![]() ![]() “Sometimes, people just need something to hold on to,” she concluded. ![]() To be able to show people how to make a positive difference in life, and when I get news of accomplishments, of how far some of these children have come – that’s very rewarding,” said Koester, who doesn’t have children of her own and has thus made it her personal mission to help others. At the end, they were able to co-ordinate and march, and I cried. “During class, there were a few children who were seizure-prone with developmental problems. What’s the most rewarding part about her work? If that foundation is weak, then one has to reinforce learning at the primitive reflex or developmental movement pattern levels.īy using appropriate Brain Gym movements and activities that stimulate the brain and encourage neurological flow, one is able to better engage in the learning at hand. Everyone has a foundation of neurological patterns that allow continual learning and growth. In her subsequent book, Movement Based Learning For Children Of All Abilities, Koester says that for all children, basic developmental movement patterns create and develop neurological functions. The book focuses on 11 children who had complex developmental needs. In 2006, Koester co-wrote a book entitled I Am The Child: Using Brain Gym With Children Who Have Special Needs with Gail Dennison (published in two languages and two others pending), journaling her experiences as a teacher in a public school classroom over a two-year period. You learn this by observing or noticing neurological soft signs,” she explained. It could be as minute and simple as a child who comes in, and cannot sit still and focus, and then learning to be quiet and focus at the end of the session. “The difficult part is teaching the adult and children to notice the changes. For example, instead of entering a house through the front door, you use the window.īrian Gym is not about learning to become more right- or left-brain it is about discovering the top and bottom, front and back patterns as well. It also doesn’t mean that a child with Attention Deficit Disorder is easier to approach than one with, say, celebral palsy. ![]() But it is a powerful tool to have as a methods intervention. ![]() “Brain Gym is not a miracle cure-all or a magic bullet. One child began to walk independently at age five, and a nine-year-old boy diagnosed as autistic, who previously used two words to express himself, began using functional speech after just three months of using Brain Gym,” exclaimed Koester. In fact, three children with whom I’ve worked with have gone from blindness to sight. I have seen improvement in both children and adults who have used Brain Gym. The Brain Gym activities address three specific dimensions of physical movement – focus, centering and laterality – that correlate with three areas of the brain. This, Koester feels, could be due to the stress from neurological damage or simply because a more sensitive nervous system creates a need for movements. When she first decided to go into Brain Gym, she said: “People thought I was crazy but I wanted to teach others to be able to work with kids the way I could.”Ĭhildren who have special needs “switch off” more frequently than the average child. As a result, they can sit up or walk more easily – some can go from blindness to sight – it’s a matter of getting the right brain neurons to work,” she added. So, we have to step back into their developmental phases to help them reach a point where they can understand core body activation and learn to stabilise. “These children don’t have the same awareness of their bodies as we do. She was in Kuala Lumpur recently to conduct a workshop on Brain Gym For Caregivers Of Special Needs Children. I also teach people how to access these special needs kids, to bring them to a stage where they can walk, speak, read or even see better,” said Koester, 54, who has 16 years experience working with special-needs children.īefore this, she had 11 years training as a public school teacher and went on to operate her own massage therapy business, learnt to build wooden boats, started her own school to teach at-risk young people, and gave home hospice care for the dying. The 26 basic activities are the same (as in the programme), but since special needs children cannot always achieve them, we teach them how to do so with building block activities. “Along the way, I met co-founders Paul and Gail, and talked with them about developing the programme to help special needs children reach greater potential. Window into their world: Cecilia Koester with the book which she and Gail Dennison co-wrote, at the Brain Gym conference in Kuala Lumpur recently. ![]()
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