What precisely is Kinesiology ?
Kinesiology is defined primarily as the use of muscle testing to identify imbalances in the body's structural, chemical, emotional or other energy, to establish the body's priority healing needs, and to evaluate energy changes brought about by a broad spectrum of both manual and non-manual therapeutic procedures.
Kinesiology, therefore, may be understood as a system of natural health care which combines muscle monitoring with the principles of Chinese medicine to assess energy and body function, applying a range of gentle yet powerful healing techniques to improve health, wellbeing and vitality.

How Does It Work ?
A fundamental premise of Kinesiology is that the body has innate healing energy and is at all times doing its best to care for itself, but that sometimes it needs to be helped into a better position to achieve this care.

Kinesiology also recognises that there are flows of energy within the body that relate not only to the muscles but to every tissue and organ that go to make the body a living, feeling being.
These energy flows can be evaluated by testing the function of the muscles, which in turn reflect the body's overall state of structural chemical, or emotional balance.

In this way, Kinesiology taps into energies that the more conventional modalities overlook. Kinesiology looks beyond the symptoms. Kinesiology does not treat named diseases. Nor does it diagnose them. Kinesiology is concerned with imbalances in the body's energy. In this respect, Kinesiology has close links with the acupuncture concept of energy flow.

Kinesiology is not limited to dealing with ailments. Energy balancing brings a person closer to achieving any goal of their choice ~ in sport, relationships, learning or coping with life in general.*

Why Muscle Testing ?
Precision muscle monitoring techniques are applied to identify & correct energy blockages within the body.

Always the answer is somewhere inside you. Muscle monitoring is a natural feedback system using an indicator muscle, which supplies information via nerve pathways and the meridian system of the Brain and Body.

Kinesiology bypasses conscious thinking processes to isolate causal factors in the subconscious, body and etheric levels. Honouring this system enables the body to clear itself at its own enhanced rate and priority.

What is Educational Kinesiology (Brain Gym®) ?
Educational Kinesiology (Edu-K) is the process of drawing out learning through our natural movement experiences. It is more precisely the study and application of exercises which activate the brain for optimal storage and retrieval of information. Edu-K is a process for re-educating the whole mind/body system for accomplishing any skill or function with greater ease and efficiency. The Edu-K process emphasizes the "educational model"––the model of "drawing out through movement." The intention is to support and nurture the learners innate and organic unfolding of skills and intelligence.Educational Kinesiology includes both self-help and facilitated processes. Of these, the PACE process, Edu-K 5 Steps to Easy Learning, Brain Gym®, and Vision Gym"! activities provide self-directed learning through movement experiences. Educational Kinesiology In Depth: The Seven Dimensions of Intelligence, is a facilitated process that supports change through a multi-dimensional system of movement re-education.
What is Brain Gym® ?
Brain Gym® is the registered trademark for the starter educational, sensorimotor program developed by Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., an expert in child motor-development. It is based upon more than 80 years of research by educational therapists, developmental optometrists, and other specialists in the fields of movement, education, and child development. Brain Gym consists of simple movements similar to the movements that children naturally do during their first three years of life as they complete important developmental steps for coordination of eyes, ears, hands, and the whole body. The Brain Gym movements have been shown in clinical experience, in field studies, and in published research reports, to prepare children with the physical skills they need in order to learn to read, write, and otherwise function effectively in the classroom. The ability to learn easily is especially important for children in the first years of school, when they are laying the foundation for their future schooling and adult life work.

What are Edu-K's Three Dimensions ?
The Dennisons describe brain functioning in terms of three dimensions––laterality, focus, and centering:

Laterality is the ability to coordinate one side of the brain with the other, especially in the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic midfield, the area where the two sides overlap.This skill is fundamental to the ability to read, write and communicate. It is also essential for fluid whole-body movement, and for the ability to move and think at the same time.
Focus is the ability to coordinate the back and front areas of the brain. It is related to comprehension, the ability to find meaning, and to the ability to experience details within their context. People without this basic skill are said to have attention disorders and difficulty in comprehending. At a deeper level, focus allows us to interpret a particular moment or experience in the greater context of our lives or to see ourselves as unique individuals within the larger framework of our society.
Centering is the ability to coordinate the top and bottom areas of the brain. This skill is related to organization, grounding, feeling and expressing one's emotions, a sense of personal space, and responding rationally rather than reacting from emotional overlay.
The Brain Gym movements interconnect the brain in these dimensions, allowing us to easily learn through all the senses, to remember what we learn, and to participate more fully in the events of our lives. We are able to learn with less stress, and to express our creativity using more of our mental and physical potential. The movements also assist in clearing emotional stress that can effect us both mentally and physically. Reported benefits include improve-ments in such areas as vision, listening, learning, memory, self expression, and coordination in children and adults. Teachers typically report improvements in attitude, attention, discipline, behavior, and test and homework performance for all participants in the classroom

