Whole-Brain Living and Learning

Monday, September 8, 2014

Arm Activation - A Fall-Prevention Tool for Senior Citizens

This story first appeared in my book Educate Your Brain - Use mind-body balance to learn faster, work smarter, and move more easily through life. Since its publication, I've talked with many people with aging parents or neighbors, or who work with seniors in their practice. All are concerned about their clients' or loved ones' potential for falling, which for the elderly can lead to serious injury or even death.

Since this story tells of a remarkable shift into more secure and confident walking, I felt it was important to share it more widely. At the conclusion of the story, I explain how to do the Brain Gym^® “Arm Activation” movement, which made so much difference in my own mother’s ability to walk securely.

My 93-year-old mother was recovering from a leg fracture, which required three months in a skilled nursing/rehabilitation center. Once she got home, her physical therapist (PT) was helping her continue to improve her movement and stability. Her typical hunched-over posture meant that she took short, shuffling steps, not the true stride the PT was looking for, leaving her at higher risk for falls.

As Mom practiced with the PT’s guidance, my attention was drawn to her shoulders. I know how much stress I tend to hold in my own shoulders and how that can affect my whole body, so I wondered: could the key to her short stride be the fact that her shoulders seemed so raised and frozen? Later, I asked Mom if she’d like to experience one simple Brain Gym movement that might help, and she agreed. While she was sitting, I supported her in doing Arm Activation by having her raise her arm and “push just a bit” against my own hand in all four directions: forward, backward, toward her ear, away from her ear. Then I gently held her wrist as she lengthened that arm overhead, releasing all the way from waist to fingertips. She loved the feeling of relaxation in that shoulder and arm, and we repeated with the other.

Then I had her stand up, and she said, “Kathy, I’m looking right at you!” She was experiencing the fact that, for the first time in many long months, she wasn’t hunched over. Her shoulders had spontaneously come into improved alignment, leaving her chest more open and her head up. She said she even felt taller.

Then I had her walk, and she took lovely steps, much longer than before. She was so pleased with herself! Later that afternoon, Mom and I demonstrated Arm Activation for some other family members, and this time she stood even straighter, her chin held high. Her gait was even more fluid and confident—a true stride.[1]

Arm Activation is one of the Brain Gym Lengthening Activities, whose purpose is to release tension in the back of the body. This movement unlocks stress held in the shoulders, so we can regain our natural alignment, gain more fluid and coordinated use of the arms and hands, experience clearer focus, and more.

Before you experience this movement, do a few simple a pre-checks, so you have a means of comparing your "before" and "after": Take up a pen or pencil and write your name, and then a sentence or two. Notice the formation of your letters and words, how your hand and arm feel as you write, and your experience of expressing ideas in words. Notice your sitting posture, then stand, and notice how you feel as you walk.

Now for Arm Activation:

Position your left arm straight up overhead (or at any comfortable angle in front of you). Place your right hand on what’s now the “front” of your left arm, below (not on) the elbow. Hold steady with your right hand as you press gently against it with your raised left arm.

This is an isometric activity, rather than a "pushing hard" activity. Using only twenty percent of your push power allows your muscles and tendons to gently activate and release. Hold for about eight seconds, or until you feel the shoulder muscle relax, whichever comes first.

Pressing forward • backward • in toward ear • away from ear

Now do the other three directions. Keeping your left arm raised, move your right hand to the “back” of your arm, and hold it steady, this time pressing your arm to the back. Move your right hand to the “inside” of your left arm, and hold it steady as you press toward your ear; move your right hand to the “outside” of your left arm, and hold it steady as you pull away from your ear.

Run your right hand up your left arm and take hold of your left wrist; gently pull up on your wrist, lengthening the whole side of your body, starting at the waist.

Slowly lower both your arms, and notice the difference in how they feel as they hang at your sides. Does one arm feel more “alive” than the other?

You can repeat the entire process, reversing all these directions to activate your right arm.

Now that both arms are “activated,” what do you notice about your posture? Your breathing? Your sense of focus and presence?

Take up your pen or pencil again, and write your name and a sentence or two. What do you notice about the formation of your letters and words? How do your hand and arm feel as you write? Is there any difference in your focus on your writing, and your expression of ideas? What do you notice about your sitting posture, and your experience of standing and walking?

