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- What is Educational Kinesiology
(or Edu-K)?
Kinesiology is “the study of movement.” Educational Kinesiology (or Edu-K)
is the study and application of natural movement experiences to
facilitate learning. It focuses on the performance of specific physical
activities that activate the
brain for
optimal storage and retrieval of information. Edu-K is a process for
re-educating the mind/body system for accomplishing any skill or
function with greater ease and efficiency.
Edu-K includes both self-help and facilitated processes.
BRAIN
GYM®
and Vision
Gym™ are taught in classes and feature self-help activities.
Edu-K In Depth: The 7 Dimensions of Intelligence is a facilitated
process that is experienced one-on-one with a Licensed
Instructor/Consultant.
- What is
BRAIN GYM®?
BRAIN
GYM® is
the registered trademark for an Educational Kinesiology sensorimotor
program. It is based on more than 80 years of research by educational
therapists, developmental optometrists, and other specialists in the
fields of movement, education, and child development.
BRAIN
GYM®
consists of simple movements similar to those performed naturally by
young children as part of the process of
brain
development. The
BRAIN GYM®
movements have been shown in clinical experience, field studies, and
published research reports to prepare learners with the physical skills
they need to read, write, concentrate, organize, and otherwise function
effectively in the classroom and adult life work.
- Who started
BRAIN
GYM®?
When? Why? How?
Paul Dennison, Ph.D., remedial educational specialist and founder of the
Educational Kinesiology Foundation, developed the
BRAIN
GYM®
program over a period of 25 years. As director of California's Valley
Remedial Group Learning Centers in California. These eight learning
centers offered Dennison students with whom he could actively explore
the effects of specific movements on the ability to learn various
academic skills. During this time, he drew from a broad spectrum of
innovative work in the fields of education, developmental vision, and
personal development as he focused on the causes and treatment of
learning disabilities. Dr. Dennison served as director of the Valley
Remedial Group Learning Centers for 19 years, helping children and
adults turn their learning difficulties into successful growth. In 1980,
he synthesized his work and began traveling and teaching
internationally. Since that time, the Edu-K processes and applications
have continued to evolve. The current
BRAIN
GYM®
Handbook, based on the work of Dr. Dennison and his wife, Gail E.
Dennison, was developed in collaboration with over 29 educational
kinesiologists from around the world.
Dr. Dennison has been an educator for all of his professional life. His
work is based on an understanding of the interdependence of physical
movement, language acquisition, and academic achievement. His effective
and ground-breaking approach to teaching grew out of his background in
brain
research and experimental psychology. He and Gail Dennison have
published fourteen books and manuals, beginning with Switching On: A
Guide to Edu-Kinesthetics, published in 1980, and most recently
BRAIN
GYM® for
Business: Instant
Brain
Boosters for On-The-Job Success published in 1994 with Jerry V. Teplitz,
J.D., Ph.D.
- What is Dr. Dennison’s background?
After receiving his undergraduate education at Boston University, Dr.
Dennison moved to California to teach elementary students in the Los
Angeles public schools. There he assisted in the implementation of Dr.
Constance Amsden’s Malabar Reading Program, well known as an innovative
approach to teaching reading.
Dr. Dennison established his first reading clinic in 1969. Two years
later, after studying the seminal work of Dr. Samuel T. Orton in
neurology and Drs. Doman and Delacto, specialists in language
development, he began introducing perceptual-motor training to his
students. Over the next three years, he worked closely with Louis
Jacques, O.D., a leading pioneer in vision training, and Samuel Herr,
O.D., with whom he shared a learning center. In 1975, Dr. Dennison
received the Phi Delta Kappa award from the University of Southern
California for outstanding research where he earned his Ph.D. in
Education with a major in Curriculum Development and a minor in
Experimental Psychology. His research study for his doctoral
dissertation focused on the relationship of covert speech (thinking
skills) to the acquisition of the skills of beginning reading.