What are the primary aims and outcomes of the Brain Gym program ?
Brain Gym is Edu-K's readiness program. It prepares students of all ages to practice and master the skills required for the mechanics of learning. The program includes a simple teaching format, a language for stress-free learning, and a series of movements for integrating learning into the physiology. Brain Gym offers the learner a self-directed system with which to pace individual learning needs, building self-esteem through successful mastery of skills. This program is distinctive, in that it addresses the physical (rather than mental) components of learning.

It builds on what the learner already knows and does well; it meets the learner just as he or she is, without any judgment of capabilities; it teaches the student key elements of learning theory that he or she will be able to apply. Brain Gym requires little additional training for the classroom teacher, no testing, no technology, and it enhances (rather than replaces) current curriculum. The program is used as effectively in business, sports, and the arts, as in the classroom.

Brain Gym outcomes for student or worker include:

increased self-esteem
the ability to harness motivation
skills to identify and avoid stress
increased awareness of and respect for one's own intelligence, body and personal space
unique tools for team building, and for developing cooperation and co-creativity
Specific strategies for improving reading writing, spelling, math, communication and organization skills are included. Patterns of stress and addiction are explained in terms of the brain and physiology. Tools for alleviating these stresses are included.

How is a Brain Gym consultant similar to a Tutor, physical therapist, reading specialist, speech therapist, counselor ?

Unlike a tutor, physical therapist, reading specialist, speech therapist, counselor, etc., the Brain Gym consultant does not have a preconceived expectation about what needs to be learned, or how that learning will occur. The consultant follows the learner's lead as to the unfoldment of these processes.Like the above named professionals, the Brain Gym consultant addresses the personal motivation to learn.

The Brain Gym consultant like other specialists, is concerned with the mental mechanics of learning, such as encoding, and decoding language (i.e., phonics) or writing the alphabet. Unlike other specialists, the Brain Gym consultant is primarily concerned with the physical skills of learning – the ability to use the eyes as a team, to hold the pen or otherwise coordinate eyes and hand, and to listen actively. The Brain Gym consultant does not emphasize curriculum or behavior directly. He or she looks at the individual as a whole person who, at any given moment, has untapped potential related to underdeveloped movement patterns. The emphasis is on learning readiness––accessing innate gifts and helping the learner to be comfortable and able to draw out those gifts and to match them to the physical, mental and environmental requirements of a given skill or situation.

Who started Brain Gym? When ? Why ? How ?

Paul Dennison, Ph.D., President of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation, developed the Brain Gym program over a period of 25 years work as an educational specialist. He began researching the work as founder and director of the Valley Remedial Group Learning Centers in California.

These eight learning centers offered Dennison clientele with whom he could actively explore the effects of specific movements on the ability to learn various academic skills.

During this time, he drew from a broad spectrum of innovative work in the fields of education, developmental vision, and personal development as he focused on the causes and treatment of learning disabilities. Dr. Dennison served as director of the Valley Remedial Group Learning Centers for 19 years, helping children and adults turn their learning difficulties into successful growth.

In 1980, he synthesized his work and began traveling and teaching internationally; the Edu-K, processes and applications have continued to evolve. The current Brain Gym Handbook, based on the work of Dr. Dennison and his wife, Gail, was developed in collaboration with over 29 educational kinesiologists from around the world Dr. Dennison has been an educator for all of his professional life. His work is based on an understanding of the interdependence of physical movement, language acquisition, and academic achievement. His effective and ground breaking approach to teaching grew out of his background in brain research and experimental psychology.

He received the Phi Delta Kappa award for outstanding research at the University of Southern California in 1975 and was granted a Doctorate in Education for his research in beginning reading achievement and its relationship to covert speech skills.He and his wife, Gail E. Dennison, have published fourteen books and manuals, beginning with Switching On: A Guide to Edu-Kinesthetics, published in 1980, and most recently Brain Gym for Business: Instant Brain Boosters for On-The-Job Success published in 1994 with Jerry V. Teplitz, J.D., Ph.D.

