Emotion to Motion

As this course has evolved it now includes a strong integrating component called oral core. This portion of the course proves powerful for tapping into the breath and oral area with the emotion of autonomy (will or intention). It involves reaching with eyes, ears, mouth, head, neck, and torso. The mouth and core of the body move as a team initiated by basic human intention. By devising games (activities) using an oral grasp and reach approach, the child can connect with powerful neurological pathways and begin integrating skills through patterns of infancy that are presented in the games. Learners will have the opportunity to experience the process in labs.

The games were created to provide functional and age appropriate ways to organize the breath, torso, hyoid, tongue, lips, cheeks, eyes, hands around the original center - the mouth.  Regulation, autonomy, power, determination, rhythm, grading, discrimination, direction sense, praxis, and sustained attention have an opportunity to develop into a more mature state.

Reflexes of the motor, tactile, oral, ocular systems are developing simultaneously.  These activities are created to move a child through them by keeping the mouth the leading appendage of the body and playing between the expression of the reflex patterns to accomplish a goal.

The games were set up with an element of repetition to provide the practice a body needs to establish or re-establish the basic wiring of the breath, eyes, mouth, hand with the sensory systems for discrimination and praxis. The use of all systems can be expanded or shrunk to best meet the child’s “just right” challenge.  

Oral motor programs to reduce defensiveness and develop control are used with these activities if needed and some children may require that type of program prior to working with these games. Clinical reasoning on the practitioner’s part will be needed to further modify these for each child.