Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength. - St-Francis de Sales
After 8 lessons this week, Mika is now falling asleep without twitching or needing someone to hold her and she is also sleeping soundly (we can lower our voices and talk and she won't wake-up! The same Mika used to wake-up from a hair falling on the floor. Her hands are also quieter (she moves them less) and she has a gentler touch (her sister was the first to say out loud, I was in disbelief!) The essential I found most intriguing is subtlety (Anat Baniel identified 9 essentials for learning and vitality). I was told and I strongly believed that Mika needed deep pressure touch and I was stunned to observe her reactions to gentle, light touch: she connected with her practitioners and they didn't need to bribe her to get her to stay calm on a massage table. I experienced it myself and gentle touch definitely increases ones awareness to your body instead of overpowering the area touched my deep pressure. The Anat Baniel Method evolved from Feldenkrais method and aim at working one's own brain plasticity (more on the method here). In order to give you an idea of what a movement lesson might feel like, imagine mixing brain gym, yoga and meditation together.
ABM and Sonrise are deemed complimentary to one another but along with my own observations and increased awareness for my body (I had no idea that I can interlace my toes!), there are some divergence between SonRise and ABM. The two that have most confused me are the enthusiasm and the language piece.
I though the enthusiasm chapter would be the easiest one to process as I embody enthusiasm!!!! I'm expressive, smiley and I do my occupations with energy! Yes, this was my own definition of the word and even if I hadn't checked the actual definition ( "strong excitement of feelings" as per Merriam-Webster dictionary) nor the etymology of the word (inspired by gods), Anat Baniel uses it significantly differently! She recommends parents to develop enthusiasm as a skill to willingly notice the tiniest changes in our children and to internally experience delight and joy. She goes on saying that "when you amplify the enthusiasm you feel within yourself, you child feels it even if you say nothing" (Kids beyond limits" p. 134). Just like anxiety will cause anybody to respond with fear as we are hardwired to do so, Enthusiasm will positively affect your child or anyone you work with! Anat Baniel, backed by brain science, recommends to "reduce the intensity of your emotional expression with your child so that you become more attuned and in synch with her, and your child becomes more attuned with herself." This goes for positive reinforcement and I realize that we used it every time she peed in the toilet or did or said something new and we would have a celebration for her success by jumping up and down and saying lots of various verbal praises! While she enjoyed the show, we most definitely interrupted her own awareness for her own success. We have started to tune it down and to experience our emotions internally. We are far from expressing the 3 E's that Son-Rise recommends (excitement, energy, enthusiasm) but we experience them internally! Weber-Fechner law is a neuro-physiological phenomenon that highlights "why reducing the intensity of the back-ground stimulus increases the ability of the child to perceive differences. And those perceived differences are information for the brain to work with, for creating new connections and moving the child for the impossible to the possible" ("Kids beyond limits" p. 127) Her Mika-Rise playroom is perfect to enhance her ability to perceived differences so the two approaches meet again here!
Onto the language piece, related to having flexible goals: Mika used to blabber alot more in non-sensical syllables with the intonation and rhythm of real language and I used to be basically stunned, and participate in her conversation only for a few moments and then dropping it, thinking that I wished I could understand, that I wished she could speak her mind to me and immediately suggest what she might be saying in real words . She still has these conversations with her dog when I'm not in the room!! With SonRise, we are encouraged to guess when she is making speech like sounds to guess what actual word she might be trying to say. We are encouraging action words such as "eat", "jump", "read" etc. Anat Baniel explains that having flexible goals might mean to drop the goal of supporting Mika speak in the short term by fully engaging in those non-sensical conversations.She has witnessed children going from no language at all and with the help of movement lessons, dropping the goal of language and playing with the child's own noises and intonations, these children developed language! We are trying this. It makes sense and it feels right. Our home program is now looking like a hybrid of the ABM and SonRise methods, we will adjust as we gather more knowledge and observations on how Mika progresses. I feel relief and a renewed sense of hope in Micheal Merzenich's preface in "kids beyond limits" as he states that "building a more effective and more powerful brain requires us to start where the child is, and where that brain is right now. This can require a highly personalized approach and almost certainly a great deal of very hard work for all concerned"( Merzenich is a neuroscientist,, member of the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of medicine, he coined the term "brain plasticity revolution)
Now, I realize a blog is not a book but I had so much to share! Keep posted and please keep sharing the link to our fundraiser with your friends and family. We really appreciate your financial support and we keep with our goal of offering the best to support Mika's learning and because ABM lessons and Son-Rise training are costly, YOU rock our world!