ABM and NeuroMovement on CBC

Anat Baniel Method Workshops

The mats are waiting for you in Sorrento!!

"Phenomenal!"

"Relaxing but intense" 

These are just some of the words that participants used to describe their experience at my ABM workshop in Coquitlam BC 10 days ago. 18 students spent the evening of Friday and all-day Saturday immersed in the Anat Baniel Method.  Participants came from all walks of life- some severely affected by accidents and/or surgery, some suffering from painful chronic conditions, some interested in helping their own children overcome limitations, some seeking a transformation in their understanding of self. They were not disappointed!

Lectures about how the ABM 9 essentials are critical to making brain changes coupled with participation in Transformational Movement Lessons ennabled participants to wake up brains and bodies alike. 

Several of the participants mentioned that their favourite part of the workshop was the guided hands-on portion. Divided into pairs I carefully instructed the participants on how to observe their partner, how to touch in a way that was safe and subtle, and how to help their partner to feel more of their self. They were able to experience how powerful very gentle touch is and also how "being with" another person, can be transformational for both the giver and the receiver.

One participant described his ABM workshop experience as “a profoundly mystical journey into the connection between body and mind.” Others found their pain and limitation melting away. All had a new appreciation for the power of our amazing brains.

I invite you to experience for yourself the power of the Anat Baniel Method. I am teaching a 5 day course (mornings) at the Sorrento Centre in Sorrento BC. July 27- August 2, 2014. 

Move Into Life with the Anat Baniel Method!

 

I must end by saying a big thank you to my amazing colleague and fellow ABM practitioner Hilary Mason who supported my teaching and assisted those participants who needed a little extra help. Thank you!!!

Comparing modalities- Anat Baniel Method and Physical Therapy

Here is a great comparison of Anat Baniel Method and Physical Therapy with Carla Reed. She is one of the senior ABM Trainers who is a trained Physical Therapist.

Thanks to Johannes at The Scandinavian Center of Neuro-movement for making this available on YouTube.

Bone Deep Strength

A great 7 minutes explaining of some of the issues surrounding skeletal health vs modern concepts of fitness. I highly recommend this to you.

Move Into Life quote #1

There is extraordinary power in our observational abilities. Observing a thought, action, or feeling in ourselves creates new levels of organization and information in our brains. This not only allows the brain to create something new, but also prompts it to do so, and the end result is often transformational. —Anat Baniel

Going Slowly

See what we can learn from going slow. Notice the majestic movement of the fastest animal on the planet. What would you notice about your majestic self if you moved more slowly?

Neuroplasticity

Here is a wonderful, short explanation of some principles of Brain Plasticity. Anat Baniel Method is the practical application of Brain Plasticity!
We use MOVEMENT (which is the language of the brain) and the ABM 9 ESSENTIALS to make changes in our neuro-pathways.

Right Brain/Left Brain

Try this simple test to see which side of your brain you are using! I keep switching from one to the other. This doesn't really have much to do with ABM specifically but it is fun! :)

Scoliosis

Anat Baniel's Article about Scoliosis from her blog post on the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anat-baniel/scoliosis_b_3516736.html)

Scoliosis: Go With the Curve -- How You Can Increase Your Flexibility and Strength and Reduce Pain Through Brain Change

Posted: 07/01/2013 4:01 pm

Saturday, June 29, 2013, was the first International Scoliosis Awareness Day. It's a day to "create positive, public awareness about scoliosis, promote education, advocacy campaigns, and bring people together with the condition." In honor of this day, I'd like to share with you new possibilities for breakthrough improvements in mobility, strength, balance, breathing and pain relief for people with scoliosis that are based in the capacity of the brain to change itself and create new patterns and freedom of movement despite the curvature.
You don't need a straight spine to have a healthy, flexible and powerful back.
A healthy spine can move in all directions: It can twist, bend forward, backward and sideways and any combination of these four directions. When in action, the spine repeatedly twists and curves, moving in and out of the midline. With scoliosis, the spine has some degree of fixed curvature and as a result never moves fully back to the midline.
It is natural to want to straighten the spine. Many techniques, from exercise to braces and even surgery, attempt to reduce the curvature as much as possible, often with limited success. However, you do not need to have a straight spine to have a functionally healthy spine, in my opinion. What you need is the ability to move your spine in all directions with ease and dexterity. And that is possible to achieve, I believe, also when there is scoliosis.
The Brain Organizes All Movement
If we only focus on the structural aspect of scoliosis, we have no choice but to try and "fix" the structure and have it define what we can or cannot do. However, the moment we realize that it is the brain that organizes all movement, that it is an information system and that the brain can change itself throughout life, we can look to provide the brain with new and relevant information with which to form new connections and patterns and create exciting new possibilities for us. In other words, the structural limitations needn't create nearly the typical functional challenges that many of those suffering from scoliosis experience, in my opinion.
Five Ways To Inform Your Brain and Increase Your Mobility and Well-Being
Before doing the suggested movement exercises below, make sure to get the approval of your health care provider. Make sure to do the movements slowly and gently, no more than 10-20 minutes twice a day. If you experience pain doing any of the movements, stop doing that movement.

