Stage of Diet Changes

Denial
Most of us hate to be told what is good for us. So at this stage, I would like to reframe nutritional advice. Finding the nutrition that makes you feel and act your best is a unique and personal journey. Depending on your own bent, see this journey as a science experiment, an ancestry study, a spiritual quest or a practical personal care experience.

Overwhelm
When people start changing the SAD (standard American diet), they are often overwhelmed with what, when, how and why to change the daily diet. Too much change and too many new rules for eating can cause overwhelm and discouragement. It is really best at first to go with just one main principle, realizing that you will not always be able to follow it, but you will feel better if you do. One such principle is: Always choose the less processed of what is offered: Fruit salad, diet bar, candy. The choice is simple; the less processed is the fruit salad. If the principle is "no wheat" and you are offered either an oatmeal cookie, chocolate chip cookie, cake, pick the oatmeal cookie because there is less wheat.

Anger
Everyone, from time to time, after starting to shift the diet has an angry moment: Why can’t I eat like everyone else? Well, the secret is that “everybody else” can’t eat that way either. Their age, genes or systems may be able to hold off the devastation of an unbalanced diet but how would they feel with a more balanced diet? So ditch the anger and get on to….

Acceptance
So you accept that step by step you have changed small and large parts of the diet using principles that make the decisions easier and are finding joy in the simplicity of you and your family’s diet. It isn’t perfect but most of the time you follow the 3 to 4 principles that you have established. Great, but don’t get cocky, kid.

Proselytizing
Once you have established a clear diet path and are feeling the great results, it is very hard to resist becoming a evangelical nutritionist. This impulse can go from “friendly” unasked for advice at work to a full out nutrition nazi. This is a natural impulse that should be guarded against. Just remember that others will respond to even asked for advice with denial, so be joyful in your own self discovery.

Bon Appetit!

Using Reflexes to Heal & Regenerate

It is common for people beginning to look at developmental resources to underestimate their full usefulness. For example, infant reflexes should not be retained into childhood and beyond. They may come out of integration during trauma. Some novices see this as “bad”. However, when infant reflexes are reactivated, nature is offering an opportunity, if we take it. If we return to the movements and postures that developed our original ability, we can heal using the original process that developed the ability in the first place. Then one can return to integration.

For example: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSS) usually brings the Moro Reflex out of integration. Originally for the individual, the Moro Reflex may have been weakly integrated and therefore quickly becomes unintegrated under traumatic stress. By starting a program that allows a person to just relax in the positions of Moro #1 and Moro #2, as well as adding the development resource of sustained deep pressure, an adult can recapture the original moment of development for regulation.

This may not be all that is needed for re-integration, but it can be a healthy start. It is common that one or the other will not in the beginning feel entirely comfortable. This activity gives the Upper and Lower Brains time to adjust and rewire. At first the body-brain system may only want to stay in the positions for as little as 15 seconds. Tune in and gently encourage the system to lengthen the time, over a number of days. Two minutes in the postures seems to be a favored amount of time, although some prefer up to 10 minutes in each position. More time in a posture is not necessarily better. Check in (see earlier posts on checking in) and listen to what you Lower Brain and body are trying to communicate. Attempt to ignore the chattering Upper Brain. Relax your joints and muscles as much a possible in the postures. Let images and thoughts come and go without reaction.

Next week, I will post the pictures for the postures!

Traumas and the Neurodevelopmental System

Last month we looked at birth trauma and how it affects human development. Today we connect birth trauma with other types of traumas. As we previously noted there is a spectrum of trauma:

1. Stress, that can be bad or good for our growth
2. Chronic stress that is decidedly not good for our systems
3. Strauma when chronic or sudden stress triggers mini trauma into our systems
4. Trauma when the physical, mental and/or emotional human functioning is effected

Birth trauma can look like any of the above and any of the above can affect how the sensory-reflex motor systems develop. Some of these differences are minor and others can be major. If the developmental spiral through life is too splintered, the human system is stressed at more and more levels of daily life.
Other traumas can affect our functioning in life:
1. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
2. Traumatic bodily injury
3. Traumatic emotional injury
4. Traumatic mental injury

Each of these traumas is real and healing needs access to the developmental resources that we all have available in our brain-body systems. Some of these resources include:

1. Reflex patterns 2. Gravity and Body senses

3. Breathing 4. Use of mirror neurons through visualization

5. Sleep 6. Nutrition

7. Body and natural rhythms 8. Meridians

It is my belief that most emotional and mental (and many physical) traumas become traumas because the human systems in early development were weak. For example, emotional trauma is often linked with an unintegrated Moro Reflex. Often the Moro Reflex was not entirely or strongly integrated at the time of the trauma which then became emotionally triggered. I have met many people who have had physical trauma due to “accidents” that were all or partially caused by a retained ATNR Reflex.

