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This incident was related to me by a Brain Gym ® Instructor, who learned of the episode shortly after it happened, when she was invited to teach the Brain Gym program in the boy’s classroom. After repeated warnings, Aaron had been suspended for two weeks. Extrinsic Discipline or Intrinsic Self-Control?Ī 12-year-old middle school student I’ll call Aaron had several times been sent to the principal’s office for hitting his classmates and otherwise causing disruptions in his sixth-grade classroom. Click here for the name of an instructor in your area. All rights reserved.īrain Gym ® is a trademark of Brain Gym ® International/ the Educational Kinesiology Foundation. The Brain Gym ® activities are from Brain Gym ®: Teacher’s Edition by Dennison and Dennison, ©2010. Besides the two intelligences named here, Armstrong identifies six others. Thomas Armstrong has interpreted this work in several of his own books, including Seven Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Multiple Intelligences, Plume, 1999, and Neurodiversity in the Classroom: Strength-Based Strategies to Help Students with Special Needs Achieve Success in School and Life, Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2011. * Educator Howard Gardner did pioneering work on the theory of multiple intelligences in the early 1980s.

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And I’m confident that a happy and exploratory learner like Wyatt, who knows how to learn, will do well with whatever subject matter is presented to him. I love seeing these learners make the shift from trying too hard to spontaneously doing their best. I find that many children, and adults, too, overthink and try too hard instead of trusting their innate movement patterns. We danced around together, jumped up and down, and celebrated the joy of his new accomplishment. He seemed to know where the ball would be without thinking. I began to make the throws more challenging. I then moved around a bit as I continued throwing it, and he moved in anticipation of catching it. This time Wyatt easily caught the ball all three times. When Wyatt felt ready to play, we did a post-activity so he could experience his new learning. We did the Cross Crawl, then Arm Activation, the Footflex, Lazy 8s, and Hook-ups.

I let him choose some Brain Gym activities from a poster in my office, and then he and I did the movements together to help him trust his physical responses. I told Wyatt he was probably analyzing too much and that, as he relaxed, he might discover some new ways to use his eyes and body together as he caught and threw the ball. Playing catch, along with doing some Brain Gym® activities, is a great way for both children and adults to awaken attributes associated with these intelligences. Educator Thomas Armstrong calls these the Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence and the Spatial Intelligence*. Wyatt and I were working on developing two kinds of intelligence that are central to Edu-K, as they’re important to a learner’s physical ease and connection with his environment.

He caught the ball awkwardly the first time and missed the next two catches, becoming more discouraged each time. First I threw it in a somewhat high arc, then in a low underhand, and finally in a straight line. From a static standing position, I threw the ball to Wyatt with a moderately easy toss. Wyatt agreed to an experiment: to see if he could learn to trust his body to move without his having to think about what to do next. I explained that, when we’re playing, sometimes our body moves even faster than our brain and we know what to do without thinking. Together, Wyatt and I formulated his goal, for him to play and have more fun with his friends. I can never think fast enough to know what to do.” I can’t catch the ball, and the other kids never choose me for their team. “Today we played softball,” he explained. And when I asked this nine-year-old what he would like to work on, he came close to tears. Although Wyatt’s mom brought him to see me because of his learning difficulties, he wasn’t interested in working on that topic.