Movement, Rhythm, and Sensory Disturbances Affect Perceptual Reality - What Can We Do to Help?

An organized body leads to an organized mind! A person with severe, nonverbal autism often exhibits intense sensory, movement, and rhythm difficulties that affect all areas of development. The messages, the impaired sensory systems project are irregular and often confusing. In some cases, but not all, there are disrupted underlying thought processes, which cause difficulty organizing and categorizing thought. When movements (dyspraxia/apraxia) are not automatic, problems initiating and implementing motor skills including speech often occur. Central nervous system dysfunction may be the cause of this miscommunication among neurons, which renders someone with severe autism unable to think and move his body simultaneously. Initiating, stopping, and switching movement are all difficult.

If the person is unable to direct his body upon verbal request, or to imitate when provided visual cues, motor him through movement patterns. Repetition with a ramping down of motored prompts develops the neuron circuitry that allows the voluntary movement to become automatic. Break skills down into small units and keep language simple and direct. Use visual and gestured cuing as needed. Incorporate, backward chaining techniques, a process where the person is motored through the majority of the steps and then encouraged to complete the last step on his own. For example, when learning to zip a jacket, motor the person through the process of engaging the zipper and let him complete the last step by pulling it up. These strategies work well with self-help skills that require a series of steps. (I.e. tooth brushing, dressing, and shoe typing)

Dyspraxia/apraxia renders sign language difficult to learn; a poor choice for expressive communication; however, learning to understand signs and gestures as visual cues is effective receptively as many of these individuals are stronger using visual rather than auditory systems. When performing gross motor movements, motoring and repetition is key! Exercises that cross the midline and engage both hemispheres may have added benefit. (I.e. Brain Gym) Start early for the best outcome; however, it is never too late for improvement. Nature walks on uneven terrain encourage the individual to attend to a natural environment, and to respond automatically with appropriate movements. This lessens the inhibitory factor that often appears in artificial settings.

A nonverbal individual may appear to give priority to one sensory channel at a time. There is often a delay in auditory processing; hence, a visual stimulus may not be experienced simultaneously with auditory input. Some might demonstrate totally disconnected sensory channels. For example, an individual who responds correctly by selecting a correct response from a field of words or pictures may lose his accuracy in selecting a correct response if he has to get up and move. Is it just that he has difficulty thinking and moving at the same time or could it be more complex? A visual prompt, - picture, sign or gesture- will usually remedy the problem, but it does not wholly explain the break.

A person may indicate he understands and appropriately reply to a directive verbally, typing, using words/picture cards, but still not be able carry out the action. For example, ask the person, "Where are you going?" He responds, verbally or using alternative communication devices, " I'm going to hang up my coat." Instead of hanging up his coat, seemingly oblivious, he heads off in a different direction. Is it going from listening to thinking to moving that cause the thought disruption? A lost connection occurs when the student moves.

When working from a field of choices, a person may never look at the choices, not even a quick peripheral glance may be detected, yet, his selection of responses may be correct! It appears as if he is seeing and controlling his body from outside himself. A person, who has difficulty integrating sensory channels may easily match objects presented visually. (I.e. word to word, picture-to-picture, object-to-object) This process becomes more difficult when pairing visual material that varies from the concrete (object) to the representational (picture) to the word (abstract). (I.e. matching two words or two pictures is much easier than matching the word to the picture. Matching the word to the picture is easier than matching the word to the object.) Crossing sensory channels can be difficult. The person may be unable to match an object presented visually with an unseen object. For example, put a crayon, bottle of glue, scissors, and a ball, in a bag. Show the individual a crayon, and then ask him to reach into the bag and find the same. If he is unable to find the crayon, put one of the crayons in his hand, and ask him again to reach in the bag to find the other crayon. Repeat the activity, using the other objects. The person may be successful visual to visual or tactile to tactile, but not visual/auditory to tactile. After a good deal of practice, he may improve while another may continue to have difficulty.

An individual may appear to lack an internal rhythm. When young, parents should hold their child close, so he can feel the heartbeat/rhythm of the mother or father. An older child may be provided an external rhythm by alternately tapping the right and left hand, shoulder, or arm. Many of these individuals like rhythmic pressure to the sides or front and back of their heads. Listening to ocean waves, nature sounds, or music might help him attune to the rhythm of the earth. Moving to music or drumbeats might also help. An agitated person can be encaged in meditation by holding hands and breathing in unison with calm person.

Sight, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures may serve as sensory irritants. Eliminate aggravations when possible. One reason a student may engage in self-stimulatory behavior is to modulate unwanted stimuli. These repetitive behaviors might also help the person establish a rhythm to organize their movements. A person may also be trying to block out interfering thoughts and emotions of others or he might be stimmming as a strategy to return to his own internal world. Whatever the reason, instructors should encourage the person to stop when in the process of direct instruction since self-stimulation seems to enable the client to block the teacher, parent, or therapist. When not involved in instruction, let the individual re-engage in his preferred self-stimulatory activities as these activities may be helping him self organize and/or relax. If the self-stimulatory behaviors are dangerous or socially unacceptable, attempt to replace, rather than fade them.

