COMING SOON…WHAT IS NEURODEVELOPMENTAL MOVEMENT?
“NeuroDevelopmental Movement® (NDM®) is an approach to behavioral, academic, psychological, social, and physical challenges of both children and adults with any form or degree of injury or delay in the central nervous system. NDM is fully informed by and takes all of its powerful tools for change from the model for natural growth called the Developmental Sequence.
The Developmental Sequence is the hierarchy of physical activities through which every human being moves. From pre-natal activities up through cross pattern walking, all humans are genetically programmed to move through an ascending hierarchy of functional movements each, of which stimulates the next phase of growth. Each layer of development is built on the layer of growth that occurred prior, so it is critical that each stage is fulfilled in a timely manner. This hierarchy of movements is responsible for our anatomical and neurological health. By replicating the Developmental Sequence through a program of NeuroDevelopmental Movement, we are able to create a healthy physical body and nervous system.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® is the specific approach that meets the needs of this child or adult in the most comprehensive way available because it follows the Developmental Sequence. Through its neuro-motor and sensory programs, NDM completes and fills in gaps in development, allowing the client to move forward in their anatomical and neurological growth.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® is a movement and sensory-based, drug-free approach to addressing the challenges of a disorganized or injured brain. Brains can become dysfunctional with a patchy or spotty distribution of challenges that often stand out against a pattern of largely normal neurodevelopmental skills. They may present themselves against a background of good intelligence, while behavior can be extreme and unmanageable. Some children have pervasive neurodevelopmental challenges that impact all areas of their functioning, and in more extreme cases, children are globally delayed, or brain injured.
More commonly, however, children can have a wide range of less extreme, but still highly challenging diagnoses, including most of the “alphabet” diagnoses: RAD, ODD, OCD, ADD, ADHD, FASD, CP, Tourette’s, Autism Spectrum, etc. All of these diagnoses are on a continuum of a damaged or under-developed brain.
The brain itself is the central problem, and when you have a central problem, you can logically posit a central solution. Thus, when you treat the central organism, the brain itself, you can go a long way toward recovery.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® addresses these issues by evaluating skills at different developmental levels, and considers reflexes, movement, and sensory development. If there are gaps at any level, work is begun at the lowest level to enhance functionality and complete the required developmental task, by replicating the activities that a neurologically typical child instinctively utilizes to integrate the brain.
The tools that are naturally provided to integrate the infant brain are the most effective way to integrate a brain that is missing some of those functions that lead to the above diagnoses.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® will assess a child and provide a program of activities that should take about an hour a day. These activities will replicate any missing stages and will include reflex, motor, and sensory activities. NeuroDevelopmental Movement® provides the client with one of the most comprehensive, effective, and natural approaches to these challenging issues.
Traditionally, the prevailing approaches in our culture respond to challenging children with one or both of two solutions, either: 1) Change or modify the behavior directly through behavioral programs or coaching—including social behavior, academic behavior, and physical behavior; or, 2) Medicate.
We are given primarily these modalities, but with the ever-increasing level of dysfunction in our children, we must look beyond the two approaches that have been tried for an extended period of time with no resolution of the bigger trends in the culture, We challenge all of our clients to look beyond interventions that have failed to heal the current problems in childhood mental and physical health, and look to the central solution which, on examination, is the most logical and effective approach. Treat the brain itself with what the brain naturally needs.
NeuroDevelopmental Movement® discards the behavior and/or medication model and focuses on the problems underlying the neurological dysfunction. The central problem is met with a central solution.” – Bette Lamont