Bolles Sensory Learning Method |
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Written by Mary Bolles, Sensory Learning Institute
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Wednesday, 28 February 2001 |
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Page 2 of 7 I grew up in rural Ohio and after earning a college degree in Liberal Arts I found my life almost totally focused on the learning and behavioral problems of the second of my four children. Born in the early 70s, he was not talking at three, he didn’t seem to feel pain when he skinned his knee or hit his head, and his coordination didn’t seem to be quite as good as that of other children when learning to swim. He seemed to lack any “inner peace” and had difficulty with trust and bonding. He had anxieties and fears that were disproportionate to his experiences. When he stood in a line at school and a classmate bumped him he would begin striking out at the child. For him, the coming together of sensory input could not give reasonable meaning to his experience so he would become disoriented and act out feelings of anxiety, frustration and fear. Underactive sensory motor activity in his brainstem contributed to his hyperactivity and distractibility. This lack of sensory integration in my child became the focus of my life’s work and led to the development of Sensory Learning.
Over time I discovered that Learning Problems are much more that a reversal of letters, a language delay, hyperactive behavior, or an attention deficit disorder. These problems involve all the dimensions in a child, and every child has its own individual mosaic that can be best addressed by a comprehensive approach. I learned that working with the whole to effectively reach a child and enhance his developmental potential requires us to fully engage the child. Therefore I worked to create an experience that nurtured and challenged his subconscious sensory experience and could be engaging and fun on a conscious level. I became convinced that a therapy had to be delivered in a manner that felt supportive and safe so that the participant could maintain openness and receptivity. Medical interventions are so often “done” to an individual while educational (learning) interventions are interactive in nature.
Sensory skills are learned through experiential interaction. I finally came up with three medical interventions that had been practiced for over 40 years. The first of these was Dr. Harry Riley Spitler who founded the college of Syntonic Optometry in 1933. As a pioneer in the field of photostimulation he stated, “Syntony for balancing of the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system can be produced by frequency of light in the eye.” The second, Dr. Guy Berard, a French doctor who wrote Hearing Equals Behavior, was a strong leader in the field of acoustic stimulation. He stated, “Everything happens as if human behavior is largely conditioned by the manner in which one hears.” The third was Dr. Jean Ayers, an occupational therapist. She formulated a theory of sensory integration dysfunction and developed interventions that included vestibular stimulation or bodily movement. She said, “The vestibular system is the unifying system and vestibular stimulation seems to prime the whole nervous system to function more effectively.”
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