12. Anat Baniel and Brain Plasticity

We learn through movement, we turn stimulation into information…with awareness.

Anat Baniel

Nature doesn’t grow in straight lines. Nothing in nature is perfectly straight. Our rational brain loves straight lines, they are fun to draw and design buildings with, but they are not natural. We have all grown up learning the classical model of learning: ‘get it perfect’, ‘get it straight’, ‘there’s a proper way of doing things, if you want to get it right’. That’s the rational brain way of doing it.

Learning brain plasticity is not a bit like this. It is the opposite of rational: it is natural, organic. We grow like trees, not buildings. We don’t erect scaffolding and concrete in our brains, we grow wonderful images; we make music.

If you want to engage with your brain, you need to be open, be mindful that it is a garden not a building, and that there is never just one way of doing things. There are infinite ways of doing things. The point is to engage the brain, to play with its magnificence, and then trust it to do its stuff. It knows what to do – it just needs the right conditions.

Anat Baniel works with a range of childhood conditions, from cerebral palsy to autism. She has a unique way of working with children with special needs that facilitates transformation in a way that ordinary therapies do not. She uses movement with attention and eight other essentials to communicate with the brain to enhance change and learning. As Dr Michael Merzenich wrote in his foreword to Anat’s book, Kids Beyond Limits:

Scientists have defined the ‘rules’ governing brain plasticity. Anat Baniel, working in parallel along a completely different path, has defined almost exactly the same rules. She interprets them in practical and understandable human terms as the ‘Nine Essentials’, which richly contribute to clinical intervention.

Anat Baniel and her ABM (Anat Baniel Method) have had great success working with autists of all ages. Children under the age of three or four can often lose their diagnosis. She says this is due to a combination of the capacity of the brain to change, and the child having less time to form habits and ‘learn’ their experience of being on the spectrum.

Anat Baniel calls autism a neuromovement disorder. One of the things she teaches is to do what babies do: lie on the floor, bringing the feet up to the head, bringing the knees up to the head, watching with infinite attention and care the movement of the body. It is about letting the brain and the body reconnect. It is about letting the physical connections come into awareness and attending to the inner sensations. It is learning to follow the feeling of the messages running up and down the body, letting the brain know something new about the body.

As it does this, the brain begins to make new connections, new pathways, and it begins to do what it always wanted to do: it begins to make, or improve, its 3D patterns of the body.

(Although not part of ABM, this exercise also switches on the parasympathetic system. Studies have shown that the parasympathetic system is changed by easing the clenched muscles around the lower spine. Autists, because they spend so much time in a sympathetic state, tend to have very tight muscles here. This exercise relaxes these muscles and permits the flow of information. It also seems to help to reconnect the social engagement system, and to ‘switch on’ the facial muscles naturally.)

Anat Baniel says that without attention this is simply exercise. This movement is not exercise, it is attending, following and feeling the inner sensations. You have to go slowly, and between each movement you have to stop and let the brain recalibrate. It is movement with attention. It is transforming stimulation into information.

It might not seem like much, but this can be overwhelming for an autist. You need to go very slowly or it can bring on an influx of stimulation that triggers an ‘overwhelm’ response. Babies don’t go fast, they go into a dream-like ‘zone’ when they are integrating their body.

Now, we can’t necessarily get our children to go dreamily, but we can move towards that kind of motion. It is not an operation in making something; it is an operation of engaging, finding and listening. The brain then begins to connect.

How you do the exercises is what matters. You need to remember that we are working with the nervous system, and a flighty one at that. You have to go slowly, you have to work with awareness. It is very easy to overload a person with autism, and although it might not look as if you are doing much, the brain is actually processing a great deal of information.

Ultimately we are learning, not to drive the mind, but to give it space to drive itself. We are providing the opportunity for new connections to be made, for new awareness to be harnessed.

It is essential that the nervous system finds its own intelligence.

Anat Baniel

It is beneficial, if you want to experiment with these types of exercises, to learn them first for yourself with a practitioner. We can all learn greater self-awareness and we can only really teach it when we can embody the experience. If you need to, find a practitioner who can teach you or your child how. Just make sure that they understand the principles of brain plasticity, and the principle of child-centred learning.

Autism provides an opportunity

for us all to learn higher awareness.