Markdown lines 191–326 · Part 2 of 4
that system. One of them is vestibular movement, is movement through space. Another one is
what we call proprioceptive. And also kinesthetic movement, input, which is pressure or
whatever into the joints and into the muscles. We also know that certain kinds of music and
sound can be very helpful and very effective. And that is not so surprising, when you think that
anatomically and physiologically, the vestibular system for movement and the auditory system
for sound, and listening production, are essentially the same system. It's the vestibular
cochlear system in anatomy, and it's the the auditory, what auditory press, I don't know, the
eighth, the eighth cranial nerve, in terms of the neurological. So here's a little guy who has this
issues, these issues with seizures, then we add on top of it is sensory processing. And then we
have the potential challenge of autism. Now,
18:40
autism for Julius is an interesting question, because with all of these other issues going on for
him, it's very hard to say, Ah, yes, this is the autism part. What we can say about him is he has
a lot of autistic characteristics. And he is also the doctors and others who have seen him say,
this kid is untestable. You know, how do you how do you put a label, and one of the things that
I think he is a very, very lucky little boy to be to be growing up in Denmark, and that is that he
is not dependent for educational and medical services on a label. You know, it's like it's
because of the healthcare system. And the education system simply being different from what
we experienced here in the States, where many children aren't going to get the services they
need, especially in the public schools, unless they have that label of autism. And fortunately
Ulis does not have to have that. What we see that our autistic characteristics with him is the
issue of sensory overload. sensory processing issues are very, very Very common in children
who have the diagnosis of autism. One of the things that is also very characteristic on many of
these children is their attention and their focus is on their internal world, the external world is
often very confusing, it is overwhelming. And I think they without coming to a gateway
program, have the gift of being able to turn inside and to find often find something very
beautiful and very wonderful within themselves. But that very characteristic is also what
disconnects them from people, and from the equal wonder of what others have to offer here.
And one then has difficulty with social relationships, difficulty reading people's expressions,
and emotions. Much of this comes from limited eye contact, you know, we, one of the things
we can't do, we have islands, we have the ability to turn ourselves away from that sensory
input. We don't have ear lids, we don't have skin lids, the eyes are one of the few things that
we have, that we can very systematically use to regulate the amount of input that we are
comfortable with. So many of these children have very limited eye contact. And this was a very
strong characteristic of Julius and with this, not surprisingly, reduced verbal communication
skills. Now, as I look at him, and as I watched him, one of the things and this is also true for me
with so many other children, what are the connections? are each of these things, something
isolated? Or are they connected, and for me, they are very connected. There is the connection
with a sensory processing, potentially affecting the seizures, definitely affecting whether a
child, quote, looks at ACT autistic. If there is autism, it's going to influence sensory processing.
It may also influence seizures, et cetera, et cetera. And so what I'm fascinated with are the
connections. And when I will look at a child, one of the things that becomes very important. If
I'm saying, Well, where do I go? What do we what do we need, you know, I It's like a tree, I
can look at a tree. And there are all these leaves out here on the branches. And let's say there
are 100 different leaves. And let's say each of those leaves in a metaphor is a canoe is one of
the characteristics of this child, I can work on 100 different things. If I'm out at the peripheral
leaf level, or I can ask myself, what's in the trunk? And what's in the roots? What are the key
issues, that if you work with that key issue or issues is going to affect everything else? Again,
the connections. And for me, the sensory processing issue was very much the key connector
for Julius in the therapy intensive that I did with him last May. There were a number of things
that I focused on in the program. These I was wanting to find out who is this kid? What is it that
he is able to do, we also have a bias in the rehabilitation world and in the medical world, for
going for everything the person cannot do. Think about it. You know, it's like, what are your
deficits, and then we address our treatment at the deficits. But none of us learn by constantly
being reminded of what we can't do. We need to have an approach that builds and reduces
those limits. But it's through the things that are working, that we make the greatest gain and
also that we build trust with whoever that guide or therapist or mentor happens to be. So one
of the things that I incorporated throughout the sessions with him, were the activities involving
movement, bouncing on a ball jumping on a trampoline, using music, dancing, all kinds of
things to help his sensory system become more organized, but then doing a lot of things of
instead of saying and believing that All of these I, one of the things I guess I didn't talk about in
terms of the movement is this little guy had figured out some in pretty incredible ways of
providing constant vestibular input to his system, his head was constantly rotating from side to
side like this, he kind of flipped his fingers like so. And he had the most beautiful, graceful
dance around the room, you know, much of the rest of the world would say, oh, my gosh, he's