How were the Brain Gym movements developed ?
Many of the Brain Gym activities, like the Owl, the Elephant and the Alphabet 8s, were developed from Dr. Dennison's knowledge of the relationship of movement to perception, and the impact of these on fine motor and academic skills. Others were learned during his training as a marathon runner, his study of vision training, his study of Jin Shin Jitsu, (a form of accupressure), and his study of Applied Kinesiology, (taught to the public as the Touch for Health synthesis).

What is Dr. Dennison's background ?
After receiving his undergraduate education at Boston University, Dr. Dennison moved to California to teach elementary students in the Los Angeles public schools. There he assisted in the implementation of Dr. Constance Amsden's Malabar Reading Program, well known as an innovative approach to teaching reading.

Dr. Dennison established his first reading clinic in 1969. Two years later, after studying the seminal work of Dr. Samuel T. Orton in neurology and Drs. Doman and Delacto, specialists in language development he began introducing perceptual-motor training to his students. Over the next three years, he worked closely with Louis Jacques, O.D., a leading pioneer in vision training, and Samuel Herr, O.D., with whom he shared a learning center. In 1975, Dr. Dennison received the Phi Delta Kappa award from the University of Southern California for outstanding research where he earned his Ph.D. in Education with a major in Curriculum Development and a minor in Experimental Psychology. His research study, for his doctoral dissertation, focused on the relationship of covert speech (thinking skills) to the acquisition of the skills of beginning reading.

In 1976, Dennison began working closely with Chiropractor Richard Tyler and Bud Gibbs, sports kinesiologist. Dennison continued an active chiropractic and optometric referral program for students through his nine learning centers. In 1978, Dr Tyler helped him to implement a longitudinal research study at the centers to see how Dennison's specific movement interventions might affect learning (see Switching On).

In 1979, Dennison took the Touch for Health course and, modeling that workshop format, began to outline the Edu-K program. His first book, Switching On, was published in 1981. He discovered his Laterality Repatterning in 1982 and began focusing on the adult population. In 1983, he developed Educational Kinesiology: Seven Dimensions of Intelligence (previously titled the "Edu-Kinesthetics In-Depth" course). In 1984, he began working with Gail Hargrove Dennison with whom he developed other elective courses. Gail Dennison helped to systematize the Edu-K materials and developed the Creative Vision material, Vision Gym"! activities, and Visioncircles program.

What ages can use Brain Gym ?
Does it work for anybody? What about seniors? What about preschoolers?

Brain Gym is currently being used by people of all ages and in all walks of life. Although the program was originally designed for kindergarten through college level students in the classroom, it is now being used successfully with infants, pre-schoolers, adults, and seniors. The Brain Gym for Business book offers an easy guide for applying these tools in the business environment. Mental Fitness Plus for Seniors, in Australia, and other senior programs here, have shown Brain Gym's effectiveness in helping older people to enhance and retrieve physical and mental skills.

Does the use of Brain Gym promote permanent changes ?

Brain Gym promotes the ability to learn and to retain learning at a deep, whole-brained level. New learning occurs when a person is relaxed and easily able to access their sensory system for seeing and listening, and to comfortably feel and express their feelings. Learning tends to be more permanent, accessible, and applicable when a person is not tense, stressed, or frightened. As self-confidence and self-esteem increase, motivation and behavior generally improve as well

How does movement affect the brain ?
Do actual physical changes in the brain occur through the use of Brain Gym?

Yes, briefly, Brain Gym works by facilitating optimal achievement of mental potential through specific movement experiences. All acts of speech, hearing, vision, and coordination are learned through a complex repertoire of movements. Brain Gym promotes efficient communication among the many nerve cells and functional centers located throughout the brain and sensory motor system. Blocks in learning occur when the body is tense and information cannot flow freely among these centers. The Brain Gym movements stimulate this flow of information within the brain and sensory system, freeing the innate ability to learn and function at top efficiency.

What is a balance ?
Can everyone learn to do Brain Gym and balances?

