The founders of Edu-K: Paul E Dennison, Ph D, and Gail E Dennison

Background to the Edu-K programme

Edu-K Founders

Dr Dennison, a specialist educator, came to the conclusion by 1975, after having tested and prescribed remedial programmes for hundreds of ‘learning disabled’ students at his learning centres, that most students experiencing difficulty in school were sufficiently intelligent for the tasks required of them. The deficits he found were in their physical/perceptual abilities and had often plagued the child’s development, uncorrected, since infancy. Spatial awareness, a concept of wholeness and closure, the ability to focus attention and perceive an organisation or a structure, are requisite learning skills, easily taught yet often not available to the children who need them.

Development of the Edu-K programme

He discovered that these skills depend upon an innate understanding of our bodies and how they move in space. Children only repeat those movements that are comfortable or familiar. It is as if the person considered ‘learning disabled’ lacks permission to move in an integrated and co-ordinated fashion. Dr Dennison’s Brain Gym® and Repatterning procedures were developed as he explored processes to encourage his students to discover new ways to move that were more functional and co-ordinated.

His educational therapy builds the student’s self-esteem, trusting the learner to work through mental aspects as physical blocks are released. The teacher’s role becomes that of facilitator of the process of learning. The teacher models how to learn and presents the curriculum. The teacher helps the student to notice what makes learning easier or what interferes with learning. The child has control of the process by which he internalises information.

The Educational Kinesiology Foundation

The Educational Kinesiology Foundation, the international body for Educational Kinesiology and Brain Gym, was established in 1987 in Ventura, California, USA, as a non-profit/educational organisation. The Dennisons, along with a group of educators who had experienced the Edu-K process, envisioned together how Edu-K might bring wholeness and ease to the educational system, as well as to other facets of life. These people were eager to explore ways of working with learners that would respect and nurture individual differences, value co-operation and conserve wholeness. They agreed to develop Edu-K around the concept of ‘drawing out’ the unique potential of an individual, rather than ‘stamping in’, intruding, or filling the mind with ‘information for its own sake’.

The Edu-K process continues to evolve around the concept of creating safety and trusting the learner’s unique learning style to emerge as the movements and balances* set him or her free. The Dennisons, the Board of Directors and the International Faculty Members, together with the Edu-K network, hold an ongoing intent to refine the Edu-K materials and language to keep the Edu-K system inviting and non-intrusive.

The Board persists in exploring the make-up and possibility of an organisation based on interdependence, decentralisation, diversity and an openness to new possibilities. Edu-K continues to evolve its processes, language, course materials and organisation around these principles.

Since 1987, the Foundation has trained thousands of professionals, at various levels, to facilitate the Brain Gym® programme worldwide. The work is being used extensively in homes, classrooms and businesses.

The international Foundation web address is: www.braingym.org.

Educational Kinesiology Trust (UK)

For more information on the Educational Kinesiology Trust UK, the curriculum and membership body for Educational Kinesiology and Brain Gym in this country, click here.

Do you have any further questions?

Visit the FAQsemail us or phone the Trust on 0845 539 0312.