At times the infant reflexes will come out of integration to restart healing after a trauma. Using the infant reflexes for healing is a natural way to remind the human system of resources we have naturally within.

Birth Trauma and Stress Management

We are seeing more and more adults coming into our office due to traumatic birth issues. Traumatic births include breech, very long, very short, C-Section, forceps or suction deliveries. Problems can happen in any birth and, obviously, it is most important that both mother and child come through alive, even if traumatized. So it is without judgment that we look at this issue.

The infant developmental reflexes appear in utero, transform during birth and continue their work through the first year of life. Trauma at any of these times can affect an individual’s ability to regulate muscles, emotions and even thoughts. Most people who have had a traumatic birth have a vague understanding that it has left its mark on them. Deep stress, anxiety, exhaustion, overdrive, sustained learning issues, sensitivities and a lack of peace are only a few of these remnants.

Our work with adults of traumatic birth usually gives voice to this deeper knowledge by measuring and drawing attention to often seemingly inexplicable issues. A Plan for Learning reflex session starts with a short assessment of reflexes preselected by goals and a history. Throughout a session, the checks, integration techniques and home program activities are woven together to aid resolution. A 75 minute session cost $150 and includes a written chart of reflexes checked and measured, home activity suggestions, a DVD of the session and a CD of the activities suggested. The ideal number of visits varies from between two and eight. Reflex integration sessions booked between now and Sept 1, 2011 will receive a 10% discount with the mention of this announcement. A more peaceful future awaits.

The HANDLE Approach & Reflex Integration

Development of how we intake, process and react to our world depends on the sensory-motor feedback system. Before we are born, our senses trigger motor reflexes, which then help regulate and use the senses. This feedback growth continues after we are born through the seminal (seed) senses and the infant (primitive) motor reflexes. This feedback system develops our processing modalities of the Upper Brain (cortex). As you can see, infant reflexes play a role in development.


The HANDLE Approach looks at the entirety of the sensory-motor development. As a metaphor let’s consider HANDLE a basket. The basket’s handle includes the incredibly important principles that lift and guide the HANDLE approach. The basket’s bowl gathers holistically many pieces of the whole system: the sensory, motor, reflex, nutrition, genetics, environment, and much more. No other approach that I have found comprehensively deals with so many parts of an individual’s system.

Dealing with one facet of the neuro system, such as, nutrition, reflexes, motor, etc, can be helpful at times. That is why many HANDLE practitioners are themselves or may suggest complementary therapies to focus in on a particular area. Although HANDLE works holistically and developmentally to integrate infant reflexes, there may be reasons to deal one or more individually with other techniques. However, these may or may not stay integrated if the underlying body senses are not well enough developed.

Infant reflexes are within us to support development and safety. Sometimes they become atypical due to trauma. Other times they are atypical due to developmental factors that take a more holistic approach to remediate.

New Online Introduction to Autism Course

Just a quick announcement of our new online course, done in coordination with Professional Learning Board. This course is a great overview of what autism is and differences that people on the spectrum have compared with neurotypical. The course gives many opportunities for parents and teachers to try approaches to make learning and interaction easier for students with autism.