1. Move your spine in all directions: Rather than focusing on trying to have a straight or a straighter spine, instead focus on moving your back in many different directions in space. It's important you do small and very gentle movements for effective and rapid brain change. You can use your imagination to visualize the movement if trying to do it is presently difficult.
2. Go with the curve: For a curve to form in the spine, the muscles on one side of the spine need to continuously contract more powerfully than on the other side. Many try to stretch the spine, but that only pulls on the short muscles, which in turn gets them to contract even more due to the stretch reflex. I feel it is your brain that needs to tell these muscles to let go. To help the brain feel the imbalance, instead of trying to "fight" what its doing, gently move your spine more in the direction of your curvature, e.g., gently increase the curvature -- yes you read this right. Then gently and slowly let go and see whether your spine, spontaneously, feels the sensation of growing longer.
3. Twist, don't straighten, your spine: If you had a chain lying on the ground in an S shape and you gently and gradually twisted the two ends in opposite directions, after a while that chain would begin to straighten. You can do the same with your spine. Preferably while lying down on your comfortable side, but also in sitting or even in standing, gently twist your back and spine in the direction that is the easier one for you, then come back. After you repeat this movement a few times, notice whether your back begins to move more easily and your spine feels it is getting longer. (How much depends on already existing structural changes.)
4. From asymmetry to symmetry: To help correct asymmetry, it's important you do your exercises asymmetrically. This helps your brain (i.e., you) feel when you are off the midline and self correct. First do the movements on the side and to the direction that is easier and don't do the other side right away. It might feel a bit strange in the beginning, but after a while you may start noticing increased mobility and comfort in your back and your whole body that might surprise you.
5. Your back is not alone: Your brain organizes your whole body -- your muscles, joints and skeleton -- to function successfully with the curved spine the way it is. In order to improve the mobility in your spine and maintain the improvements, its important that you also focus on, and move in new way,s not just your back, but also your legs, arms, head, and pelvis.

To find out why it's important to move gently and slowly to induce positive brain/body change, you can read about the Nine Essentials.
To learn more about the NeuroMovement approach of the Anat Baniel Method you can go to: www.anatbanielmethod.com, read the article "Movement and Learning Based-Approach to Working with Scoliosis."

Anat Baniel on Why Not Tummy Time

http://www.anatbanielmethod.com/why-not-tummy-time

HuffPost fitness article # 4 by Anat Baniel

The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 4 -- The Flat Stomach Myth

We are continuing our series on why it's so hard to follow through on New Year's fitness resolutions. (Can you believe it is already end of February?!) In previous posts, we introduced the "Training Your Muscles," "No Pain, No Gain," and "Stretching" myths. This week, we'll discuss the "Flat Stomach" myth.
Perhaps you are one of many people who do sit-ups, crunches, or other exercises to get a "flat stomach,"or what is often referred to a "strong core." I applaud your goals. I'm all for being attractive, pain-free, and strong.
However, from what I know about the brain and how it organizes muscles into successful action and high-level performance, the idea of chronically contracted stomach muscles as the way to be strong and lead a potent life is fundamentally wrong. Many have bought into the myth of the "flat stomach." In my workshops when I first let people know that they might want to free their abdomen, there is a gasp in the room. However, this myth is likely undermining your athletic performance, increasing your likelihood of injury, and aging you prematurely.
The Myth of the Flat Stomach
What is a strong muscle? It is a muscle that has the ability to contract and de-contract, move you and do the greatest amount of work it can. A muscle that is already contracted (e.g., flat stomach) can no longer do powerful work.
Making things even worse, muscles work in a synergetic fashion with what is called their "antagonistic" muscles. The brain orchestrates this organization of muscular activity. The "antagonists" to the belly muscles are the back muscles. When your abdominals are chronically contracted, your back muscles cannot work to their fullest capacity; and it is primarily your back muscles that are engaged in the powerful movements of your body, such as jumping, punching, serving a tennis ball, and in keeping you upright.
Try This: Sit in a chair with your arms on your knees. Slowly lift your right arm up in front of you. Put your arm back down. Now suck in your belly really hard and keep it pulled in; and in this position try to lift your right arm up again and see what happens. Of course, it is much harder, because your back muscles that need to get into action when you lift your arm are stopped by your brain.
I fully agree that strong abdominals are very useful and important to have. But this is not the full story. The most powerful muscles of our body are all the muscles that are attached to the pelvis, what I call the "power center." And what makes us strong is a strong brain that has figured out which of these muscles to contract for which movement and when to let go.
When you tighten your belly, you not only weaken yourself, but you also lose flexibility, restrict your breathing, lose vitality, and accelerate aging.
The Story of Mike
I worked with a young baseball player, Mike (not his real name). He had a great physique and was a tremendous batter with a multimillion-dollar major league contract. He came to me to get relief from chronic right shoulder and lower back pain.
When he came into my office, I immediately saw that his abdominal muscles were powerfully contracted no matter what movement he did. That was a problem, because when he lifted his right arm up to swing a bat, his back muscles weren't available to participate in the movement as needed. As a result, he overused his shoulder muscles and his back became disorganized and painful. Mike badly needed to learn to let go of his flat stomach.
I asked him what, besides practicing baseball, was his fitness regime. His answer was sit-ups; he did hundreds a day. This alone can dumb down any brain. This incredibly capable, talented athlete was undermining himself without knowing. So much so that I discovered that he already had surgery on his right shoulder.
Initially he was resistant to learning to free his abdomen -- he had a deeply-ingrained belief that it was his flat stomach that made him powerful. But once he agreed to give it a try, his shoulder pain and the discomfort and rigidity he felt in his lower back disappeared, and he was able to hit the ball with more power and better precision.
Use Your Brain to Synchronize Your Muscles
How can you synchronize your stomach and back muscles to perform optimally? The Anat Baniel Method has defined the "Nine Essentials" to communicate with your brain and provide it with the information it needs for creating well-organized movement. In this blog I would like to introduce you to our next "essential."
The Flexible Goals Essential
There is no way to know in advance the path that will lead you to achieving your goal. Know your goal and at the same time free yourself from the compulsion to achieve your goal in a certain way. By truly embracing all the expected and unexpected steps and missteps, you will create a rich source of valuable information for your brain to lead you to your goal, including successfully achieving your fitness goals.
Try these 10-minute video movement lessons to experience the "flexible goals" essential and discover how to move both your belly and your back in free and harmonious ways that will make your stronger, energize you, reduce pain and injury, and reawaken your vitality.
Also use all of the "essentials" we introduced in our previous blogs while exercising, and you will find yourself doing things you never thought possible, along with strengthening your power center in the most efficient and pain-free ways. Give it a try and let us know what happens.
Watch for our final post in this series: "Fitness Myth 5: Practice, Practice, Practice."
Learn more about the Anat Baniel Method.
For more by Anat Baniel, click here.
For more on fitness and exercise, click here.