In 1976, Dennison began working closely with chiropractor Richard Tyler
and sports kinesiologist Bud Gibbs. Dennison continued an active
chiropractic and optometric referral program for students through his
nine learning centers. In 1978, Dr. Tyler helped him to implement a
longitudinal research study at the centers to see how Dennison’s
specific movement interventions might affect learning (see Switching
On). In 1979, Dennison took the Touch for Health course and, modeling
that workshop format, began to outline the Edu-K program. His first
book, Switching On, was published in 1981. He discovered his Laterality
Repatterning in 1982 and began focusing on the adult population. In
1983, he developed Educational Kinesiology: Seven Dimensions of
Intelligence (previously titled the “Edu-Kinesthetics In Depth” course).
In 1984, he began working with Gail Hargrove Dennison with whom he
developed other elective courses. Gail Dennison helped to systematize
the Edu-K materials and developed the Creative Vision material, Vision
Gym™
activities, and Visioncircles program.
- How were the
BRAIN
GYM®
movements developed?
Many of the
BRAIN GYM®
activities, like the Owl, the Elephant, and the Alphabet 8s, were
developed from Dr. Dennison’s knowledge of the relationship of movement
to perception, and the impact of these on fine motor and academic
skills. Others were learned during his training as a marathon runner,
his study of vision training, his study of Jin Shin Jitsu (a form of
acupressure), and his study of Applied Kinesiology (taught to the public
as the Touch for Health synthesis).
- What are the primary aims and outcomes of the
BRAIN
GYM®
program?
BRAIN
GYM® is
Edu-K’s readiness program. It prepares students of all ages to practice
and master the skills required for the mechanics of learning. The
program includes a simple teaching format, a language for stress-free
learning, and a series of movements for integrating learning into the
physiology.
BRAIN GYM®®
offers the learner a self-directed system with which to pace individual
learning needs, building self-esteem through the successful mastery of
skills.
This program is distinctive because it addresses the physical (rather
than mental) components of learning. It builds on what the learner
already knows and does well; it meets the learner just as he or she is,
without any judgment of capabilities; and it teaches the student key
elements of learning theory that he or she will be able to apply.
BRAIN
GYM®®
requires little additional training for the classroom teacher, no
testing, no technology, and it enhances (rather than replaces) current
curriculum. The program is used as effectively in business, sports, and
the arts, as in the classroom.
Specific strategies for improving reading writing, spelling, math,
communication and organization skills are included. Patterns of stress
and addiction are explained in terms of the
brain and
physiology. Tools for alleviating these stresses are included.
BRAIN
GYM®
outcomes for student or worker include:
- increased self-esteem
- the ability to harness motivation
- skills to identify and avoid stress
- increased awareness of and respect for one’s own intelligence,
body and personal space
- unique tools for team building, and for developing cooperation and
co-creativity
- What are Edu-K’s Three Dimensions? (The Dennisons describe
brain
functioning in terms of three dimensions––laterality, focus, and
centering):
Laterality is the ability to coordinate one side of the
brain
with the other, especially in the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
midfield, the area where the two sides overlap. This skill is
fundamental to the ability to read, write, and communicate. It is also
essential for fluid whole-body movement, and for the ability to move and
think at the same time.
Focus is the ability to coordinate the back and front areas of
the brain.
It is related to comprehension, the ability to find meaning, and to the
ability to experience details within their context. People without this
basic skill are said to have attention disorders and difficulty in
comprehending. At a deeper level, focus allows us to interpret a
particular moment or experience in the greater context of our lives or
to see ourselves as unique individuals within the larger framework of
our society.
Centering is the ability to coordinate the top and bottom areas of
the brain.
This skill is related to organization, grounding, feeling and expressing
one’s emotions, a sense of personal space, and responding rationally
rather than reacting from emotional overlay.
The BRAIN
GYM®
movements interconnect the
brain in
these dimensions, allowing us to easily learn through all the senses, to
remember what we learn, and to participate more fully in the events of
our lives. We are able to learn with less stress, and to express our
creativity using more of our mental and physical potential. The
movements also assist in clearing emotional stress that can affect us
both mentally and physically. Reported benefits include improvements in
such areas as vision, listening, learning, memory, self-expression, and
coordination in children and adults. Teachers typically report
improvements in attitude, attention, discipline, behavior, and test and
homework performance for all participants in the classroom.
