Uncategorized Archives - Page 12 of 14 - Primitive Reflex Integration on the Surrey/Sussex Border

What is reflex integration therapy?

I went along to a business networking meeting on Tuesday. I thought it would possibly be a good place to spread the word and also find people to help me with things like printing flyers, graphic design and perhaps even some social media help.

What I wasn’t prepared for was telling people what I “do” in a minute! I then had to do an elevator pitch on the spot. Silly me!

When people ask what I do, some think it’s some sort of wacky alternative therapy. Some think it’s massage. Some think I’m somehow conveying energy or something like that to “recipients”. I don’t do ANY of these things, and to me, neuro-developmental therapy is anything but alternative! In fact, it’s something that could save squillions – if our health service would only adopt it.

So, what do I actually do, then?

Neuro-developmental therapy is a very gentle, movement-based, non-talking therapy, which gradually reduces social, emotional, behavioural and sensory challenges.

I work with central nervous systems and brains! I give the central nervous system and brain a second chance to develop typically if there has been a glitch in development.

Our development is like a very complex chain reaction: If a foetus’ development is interrupted in utero or during childbirth by some kind of stress/trauma, or a new-born’s development is interrupted by restricting movement or by some trauma, the next link in the chain cannot be completed, so neural connections are not as efficient as they would be without the interruption.

I work to help primitive reflexes to integrate. These are the reflexes we are all born with, which should have disappeared in the first two years of our lives, as we progress through the “typical” milestones, such as rolling, sitting, crawling, etc, within the “typical” window of development. If we do not integrate these primitive reflexes, they remain “retained” in our systems, and cause emotional, behavioural and learning challenges throughout life.

What this means going forward is that a person will have challenges – some noticeable and some that they are able to compensate for. As a matter of fact, most people have several glitches in their development that are not obvious to the untrained eye, but it is worth mentioning that our behaviour and personalities are shaped by our reflex profiles.

I work towards integration using foetal and newborn movement patterns, which mimic primitive reflex patterns, giving us a second chance to create the brain connections we should have created first time around.

To give just a few examples:

Someone who blames everyone else for everything: nothing is ever down to them… These people have a strong Moro reflex. They act without speaking and cannot regulate their emotions. People with sensory issues tend to have a strong Moro reflex. These people should steer clear of social media, as they get into arguments about trivial things
People who cannot accept any other point of view, can’t see anything other than black or white and go into a sulk when they don’t get their way more than likely have a strong Fear Paralysis reflex
Someone with extreme anxiety and/or depression is more than likely to have a very strong fear paralysis reflex. These people are living in survival mode all the time and withdraw from stressful situations
People presenting with specific learning difficulties will more than likely have a reflex that relates to left/right hemisphere integration
Those with a very weak core, hypermobility and who fatigue easily have probably still got reflexes active from the time they learnt to roll, sit, crawl and walk, and have not yet developed adult postural reflexes

So… how do I do help?

I carefully observe my clients. I look at everything. Even how someone expresses themselves, eye contact, gestures, gait, the way they sit… I get children to draw a picture for me, and notice whether they are left or right handed, how they hold a pencil, what colours they use, how their pencil control and colouring is… after observing, I will home in on a few reflexes that I want to assess. I’ll then get my client to do some work with me, which involves a series of rhythmic and pre-birth movements and pressures that I get the client to resist.

Sometimes I can get a person to notice differences almost immediately. Sometimes it takes months of peeling back layers to get to the root of a problem.

This is not magic. It won’t work as well for one person as it will for another. However, it’s worth a try.

In the future, it is my dream to get the NHS to recognise neuro-developmental therapy as a way to help children (and adults), but in the meantime, you can visit me at my clinics in Surrey and Sussex.

They say that if you find a job you love, you’ll never work another day. For me and my colleagues specialising in neuro-developmental therapy, this cannot be more true. I feel that I’ve found my vocation: seeing people transform through movement is the most rewarding experience I could ever wish for.

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Retained Primitive Reflexes – What method works best?