Allow ample time for spinning, swinging or jumping on a trampoline for the individual student is the best judge of the type, intensity, and duration for vestibular and proprioceptive input over time. Each individual should determine what he needs. Brushing, deep-pressure massage, joint compressions, meditation, sacral cranial, reiki, and reflexology may help the person feel comfortable in his body. If comfortable, the person is more apt to stay present and attend to instruction. The importance of rhythm and movement is paramount in helping a person with severe autism reach his full potential.

Definition of Terms: apraxia/ dyspraxia: Impairment of the ability to execute purposeful, voluntary movement. binaural beats: Two different frequencies are presented, one to each ear, the brain detects phase differences between these signals. A perceptual integration of the two signals takes place. Vestibular: The system that sub serves the bodily functions of balance and equilibrium. It accomplishes this by assessing head and body movement and position in space, generating a neural code representing this information, and distributing this code to appropriate sites located throughout the central nervous system. Vestibular function is largely reflex and a€‥unconscious in nature. Proprioceptive: describes the ability of the to sense the movement and position of muscles without visual guides. It is essential for any activity requiring hand-eye coordination, awareness of posture, movement, and changes in equilibrium and knowledge of position, weight, and resistance of objects as they relate to the body. Resonant entrainment of brain waves: Because neural activity is electrochemical, brain waves can be influenced. Think of the tuning fork effect. Rhythm: a measured movement, the recurrence of an action or function at regular intervals. Subconscious: The part of the mind below conscious perception where subconscious joining or blending may occur. I speculate that the mixing of subconscious minds can exist without one's conscious awareness. This blending can be very helpful in helping the person understand and operate in "our" typical perceptual reality.

I have worked with a vast array of people with autism. Many of the ideas I present are based on experiences intuitively listening to what my students were trying to show and tell me. My ideas have also been influenced by information that I have read based on the work of others that has resonated with me.

Mary Ann Harrington MS

http://web.mac.com/maharrington

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Certified Rolfing & Movement

Rolf movement has become an integral part of what Rolfing is, for the simple fact that in order to fully enable a more integrated being, something has to enable the integration of mind/body. Rolfing is about relationships; therefore structure and function have to be congruent and dimensional for the full potential available in each of us to emerge. Rolf Movement provides a strategy that a Rolfer uses to navigate towards achieving biomechanical goals and integration. Ultimately, all movement is a product of the nervous system and the connective tissue matrix; the autonomic nervous system is essentially the biodynamic dance between the parasympathetic/sympathetic branches or "fight or flight" reflexes. Conventional phenomenal data begins at the quantum level then abstracts, or filters, into sensation, e-motion, belief, and then finally into activation or expression. Rolf Movement works within the relationship between the tenets of gravity/structure, coordination/pre-movement, impression/perception, and expression/meaning, known as The Tonic Function Model, as a way to approach and evoke more desirable and efficient movement through sensation. Elements of somatic patterning and the potential to enhance performance and form has always been a resource to athletes when articulating full expression, as well as obvious sport specific benefits.

How you think is how you move, and how you breathe is how you live. Movement manifests from a pre-movement or an automatic override response, which is an organic compound of a collective body of experiences acquired throughout life. From the moment of conception a human being is shaped and formed from a genetic code that has been further conditioned by a conscious/sub-conscious overlay. Consciousness and subconscious overlays are the sum total of object relations or relationship to "other," and this subject-object relationship fosters the subsequent emergence of the deeper dualities that drive our structure and function. As a result of our relationship to our environment and primary care giver, our original perceptions were birthed that would form the way we would move in the world. Corticalized movement is that which is done consciously or voluntarily; sub-cortical movement is sub-conscious, or involuntarily. Ironically, the first physiological structure to form in embryo is the primitive streak that quickly evolves into the central nervous system, the heart then mushrooms out of brain and digresses to its known position where the respiratory diaphragm emerges and resources to form the fascial matrix of the body. The fascial matrix is what gives the body its structural and functional orientation of space in gravity. So the primary contributors of a sustaining life force manifest first; energy, breath, blood, or thought, word, action. Therefore, as the being grows and is conditioned in thought or perception, he or she is subsequently being conditioned to move or express as a result of the role of the autonomic division of the peripheral nervous system, hence, as a man thinketh so is he.