- How is a
BRAIN GYM®
consultant similar to a tutor, a physical therapist, a reading
specialist, a speech therapist, a counselor . . .?
Unlike a tutor, physical therapist, reading specialist, speech
therapist or counselor, the
BRAIN
GYM®
consultant does not have a preconceived expectation about what needs to
be learned, or how that learning will occur. The consultant follows the
learner’s lead as to the unfoldment of these processes.
Like the above-named professionals, the
BRAIN
GYM®
consultant addresses the personal motivation to learn. The
BRAIN
GYM®
consultant, like other specialists, is concerned with the mental
mechanics of learning, such as encoding, and decoding language (i.e.,
phonics) or writing the alphabet. Unlike other specialists, however, the
BRAIN
GYM®
consultant is primarily concerned with the physical skills of learning:
the ability to use the eyes as a team, to hold the pen or otherwise
coordinate eyes and hand, and to listen actively. The
BRAIN
GYM®
consultant does not emphasize curriculum or behavior directly. He or she
looks at the individual as a whole person who, at any given moment, has
untapped potential related to underdeveloped movement patterns. The
emphasis is on learning readiness––accessing innate gifts and helping
the learner to be comfortable and able to draw out those gifts and to
match them to the physical, mental and environmental requirements of a
given skill or situation.
- Can BRAIN
GYM® be
used in the classroom? How?
BRAIN
GYM® is
used in classrooms around the world. The movements are often done as a
whole group activity before, during, or after school. A skilled teacher
can also identify individual students as candidates to benefit from
specific movements. Older students can easily learn to notice times when
they could benefit from the various movements.
- Compared with other educational programs, how is the
BRAIN
GYM®
program distinctive?
The BRAIN
GYM®
program is distinctive in that it prepares learners to learn. It
enhances, rather than replaces other programs or curricula.
Education of the classroom teacher in this century has been based on the
premise that learning is a mental activity. The physical components of
learning––the visual, auditory, fine motor and postural skills––have
been almost entirely ignored by educators. A student who has difficulty
in the early grades rarely does better later on unless the physical
cause of the stress is somehow addressed. Moreover, since learning is
measured by results rather than by process, stressful compensations are
often acquired and carried throughout a learner’s life.
Dr. Dennison came to the conclusion by 1975, after having tested and
prescribed remedial programs for hundreds of “learning disabled”
students at his learning centers, that most students experiencing
difficulty in school were sufficiently intelligent for the tasks
required of them. The deficits he found were in their
physical/perceptual abilities, and had often plagued the child’s
development, uncorrected, since infancy. Spatial awareness, a concept of
wholeness and closure, the ability to focus attention and perceive an
organization or a structure, are requisite learning skills, easily
taught yet often not available to the children who need them.
He discovered that these skills depend upon an innate understanding of
our bodies and how they move in space. Children only repeat those
movements that are comfortable or familiar. It is as if the person
considered “learning disabled” lacks permission to move in an integrated
and coordinated fashion. Dr. Dennison’s
BRAIN
GYM® and
Repatterning procedures were developed as he explored processes to
encourage his students to discover new ways to move that were more
functional and coordinated.
His educational therapy builds the student’s self-esteem, trusting the
learner to work through mental aspects as physical blocks are released.
The teacher’s role becomes that of facilitator of the process of
learning. The teacher models how to learn and presents the curriculum.
The teacher helps the student to notice what makes learning easier or
what interferes with learning. The child has control of the process by
which he internalizes information.
- Can BRAIN
GYM® help
with special needs, such as Attention Deficit Disorder, hyperactivity,
brain
damage, or similar challenges?
Children with special needs and severe learning challenges benefit
positively from
BRAIN GYM®,
as is attested to by thousands of families using the activities.