Find my new online course: Introduction to Autism at http://k12teacherstaffdevelopment.com/tlb/introduction-to-autism-class/

Needs of the Lower Brain Must be Met for the Upper Brain to be Fulfilled

Our Lower Brain holds our developmental and survival resources. Sometimes these resources are called “primitive” because they are with us from the beginning and are foundational for our growth and survival. However, if the Lower Brain ain’t happy, the rest of the person usually can’t be fully happy either. The Lower Brain can feel unsafe because of issues dealing with gravity, body in space sense, efficient energy use, inconsistent sensory input or conflicting signals.Let’s look at these issues more closely:

Gravity: From the moment of conception our developing body-brain system must do a dance with gravity. To live, cells, organs and tissues must push against gravity. Our first developing sense deals with measuring and reacting to gravity. Most developmental issues have their genesis with issues around gravity regulation of muscles and tissues. Autism, dyslexia, low tone, ADHD and other concerns have challenges with gravity.

Body in Space: All of our senses constellate to let us know where we are in relationship to other people and things in the environment. It is the basis of our sense of boundaries. If this body map isn’t well established, the body-brain system sends out an unconscious alarm. This alarm is often picked up by the Upper Brain as generalized anxiety. Although anxiety is usually associated with emotions, a physical feeling of lacking safety will trigger negative emotions. People on the autism spectrum, those with OCD, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental issues can have issues sensing their body in space.

Efficient energy use: Development is all about learning how to conserve and use limited neural energy wisely. When unnecessary energy is being eaten up by overworking Lower Brain functioning, the result is often a burst of energy and then exhaustion. This pattern is often seen in ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder and other syndromes.

Inconsistent sensory input: The body-brain system does not like to receive conflicting sensory signals. It would be like someone seeing a barking cat. The alarm signals go off. The brain wants agreement among the differing senses. If one sense is consistently giving unreliable information, the body-brain system will block or transform that information to improve agreement. This is a very inefficient use of neural energy and can interfere with day-to-day functioning.

Conflicting signals: The sensory system is not the only system that dislikes conflict. If a person has retained infant reflexes in the Lower Brain and the Upper Brain wants to move in a way counter to the reflex pattern, tension arises. It is as if one horse is pulling one way and the other another. Both horses do not get where they are going and use a great deal of energy trying. Most people with neurodevelopmental or learning disabilities have retained or atypical infant reflexes that interfere with planned motor activities.

Stress…Strauma…Trauma

Lately I have discovered a gap in the English language. My family, friends and colleagues usually laugh at my created terms, but often end up using them because there are no viable alternatives. In this case, English is missing a word to describe the state of almost continuous, high level stress. Trauma is the closest word but is usually reserved for near death experiences, not the damage inflicted by significant, ongoing stress. I have come to use the word, strauma, which is a hybrid of stress and trauma.
Stress is an interesting word that invokes varying responses. It is a word with a great deal of gradation. The grading runs from being dead (no stress) to system shutdown (very high stress). At the one end, low to moderate stress can actually be helpful. Without some stress, our motivation often collapses. At the high end there are two different issues: sudden, intense stress and the soul and body eating, persistent high stress.
A typical human neuro-system is resilient to most stress that is short term. We are built to respond to sudden attack or deprivation. It is the long term stress that many people endure either by choice or necessity that corrodes our body and brain system over time. In modern life, our short term fight or flight responses are not as common as our often self imposed strauma.
To help clients of all ages to become aware of their internal stress to strauma levels, I often suggest a color chart. Depending on the age and ability of the client it can be a 3 or 5 point scale.
Five Point Stress to Strauma Scale:

Blue: Sluggish, low energy, sleepy

Green: Relaxed, non-stressful time and feeling, recreation

Yellow: Attentive, usual school and work rhythm

Orange: Building Strauma alert, too highly stressed for too long (different for everyone), autonomic nervous system signaling impending overwhelm

Red: Fight, flight or freeze activated, lower brain reacts for safety

The three point scale is as above without the blue or red levels. Many people attempt to stay in the orange area too long, thinking this is most productive. However, many studies show that it is a penny wise, pound foolish investment. As with a marathon runner, establishing a pace that can be sustained is most efficient and saves health and wellness.

Tuning In and Out

Isn’t it interesting that tuning out can mean tuning in? If we tune out of
life’s environmental distractions to take stock of the internal environment
and our neurodevelopmental resources, we find gifts of health and awareness.
However, if we tune out our inner messengers and focus only on the outer world,
we can miss important messages. When we miss these messages, our interior
and neurodevelopmental resources must get our attention through physical,
mental and emotional means that are not always pleasant.





