Related Resources and Research:
Baniel A. 2009. Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. New York: Harmony Books
"Core stability exercises (are) not superior to conventional physiotherapy exercises in terms of reducing pain and disability" Muthukrishnan R, Shenoy SD, Jaspal SS, Nellikunja S, Fernandes S. "The differential effects of core stabilization exercise regime and conventional physiotherapy regime on postural control parameters during perturbation in patients with movement and control impairment chronic low back pain."Sports Medicine Arthroscopy Rehabilitation Therapy and Technology. 2010 May 31;2:13.
"Despite the large variety of treatments which have been evaluated through randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses, the effect sizes are often small, even for commonly used treatments such as exercise for chronic low back pain." Hayden JA, van Tulder MW, Malmivaara AV, Koes BW: "Meta-analysis: exercise therapy for nonspecific low back pain." Annals of Internal Medicine 2005, 142(9):765-775.
The brain has the ability to figure itself out: The brain is the ultimate self-organizing system. Thompson E, Varela FJ. 2001. "Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and consciousness." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5: 418- 25. Lewis MD, Todd RM. 2005. "Getting emotional-- A neural perspective on emotion, intention and consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 12(8- 10): 213- 38.
What we know from the science of neuroplasticity: "[T]he realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers . . . to change its structure and function in response to experience": Begley S. 2007. "How the brain rewires itself." Time, January 19. See also Doidge N. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself. New York: Viking.
Research shows that movement done automatically creates little or no new connections in the brain: "[T]he variable determining whether or not the brain changes is . . . the attentional state of the animal." Schwartz J, Begley S. 2002, rpnt 2003. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York: HarperCollins. Recanzone G. H, Merzenich MM, Jenkins WM, et al. 1992. "Topographic reorganization of the hand representation in cortical area 3b of owl monkeys trained in a frequency discrimination task." Journal of Neurophysiology 67: 1031-56. Nudo RJ, Milliken GW, Jenkins WM, Merzenich MM. 1996. "Use-dependent alterations of movement representations in primary motor cortex of adult squirrel monkeys." Journal of Neuroscience 16: 785- 807. Doidge N. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself. New York: Viking/ Penguin.

Anat's 3rd Fitness Article

The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 3 -- The Stretching Myth

We are continuing our series on why so many people sincerely commit to fitness resolutions each new year and then, in the coming weeks or months, end up either not fulfilling their fitness goals or quitting completely.
Last week, we introduced the "No Pain, No Gain" myth. This week we are going to talk about the "Stretching" myth.
So, why do we feel the need to stretch? We may feel restricted in our movements and that our muscles are too short. We often stretch in an attempt to make these muscles get longer.
We have also been told that stretching is good for us, that it is necessary to stretch before we run or do any kind of rigorous exercise in order to avoid injury. We stretch in an attempt to increase our flexibility and move better, all highly valid goals. Stretching is everywhere. It is used in yoga, Pilates, sports and dance training, and aerobics. Stretching is also an important part of physical therapy, where it is applied after injury and surgery.
Fitness Myth 3: The Stretching Myth
There is no question that when muscles are chronically contracted, it limits our ability to move freely and powerfully, and increases the chances of injury. However, is "the way" that most people stretch the solution? The answer is "no." This answer becomes obvious when we look closer at how muscles work and what makes them too short in the first place.
Muscles can only do one of two things: contract or let go. When a muscle contracts, it moves us in space. Once the movement is completed, the muscle lets go and relaxes so that it is ready to contract again when needed. A chronically contracted muscle stops being useful to us, and actually interferes with our freedom to move and be powerful.
When we try to force a muscle to relax by stretching it, we are applying force against an actively contracted muscle. Unbeknownst to us, we activate the "stretch reflex," a built-in mechanism to prevent muscles from being torn. There are muscle spindles (sensory receptors that detect stretching) that get activated when force is applied to the muscles and actually tell them to contract further, in order to protect those muscles from injury.
(There is a growing body of research that shows that stretching can actually impair performance and cause injury. See the resources, research, and links at the end of this post.)
So what can we do when we have chronically short muscles -- for example, our hamstrings or our lower back muscles?
Increase Flexibility Through Brain Change
It is our brain that tells our muscles what to do. Muscles don't have a say in how long or short they are going to be. So when a muscle is too short, we need to change the brain patterns that are telling our muscles to do so.
As described in my first post, "The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 1," we need to provide the brain with new information with which it can create new patterns that allow the short muscles to lengthen when necessary and create a better organized movement altogether. Without exception, when movement is well organized, our strength and flexibility increase; we prevent injury and we become more fit.
The Anat Baniel Method has defined the "Nine Essentials" to communicate with your brain and provide it with the information it needs to create these improved new connections and patterns. In this blog post, we will show you how you can use some of the essentials to help you get great outcomes from your stretching routine.
In our previous blog posts, we discussed three "essentials": movement with attention, the slow essential, and the subtlety essential. Today we are introducing the "variation essential," which will further wake up your brain and flood it with new experiences and information to give you more of the flexibility you want and help "warm up" your muscles in preparation for your fitness routine.
Brain research has shown that introducing variations to any movement you do rapidly increases the number of synapses in the brain associated with that movement. As a result, new possibilities open up for the body to move in a more flexible and harmonious way that also feels a lot better.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Stretching Routine
To get the best outcomes from your stretching routine, in terms of increased flexibility and prevention of injury (muscle warm-up), it is perfectly fine to keep the routine you have, just apply the four "essentials" presented above:

1. Whatever stretching movement you do, make sure to first do it a number of times very slowly and don't go as far as you can. Remember, you do not want to activate the stretch reflex which will shorten the muscles involved.
2. Make sure that as you do the movement, you pay close attention to what you feel as you move.
3. Reduce the force with which you do the stretching movement. Go only as far as you are comfortable at any given moment. I know that it is counterintuitive, but combined with your attention to your movement, your brain will be figuring out alternative ways for you to move so that you can safely go further, i.e., become more flexible.
4. Introduce variations to the stretching movements that you do. So, for example, if you are reaching for your toes with your hands to try and lengthen the hamstrings, you can turn your head one way as you do it, then the other way; then move your hands to the left of your feet, then to the right of your feet; do the movement with your belly pulled in, then with your belly pushed out, etc.

