Reflexes 2: The Bricks at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Now you can watch Reflexes: The Rosetta Stone of Children’s Development in the ECMMA 2012 virtual convention! For a live experience, come integrate some reflexes with me at the Children’s Music Network International Gathering on October 13th.

Last week, a mother told me that immediately after the first reflex integration session, her two year-old had stopped biting her brother. She said that, in all her professional life in psychology, she had never seen any modality work so effectively. Another mom called me to say that after the first session, her restless nine year-old started to fall asleep at night in only ten minutes. After one more session, she noticed that the child was suddenly able to add three digit numbers easily. Up until then, the child had struggled with two digit addition problems.

“I expected things to work – in due time,” she said. “But this is so fast!”

The morning after my breakout session for the ECMMA 2012 Conference, a woman came up to me and said, “I went back to my room and cried for half an hour. Now, an issue that I have been working on for twenty years is just gone. I’m free!”

How can reflex integration work so profoundly and so quickly on some of our deepest, most longstanding problems?

Imagine human development as a pyramid. The bricks at the bottom are the foundation for everything that is built on top of them. The strength of that foundation determines the stability of the structure.

My guess is that the very bottom row of bricks is chemistry, genetics, and so forth – the elements of what becomes the physical body.

But in order for these molecules to do anything, they need to move. The next row of developmental bricks are probably the primitive reflexes, emerging at the very beginnings of our lives. For example, the Touch Reflex appears at only one week in utero! This first impulse of the tiny embryo is to recoil from contact. After a week, under normal circumstances, the embryo no longer avoids contact with the uterine wall. For a developing human being, dependent upon the mother’s touch, this is an important survival mechanism. Touch – and the move toward relationship that touch develops - goes on to fuel all human contact, with mother, family, neighborhood, and eventually, society.

If the impulse to recoil from touch remains strong – which can occur under traumatic circumstances - normal development is impossible. This “brick” in the foundation of the pyramid is missing; there is a fundamental instability upon the base of the child’s developmental processes.

Infant reflexes are pre-programmed. As specific as chemical compounds, they follow the same movement code in every human being. Our repertoire of reflexive movements is large, because, as babies, we must move in many different ways to perform many kinds of tasks.

Because these primitive reflexes emerge in a progressive order, each new one is built upon the backs of the ones that emerged before them. The new reflex is programmed with the assumption that its predecessors have reached their normal level of development. This means that the incoming reflex does not arrive with its own set of pots and pans - it expects the developmental kitchen to be already equipped. So if information from the Touch Reflex – or the Fear Paralysis Reflex, or any other reflex – is missing; no subsequent reflex can develop to completion, or integrate.

The repercussions of this are enormous. When bricks are missing at the foundational level, the whole structure of our development is less stable. We can get along – sometimes so well that no one would ever know – but we are, at bottom, compensating.

And sometimes, we aren’t getting along very well. Those are usually the kids that show up in my office.

Because these missing bricks come so early in the developmental process, the instability can manifest in literally any way. Behavior. Cognition. Coordination. Emotional triggers. Immune disorders. Most of the acronyms. Sensory processing issues all come along with a reflex integration deficit.

But there is good news. Because the reflexes are so specific, instinctual, and universal, our systems know and recognize them. Once the missing bricks are found, we can replace them. Reflexes – like bricks – come in standard sizes.

Many of empty spaces in the foundation are not hard to find – they are the places we feel afraid, insecure, angry, hurt, confused, clumsy, or just not good enough. Sometimes they signal obvious traumatic events – birth injuries, falls, abuse, toxic reactions, family (especially maternal) stress.

Sometimes a big injury is buried under a lot of smaller ones. Sometimes, the missing reflex creates obvious dysfunction, and integrating it helps bring us to a more normal level of competency. If our compensations are working, and we handle our tasks with competence, reflex integration can enhance our performance – we can suddenly run faster, jump higher, play faster. Reflex integration movements can give an edge to athletes, musicians, students of all kinds – to anyone, in any field, who works toward excellence.

Sometimes simply doing the reflex integration movements is enough. I created Rappin’ on the Reflexes so that any parent or teacher or practitioner could do reflex integration with children, even in a group setting, a minute or two at a time. And even if this amount of integration is not enough, it helps. Sometimes it helps a lot.

Then there are the times when we require something a little more than just the obvious movements. A good cry. A walk around the lake. A phone call to a loved one. A game of catch. 

Sometimes a lot of practice is necessary before the benefits of the integration can be maintained in every day life. Sometimes the brick goes back into place immediately and nothing need ever be done again. Finding the individual ways to creatively negotiate our basic human template is what keeps life – and my work – interesting. And endlessly rewarding.

For reflections on the Touch Reflex, read my article Peter Pan, Infant Reflexes and the Sense of Touch, published in Lilipoh, winter 2008.