The rhythm of life requires inbreathing and outbreathing. There needs
to be a balance of tuning in and reaching out in our lives. Take time to
tune in during physical exercise, prayer, eating and other sensory experiences.
Examine how reaching out into the exterior environment affects the other spheres.
The essence of our being is life fully experienced in the inner and outer world
through each step of our human development.

Autism Awareness Month Part 2

Autism is a spectrum disorder where different developmental milestones vary widely. One area that is consistent in all folks with autism is weakness in the gravity sense. All people with autism have issues with any or all of the following:

The gravity sense organ, the semi-circular canal and its ability to read and react to gravity

The cranial nerve and tracts that connects the gravity sense information and intake of sound into the brain stem

The cerebellum with the brainstem that modulates muscle tone and presorts sensory input

Why is this important? One of the most important reasons is that weakness with the gravity sense and other body senses can cause the Lower Brain to send alarm signals to the Upper Brain often resulting in anxiety.

Addressing the issues of the body senses can make this functioning better and lessen anxiety.

April is Autism Awareness Month Part 1

Mind sharing develops in a sequence and in relationship to verbal and nonverbal language. Most people on the autism spectrum have delay in these areas. Both developments depend on a well functioning sensory-motor-reflex system.

Mind sharing for a newborn is undifferentiated. All is one mind and being: the baby, the parents, the environment.

As a baby develops into toddlerhood, the self-mind develops. The toddler learns to understand her own mind and responses with "Me!" and "Mine!" All others are considered part of the toddler mind and therefore should always know its needs and wants.

As time goes on the young preschooler now knows that you have a different mind and that she must ask endless questions to find out what is in your seemingly Olympian mind. The preschooler doesn't know your mind, but still believes that you know hers. She believes that mother knows what she did even if she wasn't there.

Then one big day, the child realizes that minds are separate and that others can't see into her mind. Now she realizes that she can tell an untruth and others will not know. As she grows older, she realizes that when she plays and share minds with others, she sees all new visas, making social interactions irresistable. She finds that each person is a surprise treasure box ready to be opened.

Tune Into Tone

We are so busy! However, more and more people are trying techiniques, such as yoga and meditation to relieve stress.These are excellent practices and tuning in can improve yoga and mediation or be used on its own.

In the study of sensory-motor-reflex, we consider the tone of our body’s tissues, muscles, liquids and organs.Tone is the ability of living systems to push out in tension and release to relaxation. It is tone that we use to feel and give us a brain map of the inside and outside of our bodies. The words “tone” and “tune” come from the root word. So when we tune in, we are noting our tone.

Try this: Sit in at a table and put your elbows on the the table. Relax. Cup your hands and gently place them over your ears. Close your eyes. Now tune into what you feel inside your head in the inner ear. Don’t try to make something happen, just notice. Take a minute or two and relax, just feeling the inner ear.

How did it feel? Warm and pulsing? Cold and contracted? Something else? The inner ear is the housing of our Gravity Sense organ: the semi-circular canals and of our sound wave translator: the cochlea. Tuning into this area may make you more aware of your sense of gravity and hearing. It may improve the tone of the inner ear and help a tune reach your brain more easily. Over time while practicing this activity, you may feel changes in the tone and sensations in the inner ear. Try it daily for a few weeks and see.

As the months roll on, I am hoping to bring you more tips about tuning in and toning. Tuning in gives the Lower Brain that oversees survival time to communicate with the busy, distracted Upper Brain. This physical inner exploration can be not only fun and relaxing, but the start of a more conscious way to help your body-brain system work more efficiently and to help sustain attention longer in only a minute or two a day!

The Tortoise:Sustainable Attention, Abilities & Powers

I once heard that the difference between a genuis and everyone else is that a genius can sustain his or her attention for a much longer time on one area of thought. Sustaining our energy is the key to many issues in people's lives:learning, attention, completion of tasks, and self mastery. As a younger person, I would hurl myself into every task, because unconsciously I thought I needed a "running start" to be able to finish it. I got through even simple tasks by brute force and speed. Partly this was my unregulated neurodevelopment and partly this was the message of my society that I must try very hard. However, through development, I have learned the truth of the tortoise and hare story for myself. Instead of "slow and steady wins the race", I think I would rephrase it: "as fast as sustainable, wins the race."