Modified Arm Activation:

Feel free to modify this movement in any way that works, such as holding the arm lower, or even with a bent elbow. The important thing is the isometric release of the shoulder joint, in all four directions.

It’s even possible to “activate” both arms at the same time, with the support of a friend. Here are some photos that show me sharing this activity with my friend Susan.

Pressing forward • backward • in toward ears • away from ears

For the “forward” activation, I am bracing my body against the back of Susan’s chair so it doesn't rock backward. This way, Susan feels stable, and able to relax in this movement.

And here’s another tip: For even the able-bodied, doing Arm Activation with the support of a friend - activating both arms at the same time - is a delightful experience, and one I love. Find someone to share this activity with!

I hope you enjoy this wonderful Lengthening Activity from Brain Gym. Please let me know what your own experience is, and what happens when you share Arm Activation with others.

Warm regards,

Kathy

[1] Brown, Kathy. Educate Your Brain. Phoenix: Balance Point Publishing, 2012. 201-202.

Click here for a link to the website for my book, Educate Your Brain

www.educateyourbrain.com

Brain Gym® is a registered trademark of Brain Gym® International, Ventura, California • www.braingym.org

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Friday, August 22, 2014

Brain Gym® for Traumatic Brain Injury

"Moving toward a higher level of daily functioning
one step at a time... with Brain Gym®"

This is the statement of intention that my Brain Gym^® colleague, Mary Ann Beebe, and I created for a very special project: We were hired by the Brain Injury Alliance here in Phoenix, Arizona, to offer two one-hour Brain Gym sessions per month for people who have experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is incredibly rewarding to share Brain Gym with this special population.

We never know who will arrive for these sessions, which are listed on the monthly schedule along with such classes as tai chi, karate, strength training, and aerobics, at the state-of-the-art Virginia G. Piper Sport and Fitness Center, part of the Disability Empowerment Center, where the Brain Injury Alliance has its offices.

Not long ago, seven participants slowly arrived and found places for one of our Tuesday evening sessions – some walking, others in wheelchairs – and all had a family member or caregiver with them. Everyone that day was new.

And there sat “Dan” in the front row, a young man in his 20’s, brought by his father for his first experience of Brain Gym. Dan was clearly doubtful, resistant, and distracted.

We had no idea how Dan had ended up with a brain injury, which we could see had left him with some cognitive issues, and challenges using the left side of his body.

Mary Ann and I introduced ourselves and the Brain Gym program, and led the group through a modified form of pace, the Brain Gym warm-up.[1] Everyone but Dan seemed interested and ready to participate; Dan we ended up coaxing, humoring, and cajoling in a good-natured way, to complete these simple activities.

Then we went on to the core activity of the day’s session, a group Brain Gym "balance."

As licensed Brain Gym® Instructors, Mary Ann and I typically do balances with individual clients - children or adults - with special needs, or typically-abled - who want to make a change in some specific area of life. They may choose to address reading, focus, organization, coordination in physical skills, etc. In a one-on-one session, balances are focused on the specifics of that particular "learner" and his goal for change.

A standard Brain Gym balance is a five-step process. The learner gets into his best pace for taking on new learning, sets an intention, or goal, for what kind of change he’d like to make, notices his current ability level at that target skill or ability, chooses Brain Gym movements that he’s drawn to in that moment, and notices changes in his ability or skill.

When Mary Ann and I began planning how we would go about offering Brain Gym balances to an entire group of participants in this special population, we realized that our key word would be “simplify.” For the balance process itself, that meant paring down to three primary elements – Notice, Brain Gym, Notice. And rather than a balance, we called it a “Learning Adventure.”

We again simplified by choosing a single physical activity that we thought would work for everyone in the group to use for their initial “noticing.” Our intention is that any given physical activity will represent the kinds of coordination and cognitive challenges that people with TBI experience on a daily basis.

On this day, we distributed balls and suggested that everyone see what they could do with them – bouncing, tossing – with or without a partner. Mary Ann and I modeled a few options. Some participants chose to partner with a caregiver or family member, and bounce the ball back and forth to each other. One man with limited movement chose to roll the ball from hand to hand. Another chose to bounce the ball on the floor next to his wheelchair, which he accomplished by simply letting go of it. His partner would catch it and return it to him, as it often bounced out of range of his reach.

