctional with others and themselves come into balance. Their awareness can compare the effects they have on others and their differences in how to address the situation.
Teaching students the sense of groundedness begins by first finding their sensory bodies. We do this process by combining attention with sensation. There are lots of examples in the book A New Sensory Self Awareness so let me give you a few tips.
Tips
Every student with behavioral challenges needed help in movement from the was it down. Do these three steps:
Ask the student to lie down and tell you what is touching and not touching the floor. If the student can’t sense much, or lie still enough to sense anything, have the student just notice.
The full lesson of Pancake body is on page 40, in the book A New Sensory Self Awareness.
If the children don’t have patience finding internal spatial awareness, try lessons in this book :A New Sensory Self Awareness. There are twelve lessons on Sensory Body awareness that can help.
The second step is to become aware of movement tendencies. Certain movements 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 aware of any 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! Here is a Checklist . Pay attention to the “5 points” statements. Keep track of your number of points and there will be an explanation below.
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 that can’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 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 me 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)