A balance is a five-step learning process that models the lesson plan most often used by effective teachers. A short balance can be completed in just minutes; a longer balance may take an hour or more. A balance involves: 1. getting ready to learn, 2. setting a goal or intention, 3. pre-activities which playfully identify aspects of the learning that need more focus for integration, 4. a way to integrate the learning into physical movement (in this case, through the Brain Gym movements), and 5. post-activities to identify the new learning.

After the balance, new choices and possibilities are available to the student, and improvements are usually evident. The final, unnumbered step is to "celebrate the new learning." This is the step of play, exploration, innovation and implementation that is so essential to creative learning, yet often omitted in the classroom, where learners are pressed to begin a new task before even acknowledging the skill with which the previous one has been accomplished. Anyone who is so inclined can learn to facilitate this process for self or for others by taking a Brain Gym course. The balance process is simple, yet requires deep understanding, based on a personal experience of the physical as well as the mental and emotional components of the learning process, for skillful, non-intrusive facilitation. A current directory of certified instructors is available through the Foundation

Can you use the Brain Gym activities in your home ?
The Brain Gym activities are performed in homes around the world. Following simple instructions the safe, simple movements can be practiced in 10-15 minutes per day in the comfort of your own home.

Does a person need to do the exercises everyday in order to benefit from the program ?
Doing the Brain Gym movements everyday is fun, easy, energizing and reinforces positive movement and postural habits. Once new learning patterns are mastered, they become automatic and one no longer needs to do the movements daily in order to benefit from them, although they will still find Brain Gym helpful during times of stress.

Is Brain Gym the same as movement therapy, yoga or other exercises ?
Brain Gym is similar to, yet different from, other movement programs. Brain Gym helps to increase flexibility and coordination, as other programs do, yet it also provides specific activities to facilitate brain function for the physical skills specifically required for such activities as reading, writing, and spelling. Brain Gym is fun, easy and requires no special talents or coordination skills. Brain Gym is a good warm-up for all exercise programs.

Where is Brain Gym being used ?
The Educational Kinesiology Foundation was established in 1987 in Ventura, California, USA, as a nonprofit/educational organization. The Foundation has since trained thousands of professionals, at various levels, to facilitate the Brain Gym program worldwide. The work is being used extensively in homes, classrooms, and businesses in 36 countries including Southern Africa, Australia, Canada, Austria, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Russia, South America, Asia, and the USA. At present it is being implemented in schools in the USA after being accepted by the National Learning Foundation as an innovative approach to education for the 1990s. The Educational Kinesiology and Brain Gym books and manuals have been translated into more than 20 languages. Brain Gym was gazetted in June 1997 to be used as part of the Arts and Culture Curriculum in the new South African Curriculum.

Can Brain Gym be used in the classroom ? How ?
Brain Gym is used in classrooms around the world. The movements are often done as a whole group activity before, during, or after school. A skilled teacher can also identify individual students as candidates to benefit from specific movements. Older students can easily learn to notice times when they could benefit from the various movements.

Compared with other educational programs, how is the Brain Gym program distinctive ?
The Brain Gym program is distinctive in that it prepares learners to learn. It enhances, rather than replaces other programs or curricula.

Education of the classroom teacher in this century has been based on the premise that learning is a mental activity. The physical components of learning––the visual, auditory, fine motor, and postural skills––have been almost entirely ignored by educators. A student who has difficulty in the early grades rarely does better later on unless the physical cause of the stress is somehow addressed. Moreover, since learning is measured by results rather than process, stressful compensations are often acquired and carried throughout a learner's life.

Dr. Dennison came to the conclusion by 1975, after having tested and prescribed remedial programs for hundreds of "learning disabled" students at his learning centers, that most students experiencing difficulty in school were sufficiently intelligent for the tasks required of them. The deficits he found were in their physical/perceptual abilities, and had often plagued the child's development, uncorrected, since infancy. Spatial awareness, a concept of wholeness and closure, the ability to focus attention and perceive an organization or a structure, are requisite learning skills, easily taught yet often not available to the children who need them. He discovered that these skills depend upon an innate understanding of our bodies and how they move in space. Children only repeat those movements which are comfortable or familiar. It is as if the person considered "learning disabled" lacks permission to move in an integrated and coordinated fashion. Dr. Dennison's Brain Gym® and Repatterning procedures were developed as he explored processes to encourage his students to discover new ways to move that were more functional and coordinated.