Be playful and let your imagination blossom. Not only will you find yourself quickly becoming more flexible, but by connecting your brain to your muscles this way, your brain is getting ready to move you in powerful, effective, and safe ways; in other words, you become more fit.
Try these two short video movement lessons to experience the "variation essential." Discover how quickly your brain can change old habits, free your muscles to be both flexible and powerful, and also reduce pain and prevent injury.
If you regularly apply these essentials as you do your stretching routine, it will become second nature to you, your stretching will become effective, and you will avoid the potential negative impact of forceful, fast, and automatic ways of stretching.
We'd love to hear how these essentials work for you. Give them a try and let us know what happens.
And be sure to watch for the next blog post: "Fitness Myth 4 -- The Flat Stomach Myth."
Learn more about the Anat Baniel Method.
Related Resources and Research:
Baniel A. 2009. Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. New York: Harmony Books
Black JE, Isaacs KR, Anderson BJ, et al. 1990. "Learning causes synaptogenesis, whereas motor activity causes angiogenesis, in cerebellar cortex of adult rats." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 87: 5568- 72.
Bradley PS, Olsen PD, Portas MD. "The effect of static, ballistic, and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching on vertical jump performance." J Strength Cond Res. 2007 Feb;21(1):223-6.
Dreifus L. 2003. "Commentary: Facts, myths and fallacies of stretching." Journal of Chiropractic Medicine 2(2): 75-77.
"Human Race." Runner's World. May 2009, p66.
Nicol C., Komi P. V., Horita T., Kyrolainen H., Takala T. E. S., "Reduced stretch-reflex sensitivity after exhausting stretch-shortening cycle exercise." European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology. 1996, vol. 72, no5-6, pp. 401-409.
Reynolds, Gretchen. "Phys Ed: How Necessary Is Stretching?" New York Times Well Blog, Nov 25, 2009.
Reynolds, Gretchen. "To Stretch or Not to Stretch." New York Times Well Blog, June 22, 2011.
Samuel MN, Holcomb WR, Guadagnoli MA, Rubley MD, Wallmann H. "Acute effects of static and ballistic stretching on measures of strength and power." J Strength Cond Res. 2008 Sep;22(5):1422-8.
Shrier I. "Does stretching improve performance? A systematic and critical review of the literature." Clin J Sport Med. 2004 Sep;14(5):267-73.

For more by Anat Baniel, click here.
For more on fitness and exercise, click here.

Anat's 2nd fitness article published by the Huffington Post

The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 2 -- No Pain, No Gain

We are continuing our series on why so many people who sincerely, with all their hearts, resolve to turn 2013 into the year where they get fit, just to once again realize in June or September that they didn't do it.
Last week, we introduced the "Training Your Muscles" myth. This week we are going to talk about the "No Pain, No Gain" myth.

In the beginning, like most of us, Gary put way too much force into what he was doing. To get himself in shape, he started weight lifting, climbing steeper hills, and taking much longer walks ... But it seemed that the more effort he put into these workouts, the more tight and rigid he became, and his back pain and stiffness worsened. -- Excerpt from Move Into Life

How many of you have had this kind of experience of going gung ho when deciding to get fit or when starting a new fitness program just to find yourself injured and in pain? If you are like most of us, it didn't take long for you to become disheartened and quit, even if you were told to "work through the pain."
Fitness Myth 2: No Pain, No Gain
One of the biggest fitness resolution killers is pain. It is a harmful myth that is deeply ingrained in our fitness culture and beyond. The question we need to ask: Is pain, or more importantly, forcing through pain, necessary for increasing our athletic ability and reaching new heights of fitness, performance, and health?
My answer is a resounding no! Pain is the body's alarm system that informs us that we are in the process of harming ourselves, that we need to back off and need to do something differently. Forcing through pain actually can have long-term negative outcomes to our body and our fitness level. So much so that recent brain research shows that chronic pain results in loss of brain connections to the painful area -- a loss in what is called brain "mapping." For example, when musicians or athletes have pain in their shoulder and they keep forcing painful movements in that arm, they not only suffer, but gradually lose some of their dexterity and strength in that area. Their performance begins to deteriorate and over time, if the pain persists, they have to give up.
From my experience working with thousands of people (from athletes to musicians to moms to computer users) suffering from back, shoulder, neck, and other kinds of pain, almost always the pain is the result of poorly-organized movement.
As described in my previous post "The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 1," what needs to be done is to provide the brain with new information with which it can create new patterns of well-organized movement. Almost without exception, when movement is well organized, the pain disappears, and strength and flexibility increase -- we become more fit.
Ways to Provide Your Brain With New Information
In addition to the first "essential" we discussed previously -- movement with attention -- there are two additional essentials that are powerful antidotes to pain and limitation.
The first one is slow. Fast, you can only do what you already know. Fast does not give you an opportunity to feel what you are doing and for your brain to discover alternative and better ways to move. Doing an exercise fast from the very beginning, or doing it while in pain, will only groove in more deeply the existing brain patterns of pain and limitation.
Try this 10-minute video movement lesson and experience the "slow essential." You can bring slow to any movement you do.
The second essential, subtlety, provides the brain with new information it needs to improve the organization of your movement and relieve you of pain, thus opening up the path for greater fitness. Subtlety means that you intentionally reduce the force with which you do the movements or exercise you are engaged in. When you move with as little effort as you can master, your brain can notice what it is that you are doing and how you are doing it, and immediately use this information to improve the way you move. Any well-organized, harmonious movement is pain-free, leading to greater strength and skill, and is always very pleasurable to do.
And guess what? When moving feels good, you move more and get more fit.
Try this 10-minute video movement lesson and experience the "subtlety essential."
In Gary's case:

