Brain Gym Applications

Brain Gym's simple, yet powerful, exercises bring greater success and enjoyment to all kinds of life skills.  They are being used in a wide range of areas: in the home, at schools, in the workplace, in sports, the arts, and academics.  The modality has been applied to all age populations as a set of tools to support and empower people to be the best they can be doing their best whereever they are. 

We invite you to check out the many individuals and their work who are applying the Brain Gym techniques to facilitate others for optimal performance.

Other Educators Are Writing About Their Own Experiences with This Work
In Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head, biologist and educator Carla Hannaford surveys neuroscientific research on the importance of movement ot brain development and learning. She details learners’ need to access movement and the senses to alleviate stress – also the theme of a Brain Gym course Hannaford developed and teaches: “The Physiological Basis of Edu-K.” In Smart Moves, Carla also writes about her research done in the classroom with children labeled as learning-disabled, describing the immediate and profound success in using the 26 Brain Gym movements.

Check out some of the many books written by Brain Gym Instructors to describe the use of the activities with different populations.

Hands On: How to Use Brain Gym in the Classroom gives variations of the activities as used in South Africa by educator Isabel Cohen and occupational therapist Marcelle Goldsmith.

In Fraid Not! Empowering Kids with Learning Differences, Massachusetts occupational therapist Pamela Formosa shares inspirational stories of how she uses Brain Gym techniques and occupational therapy to help children let go of their fears, discover their strengths, and find success in school.

In Bal-A-Vis-X: Rhythmic Balance/Auditory/Vision eXercises for Brain and Brain-Body Integration, Kansas educator Bill Hubert tells of his successful classroom use of the activities and how their effectiveness prompted him to develop a comprehensive program of rhythmic coordination.

And in The Heart of the Matter: Diary of a School Year, John Chamberlain, the founder and headmaster of Fayette Street Academy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, shares wisdom about using the activities to develop sensory skills in the setting of a private school.

Others who are using the 26 Brain Gym movements and program:

Special Needs – The activities are widely used y those who work with developmentally delayed children. In I Am the Child: Using Brain Gym with Children Who Have Special Needs (written with Gail Dennison), Cecilia Koester Freeman describes her effective classroom use of adaptations of the 26 movements to help children function in the presence of their sensorimotor challenges.

Parenting – in the SuperConfitelligent Child: Loving to Learn Through Movement and Play, California vision-training specialist Denise Hornbeak describes er own creative uses of the 26 movements with the young learners with whom she interacts.

Carla Hannaford wrote in Awakening the Child Heart: Handbook for Global Parenting, about how she uses the 26 activities to help children establish the verticality with balance that is essential to language development.

Business – Jerry Teplitz of Virginia uses the 26 movements in his business seminars to bring out executive excellence, and has coauthored with Paul and Gail Dennison, Brain Gym for Business: Instant Brain Boosters for On-the-Job Success.  See Jerry's many other books where he uses Brain Gym for success and stress reduction in the corporate world.

Elders – Since 2000, Karen Peterson of Hawaii has used the Brain Gym activities with senior citizens in a nonprofit “Giving Back” organization, givingbackmentoring.org, in which senior volunteers (age fifty and older) form pair bonds to help others, especially schoolchildren and frail elders. The program fosters intergenerational relationships and mentoring, enhancing the lives of both givers and receivers and helping children and frail elders develop focus, balance, memory, physical coordination, and cognitive and interpersonal skills, while creating vital opportunities for the elder volunteers to give back to their communities. The pairs (child and elder volunteer or frail elder and elder volunteer) play games and practice Brain Gym and other integrative movements, and one happy by-product is an improvement in behavior and school performance on the part of the children.  

Depression – In Healing Depression: A Holistic Guide, writer and fitness instructor Catherine Carrigan describes how she used the activities to support her own healing.

At-Risk Populations – At a leading substance abuse and mental health facility in Toronto, Ontario, Canadian clinician Paul Hyman pioneered the implementation of the Brain Gym program with thousands of his clients for ten years. The use of the activities has become a core stress-management modality of that facility.

Disaster Response – In 2004, when the sea at Aceh suddenly rose up to destroy lives and communities, volunteers participating in earthquake and tsunami relief used the 26 Brain Gym movements to help people calm themselves and to restore the survivors’ ability to take action.

Trauma Recovery – Perhaps the best example of the positive effects of the 26 activities on stress came when Svetlana Masgutova wrote about her implementation of some of the Brain Gym activities to help injured children recover from shock after a train wreck in Russia’s Ural Mountains. This inspiring story was told in Dr. Masgutova’s book Trauma Recovery: You Are a Winner; A New Choice Through Natural Developmental Movements, co-written with American educator Pamela Curlee. Dr. Masgutova has also done number Brain Gym research studies, initiated many Brain Gym programs in her native Russia and in Poland, published more than 70 articles on the Brain Gym activities in Russian and Polish, and done important work with infant reflexes.

Sports Training – Florida movement educator Carol Ann Erickson has used the activities in her Olympic coaching and her work with young athletes playing competitive sports, to help them achieve their personal best.

Many golfers have improved their game through use of the 26 under the guidance of Colorado-based Pamela Curlee, developer of “Switched-On Golf.”

Hikers in Austria are enjoying an Alpine hiking trail (called an “Easier Learning Trail” and organized by Herbert Handler) where several of the 26 are offered.

For walkers in Germany, Victoria Ulbrich has incorporated nine of the activities into a walking course in a public garden.

Military Use – Brain Gym Instructors in Israel have taught soldiers and volunteers how to use PACE, Hook-ups and Positive Points to support the relaxation and confidence of those living and working in danger zones.

Excerpted from:  Dennison, Paul E. and Dennison, Gail E.  Brain Gym Teacher's Edition.  2010.  Hearts at Play, Inc. a division of Edu-Kinesthetics, Inc.  Ventura, CA.