What happens when the two halves (hemispheres) of the brain don’t communicate or work in sync with each other?
Your child doesn’t reach their full potential. They may struggle academically – you’ve heard it, you have a smart kid, but they don’t apply themselves. Sometimes they develop bad behaviors, because their anxiety is elevated or it is the only thing they know, because they have difficulty controlling their body. They usually have poor self esteem, because they are not like the other kids – not smart, not coordinated, not normal. Sometimes they don’t get the social clues that normal kids see and interpret unconsciously, and they become shy, reserved, or act out, again their anxiety skyrockets. Sometimes, it is all three things together. They just need some help, and you as parents need some help to help your child.
That is why Equilibrium Plus was developed.
At Equilibrium Plus we use brain coaches, just like an athlete has a coach to improve performance, to help your child develop the interconnections between both hemispheres of the brain. Some of the exercises seem so simple and easy, but they are essential to prepping the body and brain to do some real work. We will be teaching you many of these exercises, and the principles behind the exercises.
Why exercise is good for brain dysfunction.
We use lots of simple exercises to help develop your child’s brain. The brain makes connections between different parts of the brain, and different parts of the body. The more the whole brain is used, the more and stronger the connections. This is the same principle used in sports, and why professional athletes still drill and do exercises every day. When we use exercises that cross the midline of the body, both hemispheres of the brain are excited and you develop more connections. The more times you repeat an activity the more this trains the brain and body to make it automatic.
Fun work:
We give you ideas for Funwork – it is homework – but it should be fun. Simple things that you can do with your child to again help them develop both sides of their brain, and increase the connections to the body.
Primitive reflexes:
Many children and adults still have some primitive reflexes left over. This means that a reflex that should have disappeared when you were an infant or child is still being retained in the body. These primitive reflexes prevent the brain from really developing evenly and normally. By working on theses reflexes, we can eliminate them and let your brain begin to catch up. Some of these reflexes are the rooting reflex, the Moro reflex, the Asymmetrical Tonic reflex, The Symmetrical Reflex, The Spinal Galant reflex, and the Grasp reflex.
What does the evaluation consist of:
The evaluation process at Equilibrium Plus has several phases to it. The first is a questionnaire that the parents fill out about your child in several different aspects. The there is the physical evaluation by Dr. Zager of your child to look at retained primitive reflexes, brain dominance (right or left hemisphere and if it is mixed), core strength, gross motor skills, vestibular and balance skills, eye tracking, and fine motor skills among other things.
We will the go over those results with the parents and suggest recommended exercise program.
Blocked gates: visual, visual motor, and auditory
These are gates in the brain that prevent a child or person from being able to absorb information and from being able to write information. It again means that the brain is not working in synchrony, that one side is being dominant, and that information isn’t flowing between the two sides. These blocked gates can seen in children who can verbally tell you what they read, but cannot formulate a paragraph to write down what they read. Sometimes it is just one gate, but many times it is multiple gates. Again the exercises work to open up these gates and produce significant improvements.
Dominance:
We think of this as are you right or left handed, but in truth it is more complex. You should have a hand dominance, a foot dominance, a close eye, and a distance eye dominance, and an ear dominance. They should all be the same side. When they are not, it is called mixed dominance and then the brain doesn’t know quite what to do and it takes much longer for the brain to process the correct information. Consider batting a ball when you have right hand dominance with left foot dominance, and your eyes are right near vision dominance and yet left distance dominance. Your body just wouldn’t be in sync and you wouldn’t be able to hit a ball very well.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is where the person sees a “d” for a “b”, a “p” for a “q”, etcetera. The numbers, letters, or objects look reversed. This makes it extremely difficult to read and the person doesn’t usually like to read because they are slow and it takes them a long time to figure out what sentence really says. It also makes arithmetic difficult as well.
One of the theories is that in the brain, the two hemispheres are separated by the corpus collosum, and in dyslexic people the corpus collosum acts like a mirror so even when you visually see a “b” your brain interprets it as a “d”, etc.. Again the corpus collosum is not letting information flow through to the other side of the brain.
Tea Cup Theory
The tea cup theory is that the little stresses add up until they overflow the tea cup. That is why a seemingly small item can blow up completely. One of the things as a parent you can do is to check the anxiety level of your child. Try to do things and teach your child ways to recognize when they are getting stressed and how to de-stress themselves with breathing, exercise, or meditation exercises.
Breathing for stress relief
One of the ways to help re-center yourself and decrease your anxiety is to practice breathing exercises. Yoga and meditation both use breathing as an integral part of their programs. Yoga specifically uses inhalation and exhalation throughout different moves. Meditation has you concentrate on your breathing. From a physiologic aspect doing breathing exercises helps expel the toxins and increases the amounts of oxygen to the lungs and therefore blood stream, which in turn helps to relax the musculature.
Meditation/mindfulness
One of the things that happens when the brain doesn’t communicate with itself, and is becomes disorganized and cluttered. Meditation and/or mindfulness helps de-clutter and helps you to organize your thoughts. When things are organized in your brain, you have less anxiety, and you can think through things in an orderly manner. Mediation also helps with your breathing which in turn helps expel toxins and increases the oxygen in the blood stream.
Gross Motor and Fine Motor skills
People who have poor balance, poor coordination, poor handwriting also have weak gross motor skills. People who have poor handwriting also have weak fine motor control. Fine motor skills get developed after the gross motor skills of the shoulder, arm, and hand. Simple basic exercises strengthening your core and working cross body will help strengthen your gross motor skills and ultimately improve your coordination and balance. Adding some specific exercises for the shoulder, arm, and hand will help your handwriting both from a legibility standpoint and from an endurance standpoint.
Basic brain anatomy
Your brain has a right and left hemisphere separated by the corpus collosum which is a bundle of fibers that allow both sides of the brain to communicate. Each hemisphere has lobes of the brain: occipital which is in the back, parietal lobe and the temporal lobe are on the sides, and the frontal lobe is in the front. Each lobe performs certain functions such as the occipital lobe is where the visual cortex lies, the parietal and temporal lobes is where the language and auditory centers are, and the frontal lobe which is the last to develop is where your decision processing takes place. In addition there are many different nerve bundles (also known as tracts) that go from one portion of a lobe to another of the same lobe or to another lobe, which helps the brain communicate with itself.
The right hemisphere of the brain typically controls the left side of the body from the motor/sensory cortex (controls muscle movements and sensations), and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. The left side of the brain is considered the logical side of the brain; however there is communication with the right side of the brain for different things like communication and math because the right side of the brain is more of the visualization part of the brain and understanding the subtle clues in communication (both written and verbal).
Brain imbalances
When one side of the brain or one hemisphere is significantly more dominant than the other hemisphere dysfunction begins. It can show up as someone who is uncoordinated, dyslexic, has anxiety, has poor or struggling academic performance, may have behavior problems, or any combination thereof. The way to improve on all these issues is by increasing the communication with the brain, thereby allowing the brain to function more efficiently and more completely