Feb 4 rev
To paraphrase Paul Dennison, in the memory of our nervous system, physical movement helps each incarnating awareness to establish and preserve neural pathways. I love and honor Paul Dennison. I have read all his books except for the training manuals. I’m also aware of five relevant fields he and his wife, Gail, do not mention and have yet to bring into conversation about living neurology. Some of these additional resources are more relevant than others for expanding-evolving Brain Gym; and, Dennison Laterality Repatterning.
The resources I’m aware of which can upgrade, expand and evolve Brain Gym are:
– A few topics in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP),
– A large fraction of Polyvagal Theory topics,
– The entire philosophical context, literature and exercises of Waldorf-methods K-12 movement education,
– BAVX (Bal-A-Vis-X) ball bouncing exercises, and
– Possibly yet to be determined aspects of Brain Integration Technique (BIT).
This current paper is meant to contribute to conversations about how to evolve Paul Dennison’s work. I’m aware Cindy Goldade and Colleen Gardner, the primary editors of the 2022 Brain Gym course manual, have done extensive work on updating Brain Gym – https://in-motionintelligence.com/edu-k-in-depth-301/? I will share this paper with them for comment, corrections and suggestions.
What follows are I believe the easiest and most significant additions to update Brain Gym and Dennison Laterality Repatterning (DLR).
Waldorf-methods K-12 movement education
The world’s largest collection of holistic literature on children and movement is undoubtedly the literature around Waldorf-methods K-12 movement education. I estimate this includes 40-50 books, not counting innumerable articles and online posts.
Where the Waldorf people would say, “Start with Rudolf Steiner—then look at movement literature,” this is less relevant for Dennison and Brain Gym-educated folks. Dennison and Waldorf folks have overlapped and been networking since the mid-1980s. I was part of this.
I do believe Waldorf-methods and philosophy around children’s movement will converge with Paul Dennison’s work—perhaps in about 100 years. In the meantime, for those interested in what Waldorf movement education can contribute to Brain Gym, I recommend Jeff Tunkey’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXS-AGzX7C4TIBPD-zh4Tg
Jeff also has a book, Educating for Balance and Resilience: Developmental Movement, Drawing, and Painting in Waldorf Education (2020). I especially recommend this video re teen and adult movement education: “COPPER RODS ACTIVITIES FOR WALDORF SCHOOLS”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSs9CBrhYds
Even more Waldorf-methods movement education material is at Assoc. for a Healing Education: https://www.healingeducation.org/our-team/
Videos and audio here: https://www.healingeducation.org
When Brain Gym Converges with Waldorf remedial movement education, I imagine two good effects. One is it will strengthen Brain Gym methods and rhetoric so it can be more sustainable in K-8 schools. Second it will lead to a much more robust system for adults to remediate and improve the dimensions of their internal neurology; including, goal setting and intention-setting methods.
BAVX (Bal-A-Vis-X) ball bouncing exercises
Another resource of great relevance to expanding Brain Gym and making it more accessible and scientific is BAVX (Bal-A-Vis-X) ball bouncing.
When watching the following videos, please imagine the exercises accompanied by spoken poems or singing of songs. These should be added to each and every ball bouncing exercise shown:
“Bal-A-Vis X Demonstrations” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQfttMeuAPw
More basic ball exercises – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnjaovsHdz4
“Occupational Therapist Explains Bal-A-Vis-X” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKQSXr4CHSs
I mention BAVX towards the top here for another reason. Thru the kindness of Gail Dennison, I’ve had opportunity to review a good fraction of Brain Gym research published in the Brain Gym Journal. There is as well, several good scientific research papers on Brain Gym available online I’ve read.
My question which started this reading was, “If Brain Gym is so effective, why is the great body of amateur and professional research ignored by academic educators?” The answer seems to be the design of research always lacks a control group doing holistic remedial exercises different from Brain Gym. The research design error committed over and over again consistently, in the research reports I read was the group doing Brain Gym exercises was only ever compared to one control group doing no exercises at all. Academic educators and school administrators are famous for their ability to deny and ignore research on holistic methods; even when consistently positive results are documented and graphed.
The answer to this is a second control group is needed. The second control group must be doing another form of holistic remedial exercises different from and not overlapping with Brain Gym. BAVX exactly fits the bill here.