I told Gary that he would need to cut way back on his exercise. Instead of lifting the heaviest weights he possibly could, I asked that he lift very light weights for a while -- and not climb more steep hills for a few weeks...
... I had him do some very simple floor exercises. Through these exercises, I guided and encouraged him to reduce the force with which he moved. He discovered that when he did this, his body moved much better, with greater ease and pleasure...
Gary continued lifting lighter weights as part of his new regimen ... He enthusiastically reported that the pain and stiffness were gone and that at the end of the day he had so much energy that he was getting things done around the house that he'd been putting off for years ... that he was also feeling younger and more vital than he'd felt in over a decade. -- Excerpts from Move Into Life

These three "essentials" -- movement with attention, slow, and subtlety -- may feel counter-intuitive. However, practicing these essentials will not only help you get rid of pain, it will actually increase your fitness level very quickly. Give them a try for a week or two and see what happens.

Learn more about the Anat Baniel Method.
Related Resources and Research:
Baniel A. 2009. Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. New York: Harmony Books
The brain uses information it acquires through perceiving differences to create new connections between different brain cells; this capacity is called differentiation. Differentiation is a fundamental process underlying all forms of life.
Prasad KN. 1980. Regulation of differentiation in mammalian nerve cells. Plenum, NY. Scientists are able to measure and track the process of differentiation as it is taking place in the brain.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 2007. Scientist observes brain cell development in "Real Time."
ScienceDaily, May 29.
Mizrahi A. 2007. Dendritic development and plasticity of adult- born neurons in the mouse olfactory bulb. Nature Neuroscience 10(4): 444- 52.
Those connections come together in complex, dynamic, responsive, and continuously evolving patterns. For research describing development in terms of complex dynamic systems, see:
Smith LB, Thelen E. 2003. Development as a dynamic system. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(8): 343- 48.
Thelen E, Smith LB. 1996. A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
Fast we can do only what we already know: See Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, and Pearl DK. 1983. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential): The unconscious intention of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106: 623- 42.
Going slowly allows the brain to figure out what in its existing repertoire may be useful, allowing the new skill to emerge. Bernstein NA. 1996. On exercise and motor skill, In Latash ML, Tuvey MT, eds. On Dexterity and Its Development. Translated by ML Latash. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
See also Thelen E, Smith LB. 1996. A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
"Thinking is the same fundamental process in the brain as organizing movement." Merzenich M. April 2009. Lecture on brain plasticity to students in the Anat Baniel Method Professional Training Program. Anat Baniel Method Center, San Rafael, CA.
For more by Anat Baniel, click here.
For more on fitness and exercise, click here.

Anat's first fitness article from the Huffington Post

The Fitness Myths That Hold You Back, and How to Succeed: Myth 1

Are you one of the many thousands of people who have made a New Year's resolution to exercise regularly and get more fit in 2013? Are you also one of the many who have made the same resolution in the past just to keep it for a couple months, or perhaps a week or two, or maybe not at all?
Know that you are not alone. Do not berate yourself. There are very good reasons why so many people fail at fulfilling their genuine intent to become more fit in the new year. And it is not just lack of willpower.
So, why is it so difficult for so many people to follow through on their fitness resolutions?
The answer is that there are certain myths about what it takes to become more fit -- increase our flexibility, strength, coordination, and stamina -- that contradict what our bodies really need and require. Trying to achieve fitness, usually meaning physical fitness, is based upon myths that make it challenging, if not impossible, to commit to and achieve a successful fitness regime.
Today, I would like to introduce the first myth, the "Training Your Muscles" myth, based on the Anat Baniel Method, a NeuroMovement approach to fitness. NeuroMovement is a holistic approach to human functioning and action, based in the understanding that the brain organizes all movement. With this approach, brain change (neuroplasticity) plays a critical role in becoming physically fit. There are immediate ways for you to take advantage of the remarkable capacity of your brain to change itself and create new pathways for greater fitness and health.

Muscles Do Not Have a Mind of Their Own
There is no question that to be able to move, we need our muscles, and that stronger muscles provide us with the possibility for stronger, more powerful movement and stamina, making us more fit. However, muscles do not know what to do on their own. It is the brain that "tells" the muscles what to do -- when to contract and when to let go -- through the signals it sends to the muscles.
And in order for the brain to know what signals to send to our muscles, it has to first "know" that the muscles are there to be used and learn how to coordinate the different muscle groups successfully. Perhaps you've had the experience of trying to tone and strengthen certain muscles in your body and no matter how hard you exercised, it didn't work. This is because your brain never connected fully enough to these muscles. The brain needs a rich variety of experiences from which it creates the necessary connections and patterns of our movements, also known as "mapping" in the brain.
Fitness Myth 1: The "Training Your Muscles" Myth
How well your brain knows what commands to give your muscles will decide the quality with which you will move, or whether you will even be able to do the movement altogether. The "Training Your Muscles" myth assumes that we can train muscles directly by doing lots of repetitions of certain movement. Only when you have a well-organized NeuroMovement pattern can you successfully begin to increase your strength, speed, and flexibility.
If your brain has not gotten the information it needs to be able to create the necessary patterns of the movement you are trying to do, you will either simply fail and eventually give up or you'll do the movement poorly, making it very difficult to do, often times painful, and even injurious.
What we all need is to first provide our brain with information it can use to create more refined, accurate, and well-organized patterns for us to do any movement in an efficient, easy, safe, and pleasurable way. So how can this be done?
The Anat Baniel Method has defined "Nine Essentials," each one providing an easy and very powerful way to flood the brain with new information that it needs. In this article, we will introduce you to the first Essential, and the rest will come in future posts.