His educational therapy builds the student's self-esteem, trusting the learner to work through mental aspects as physical blocks are released. The teacher's role becomes that of facilitator of the process of learning. The teacher models how to learn and presents the curriculum. The teacher helps the student to notice what makes learning easier or what interferes with learning. The child has control of the process by which he internalizes information

Can Brain Gym help with special needs, such as Attention Deficit Disorder, hyperactivity, brain damage, or similar challenges ?
Children with special needs and severe learning challenges benefit positively from Brain Gym, as is attested to by thousands of families using the activities. A more intensive program and a simplified or assisted application of the movements may be recommended by certified instructors specializing in this area of work.

Can the use of Brain Gym activities or balances affect health, or alleviate stress ?
Research over 30 years shows the correlation between brain organization (dominance patterns), attention deficit, allergies, and auto immune deficiency. Balance of the left and right cortical hemispheres depends on cross lateral patterning, including binocular vision, binaural hearing, and contralateral movement. Common sense tells us what research has validated: chronic one-sided behaviors (monocular vision or excessive left- or right-handedness), especially without the context of whole body movement, polarize the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system, adversely affecting learning, behavior, and immune response. Both as a result and a possible cause of these one-sided behaviors, chronic anger, frustration, and depression become part of a cycle of habituated adrenal response and the related high levels of cortisol in the blood.

What is Edu-K's Relationship to other Systems of Education and Kinesiology ?
Educational Kinesiology is based on a unique integration of learning process with kinesiology, the study of muscles and their movements. The intention of the Edu-K work is to invite the emergence of latent potential through the vehicle of the body––the repository of thoughts, feelings, and movement patterns. The Edu-K processes offer a structure for the continuous interweaving of thinking, feeling, and sensation––the integration of mental and physical functions. Edu-K enhances, rather than replacing, other educational and kinesiological approaches to growth and development.

Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a distinct work used by chiropractors, similar to Edu-K in its study of muscles and use of muscle-checking or muscle-testing, and yet different from Edu-K. AK is based on processes of "muscle-testing" that isolate the response of individual muscles in the body. Edu-K is oriented to goals, and to daily life function and performance, rather than to a medical or mechanistic model of the body. AK includes a set of specific tests and related corrections to restore balance in a therapeutic model, and uses test responses to make an evaluation of physiological health. One-to-one correspondence is frequently used between muscle "weakness" and organ or system function. The chiropractor corrects imbalances using spinal or other muscular, cranial, or lymphatic manipulation and/or by offering nutritional support.

In Edu-K, the body is seen in terms of the situational or environmental context of the individual's moment-to-moment needs, motivations, and interrelationships. The individual does not need to change, as they are in a growth process. He or she is fine just as they are. Presenting challenges or behaviors are valid just as they are. New learning is possible as a sense of objectivity and choice develops around old patterns. Muscle-checking is used primarily to anchor their new learning. The Edu-K process offers a multidimensional approach to balance emphasizing the learner's discovery of movement patterns that release physical, mental, or emotional holding, making latent potentials more available.

What is the International Educational Kinesiology Foundation ?
The Educational Kinesiology Foundation was founded in 1987. The Dennisons, along with a group of educators who had experienced the Edu-K process, envisioned together how Edu-K might bring wholeness and ease to the educational system, as well as to other facets of life. These people were eager to explore ways of working with learners that would respect and nurture individual differences, value cooperation, and conserve wholeness. They agreed to develop Edu-K around the concept of "drawing out" the unique potential of an individual, rather than "stamping in," intruding, or filling the mind with "information for its own sake."

The Edu-K process continues to evolve around the concept of creating safety and trusting the learner's unique learning style to emerge as the Brain Gym movements and balances set him free. The Dennisons, the Board of Directors, and the International Faculty Members, together with the Edu-K network, hold an ongoing intent to refine the Edu-K materials and language to keep the Edu-K system inviting and non-intrusive.

The Board persists in exploring the make-up and possibility of an organization based on interdependence, decentralization, diversity, and an openness to new possibilities. Edu-K continues to evolve its processes, language, course materials, and organization around these principles.

What is the South African Educational Kinesiology Foundation ?
This Foundation was founded in 1994 to further the aims of the International Foundation in Southern Africa. All instructors and practitioners of Edu-K are licenced through this Foundation to practice Edu-K in Southern Africa. Qualifications are internationally recognised. Registration is through the State of Southern California. For futher information, see the Practitioner section under Educational Kinesiology.