I’m aware a Brain Gym study with a BAVX control group and a “do nothing” group is probably outside the means of K-8 teachers, the authors of most Brain Gym research to date. However any college wishing to do this—or any phD student writing a thesis—could easily run a research project with two control groups, using students of any age (all groups have to be the same age cohort).
Brain Integration Technique (BIT)
BIT is a professional-grade specialized kinesiology certification. It is NOT something school teachers will be interested in. BIT cannot be done in classrooms, not even by remedial reading specialists. A good intro to BIT is Susan McCrossin’s articles: https://crossinology.com/articles-media/
After six BIT sessions in 2023, my sense is BIT is a more professional-grade version of DLR. I do think DLR will be practiced by remedial teachers in all public schools—in about 100 years. If DLR does not resolve a student’s internally confused neurology; then, BIT is the next thing to try.
With the above remarks in mind, the following attempts to update Paul and Gail’s model of “three dimensions of the body” to make it more accessible, effective and useful.
1 ~ Towards and away dimension (Paul and Gail’s front and back dimension)
The Dennisons suggest the most primitive movement learning is front to back. Readers familiar with NLP will know this as “towards and away-from” motion. In NLP, this is mostly applied to goal-setting. It’s easy to take this idea down into early childhood movmnet.
If Mother is safe and trustworthy, the infant throws themselves at Mother. If an unknown stranger approaches, the infant runs away or hides behind Mother. Towards and away. When I intend this polarity as a pair, I write it as “towards~away.”
In Polyvagal Theory, this is the dimension of “ventral vagal” vs. “dorsal vagal.” When our vagus nerve neurology feels a social situation is both safe and trustworthy, we move towards other people.
When our vagus nerve neurology feels a threat, dorsal vagal neurology activates. This enables flight; or. in the face of overwhelming threat, fainting and playing dead. When I intend the polarity of this pair, I write it as “ventral~dorsal.”
On page 38 of Brain Gym and Me (2006), I agree with Paul “attention deficit” does not describe what happens in disturbed childhood neurology. It’s more a matter of “towards and away deficit.” Consider the following:
For some children age five to nine or ten, intellectual school work (reading and math) does not feel safe. When presented only intellectually, the child is told, “It’s safe to read.” However inside them, in their vagus nerve neurology, because their neurology is too immature to coordinate all the skills needed to decode and make sense of what is read, reading does not feel safe. The child’s vagus nerve neurology has—at the least—mixed messages about the activity of reading.
I suspect what many children do in their vagus nerve neurology is to go both towards and away from reading and math at the same time. They move towards it—to please adults. Yet inside—they move away from reading and math as their system is as yet too immature, or too disturbed, to approach this task feeling both safety and trust in the process. This explains the deep ambivalence and lack of any receptivity of the many reading-disordered children I’ve worked with in elementary classrooms.
Does this make sense?
Comments invited.
2 ~ Top and bottom dimension
This is Paul and Gail’s “centering dimension.”
I call this the dimension of healthy top and bottom integration. Are my top and bottom each switched on? Are these two parts of me aware of each other as cooperative teammates? As roughly equal collaborators? If so, this is healthy top and bottom integration. Anything less suggests blocks of tension; and/or, blocks of weakness.
Top~bottom integration dimension may be easier to perceive and appreciate by its absence in a person. If you are a people watcher, on the street, do you ever observe people who move as if one or more parts of the top of their body isn’t coordinated or moving with one or more parts of the bottom of their body? I have.
In Brain Gym and Me, Paul describes, in theatrical productions, the initial movements of the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow demonstrates lack of coordination when the actor portraying him flails around without crossing the midline. That’s part of how we can be dissociated top~bottom. Paul also mentions the vestibular system, our inner sense of balance and “rightness” felt kinesthetically. A lacking or weak vestibular system is another way we can be dissociated top~bottom.
Blocks of tension or weakness
Energy moving up and down in our neurology (acupuncture meridians are useful to think about here) can be short-circuited one of two ways. One way is to have rigid blocks of muscle tension somewhere from our feet to our axis and atlas neck vertebrae. A block created by tension will stop energy—and therefore awareness–moving up or down in our neurology.
A physical or energetic weakness, say in the ankles, can contribute to an individual being an “easy pushover.”
The easiest and most accessible rhetoric we have for top~bottom integration is the language of a “head-brain” and a “gut-brain.”
This idea itself has several shades of meaning, each one relevant:
– The cognitive mind and the gut micobiome,
– Conscious waking Self and the Child Within (inner child),
– Self and internal parts in Internal Family Systems, and
– Top Dog~underdog in Gestalt therapy.
