Reflexes 1: Emergence, Development, Integration
This Reflex series is based upon, “Reflexes: The Rosetta Stone of Children’s Movement” –part of the ECMMA 2012 Virtual Convention coming soon to a computer near you! For a live version, on October 13th I’ll be presenting “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Integrate a Reflex” at the Children’s Music Network International Conference in the Midwest.
My breakout session at the ECMMA 2012 Convention was entitled “Reflexes: The Rosetta Stone of Children’s Movement.” Working with reflexes is about decoding a language, yes. But more and more in my clinical work, I find that once we translate those reflex movements, they point us toward trauma. Maybe my talk should have been retitled: “Reflexes: The Thermometer of Children’s Movement!”
Why is this? What could be more natural than the movements we gestate with, are born with, creep and crawl and toddle with? Why does this reflex language talk to us about bumps and bruises, allergens and toxins, anxieties and fears?
I think it is because, in the absence of trauma, we don’t need to decode the reflexes at all! When the electricity is working fine, we don’t need to go down to the basement and tinker with the circuit box.
Imagine reflex development as a wave form. The reflex emerges at the lowest point, and becomes more and more active as it rises. When it reaches its peak, all the movement information that the reflex contains is present. As the waveform descends in the other direction towards completion, the activity of development shifts to the activity of integration.
As reflexes emerge and develop, they present us with new movement information. For example, as babies, we turn our heads to the side. Then we find that we have these interesting things (hands) to look at because (unbeknownst to us) our shoulder and arm have turned, too. And our leg has stretched out on the same side, as well! After awhile, as we “practice,” the opposite side of our body becomes involved, curling over to meet the object of our attention, until one day – bingo! we turn over!
If we were to graph this little movement story as a wave form labeled the Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR), we would be traveling up, up, up the left side of the wave from emergence to development.
What happens when we slide down the right side of the wave toward integration? Reflexes are movement information that originates in the back parts of the brain. As we “practice” these movements, in the normal course of life, they start to get us what we want. They connect us with things and people. We start to realize that those little wavy things we are looking at are part of us! We find that we can use them to grab things and bring them to our mouths. As we expand our movement repertoire, we have choices about our movements; we can create our own combinations. We are no longer restricted to the paint-by-number cards we were given at conception.
The way the reflexes integrate – or fail to integrate – literally wires our brains. When development happens normally, neural pathways are created and myelinated between the lower and higher centers of the brain. When development is interrupted by trauma, these more complex pathways are either (usually temporarily) severed – or they just do not develop at all. So we get stuck in a reflexive loop. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to change our thoughts and behaviors. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day – every morning we wake up, it’s still February 2nd.
Reflex development can get “stuck” at any point along the wave form. If the trauma is profound, sometimes the reflex becomes totally inactive – it “disappears” to some point to the left of emergence and doesn’t even register on the graph. This can register as lack of muscle tone or emotional affect. Or we may not be able to find it at all without digging – inactive reflexes often show up as a smoke-screen of seemingly unrelated symptoms.
The reflex can get stuck at the peak of development. For example, the child who is reactive all the time – is probably stuck at the peak of the Moro Reflex (fight or flight response). We’ve all experiencedthe child who seems to get set off by almost nothing, and is very difficult to calm – because this child who doesn’t seem to like being calm!
Sometimes the reflex gets stuck close to the integration point – which can be the feeling of things being almost OK, but never quite all the way. There’s always a little anxiety lurking below. Or a coordination which may improve - like handwriting or understanding of a math concept - but won’t progress beyond a certain point.
The good news is, we have some operating instructions. We can do a lot to release trauma, and to help get development back on a normal path. More on that in the next post.
I credit the wave form image to Claire Hocking, a Brain Gym (R) Consultant in Australia who continues to do pioneering work in reflex integration.
Riyah Sep 16, 2012
I remember from the time I was quite young seneig films from places like Russia where babies were birthed in water and or placed into water right after birth and they were SOOOO happy and just swimming with ease, flow and relaxed comfort. We can forget that we arrive and gestate as water babies and that the water world is very, very much a part of whom we are.. And of course we are made of 90 to 94 percent water ourselves. Viva Aqua!