Movement With Attention: First Essential of the Anat Baniel Method
Brain research has shown that movement done automatically does not create new connections in the brain, but rather it grooves in more deeply existing brain patterns (those stubborn limitations we often experience). However, the moment we bring attention to what we feel as we do any movement, there is an immediate, dramatic increase in the number of new connections associated with the areas of body that we are moving.
You can start right away. You can bring your attention to what you feel with any movement you do, and you'll immediately wake up your brain to form new connections. It might seem too easy to be true, but it works. And it will make it easier and even fun to stick with your fitness program!
For example, if you are walking on a treadmill, slow down the speed to a safe level for just a few minutes. And as you walk, pay attention to what you feel in the soles of your feet, in your ankles, in the back of your knees, your hip joints, your spine, your shoulders, and your neck. Pay attention, notice the movement of your breath and what it feels like.
Or if you are doing a yoga pose, as you move into the pose, pay attention to what you feel in the different parts of your body as you do it. Genuinely get interested in and focused on what you feel. For a few moments, don't worry how well you are performing. Just pay attention to yourself.
(Try this 10-minute video movement lesson and practice Movement with Attention.)
Movement with Attention will increase your flexibility, strength, endurance, balance, and skillfulness (i.e., your fitness). It can also reduce aches and pains, prevent injury, and promote greater joy, creativity, mental clarity, and problem-solving skills. This way of approaching fitness will help you learn how to be in the here and now, while enjoying greater physical and mental health. Give it a try and let us know how it works for you. I'd love to hear about your experiences.
Next week, we will address fitness myth two: "No Pain, No Gain."
Related Resources and Research:

Baniel A. 2009. Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. New York: Harmony Books.
The brain has the ability to figure itself out: The brain is the ultimate self-organizing system. Thompson E, Varela FJ. 2001. Radical embodiment: Neural dynamics and consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5: 418- 25. Lewis MD, Todd RM. 2005. Getting emotional-- A neural perspective on emotion, intention and consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 12(8- 10): 213- 38.
What we know from the science of neuroplasticity: "[T]he realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers . . . to change its structure and function in response to experience": Begley S. 2007. How the brain rewires itself. Time, January 19. See also Doidge N. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself. New York: Viking.
Research shows that movement done automatically creates little or no new connections in the brain: "[T]he variable determining whether or not the brain changes is . . . the attentional state of the animal." Schwartz J, Begley S. 2002, rpnt 2003. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York: HarperCollins. Recanzone G. H, Merzenich MM, Jenkins WM, et al. 1992.Topographic reorganization of the hand representation in cortical area 3b of owl monkeys trained in a frequency discrimination task. Journal of Neurophysiology 67: 1031-56. Nudo RJ, Milliken GW, Jenkins WM, Merzenich MM. 1996 Use-dependent alterations of movement representations in primary motor cortex of adult squirrel monkeys. Journal of Neuroscience 16: 785- 807. See Doidge N. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself. New York: Viking/ Penguin.
When attention is brought to movement, the brain creates new connections and possibilities at an incredibly rapid rate: My teacher and colleague, Moshe Feldenkrais, used movement to increase awareness, which in turn helped to upgrade people's functioning, often in breakthrough ways; he had his students pay close attention while moving as a way to enhance functioning. However, he did not formulate Movement with Attention as an Essential per se, that is, distinct from awareness.

Think of Movement with Attention as bringing about a virtual explosion of activity in the brain: Scans showed high levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex during new learning but not once the performance became routine. Jueptner M, Stephan K, Frith CD, et al. 1997. Anatomy of motor learning. I. Frontal Ccrtex and attention to Action. Journal of Neurophysiology 77(3): 1313- 24. Johansen- Berg H, Matthews PM. 2002. Attention to movement modulates activity in sensori- motor areas, including primary motor cortex. Experimental Brain Research 142(1): 13- 24.
"Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and functioning of the nervous system": Merzenich MM, deCharms RC. 1996. Neural representations, experience and change." In Llinàs R, Churchland PS, eds. The Mind-Brain Continuum. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Amazing Cypress!!

A cool film about Brain Connections

You can find it here!

The Language of Movement: Tools and Solutions ~ by Anat Baniel

Anat Baniel Method for Vitality and Anti-aging
(Re-Printed from Anat Baniel's website at www.anatbanielmethod.com)

A “thinking person’s approach to movement” that involves the whole self is the foundation of the Anat Baniel Method(sm) to vitality and anti-aging, to enhanced fitness, and to the learning of a new vocabulary of movement.

Students improve motion with techniques that provide both knowledge of the physical effects of exercise on the body, and the understanding of the importance of each individual’s thoughts, emotions and perceptions for successful outcomes from working out. These techniques re-train the brain to send more effective, “mindful,” better organized commands of movement to the muscles, allowing students to achieve higher performance levels, reduced stress levels, and progress towards greater health, vitality, and well-being.

The Anat Baniel Method maintains that conventional workouts are often harmful, not only to the joints and muscles, but to the self-esteem of those who experience failure because they are unable to perform the routines successfully. People frequently drop out of exercise classes, like Aerobics, Yoga, stretching, or quit a sport or other physical activity, like running, golfing, tennis, because of injury or because they feel clumsy, stiff and uncoordinated.

By simply breaking the movements down into their smaller, underlying parts and using those movements to communicate with the brain so that it can reorganize the muscles to perform the exercise successfully, all of this can be avoided. The focus of exercise should not be trying to accomplish a specific “correct” outcome from the start, nor to mimic the instructor trying to do what you cannot, but rather engage in a process that will lead you to successfully learn the necessary underlying skills and hence reach successful performance.

In order for any exercise and fitness program to be most successful, it has to be approached as a process that is built to fit the unique needs of each individual. Each person exercising should have a great degree of control over their process, because only the person exercising FEELS their own body and can effectively respond to its needs.