Dan chose to sit on his chair and bounce the ball on the floor, which he did with his right hand – the hand on the “unaffected” side of his body.

After a few minutes of this activity, we asked everyone to notice what was working in how they were interacting with the ball, and what they wished was working better. Then we introduced the Learning Menu.

For each session, Mary Ann and I simplified by selecting a Learning Menu of just four Brain Gym movements (rather than offering all 26). That day we’d posted four photos on a large board, showing Brain Gym activities that we thought would be a good combination.[2] We invited participants to call out which one they thought we should do first.

Someone in the group suggested Arm Activation, so we demonstrated that, and supported everyone in experiencing it. That was followed by The Thinking Cap, Double Doodle, and Earth Buttons. Clearly doubtful, Dan made a running commentary throughout, asking questions about how each movement was supposed to help.

When we had done all four Brain Gym activities, we invited everyone to return to their ball activity. Almost immediately, people began commenting on what they were noticing now: better aim, more energy behind their movements, improved coordination in catching. The man in the wheelchair was no longer just letting go of the ball - he was actually propelling it down with force, so that it bounced much higher, and sometimes he caught it himself.

It was at this point that I looked over at Dan, who was bouncing and catching his ball quite accurately, and with great enthusiasm. I asked him what he was noticing, and he said, “Nothing.” His father, however, had observed something that I had entirely missed. He said, “Dan, do you realize that you’re bouncing the ball with your left hand? You’ve been using your left hand this whole time.”

“Oh -- I am!” Dan said, with a really big smile.

We joined the group in celebrating all the changes they’d noticed, and closed our session with a “cool down” consisting of Hook-ups and Positive Points. We wished everyone a great evening, and reminded them of when our next session would be. Everyone left with a copy of our modified pace process, and a page showing that day’s learning menu, so they could continue with these activities at home.

Mary Ann and I love this rewarding work, which requires a whole new level of slowing down, being present and observant, and meeting individual needs. We love seeing the small changes that manifest in each and every session. And who knows how these small changes, one step at a time, will ripple out into the lives of each participant?

Warm regards,

Kathy

Addendum: As Mary Ann and I were preparing for our most recent session, Dan walked past our training room accompanied by his mother, intent on using the weight machines. His mother paused just long enough to say, "Brain Gym is helping him so much!" Since our session was about to begin, and several people were just arriving, I didn't have time to ask for details. Dan had participated in only two of our group sessions, and had experienced a total of thirteen Brain Gym activities: the five movements from our modified PACE, and two different Learning Menus of four each. I can only assume that he is doing these Brain Gym movements regularly (perhaps with guidance from his parents). I look forward to learning more, when the timing is right!

[1] The standard pace warm-up consists of four Brain Gym activities: Sipping Water, rubbing Brain Buttons, doing the Cross Crawl, and doing Hook-ups. (For instructions on these activities, please see my book Educate Your Brain, or Brain Gym® Teacher’s Edition, by Paul and Gail Dennison.) Because some of these participants with TBI may also be prone to seizures, we use Cecilia Koester’s recommendation for modifying the pace process. For the third element, rather than starting with the cross-lateral Cross Crawl, we begin with “Puppet Crawl” which is a one-sided activity: raise and lower the right arm and leg, then raise and lower the left arm and leg, etc. We follow this with the Cross Crawl, telling everyone that if they’re prone to seizures, please omit the Cross Crawl, and do only the Puppet Crawl; once they've been doing the Puppet Crawl for some time, they may feel ready to include the Cross Crawl. We all then finish with Hook-ups.

[2] My clever photographer husband created large cards for us in the same format as the wonderful cards produced by Edu-Kinesthetics. He began with the 12 photo images he’d taken for my book, Educate Your Brain, then added others we’d taken, to give us a set of all 26.

Click here for a link to the website for my book, Educate Your Brain

www.educateyourbrain.com

Brain Gym® is a registered trademark of Brain Gym® International, Ventura, California • www.braingym.org

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Friday, July 25, 2014

Alphabet 8s for Reading

Eight year old “Mark” arrived for his second Brain Gym^® session with an enthusiastic report: reading and writing were much easier since his first session, three weeks prior.