stimming. You know, this is self stimulation, we got to get rid of it. I'm looking at him through a
different set of eyes. And I'm saying, Julius, you're beautiful, you are incredible. Let's build on
this, you are telling me movement is the way in for you. And what I then said is, I would like to
find a way that you can know that I can help be the way out for you as well. And so one of the
one of the approaches that I often use with children is something called following, which is
instead of demanding that they enjoy that they join my world, that I invite them to let me
discover more of what their world is. So when he would do this, I would do this. And I was
wanting to find out what is the fascination here? What is it? We danced together around the
room, we moved our heads together. This is a kid who never looked at me. But suddenly he is
going, oh, oh, who is this? And suddenly there was, it was, I think it was his understanding that
he was not being judged. He was being it was like I wanted to know his world. And so he
began to come into more eye contact, using more nonverbal communication signals, which we
worked with a lot. And then in a mealtime program, so I said mealtime was extremely difficult
for him. And he, often with his hands, were just take the food and stuffed it in his mouth, no
eye contact with anyone. Lots and lots of the movement to try to get him to self organize. If his
mother or dad fed him, they would often scoop the food onto the spoon and handing the
spoon, he might put it in his mouth, but then the spoon would just go flying onto the floor,
27:34
et cetera. And so we worked a lot with this. And the one of the connectors with all of these
things, was beginning to introduce Hemi sync Mehta music to him. I'd like to take a short
diversion. And we're going to talk a lot about introducing Hemi sync, particularly to children
who are nonverbal, or to infants. But what I have been having to say and the essence of this
applies to everyone in the room, how do we introduce this to people in a way that is at the
whatever the level is that they are ready for. And I have a handout that will be on the back
table, that I think even though you're not not worrying, there are only a couple of people in the
room, who are really working with young children, and particularly nonverbal kids. But all of us
are working with a nonverbal signals of everyone around us. And I think that this, you know,
can be helpful for for each of us. What are the things about introducing Hemi sync? I think that
there have been some, I don't know if I want to call them errors or not thinking through totally
the learning with it. But very often we take someone and we then introduce them. But to Hemi
sync, we give them Hemi sync. But we don't have a good idea of where are they starting?
What do they start, and we need to have a baseline. And so when I'm thinking about using
Hemi sync with a child, like Julius etc, when I'm thinking about using Hemi sync, one of the
things that's very important is not to rush into it immediately. But to start with a period of time,
where I'm observing that individual observing their communications, nonverbal and verbal
communication signals, and getting a sense Who is this little kid, okay, I get this information
from the parents, and also often will ask parents to prepare a short video at home. That gives
me a sense of what this kid is like in a home environment. So I think a baseline with no music
at all is extremely important. And then It is very important to look at the child's response to
music. This is where I think we have made assumptions and potential connections that may or
may not be valid. And many of these ideas have been presented in the professional seminar
where a professional sits down with a client and uses Hemi sync gets a certain response, but
has absolutely no idea whether they would get that same response if they had simply ocean
surf, or music, etc. There are 1000s of Weldon research studies that show the power of music
in making some of the exact changes, or maybe not exact but similar changes to what we see
in Hemi sync. And so I think it's very important if we are saying or wanting to find out, is Hemi
sync effective? Does it make a difference? We need to know does it make a bigger difference
than simply using music. So I think with the kids I'm working with of more organizing kind of
music. When I came back from my gateway program and was fascinated with the question of
whether this was applicable to kids. There essentially were no meta music tapes at that time, I
had been using Stephen Harper's tape called comfort zone. And I talked to Bob Monroe and
asked him if he could make me an experimental version of comfort zone. Comfort Zone was
something Steven Halpern designed primarily for accelerated learning. I was seeing wonderful
responses with my kids to comfort zone had been using it for years. And now the connection
that came to me is, would it be more powerful if it had a bedding of binaural beats of the Hemi
sync underneath it. And some of you are familiar with the informal pilot study that I did with
about 25 kids during the years that I was in Madison, utilizing that kind of an introduction. Now,
there are a variety of what I call organizing kinds of music comfort zone, you know, certainly is
one, one that I particularly like, has been a series of recordings done by Joshua Leeds, that he
calls essential sound, there are a number of different levels of it, I have two recordings that are
called called Essential sound calm. And he's also got a whole series of them that are for dogs
and their owners. But it helps to organize and calm the system. Or also the discovery that
within our realm of meta musics. There are a number of them. That started out by with
composers who had released the music to the public without the Hemi sync and then came
back here and have an embedded version. One of these is river dawn, and the other is waves