Here are some tips that will help you be the master of your own process and will greatly increase your success with whatever form of exercise, or fitness activity you choose:

1.    Don’t Force It. Perform new movements slowly and gently so that you can feel what you are doing and give your brain the opportunity to differentiate and form new, more effective patterns of movement.

2.    Recognize your own comfort level and exercise within that zone. Build up to extra effort gradually without forcing. Once you know the mechanics of the movement, you can very quickly make it more powerful and faster.

2. Listen to Your Body. Exercise is not an isolated activity for just one part of your body. Be in touch with the way your entire body feels and its relationship to the floor and your surroundings. Pay attention to your pelvis, your lower back, your breathing, your neck, your eyes, your head, the length of your spine, the expression of your face and more. Rest between movements.

3. Use your intelligence. Think through the movements as you exercise. The body and brain are one, in constant communication. When you concentrate on what you are doing and feeling, the brain receives new information, which it uses to help improve the commands to the muscles and manage your movements more efficiently. The brain thrives on variety and when it is reprogrammed with an expanded movement repertoire, it replaces repetitive, boring, compulsive exercises that wear out our joints, and often lead to injury with a successful new relationship with our bodies.

4. Be Your Own Person. Exercise at your own pace, even if it means have a different pace than the rest of the class. Watch the teacher and understand the instruction and than pay attention only to yourself, to how you feel, what is the range, speed and intensity that is right for you. Modify the movement to fit your own sense of comfort, safety and ease.

5. Don’t be concerned with the final outcome. Pay attention to the process. A high quality process will always lead to effective learning and change and often times will lead to changes that are better and greater than we knew to ask for.

6. Take pleasure and pride in “small” changes. It is continuous seemingly small changes that lead to transformational outcomes.

7. Age Is A State of Mind. When it comes to fitness and exercise, you are truly as old as you choose to believe. There is nothing static about movement of our body, of our minds, of our feelings and of our emotions. When we cast aside old, automatic ways of moving, thinking, and feeling, and integrate new movement options into your life, regardless of age, we can tone our body, take up new sports and improve overall in ways we never though possible.

Anat Baniel Method, 4330 Redwood Hwy. Suite 350, San Rafael, CA 94903 415-472-6622; 800-386-1441 www.anatbanielmethod.com

Anat Baniel on Children with Autism

This article is from the Huffington Post and is written by Anat Baniel.

3 Breakthrough Steps for Helping Your Child on the Autism Spectrum

Posted: 04/13/2012 6:50 pm

Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the alarming statistic that one child out of 88 is diagnosed as having an autism spectrum disorder, a huge increase over the past 10 years. Are these children doomed? Absolutely not. A variety of behavioral therapies and other interventions can help the child on the Autism spectrum make great strides. My message to you is that there is hope for even greater outcomes for these children than we have come to expect. New scientific research has created breakthrough possibilities of helping the child on the Autism spectrum by reducing the brain's compulsivity and helping it become the brilliant brain it is built to be.
For that we need to stop trying to "fix" the child and start creating conditions that help the child's own brain to do its job better.
The brain of every child needs to do two somewhat opposing things. The first is to constantly seek new ways of doing things through the creation of new neural connections and patterns. The second is to groove in and turn into habits the effective new patterns, be it in movement, thinking, feeling or emotion. This is what is happening in the brain anytime a child learns something new, such as walking; what was at first impossible or difficult becomes "second nature" as the child's brain refines the patterns to perform that activity well. Typically, the brain of the child on the Autism Spectrum tends to create a limited number of very powerful habits and to have great difficulty with the complementary, open-ended process of creating new patterns and new possibilities, resulting in the rigidity we often see with children suffering from this condition.
The following helps to illustrate how we can help the child with Autism transcend his or her current limitations.
I first saw Jonathan when he just turned two. He recently was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum. In addition to making no eye contact, he was not speaking nor did he respond to his name. He had difficulty eating and refused most foods, and when people were around he tried to hide under furniture. During his first session with me, while sitting in his father's lap, he repeatedly arched his back, threw his head back and let out a cry as if his brain was stuck on an automatic loop unable to do anything else. I saw in Ryan a brain that was having great difficulty making sense of all the input and stimulation coming in.
I began very gently and slowly to move Jonathan's pelvis and back. In the beginning, he didn't seem to notice himself or me. A few minutes later, as I very gently and slowly moved his foot, Jonathan became suddenly very still and began staring at his own foot, then straight at me, then back at his foot as if he was feeling it and seeing it for the very first time in his life! Jonathan was coming home to himself. As "small" a change as this might seem, it was a moment of transformation for Jonathan, changing the way his brain had been working. After this first session Ryan's parents reported significant changes in his behavior. After two weeks of sessions he was eating much better, beginning to talk, interacting and playing with his brother and eventually with other kids.
What happened and how does this apply to you and your child?
Every child's brain is like an information "Cookie Monster" -- the brain needs lots of new information to grow and develop new skills. The source of new information to the brain is through the perception of differences. Until a child feels and notices a change or a difference in what they feel, hear, see, smell, or taste, their brain has nothing to work with. Before this differentiation takes place, it's all a blur, like background noise, no matter how clear it might seem to be to us. We can drill the child for hours with some, or little outcome. But when we help their brain get better at noticing differences, almost anything we do with the child will help them improve and almost always at a staggering rate.
Here are three ways you can help your child's brain get better at perceiving differences and getting the new information it needs to heal and learn:

1. Movement With Attention: Take a few minutes, 3-4 times a day, and guide your child to pay attention to what they feel as they move. As they are doing this, observe the immediate and remarkable changes beginning to happen in your child. Automatic, repetitive movement provides little new information for the brain. When your child is attentive to what they feel as they move -- their brain begins forming new neural connections at a staggeringly rapid rate -- that is when transformation happens.
2. Slow: Whenever you observe that your child has a difficulty or seems to "not get it", slow him or her and yourself way down. This change alone can bring about remarkable transformations. Fast, the brain can only do what it already knows. Slow gets the brain's attention and provides the time for the child to feel themselves and for the brain, once again, to notice differences and get new information to work with.
3. Variation: That means instead of trying to have your child do things the "right way", become playful. Guide your child to make lots of mistakes - to do the same thing in many different ways. That provides the brain with lots of opportunity to perceive differences and get the information it needs.