There are so many different “methodologies” that work with reflex integration. The best known in the UK are the INPP, RMT and MNRI. There’s also Padovan and dermal stimulation (brushing).

Which is “best”? Is there a “Gold Standard”? How do you choose who to go and see?

When I see people asking for recommendations for who to go and see, please remember that each therapist has their own merits, and it’s up to YOU who you go to.

Each method has its merits – some share movements/exercises, and some will work for one person and not another.

Ultimately, you/your child has to feel SAFE when they go to a session, and the session has to be tailored to the child. So, if a child is, for example, too exhausted to engage, a therapist who continues trying to work with the child may not really be for them. The best METHOD for your child is actually ANY of the above, as long as your child enjoys going to sessions and it doesn’t seem like hard work for you.

To me, personally, a real red flag is when I hear a therapist dismissing another therapist – or being possessive about their patch, which is something I’ve seen recently with some being rude (jealous?) about another methodology.

Recently, I sent an SSP client to a colleague who was geographically closer for regular RMT sessions. The client reported back that the therapist totally dismissed SSP – because I happen to know that this person doesn’t understand how it works – and tried to push another therapeutic listening programme, which works in a completely different way.

I asked Svetlana Robertson, a neuro-developmental therapist based in Bedfordshire, who has also worked extensively with her own family and has seen a variety of different practitioners specialising in a variety of modalities over the years, for her thoughts:

Another red flag is when your therapist can’t really answer your questions about how the therapy works and some ‘magic’ is promised, or it is said that things can be sorted out quickly. If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is… Trust your instincts and do your own research – there are no miracles, it always takes time to bring about profound change and any real success is down to commitment and working on the challenges consistently.
Svetlana Robertson – neuro-developmental therapist

My greatest advice is to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. If you don’t click with a therapist on the phone, or even in a first session, you can always go elsewhere. Also, it’s important to understand that your therapist doesn’t know everything and shouldn’t be trying to advise you to take supplements, alter your diet etc unless they are QUALIFIED to do so. We are trained in bodywork to calm the nervous system, and that is where our boundaries should lie.

In my opinion, the method you use makes no difference – it’s how you work with your therapist – a very important relationship for success! I’ve had one client cancel THREE times on the day – is someone with that level of commitment simply wasting their money?

I work within various clinical settings and network with colleagues for this reason, as then I can suggest that people go to see someone else if need be. Sometimes, your child will need to bounce between various therapists in order to make progress – they may reach a plateau with one modality, then go and see an osteopath or do SSP or something else and suddenly make a leap, at which time you could go back to your original therapist or whatever feels best at the time.

From the point of view of a parent who has been on this journey myself, I personally avoid anyone who does a hard sell. That is why I am so dreadful at promoting my own work, because I simply cannot advertise myself – it feels wrong! Instead, I talk with enthusiasm about results I’ve seen – people either engage or they don’t. This is my way of “selling”, and ensures that people who want to engage with me because they like my persona will come to me.

It’s a JOURNEY – a labyrinthe, in fact, and one I have been on myself for six years now with my own family. It’s not a quick fix, and process of establishing and strengthening those new brain connections shouldn’t be either, when you consider the length of time that a person has been living with their inefficient brain wiring.

In my opinion, the method you use makes no difference – it’s how you work with your therapist – the most important relationship for success!

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School refusal, anxiety and the plastic brain

There is nothing more traumatic than having a child clinging to you and refusing to file into school in the morning. Even worse is when a child flatly refuses to go to school and the accompanying meltdowns.

Anxiety is the neurological state of feeling unsafe.

Feeling “safe” is key to combating anxiety. That is why people with a severe case of anxiety sometimes do not want to leave the house, or why some people feel the need to stay in bed for hours to rest in the morning. It’s also why children – ALL children – thrive on routine of some kind. When we feel unsafe, we cannot function socially and we start to exhibit behaviours relating to anxiety – inability to focus, inability to listen and often also digestive disturbances – a common stress response in mammals.

