Emotional regulation for you, your child and your classroom: How to tell if your BrainMoves practice is effective

Today, we will take a dive into emotional regulation and how to determine if someone is emotionally regulated or simply shut down. We will define what a regulated individual looks like and discuss how to measure somatic regulation before and after doing a BrainMoves movement.

Let’s start by defining what emotional regulation looks like.

Is a regulated individual someone who doesn't feel emotions strongly? Can a regulated individual have outbursts

of excitement or strong feelings? To be emotionally regulated is not to be devoid of feeling, but rather to experience a balanced range of emotions. Without feelings or responses we are in the freeze phase of fight, flight or freeze. From the outside someone in the freeze mode may look compliant, agreeable and calm but in actuality they are shutting out the world unable to learn and process information. Emotional regulation does not mean there are no extreme emotions. A regulated individual can feel intense joy as well as manage great distress effectively. They do not dwell in mania or depression but they are responsive to their surroundings and their life experiences.

How does emotional regulation relate to information processing?

An emotionally regulated individual will feel emotions, positive and negative, comfortable and uncomfortable, welcome and unwelcome, and if well regulated, will absorb them and the information that the body and mind are

providing. Emotional dysregulation means that somatic issues like a nervous stomach, muscle tension, a narrowed field of vision, or audio processing issues may become noticeably problematic. These somatic signals are rooted in the body's physiological response to stress and balance. Without understanding the body's relationship between emotions and sensations, a person cannot be emotionally regulated. If someone's emotions become large, loud, and out of control, disrupting their personal, professional, or school experiences at any age, they are not emotionally regulated. However, an outburst does not have to be the only sign of emotional dysregulation. Dysregulation can also manifest in how our body carries itself and through smaller clues, like an inability to focus, brain fog, or a child's difficulty sitting down and sitting still. These smaller signs of dysregulation are often related to gross or fine motor skills and stuck developmental reflexes. The body will protectively hold onto a motion or a reflex it believes is needed for protection. If that particular reflex or tension is no longer needed, we can use targeted movements like the ones in the BrainMoves system to help remove that tension and thus address the corresponding mental or emotional symptoms.

Where BrainMoves comes in.

BrainMoves is a collection of 38 movements influenced by developmental movements all humans learn as they move from infant to a person aware of their body and able to respond to stimulus, crawl, walk, and track information with their eyes. BrainMoves is designed to help different areas of the body and address various somatic symptoms such as lack of focus, anxiety, hyperactivity, and difficulty processing visual or auditory information.

How can I tell if BrainMoves is working?

To determine if these movements are effective, we need a baseline or measurement activity before we perform the movement. In the BrainMoves course, you will learn not only the movements that target each of these symptoms, but also the measurement activities that help you see progress before and after even a single session. When we say BrainMoves helps in just five minutes a day, we are referring to this small measurement that you can do immediately to measure the results of the movement. These small gains add up to create new patterns that disengage the freeze, fight or flight and help children, and honestly, humans of all ages, be more focused, calmer, more peaceful, and able to learn and play more effectively.

Meet Ryan!

Let’s take, for example, a young man we’ll call Ryan. Ryan had a history of aggressive behavior, outbursts, and challenges with impulse control. In his 12 short years, he was labeled early on as a “difficult child.” One of his challenges was his inability to sit and listen, so he was always entering or exiting a conversation or social encounter at the wrong time. Because of this, he often struggled to understand the conversations and couldn’t engage in the learning happening around him. This, in turn, made him more uncomfortable and created more tension in his body.

The end result was Ryan could not sit still and was marked as having a conduct disorder. He would say whatever came to mind, regardless of how inappropriate it was. In a classroom setting, Ryan was almost impossible to work with, and other students in his mixed-age group class were incredibly frustrated and frequently wanted him to leave the room. While leaving the room may have helped with his overstimulation, it did nothing to help him learn necessary social skills or further his education.

With Ryan, I decided to do some BrainMoves to help remove the anxious tension from his body. Together, we did the Blowfish and the Hedgehog. The Blowfish was intended to help him become more aware of his face and mouth because he had been blurting out information and frequently spoke faster than he could breathe, making it hard to follow his conversations. I wanted him to slow his breathing and regulate his speech. While the Blowfish isn’t specifically related to speech as a speech therapist might understand it, we did it to help his facial muscles to relax and and to regulate his breathing. I also chose the Hedgehog because he carried a lot of tension in his body, particularly his back as he often twisted his spine before clambering or even falling out of his chair dramatically.

That restless discomfort was one of the reasons Ryan could not sit still; he would move until he collapsed, and in collapsing he would finally relax because his muscles could not hold him any longer.

We did the Koala Cub movement to help activate his hearing so he could be more aware and relaxed in a noisy classroom space at the same time. We also did the Bear Cub to help return circulation back into his core, helping his brain to move out of the freeze, fight or flight center. Ryan struggled to stay focused for the first several movements and left and came back to the session several times. Each time, I would let him leave, process, and have a moment before asking him to return to the movements. I then asked him to do the Duckling with him, relaxing the tendon guard reflex, enabling him to focus on what we were doing.

The movement that was most powerful for Ryan was the Red Crab. This movement requires making a sideways figure-eight motion, and initially, he was incredibly uncomfortable doing it. He dropped the fidget he was holding while making the figure-eight several times, flopped off his chair, was unable to focus, and had several outbursts. I backed up and started him with the Blue Crab, in which he was crossing the middle of his body by tracing a circle. We then moved on to the Green Crab, in which Ryan crossed the middle of his body by tracing a regular figure 8. I then gently coached him back to doing the Red Crab, and when he finished, he sat down and quietly began to work on a project at his desk, writing intently. Ryan was suddenly able to focus, and he actually selected a task he wanted to work on and now had the focus to concentrate on it. I didn't invite him to do the quiet work; he found he was now ABLE to do the task.

After the movements, he disappeared to his room and was gone for a good 10 minutes. When he returned, he slowly and calmly explained to me that he had been working on a code so he could write his journal in his own secret language. The boy who was unable to sit still, complete sentences, and pay attention then spent 15 minutes explaining to me how his code worked, and we even wrote short sentences together.

Interested? Here are the next steps:

If you’re interested in learning more about how movement can help you or your child become more emotionally and physically regulated, Brain Moves could help. Improve focus, become more socially comfortable, and listen and learn with greater ease by signing up for our self-paced online course. The videos are descriptive and will show you exactly how to do both the measurement activities and the movements. The theory and techniques are clearly explained using modern Western science and anatomy.

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