In Her Own Words: Anat Baniel talking about the Anat Baniel Method

A great interview with Anat Baniel here.

KIds Beyond Limits-review 3

Review from a Mom in Portland, OR who writes a blog about her life as mother of identical twins, one with cerebral palsy. 

 

REVIEW: Kids Beyond Limits by Anat Baniel

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Note: The following review assumes you've heard of the Anat Baniel Method (ABM). It is the primary methodology we use with Malachi and we've found it to be very compelling, though we are not without criticisms. If you follow the linked text above, you can read everything I've written on the subject.

So, I had very much hoped that I would have finished reading Anat Baniel's new book Kids Beyond Limits: The Anat Baniel Method for Awakening the Brain and Transforming the Life of Your Child With Special Needs by today, its release date, but I have to admit that I haven't. I've read most of it and skimmed through the rest.

I received an advance copy to review about a month ago and the bottom line is that I absolutely love it. But even though the book is short, only 288 pages, it has taken me an incredibly long time to read it. That's because it's just packed with things that, well, kinda blow my mind. I've found I have to put the book down at least every chapter to think about how I can integrate its philosophy into my life and the way I deal with Malachi. And I definitely can't read it before bed or I will be up all night thinking about it.

So it's been slow going. But I know for a fact I will read it through again as soon as I finish. And I will make everyone who interacts with Malachi read it. And, if I can, all of you people read it.

If you happen to have read Anat Baniel's first book, Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality, you already know her so-called Nine Essentials: Movement with Attention, The Learning Switch, Subtlety, Variation, Slow, Enthusiasm, Flexible Goals, Imagination and Awareness. These are also the basis of her new book, but I found Kids Beyond Limits to have much more practical advice, useful anecdotes and personal insights. It also seems to reference many more scientific studies than I recall from Move Into Life, and has extensive footnotes. For anyone who enjoyed Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, I would consider this a practical guide to that inspiring round-up of neuroplasticity success stories.

What I really loved was that Baniel describes in detail what is going through her mind as she treats kids with special needs and it helped me realize that more than anything the Anat Baniel Method is about how you treat kids with special needs rather than what particular movements you do. Therefore, I really consider this a book that anyone and everyone who interacts with special needs kids should read.

For others, the titles of the Nine Essentials alone might be enough to help them remember what to do in their daily interactions with kids. But for me, I've found more success with pulling out some key phrases that I repeat to myself as I interact with Malachi. Here are a few:


What is obvious to me is not obvious to him. Parents know instinctually that this is true in certain cases. For example, just about everyone would know to keep a newly crawling baby away from ledges. Even though the consequences of gravity are obvious to everyone else, the baby has not yet learned this. Baniel takes this concept a step further and shows how kids — all kids, but particularly those with special needs — are not aware of things that we consider to be obvious and this is the source of much of their dysfunction. For my son, this means that even though he arches his back all the time, he might not actually be aware that that is what he is doing and that it prevents him from accomplishing things like rolling over. So, I've started to play a game with him called "arch, flat, curl" where I playfully point out what he's doing and even accentuate it a little bit with my hands. This has very quickly taught him the difference between these states and he can now curl over to lay on his side pretty much whenever he wants to.

How can I "differentiate around the edges"? Baniel uses the phrase "differentiate around the edges" a lot and by it she means that you start with something the child can already do well and then see how you can build on that — slowly and incrementally. I'm finding this to be easiest to apply in my verbalizations. I have always babbled along with Malachi and Jaden, but now I can add in a slightly different vowel sound or play with my tongue a little more and see if they follow along. Very often, they do, and Malachi has even begun to push his tongue out the left side of his mouth, which he has never done before.

Sloooooow. OK, so this is just the title of one of the Nine Essentials, but it's very useful and easy if you can remember to do it. Just slow down. I take a few beats longer to turn the page, or wait a little longer after pointing to an object they know the word for or take 10 seconds to pick him up from the floor instead of five. What's the rush?

Require less evidence to be happy for his growth. Yes, I did just see Malachi's leg move in a way I haven't before. It's OK to be happy about that. I don't need to have him repeat it immediately to prove it to me and I don't need to keep those happy feelings in a penalty box in my head just in case he never makes that movement again. Neither do I need to wait to be happy until I see him incorporate that leg movement into rolling over. I saw him do it with my own two eyes and he's never done it before. That's enough.

Concentrate more on the process and less on the outcome. This one is really hard for me. Like, really, really, really hard. I'm constantly fighting back voices that say: "If there are no outcomes, what's the point?" But I feel like there is something very valuable there so I'm going to keep working at it. As Anat herself says, if she were required to directly "make" a child perform a certain way, she would have no idea how to do it. She just concentrates on improving their quality of movement and the rest takes care of itself.

Wonder what he'll do next. This one has been great and I've been really surprised and delighted at the results. Whenever I catch myself about to "help" him, I still my mind for a second and wonder, with rapt attention, what he'll do next. More often than not he does something useful or unexpected. For example, today, he was trying to roll onto his side to get a small toy car. He was straining and tensing his legs so much that he would never get fully onto his side. Normally, I would pick up his top leg and push it over towards where he wanted to go. This time I just watched for a second. Then, very gently, I poked his hip and wondered what would happen. Almost immediately, he brought both of his legs up and curled his body to get much closer to the toy car. I didn't even realize for a second or two that that was my desired outcome because I was so intent on simply observing. And the best part was that it came from him which — obviously, but it wasn't really obvious to me before! — is where all of his movements are ever going to come from.