Licensed instructors specializing in this area of work may recommend a
more intensive program and a simplified or assisted application of the
movements.
- What ages can use
BRAIN
GYM®?
Does it work for anybody? What about seniors? What about preschoolers?
BRAIN
GYM® is
currently being used by people of all ages and in all walks of life.
Although the program was originally designed for kindergarten through
college level students in the classroom, it is now being used
successfully with infants, preschoolers, adults, and seniors. The
BRAIN
GYM® for
Business book offers an easy guide for applying these tools in the
business environment. A number of
BRAIN
GYM®
Senior programs have shown
BRAIN
GYM®’s
effectiveness in helping older people to enhance and retrieve physical
and mental skills.
- Can the use of
BRAIN
GYM®
activities or balances affect health, or alleviate stress?
Research over 30 years shows the correlation between
brain
organization (dominance patterns), attention deficit, allergies, and
auto immune deficiency. Balance of the left and right cortical
hemispheres depends on cross lateral patterning, including binocular
vision, binaural hearing, and contralateral movement. Common sense tells
us what research has validated: chronic one-sided behaviors (monocular
vision or excessive left- or right-handedness), especially without the
context of whole body movement, polarize the sympathetic and
parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system, adversely
affecting learning, behavior, and immune response. Both as a result and
a possible cause of these one-sided behaviors, chronic anger,
frustration, and depression become part of a cycle of habituated adrenal
response and the related high levels of cortisol in the blood.
- Does the use of
BRAIN
GYM®
promote permanent, positive changes?
BRAIN
GYM®
promotes the ability to learn and to retain learning at a deep, whole-brained
level. New learning occurs when a person is relaxed and easily able to
access their sensory system for seeing and listening, and to comfortably
feel and express their feelings. Learning tends to be more permanent,
accessible, and applicable when a person is not tense, stressed, or
frightened. As self-confidence and self-esteem increase, motivation and
behavior generally improve as well.
- How does movement affect the
brain? Do
actual physical changes in the
brain
occur through the use of
BRAIN
GYM®?
Yes. Briefly,
BRAIN
GYM®
works by facilitating optimal achievement of mental potential through
specific movement experiences. All acts of speech, hearing, vision, and
coordination are learned through a complex repertoire of movements.
BRAIN
GYM®®
promotes efficient communication among the many nerve cells and
functional centers located throughout the
brain and
sensory motor system. Blocks in learning occur when the body is tense
and information cannot flow freely among these centers. The
BRAIN
GYM®
movements stimulate this flow of information within the
brain and
sensory system, freeing the innate ability to learn and function at top
efficiency.
- What is a balance? Can everyone learn to do
BRAIN
GYM® and
balances?
A balance is a five-step learning process that models the lesson
plan most often used by effective teachers. A short balance can be
completed in just minutes; a longer balance may take an hour or more.
A balance involves:
- getting ready to learn
- setting a goal or intention
- pre-activities which playfully identify aspects of the learning
that need more focus for integration
- a plan for integrating the learning into physical movement (in
this case, through the
BRAIN
GYM®
movements)
- post-activities to identify the new learning
- After the balance, new choices and possibilities are available to
the student, and improvements are usually evident. The final,
unnumbered step is to “celebrate the new learning.” This is the step
of play, exploration, innovation and implementation that is so
essential to creative learning, yet often omitted in the classroom,
where learners are pressed to begin a new task before even
acknowledging the skill with which the previous one has been
accomplished. Anyone who is so inclined can learn to facilitate this
process for self or for others by taking a
BRAIN
GYM®
course. The balance process is simple, yet requires deep
understanding, based on a personal experience of the physical as well
as the mental and emotional components of the learning process, for
skillful, non-intrusive facilitation.
- Can you use the
BRAIN
GYM®
activities in your home?
The BRAIN
GYM®
activities are performed in homes around the world. Following simple
instructions the safe, simple movements can be practiced in 10-15
minutes per day in the comfort of your own home.
- Does a person need to do the exercises every day in order to
benefit from the program?