Wilhelm Reich on top~bottom
In his surprisingly readable book, Character Analysis (1933, 1st German ed) Reich observes the phenomena of the top and bottom of the physical body each having a distinct and contrasting “charge.” He expands on this masterfully, laying out the patterns he saw in his clients. The most common pattern in men was the top half of the body was significantly over-charged; while, the bottom half of the body was significantly under-charged. For our purposes here, a too-great difference in charge can be conceived of as an energetic block. In a metaphor, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing (the top half wishes to ignore and downplay activity and impulses in the lower half).
Social dancing as healthy top~bottom
An honest indicator of working top~bottom integration is social dancing. I believe the archetype of healthy social dancing (ventral vagal switched on) is the contra dances President George Washington was addicted to. Reference: “What is Contra Dance?” –https://hatds.org/about-contra#:~:text=Contra%20dance%20is%20a%20type,Martha%20Washington%2C%20did%20contra%20dance
If social dances with a partner are easy for you to learn and perform, you have lots of healthy top~bottom, cooperation, collaboration and therefore, integration.
Sports are next. If baseball, football, basketball are easy for you to learn and play, you have lots of top~bottom, cooperation, collaboration and therefore top~bottom integration.
Vagus nerve as internal tasting
Further afield is a speculation from my six sessions of BIT in summer 2023. It’s useful to consider how our five animal senses, visual, auditory, touch, smell and taste work in our vagal neurology. Specifically, in your self, which one or two senses is preferred and most-favored? As well, in you, which senses are least preferred and least favored?
To prepare for this, let’s go back to “visual, auditory, touch, smell and taste.” In NLP this is abbreviated VAKOG. However this is only how our five senses are most-favored, most-preferred in humans, the human sensory hierarchy.
In animals, the hierarchy of most-favored, most-preferred senses is different; perhaps: smell, taste, auditory, visual, kinesthetic. Where in human beings do smell and taste predominate? I speculate this is in our vagus nerve neurology.
I believe the vagus nerve has its own somewhat unique third dimension. Evidence for this includes how the top of the vagus nerve differs from the bottom of the vagus nerve. How does it differ? It seems to differ primarily in frequency. Top is higher frequency; bottom is lower frequency. Moving sideways into the five senses, this difference seems to be most perceptible in the sensory channel of taste. The quality of vagus nerve tasting differs top~bottom.
What I suspect is true is vagus above the diaphragm taste-tests for different qualities than below the diaphragm. I suspect below the diaphragm vagus is more likely to be tasting for infection and putrefaction. Above the diaphragm perhaps it is testing more for adequate sufficient T helper cells.
A good baseline for specialized kinesiology folks to learn about the vagus nerve is Stanley Rosenberg’s book in the Bibliography. Your ideas and experience on this are invited and welcomed.
What trees can teach us about prayer
In corporate-consumer culture, prayer as a topic is banned. All corporations wish consumers to pray to their brand, nowhere else. Cue all “false idols” conversations. I believe prayer can help us understand the top~bottom integration. Consider: What if healthy prayer for humans occurs mostly in the vertical dimension, the dimension of top~bottom integration?
Where can we see healthy top~bottom integration modeled for us? In large trees, the bigger the better. Moisture flows smoothly from the soil around roots underground, up the xylem, all flowing towards the highest parts of the tree, to the stomata in the underside of leaves.
An eastern health idea is immediately useful here. Per South Korean author, Ilchi Li, a balanced state is “cool up, heat down.” What do most Westerners have? An overheated brain; and, cold feet and hands. What do trees model for us? Cool moisture flowing up towards the top of the plant, into the leaves.
To Learn More
“Make Your BELLY WARM (from “Water Up Fire Down” by Ilchi Lee) | 10 Minute Daily Routines” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLxMOcIxWAs
Water Up Fire Down: An Energy Principle for Creating Calmness, Clarity, and a Lifetime of Health – Illustrated (2020) by Ilchi Lee
-=+ -=+ -=+
Tree transpiration is the process by which moisture (water) from underground roots, is carried up thru the tree to small pores on the underside of leaves (stomata).
Why do tree leaves, in direct sunlight, release water vapor? In warm weather, sustained, direct sunlight makes leaves too hot. Losing water vapor cools the leaves down. The hotter the weather, the more important this function is.