Mark had been diagnosed with “dyslexia and dysgraphia,” and, despite his clear intelligence and precocious verbal language skills, had struggled in school. Now, following his first Brain Gym session (which had included Dennison Laterality Repatterning), he found that he could read much more easily, and understand what he read. His handwriting had definitely improved, as well. Mark and I shared a high-five to celebrate these changes!

When I asked Mark what he’d like to work on now, he said that he was still “kind of confusing d’s and b’s” in both reading and writing. He said he could mostly figure them out, but he wanted to know them “instantly.”

To create a pre-check for this goal, I pulled out my small whiteboard and wrote d’s and b’s all over it. I pointed to one letter after another, in random order. Mark correctly identified each one, but his face was stressed and it looked like he was barely breathing, signs that a lot of effort was going into this activity.

Reversals

Making reversals like this is common among young children, most of whom grow out of it as they mature. When reversals persist into a child’s school years, it could indicate that certain kinds of patterning were not complete, perhaps the outcome of not going through the crawling stage, or not actually crawling-on-the-floor frequently enough, and with sufficient duration.

Crawling is a significant process that helps to pattern the child’s brain for fluidly using both hemispheres together. Without this kind of patterning, we may struggle to perceive the difference between such things as b and d, or p and q, or 3 and E.

The Cross Crawl

Indeed, I had learned from Mark’s mother that he had skipped the crawling stage. When he began his first Brain Gym session, he had great difficulty with the Cross Crawl movement, where we raise one knee and reach over to connect the opposite elbow to it; then the other knee with its opposite elbow, etc., back and forth (requiring cooperation between our two brain hemispheres). It was much easier for Mark to bring his elbow down to his “same-side” knee, rather than crossing over to the opposite knee.

By the end of that first session (which, as I mentioned, included Dennison Laterality Repatterning), he could easily and automatically reach for the opposite knee. Immediately, his reading showed a dramatic improvement. He was reading easily, with expression.

Back to today’s session…

This time, Mark’s learning menu started out with doing the Lazy 8s. This is an activity that calls on both the right and left hemispheres simultaneously, and requires the learner to “cross the midline.”

I made a sample Lazy 8 on my big whiteboard and asked Mark to begin tracing over it, until he felt “done.” This took quite a few repetitions, as his mind-body system was absorbing this pattern. When he felt finished, I asked him to switch the marker to his other hand, and do the same thing. With his non-dominant hand, he was less coordinated, and it took longer for him to feel like he had the flow of the Lazy 8. Then I asked him to hold the marker with both hands, and again trace the 8. He took some time with this activity, as well.

When he finished, I asked him where the “d” would fit, and where the “b” would fit, if they were part of the flow of the Lazy 8s. He immediately identified the “d” as belonging on the left side, and the “b” as belonging on the right side. I drew them on the board, and suggested that he trace over what I’d done.

This method of blending letters of the alphabet into the Lazy 8s pattern is called “Alphabet 8s.”[1]

I showed Mark how to do three Lazy 8s, and then, from the midpoint of the 8, flow into the letter. Again and again with letter "d," and again and again with letter "b." He did this intently, experiencing how different these two letters look, and how different they feel to make.

The letter d begins with a curve up to the left, around, then a straight line up and down.

The letter b begins with a downstroke, then a curve up to the right and around.

When Mark felt finished with his Alphabet 8s, he said he was ready to repeat his precheck. This time, when I pointed to each of the letters – d or b in random order – he not only immediately knew each one, but he supplied his answers breathing easily, and with a smile on his face.

He said, “Wow – that was easier!” And when he read a bit of a storybook to me, he again said, “Wow – that was easier, too!” And he went away, happily, with his mother.

Mark may have fully balanced for his entire goal of reading easily, or he may still have other aspects to resolve. Time will tell. But I love knowing that, if he identifies new areas where he'd like to improve, we can address them with Brain Gym balancing!

Warm regards,
Kathy
[1] The Alphabet 8s activity includes patterns for all 26 letters of the alphabet. For more information about Alphabet 8s you can refer to Brain Gym^® Teacher’s Edition, by Paul and Gail Dennison.

Click here for a link to the website for my book, Educate Your Brain

www.educateyourbrain.com

Brain Gym® is a registered trademark of Brain Gym® International, Ventura, California • www.braingym.org