Everyone breathing has experienced some situation or environment that has either caused them to breathe rapidly or hold the breath. This impulse comes from the way you perceive the environment, and this perception is based on a collective body of experience that has already calculated and decided for you in advance of what you would do in this type of situation. Again, this is based on the primary dualism of a subject-object relationship in which certain somatic preferences were adhered to and compounded into consciousness that is sensory activated. This is why just thinking about someone can either cause a calm, pleasant response or an anxious, negative reaction, or walking into unfamiliar territory causes reason for processing if the environment is threatening. This constancy is a necessity for survival and is part of a feedback loop reflex of the nervous system. (What might not be necessary is the specific response or reaction that emerges.) The parasympathetic and sympathetic divisions of the nervous system are in a constant ebb and flow dance to keep the body safe, vertical, and expressive in gravity given certain virtues, anomalies, and asymmetries. The position of a Rolf Movement Practitioner is to consider the premise of the structural differential that states that conventional phenomenal stimulus bombards the sensory division of the peripheral N.S., filtering into sensation before e-motion, belief, and finally expression.

A shift in sensation can mean a shift in resource. This shift is nothing less than the potential sum total of a person's symbolic imagery about himself and his world shifting and manifesting as potential uninhibited, dimensional, and supported movement. Breath is expression (or meaning manifest) and all of the diaphragms of the body are constantly self-regulating according to perception, coordination, and gravity. This self-regulation is again based on the collective body of experience known as your consciousness integrating with new stimulus to either produce or inhibit breath. This ability of the body is so very vital to movement. Diaphragms are viewed as laterals that serve as fluid containers strategically placed at the primary and secondary curves of the body. These thickened pressurized fascial valves regulate and stabilize the flow of the fluid body and breath to foster or inhibit movement. Keeping in mind effecting sensation can change the whole context or meaning of a movement allows the trained Rolfer to evoke a new resource for the client seeking more ease, which translates into less suffering in most cases. The way a Rolfer seeks new resource and potential that is sensory stimulated is viewed from the context of The Tonic Function Model.

French Rolfer and Rolf Movement Instructor Hubert Godard, is a dance and movement professor for the University of Paris, France, and is the primary contributor to what is known as the Tonic Function Model. This model suggests that tonic function, or the human being's ability to orient to space in gravity, is affected by four entry points; structure/gravity, coordination, impression/perception, and expression/meaning, with each one possessing the potential to influence tonic function, and one or all of the other entry points. In other words, these four elements of the Tonic Function Model are always in relationship working simultaneously to keep the being safe, vertical, and expressive in gravity given all the considerations of the model. Rolfers can work within these relationships initiating changes in sensation to structure, coordination, perception, and meaning to evoke a shift in resource; changing sensation of any one or all of these can evoke the system to orientate to a new resource and ease of movement. Simply bringing awareness and embodiment to specific areas of relationship coupled with a new sensation can promote a shift in ease or efficiency of movement. Injuries can cause an overlay to the structure and inhibit its ability to move, and it is necessary to take injuries into full consideration. Posture, or holding patterns can be indicative of movement patterns that have not utilized use of the gravity response system. Proprioception activates the gravity response system and this activation is located in the skin, specifically the hands, feet, and face, and stimulate gamma activity in motor control. The way proprioception influences gamma activity, or the feed back reflex, is why embodiment and awareness of sensation may evoke a change in resource.

It seems that Rolf Movement has compiled and condensed much of the language that qualifies and quantifies theories of successful movers over the ages. When I see great gymnasts, martial artist's, yogis, dancers, runners, cheerleaders and many of the other countless movers from time, I think there had to be an idea of these relationships and resources, even if there was not a homogenous language to communicate what was being done or taught in terms of tonic function. Gross and fine motor movement skill is obvious in some and elusive in others. These shifts take commitment to the desired outcome, nothing happens instantly but dramatic results can be achieved quickly. What counts in terms of success is knowing how to communicate these somewhat abstract concepts into digestible bite size bits of discernable data that someone can use to improve or master their movement. Rolf Movement can be experienced as a whole session, as part of a classical Rolf session or in a Budokon class, http://www.budokon.com Budokon is an art and resource that can enable someone to grasp or master a skill level in the yogic, martial, and living arts. Rolf Movement is not psychotherapy, although there is a psychology to everything we "do". Rolfers and Rolf Movement Practitioners deal with fascia and the associated relationships with somatics. How you think is how you move, how you breathe is how you live.

The Certified Rolfing Ten Series has the potential to reduce pain and release tension in the connective and myofascial tissue of the body associated with TMJ, CTS, RLS, Fibromyalgia, Sciatica, Fascitis, Bunions, Scoliosis, and Cerebral Palsy. Poor posture is associated with fascial asymmetries that can cause foot, leg, knee, hip, back, shoulder, neck, arm, hand, and head pain; integration therapy is necessary. Orthopedic, Chiropractic, Physical, and Massage Therapist recognize Certified Rolfing and Rolf Movement as premium pain management utilizing Structural, Functional, and Postural Integration. Before and after photos of some of my clients proven results available only on my website.

John Barton, Certified Rolfer & Rolfing Fort Worth, Texas/Dallas, TX

rolfmovement.com,
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