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I was learning the new discoveries of brain development, the very foundations of intelligence. I had... mistakenly believed that the body was somehow inferior to the mind. Using Greenspan's developmental approach, I quickly understood that the brain depends on the body for its breadth of knowledge. By moving through space, we integrate with the world. Movement stimulates brain function. Time and again, Arlene (her son's OT) went straight to the body and its movements to help stimulate the nerve impulses that build mental pathways." This passage from Patricia Stacey's book,
the boy who loved windows, describes very well the concept that by impacting the body through IM, you are also impacting the mind. She refers to Dr. Stanley Greenspan's floortime intervention that she used for her son's sensory integration issues. Dr. Stanley Greenspan wrote an
article about Rhythm and Timing in the Early Childhood Today magazine a few years ago and discussed what was then some new Interactive Metronome research. Check it out.
Here's a quote from Dr. Greenspan about IM.
"The Interactive Metronome provides a long needed and important educational and learning approach to improve a number of critical foundations in the learning process."Stanley L. Greenspan, MD
leading child psychiatrist
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If you want to improve one system, go in through another," he (Greenspan) said, "If you want Walker (Patricia Stacey's little boy) to learn a word, you must use the body to teach it." "Remember" he said, "it's by moving that we come to understand space. You understand concepts by looking and doing at the same time, not by reading." pg. 214 of
the boy who loved windows
