Brain Gym®... What Is It?

Brain Gym® is a series of simple and enjoyable movements that we use with our students in Educational Kinesiology (Edu-K) to enhance their experience of whole-brained learning. These activities make all types of learning easier, and are especially effective with academic skills. The word education comes from the Latin word educare, which means to draw out. Kinesiology, derived from the Greek root kinesis, means motion, and is the study of the movement of the human body. Educational Kinesiology is a system of empowering learners of any age by using movement activities to draw out hidden potential and make it readily available.

Traditionally, educators have addressed failure by devising programs to better motivate, entice, reinforce, drill, and stamp in learning. These programs succeed to a degree. However, why do some learners do so well and others do not? In Edu-K we see that some individuals try too hard and switch off the brain integration mechanisms necessary for complete learning. Information is received by the back brain as an impress but is inaccessible to the front brain as an express. This inability to express what is leaned locks the student into a failure syndrome.

The solution is whole-brained learning, through movement repatterning and through Brain Gym® activities that enable the student to access those parts of the brain previously inaccessible to them. The changes in learning and behavior are often immediate and profound, as children discover how to receive information and express themselves simultaneously.

Although Brain Gym® activities will help any individual, young or old, to make better use of innate learning potential, they are most effective after Dennison Laterality Repatterning.

For more than fifty years, pioneers in optometry and sensorimotor training have provided statistical research showing the effects of movement upon learning. Dr. Dennison's familiarity with this research, oriented mainly towards children with specific language learning disabilities, led him to extrapolate this information into quick, simple, task-specific movements that benefit every learner. These movements of body and energy are appropriate to the special needs of people learning in our modern, highly technological culture.