Brain Gymn for Classroom

Brain Gym has been proven effective with students, executives, athletes, teachers, artists, and doctors. Brain Gym offers several areas of exploration such as the fields of education, business, athletics, dance, as well as a new program in "Mental Fitness Plus for Seniors."

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Brain Gymn Exercise

“I have seen miraculous improvement in both children and adults who have used Brain Gym.”

– Cecilia Koester

Have You Heard of Brain Gym?

Brain Gym is a system that uses simple movements to stimulate brain function. That is, it uses quick, easy-to-do developmental movements to wake up the brain without stress or injury. Children naturally explore these movements as they grow and mature. 

However, under tension, children learn to rely too much on one cerebral hemisphere of the brain alone, instead of two sides together, placing unnecessary and stressful demands upon the whole physiology. Educator Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of learning through movement and the creator of the Brain Gym program calls this the "switched off" state. 

Children who have special needs "switch off" more frequently than the average child. Perhaps the stress from neurological damage or simply a more sensitive nervous system creates a need for movements, such as Brain Gym, as well as skills of coordination. The intention behind the Brain Gym is to stimulate the brain so that the child has equal access to all dimensions of the brain. The Brain Gym activities address three specific dimensions of physical movement that correlate with three areas of the brain. 

Each dimension is described by a key word or function and by viewing postural and behavioral correlates. This means that by observing the child’s behavior or how he/she holds his/her body in space, we are lead to the appropriate Brain Gym movements and activities. Other information that would lead to knowledge about which Brain Gym movements or which activities to choose can be gathered by observing or noticing neurological soft signs. These can be eye or head movements, hand or foot movements. Also, if the child is able to move his/her shoulders and simultaneously move the hips, or, if the child can move in a contra lateral way, though uses only one side of the body at a time, then we are able to gather information about the neurological system. They are called "soft signs" because there is no hard evidence from an EEG or a CAT scan; rather we are relying on the cues from the body to surmise how the neurological system is responding.

What is Brain Gymn

Brain Gym was developed in the 1970s by the Dennisons,  educators that describe human brain function in terms of three dimensions: 

1. laterality, 
2. focus, and 
3. centering.  

According to their theory, stress inhibits neural connections in the brain with respect to the three spatial axises, and the Brain Gym movements stimulate a flow of information along these networks.

Brain Gym is based on four concepts:

1. Physical movement stimulates the brain. The 23 Brain Gym movements are designed to activate such functions as communication, comprehension, memory and organization.
2. Stress inhibits learning. Brain Gym movements encourage the learner to use the whole brain, thereby relaxing the fight or flight response in favor of keeping the memory and reasoning centers of the brainswitched on.
3. Brain Gym movements release learning blocks by activating the whole mind-body system.
4. Noticing becomes a personal feedback loop. The learner takes responsibility and control of his own learning by noticing what works and what doesn't as a particular skill is being mastered. The learner can enhance noticing with Brain Gym movements to improve performance, thus increasing self-esteem.