About Brain Gym - How Brain Gym works, introduction to the cerebellum, research on movement and learning

Brain Gym® is an eclectic technique that helps to improve performance through simple coordinated movements. Users report improvements in learning difficulties, confidence, memory, concentration, body co-ordination, eye-strain, chronic stress, and phobias. It employs physical and mental exercises and movements to stimulate the senses. The Brain Gym technique is often used to help children to be much more successful at school, to gain in confidence and self-esteem, and to overcome dyslexic, dyspraxic, attention deficit and behavioural problems. Growing numbers of schools in the UK are using a selection of the basic Brain Gym movements as a routine part of the day with positive benefits for learning and concentration.

Brain Gym was developed by Paul and Gail Dennison and was first described by them in 1985. The system was developed by practical experiment in the classroom over a period of about 15 years, and contains the movements that the Dennisons found were most effective in practice. Brain Gym is not dependent upon any theory, except the general concept that humans learn best through movement.

The phrase, Brain Gym®, is the registered trademark of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation, and encompasses the twenty six Brain Gym movements and Brain Gym Balance procedures taught on the Foundation Brain Gym 101 course. The Brain Gym program addresses the physical components of learning––the visual, auditory, fine motor and postural skills––which have been almost entirely ignored by most educators. The program also supports the participant in “noticing” their physical and mental responses to the learning situation, helps them to identify particular movement skills linked to their goal that could be improved, and gives the participant the tools to help themselves.

Because Brain Gym is a trademark, this means that only licensed instructor/consultants can teach, advertise, or collect fees for the Brain Gym program. In the UK, licensed Instructors and Consultants can be found on the main UK website (see links page of my site for details). If you see someone advertising Brain Gym and they are not on the official site, then they will not be qualified to give you the properly targeted help you might need.

What does Brain Gym do?

New brain research shows that the brain is plastic and brain wiring can be altered at any age. We now know that physical movement actually changes the brain’s wiring. Brain Gym uses a combination of simple physical and mental exercises and movements, chosen to suit the unique needs of the individual. These appear to give the mind and body a second chance at completing its development, thus allowing you to take control of your life. Many people who use the technique report that emotional, academic or physical problems then disappear.

How does Brain Gym work?

CURRENT CONTROVERSIES We actually don't really know exactly what Brain Gym does in the brain, but there is now a considerable body of research evidence that it really does work. The technique was developed by Dr Paul Dennison following more than a decade of research into the relationships between body movement and learning, during which he investigated the effect of many movements on learning and emotional states, and gained a PhD for his work. He found that 25 movements had the most significant positive effects for a significant number of students. In the early 1980's he put these together into the system now known as Brain Gym, which includes a very powerful balance structure to help clients to move forward towards their goals. So the technique is based on observation, not theory. I review some of the current published research evidence on my research page.

However, you may have read the current controversies in the media about Brain Gym.. These seem to have arisen because the book Brain Gym, Teacher's Edition by Paul and Gail Dennison, first published in 1989 and last revised in 1994, made some suggestions about how the movements might work, but couched them as though the effects were fully understood. These out-of-date suggestions are now known, in the light of current neuroscientific understanding, to be oversimplifications and a number are actually incorrect. Unfortunately, these suggestions have been taken up by schools and are being taught to children as though they are the basis of Brain Gym. Here, I give some ideas for teachers and others to use instead of some of the out-of-date suggestions.

SUGGESTED EXPLANATIONS. Here are my suggestions of how the most common exercises which are used in UK schools could be described and explained. These are three movements (Brain Buttons, The Cross Crawl and Hook-ups) plus drinking water, known collectively as PACE, which is shorthand for being Positive, Active, Clear and Energised.

	How Brain Gym® is best described
About Brain Gym® in general	● Brain Gym® was developed by Paul and Gail Dennison by experiment over a period of 15 years.
What Brain Gym does	● Claims for Brain Gym are based upon benefits that have been observed for a large number of children. ● Current well-controlled research now supports these claims (e.g. research page on this site). ● Brain Gym addresses the physical components of learning––the visual, auditory, fine motor and postural skills––which have been almost entirely ignored by most educators. ● We do NOT understand the neurological and physiological effects of Brain Gym.