Some might argue, "Isn't the pace that is sustainable always slow? And will this turn us all into lazy louts?" I think not. Like the long distance runner, without knowing the sustainable pace, the complete race cannot be run. The conscious thinking Upper Brain (the cortex) often thinks that by not listening to the messenger in the Lower Brain, it can push through the warnings of coming overstress. And the Upper Brain can, but at a price. Using this ability to push through against all stress warnings can give us great ability to survive in times of need. The occasional use of this blocking can take a toll, but is usually survivable. It is OK to ask if it is worth the price, before a full out, unbridled plowing through life.

When we use this override functioning, day-to-day, through our life, the price is one of exhaustion and illness. This is not efficient.Using the knowledge of a sustainable energy level, more gets done in the long run. So how does one know about how to keep a sustainable pace through the activities of life? I believe that this can be best done by checking in and looking for the stress signals from your autonomic nervious system. The next blog entry will examine checking in and knowing your stress signs.

Conscious Living vs. Blocking Stressors

People sometimes fear that if they start listening to the developmental messengers of their body systems, they might become hypochondriacs. They fear that they will be compelled to listen to their body’s every complaint. Just blocking the message seems to be the most efficient day-to-day default setting. It is a surprise and a relief to find that the opposite is true. By consciously knowing and adjusting where our neural energy is being used or wasted, we become more masterful over our world.

The amount of energy that we use blocking the environmental stressors markedly increases unconscious stress. Blocking an such stressors take a lot of neural energy and the stress itself takes even more. Almost always suppressing these stresses cannot be sustained long without an emotional reaction. For example, your collar is chaffing, you block this sensory message, then the temperature rises and you block that message. Then your child asks for help and you snap. The energy needed to use your prefrontal cortex has been undermined by all the sensory blocking. If you had consciously adjusted your collar and had cracked the car window, you may have been kinder to your child.

We often block environmental stressors without consciously considering how we could easily accommodate our body systems' needs. I once sat at a meeting for 3 ½ hours facing dark window blinds cracked so that bright light shown into my eyes. I blocked the visual stress and, by the end, had a severe headache that made the meeting information unmemorable. If I had consciously realized the issue, I could have moved my seat or adjusted the blinds. Then the whole point of the meeting would have had my attention.

Many people carry labels, such as, ADHD & autism, and are being overwhelmed by environmental stresses. Attention and development take flight when there are high levels of stress.

Mercury, above, was the messenger of the gods. He carries the caduceus, a rod wrapped seven times by a serpent. This is an ancient symbol of healing. The caduceus could represent the lower "reptile" or survival brain bringing its developmental gifts to the upper brain for enlightenment, health and power. Heed the developmental messenger for health and well-being.

Developmental Resources: Dorothy's Slippers

Inner developmental resources are like Dorothy’s Slippers: you had them all along; you just didn’t know how to use them. Nature has provided us with some magnificant tools for healing and self growth. These tools are very real and physical, yet most people aren't consciously aware of them. We live in a cortex driven (upper brain) era. Many of us have lost awareness and trust in our deeper resources, such as our body senses and reflexes. We feel cut off, fragmented and somehow missing something. Our upper brain or cortex hunts for the reasons for these phantom feelings, usually in outer, complex, and unproductive ways.

Think of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. She wanted to get home. She went to the upper brain (the Wizard) and he sent her out into the world to seek her way home, only to end up back where she started with no satifaction. It was only when she listened to her inner resources, Glinda, that she found that she had always had what she needed, both in Oz and at home. Her slippers of gems (ruby in the movie and diamond in the book) where literally at her feet.

The developmental gifts in our lower brain, including our body senses and reflexes, are there waiting to be called upon to balance and sustain us through our life. Let's start using them now. So all together: click your heels together three times....

Access Our Blog from Fusion Training Website!

We're kicking off our new blog here on the website! The good news is that we have a great plan to bring you interesting, useful news and tips about development and the sensory-motor-reflex approach every week. We will also be connecting this blog to Facebook and Twitter so you will be able to follow us and not miss a thing. We are slowly connecting all the parts, so bear with us for the next month or so.