This concept needs to be better understood by some of those who work with children – including some teachers and paediatricians. Just because a child shuts down in unfamiliar circumstances, it doesn’t mean they are “autistic”, for example.

When someone doesn’t feel safe, their senses are bombarded and they get quickly overwhelmed. They may, for example, suddenly develop awkward eye contact and tunnel vision, and not be able to process sound as normal. This is actually a manifestation of the Moro and FPR reflexes, which cause sensory processing difficulties.

Some practical ways to help a child to self regulate when suffering from short-term anxiety

During a short period of adjustment for a few days or a couple of weeks, there are few things you can do to help a child feel safe in the world by toning the vagus nerve.

Practice deep breathing: in to a slow count to four through the nose, out to a slow count to eight through the mouth
Encourage humming
Encourage singing
Baroque music – in particular a Vivaldi lute concerto
Brain Gym Hook-ups
Cat arches are a wonderful yoga movement for calming an anxious child (or adult!) and helping them focus, especially accompanied by some lovely breathing – not to be confused with RMTi cat arches, however!

Additional activities you can try for dealing with meltdowns, sleep and digestive disturbances are:

snow angels
star jumps
get your child to lie like a star and slowly fold right up into a ball, like an anenome, then back to a star – repeat several times
roll a ball up and down a wall with the back
doing silly walks – have a competition
play row, row, row your boat with another child or you
do push ups against a wall

In the case of longer term anxiety, please consider booking an appointment with a neuro-developmental therapist. We work with the autonomic and central nervous system using a gentle movement programme (and in my case, a gentle sound programme too) to help people feel safe and create/strengthen higher brain connections in order to take them to a state of greater self awareness, greater emotional awareness and improved self regulation.

You can book to see me here

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Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia, Dysgraphia and the Plastic Brain

I have been working with a child who has all the dys- specific learning difficulties: dyslexia, dyscalculia (the maths equivalent of dyslexia), dysgraphia (extreme handwriting challenges) and dyspraxia (a lack of spatial/temporal awareness/personal organisation).

Through movement and work with his Fear Paralysis and Moro reflexes, I’ve seen him shift from having extreme sensory challenges and very poor social skills to being better connected with reduced sensory meltdowns – they are still there, but dramatically reduced. Through working with his Asymmetrical Tonic Neck reflexes, I saw him suddenly start to ride a bike by himself. However, although reading has become easier – and something he wants to do voluntarily now, his maths has been completely stuck – approximately two and a half years behind his year group.

Recently we decided to do the Safe and Sound Protocol – a five-day listening programme, which reduces anxiety by bringing a person out of their fight/flight/freeze/fawn cycle and into their social engagement system by stimulating the cranial nerves.

It sounds like a very strange approach – after all, how can a listening programme help learning? Well, essentially, if we are living in survival mode, down in our brainstem, connections to our emotional and rational/thinking brain do not work as efficiently. This will affect learning before we even get into how strongly retained reflexes are.

So, we recently did SSP together. I facilitated a session together with the mother, in person. I then allowed them to do the protocol at home with daily calls from me.

In this child’s case, fortunately the only obvious side effect while on the protocol was extreme fatigue and a couple of sulks with friends, both easily resolved through early nights and lots of cuddles and understanding from mum.

However, a week later, I received a call to say that this little guy had suddenly been put up a reading level, his handwriting has improved, and he is now able to do the “floss” rapidly. She sent me a video of him saying “hey, look at me”, wiggling in a coordinated fashion at a rate of knots! This was a child who’d had NO rhythm at all when I started working with him.

The significance of being able to perform rhythmic movements AND being able to cross the “midline” (an imaginary line from your nose to your navel, which those with specific learning difficulties often have challenges crossing with their hands/arms/legs) is enormous – it is a sign that both sides of the brain are working in together.

I’m writing this piece because I’m astounded at the shift – I was expecting a shift in anxiety and social awareness – but not in “dys”s. I’m waiting for further updates, but was so excited that I wanted to get this down in writing.