Water is also essential for leaves to perform photosynthesis:
During photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) from the air and soil. Within the leaf cell, the water is oxidized, meaning it loses electrons, while the carbon dioxide is reduced, meaning it gains electrons. This transforms the water (H2O) into oxygen (O2) and the carbon dioxide into glucose –https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/photosynthesis/#
When enuf water is in the ground, thru transpiration, a large tree, can lift a hundred gallons of water a day.
The insights materialism can offer us about tree transpiration are now exhausted, limited to only physical and chemical processes.
Recently big trees were teaching me, “We are praying. What humans call “transpiration” is the middle part of our prayer. The first part is receiving with gratitude from the gnomes, water supplied to our roots. The middle part is allowing-promoting-creating upward flow of moisture towards the Sun. The top part of our prayer is receiving with gratitude the Sun’s energy to convert water and CO2 into glucose. We use glucose to build leaves and stems; also, to feed the microbiome around our roots. If the sunlight makes my leaves too hot, we give up more water vapor to cool them. If animals and people eat our leaves and/or our fruits, we serve the greater ecology in this way also.”
Learning from four-footed animals
While we can learn a great deal from pets and other four-footed animals, they seem to have less to teach us about prayer. Why? Except for gorillas, mammals spend a very large fraction of their time walking on all fours (lesser monkeys also sit on their haunches to use both hands; yet, do not walk on two legs much).
As an upright creature, whose primary physical divisions are top and bottom, I look to large trees to tell me how to pray within a living vertical architecture. I asked my tree friends what they could teach me about how to live and pray in an upright body.
I suspect the main take-aways are in this vein. One is to use the “weak force” of levity inside us to “Grow Against Gravity” as Catherine Cunningham says in an article referenced below. The way I feel this is, “Lift up whatever substance you have towards the source of your Life.” For trees, their Source is the Sun, source of both Light and Life. For humans, our Source can be service to self and to others, serving with our head, heart and hands (a Waldorf-methods idea).
Our Source can even be our own Higher Guidance; especially, in Soul and Above. Intuitively we understand this Source is located in frequencies higher than our own waking Self; therefore, we imagine it above our head.
Reference: “The Tree’s Truth: What We can Learn from Being Still” –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trees-truth-what-we-can-learn-from-being-still-catherine-cunningham/
3 ~ Left and right
This is Paul and Gail’s “laterality dimension.” In the future, I suspect what’s coming is expanded shades of meaning inherent in the left~right dimension.
One shade of meaning is clearly right-brain-hemisphere and left-brain-hemisphere. Iain McGilchrist abbreviates these as “right-hem” and “left-hem.” Since 2009, Iain has been the most influential and effective voice for revisiting right~left brain research and synthesizing it into a new understanding–significant even into moral and ethical territory. As of 2023 Iain is apparently not aware of either Paul’s work or Polyvagal Theory.
Reference: Videos: https://ChannelMcgilchrist.com/free-videos/
The other significant permutation is right and left in the vagus nerve.
To Learn More on left~right within the vagus nerve.
Lucky 99 on Google Quora: “What is the difference between the right and left vagus nerves?”
The right and left vagus nerves are part of the autonomic nervous system and have similar functions, but they have different origins and target different regions of the body. The right vagus nerve originates from the right side of the medulla oblongata and has more widespread branches that target various organs in the body, including the heart, lungs, and digestive tract. The left vagus nerve originates from the left side of the medulla oblongata and has fewer branches. It is primarily involved in controlling the heart.
Overall, both sides of the vagus nerve play important roles in regulating the body’s [top~bottom integration and] homeostasis. The right vagus nerve has a more diffuse effect, while the left vagus nerve has a more specific effect on the heart.
To Learn More
“Two nested sets of three dimensions in our neurology? Comments invited – ”https://holisticbrainbalance.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/two-nested-sets-of-three-dimensions-in-our-neurology-comments-invited/
Comments and discussion invited. The above is dedicated to expanding the ministry of John-Roger.
For Further Study
The Body Reveals (1977 1st ed) by Ron Kurtz and Hector Prestera
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve; Self-Help Exercises for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Autism (2017) by Stanley Rosenberg
Paul and Gail’s books:
Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., and Gail E. Dennison. Personalized Whole Brain Integration (1985).
Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D. Switching On. Glendale, CA: Edu-Kinesthetics, Inc., 1981.
Iain McGilchrist videos: https://ChannelMcgilchrist.com/free-videos/
Holistic Brain Balance 