The movements of PACE	How the Brain Gym® movements of PACE are best described
Drinking water (part of PACE)	● Water supplies the electrolytes that carry electrical potential across cell membranes, and this electrical exchange is essential to the efficient functioning of the new neural networks being created as we learn. ● You can have too much water as well as too little, so don’t go mad on drinking water! ● Many experts now agree that school children are helped by having water available to them throughout the day.
Brain Buttons (part of PACE)	● The Brain Buttons offer a vertical and horizontal reference on the torso to help us move our eyes across the body midline. ● Many people find that horizontal eye tracking is easier after rubbing the Brain Buttons, and thus reading often becomes easier, too.
The Cross Crawl (part of PACE)	● Doing the Cross Crawl simultaneously activates both sides of the body, using neural pathways in both the left and right cerebral hemispheres. ● This MAY help synchronise activity in both brain hemispheres. ● People often find that doing the Cross Crawl helps them to be more coordinated and many people find that they are more open to learning after doing the movement. PLEASE NOTE: Children or adults with learning difficulties may find the Cross Crawl difficult and it may disorganise their thoughts temporarily. Please see a trained Brain Gym professional for advice on techniques which will help make the Cross Crawl easier and turn it into a useful tool to facilitate learning. The Cross Crawl was never intended to be suitable for all people, so if you use Cross Crawl without the right understanding, you won't get good results!
Hook-ups (part of PACE)	● Doing Hook-ups helps us become more aware of our body midline. ● People often find the relaxing effect of 2 minutes of Hook-ups equivalent to 15 to 30 minutes of meditation. ● Many people find that doing Hook-ups regularly helps them to be more relaxed, focused and organised.

MY HYPOTHESES ABOUT HOW BRAIN GYM MAY WORK. I have developed some hypotheses about how the Brain Gym movements may work based on modern neuroscientific discoveries, but please remember that these are just suggestions, which have not been tested by research!

Figure 1: Cross-section through

human brain, showing the position

of the cerebellum.

I think that the cerebellum (see picture) may be the key to understanding how coordinated movement affects learning, when most of us will think that this is an unlikely link! It has been known for a long time that the cerebellum coordinates body movement and stores learned movement patterns such as riding a bicycle or driving a car, which you use without consciously thinking. New research has dramatically upgraded the importance of the cerebellum in brain function, and current studies show that the cerebellum is active during cognitive and perceptual activities (e.g. reading, identification of phonemes such as "ph" and "th", memory, attention, scheduling and planning of tasks and emotion). This body of research shows that certain specific regions are important for specific individual skills or tasks. For example,. Zhan et al (Cognitive Brain Research v16, p91-98, 2003), shows that certain parts of the cerebellum are active in short term memory recall. Ivry and Fiez, 2000, "The cerebellum, recent developments in cerebellar research", (New York Acad. Sci. publishers), show that damage to other areas of the cerebellum affect the discrimination between different sounds or phonemes.

The controlled movements of Brain Gym build up learnt movement memory in the cerebellum and different movement patterns will be stored in different parts. It is quite possible that the scientific link that might explain WHY some exercises improve short term memory, while others improve sound discrimination (for example) will come through better understanding of the particular functions of specific areas of the cerebellum.

Other aspects of Brain Gym may affect how we use our left and right brain hemispheres. Nobel Prize-winning scientists Sperry and Ornstein discovered in the 1960’s that the left and right sides of the brain have different functions. It has been suggested that many people with learning difficulties have problems coordinating activity between their left and right brains. Dr Paul Dennison (the originator of Brain Gym) developed a series of physical movements that appear to integrate the left and right brain into an efficiently functioning “whole brain”. People who experience repatterning often experience profound positive benefits, even though it is not possible to say exactly what it is doing in the brain! This is just one of many Brain Gym techniques that seem to help the brain work more effectively in many different ways, by providing increased stimulation to visual, auditory, balance, kinesthetic and mental brain systems.

Neuroscientists are now exploring the possibility that effective cognitive activity is produced by synchronised firing of neurons across patches of the brain, instead of adjacent neurons firing at random intervals. It is possible that the commonly observed effectiveness of the bi-lateral Brain Gym movements (which coordinate both sides of the body) in improving general cognitive function might actually be caused by promotion of an increase in the synchronicity of neural activity in both brain hemispheres. Wouldn't it be great if we could persuade neuroscientists to investigate how Brain Gym works!

The Oxford Brain Gym Tel: 01865 776578

Brain Gym^® is a registered trademark of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation/ Brain Gym International.

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This site was last updated 06/09/09