Doing the
BRAIN GYM®
movements every day is fun, easy, energizing and reinforces positive
movement and postural habits. Once new learning patterns are mastered,
they become automatic and one no longer needs to do the movements daily
in order to benefit from them, although they will still find
BRAIN
GYM®
helpful during times of stress.
- Is BRAIN
GYM® the
same as movement therapy, yoga, or other exercises?
BRAIN
GYM® is
similar to, yet different from, other movement programs.
BRAIN
GYM®
helps to increase flexibility and coordination, as other programs do,
yet it also provides specific activities to facilitate
brain
function for the physical skills required for such activities as
reading, writing, and spelling.
BRAIN
GYM® is
fun, easy, and requires no special talents or coordination skills.
BRAIN
GYM® is a
good warm-up for all exercise programs.
- What is Edu-K’s Relationship to other Systems of Education and
Kinesiology?
Educational Kinesiology is based on a unique integration of the
learning process with kinesiology, the study of muscles and their
movements. The intention of the Edu-K work is to invite the emergence of
latent potential through the vehicle of the body––the repository of
thoughts, feelings, and movement patterns. The Edu-K processes offer a
structure for the continuous interweaving of thinking, feeling, and
sensation––the integration of mental and physical functions. Edu-K
enhances, rather than replacing, other educational and kinesiological
approaches to growth and development.
Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a distinct work used by chiropractors,
similar to Edu-K in its study of muscles and use of muscle-checking or
muscle-testing, and yet different from Edu-K. AK is based on processes
of “muscle-testing” that isolate the response of individual muscles in
the body. Edu-K is oriented to goals, and to daily life function and
performance, rather than to a medical or mechanistic model of the body.
AK includes a set of specific tests and related corrections to restore
balance in a therapeutic model, and uses test responses to make an
evaluation of physiological health. One-to-one correspondence is
frequently used between muscle “weakness” and organ or system function.
The chiropractor corrects imbalances using spinal or other muscular,
cranial, or lymphatic manipulation and/or by offering nutritional
support.
In Edu-K, the body is seen in terms of the situational or environmental
context of the individual’s moment-to-moment needs, motivations, and
interrelationships. The individual does not need to change, as they are
in a growth process. He or she is fine just as they are. Presenting
challenges or behaviors are valid just as they are. New learning is
possible as a sense of objectivity and choice develops around old
patterns. Muscle-checking is used primarily to anchor their new
learning. The Edu-K process offers a multidimensional approach to
balance emphasizing the learner’s discovery of movement patterns that
release physical, mental, or emotional holding, making latent potentials
more available.
- What is the Educational Kinesiology Foundation?
The Educational Kinesiology Foundation was established in 1987 in
Ventura, California, USA, as a nonprofit/educational organization. The
Dennisons, along with a group of educators who had experienced the Edu-K
process, envisioned together how Edu-K might bring wholeness and ease to
the educational system, as well as to other facets of life. These people
were eager to explore ways of working with learners who would respect
and nurture individual differences, value cooperation, and conserve
wholeness. They agreed to develop Edu-K around the concept of “drawing
out” the unique potential of an individual, rather than “stamping in,”
intruding, or filling the mind with “information for its own sake.”
The Edu-K process continues to evolve around the concept of creating
safety and trusting the learner’s unique learning style to emerge as the
BRAIN
GYM®
movements and balances set him free. The Dennisons, the Board of
Directors, and the International Faculty Members, together with the Edu-K
network, hold an ongoing intent to refine the Edu-K materials and
language to keep the Edu-K system inviting and non-intrusive.
The Board persists in exploring the make-up and possibility of an
organization based on interdependence, decentralization, diversity, and
an openness to new possibilities. Edu-K continues to evolve its
processes, language, course materials, and organization around these
principles.
Since 1987, the Foundation has trained thousands of professionals, at
various levels, to facilitate the
BRAIN
GYM®
program worldwide. The work is being used extensively in homes,
classrooms, and businesses and has been recognized by the National
Learning Foundation as an innovative approach to education.
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- Click here for the Official Brain
Gym® Website
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