Brain Gym Exercises for Health, Happiness,
Learning and Development (Part 1)

brain gym exercises - mother xcrawls her baby

Support your child to achieve his developmental milestones using Brain Gym Exercises. October 2008. This is Jenson at 3 months old. Read Jenson's story.

Brain Gym Exercises

How can something so simple be so effective! You don't need to know all 26 brain gym exercises to make a difference to yourself, a loved one, pupils or kids with learning disabilities.

Here you will find:

How to Cross-crawl and its benefits,
How to cross-crawl your baby
How to draw Lazy 8's and their benefits for you
How to balance your body using Rhythmic 8's
Real life Brain Gym Successes

These simple exercises have made a huge difference to countless thousands of individuals, their families and carers.

What is Brain Gym?

Brain gym exercises offer dramatic improvements in Asperger Syndrome, Autistic Spectrum disorders, Down Syndrome, ADD and ADHD, Dyspraxia and Dyslexia. But you and your whole family will benefit too. It's not only for kids with learning disabilities!

It is a trade mark name of a branch of Applied Kinesiology set up by Paul Dennison PhD as the Educational Kinesiology Foundation, to promote kinesiology principles specifically to education and development. It has become the most popular term for such Educational Kinesiology exercises.

Include Brain Gym Exercises in Your Daily Routine.

The benefits are enormous so you have every reason to include them in YOUR health and happiness regime.

They will help you:

reduce stress
increase and harmonised energy
improve concentration
improve whole-brain learning
feel more centred and balanced

Cross-crawl can be adapted to all abilities and ages and combined with real life activities and sports skills.

Walking running and swimming are all natural forms of performing a cross-crawl. The cross crawl helps your whole system function more effectively and it also promotes the healing process.
Energy Medicine. Donna Eden. London 1999. Piatkus Publishers

Brain Gym Exercises - X-Crawl

Cross crawl at its simplest is walking or marching in time. Babies begin life with a 'homolateral' pattern whereby the right side of the brain governs the right side of the body and the left hemisphere the left side.

The act of crawling establishes the patterning that allows the energies to cross over. This 5-minute video from Donna Eden will explain far more than I can express in words. If you have already visited my Applied Kinesiology page then you will also see her using 'muscle testing.' back to top

In her book Energy Medicine, (p72) Donna Eden tells a story of a boy involved in a horrific accident in which a tractor crushed his head, literally spilling some of the contents of his skull. His mother cross-crawled him all the way to the hospital and then several times daily while he was in a deep coma. When he regained consciousness he cross-crawled himself. Although he was blind because his optic nerve had been severed, his mental functioning returned.

How to Cross-Crawl Your Baby

Babies benefit greatly from X-crawl and they have fun too. Use cross-crawl also with toddlers, people with special needs, or those unable to cross-crawl themselves. It may be that they cannot copy movements, so you can move their limbs for them.
brain-gym-exercises..how to cross-crawl your baby Choose a suitable time when you and your baby are both calm and relaxed. Ensure you are both comfortable too. Taking hold your baby's hand and the opposite foot (e.g. left hand and right foot) gently bring them together and return to their original position.

Repeat several times on this side. Count,sing or talk to your baby in a playful, fun or soothing tone as you cross-crawl. Then take the other hand and opposite foot and repeat the actions again.Continue in this way as appropriate to the age of your baby. Never force the limbs together. If Your baby is too tense then it is probably the wrong time and your baby does not want to do it. brain gym exercises for kids >
To read 3 short success stories of the use of Cross Crawl and Lazy 8's brain gym exercises for children with learning difficulties click here.

Brain Gym Exercises -

Rhythmic 8's back to top

Two more popular Brain Gym exercises are based around the figure 8. It is hard to believe this figure is so powerful. I know the Chinese also believe it to be a very lucky number. If you're finding it difficult to think clearly or your brain seems to be working overtime, then try Rhythmic 8s. (More of a dance than an exercise) Time: Less than 1 minute

Begin by swaying your body from side to side in a rhythmic motion
Let your arms sway too, from side to side further out than your body
Now stretch your hands forward in front of you and make a SIDEWAYS figure 8 or an INFINITY sign with your arms...
Go up and over on the right, circle down, then up and over on the left, circle down, then again up and over to the right.
Continue drawing sideways figure 8's in this way twisting at the waist in the directon you are reaching.

Rhythmic 8's 'energetically integrate the right and left hemispheres of the brain and will bring balance. - Donna Eden.

Lazy 8's

brain gym - lazy 8's integrate left and right-brain thinking

Lazy 8s, like the Rhythmic 8s energetically integrate both halves of the brain.

They are usually written or 'traced' with a finger. I learned to write left-handed for writing my inner child journal. The list of benefits is impressive, though not exhaustive. Use them to:

free up writers block
think more clearly
calm yourself down
improve hand-eye co-ordination
improve visual tracking
increase attention span
increase writing flow and speed
balance emotions
improve self-esteem
improve memory

My sister used them daily for a couple of weeks and became much more confident and assertive too. I am pretty sure they would be really useful for people who have had slight strokes too.

How to do Lazy 8s

Time: 1 minute OK. so they look easy, but don't be fooled. Not everyone can do them immediately, either by being shown or by verbal instructions.

Begin with a piece of paper at least A4 in LANDSCAPE in front of you
Begin in the centre of the paper, keeping your nose pointed towards the central point
Move the pen, pencil or your finger away from you in an upward direction
Move to the left - circle up and over, down and around, back up - to cross over at the mid point
Continue up and over to the right
Circle over, down and around and come back up through the mid point again on your way to circling to the left once more
Continue to draw 'Lazy 8's or Infinity sign' in this way for 1 minute

To write with your non-dominant hand

There's not much call for it, unless of course you have injured your dominant hand/arm and cannot write easily... but I can write backwards with either hand too...thanks to lazy 8s. Actually it comes in useful in school when working with kids sitting opposite you. Its also a neat and fascinating 'party trick.'

Draw Lazy 8s in this way with your non-dominant hand either daily or any time you get to doodle - and relax. You will soon find your pen wanting to move faster than you thought possible and your letters beginning to form more easily.

There are several more Brain Gym Exercises for you and your family. If you want to understand more about Energy Medicine and Kinesiology then check out more Donna Eden videos at Youtube.com.

Brain Gym® exercises such as the cross-crawl should be included in warm-up routines for other physical exercise and can also be used to great effect on exercise rebounders.

NEXT Brain Gym Exercises Part 2
NEXT Brain Gym Exercises Part 3

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YOUR Brain Gym Stories

Audrey Sue

Audrey clapped for the first time at 16 months, army-crawled at 17 months - one week later crawling on hands and knees -
' these all began after we started her on Cross Crawl. Once Audrey crossed her midline - she was able to figure out how to do things.'

Audrey was born with a rare genetic disorder - Read Audrey's story here.