About

What is Educational Kinesiology?

Edu-K is the outcome of over 20 years of experimentation and experiential research by specialist educator Paul Dennison, PhD, and his wife and colleague Gail E. Dennison, beginning in the 1960s. At his remedial learning centres in California, Paul noticed that people who came for help with learning challenges often had postural, physical or perceptual stresses and inhibitions.

Paul and Gail Dennison describe the interdependence of movement, cognition and applied learning as the basis of their work:

For the last century, educational training of the classroom teacher has been based on the premise that learning is a mental activity. Physical components of learning – the visual, auditory, fine motor and postural skills – have been almost entirely ignored by educators. A student who has difficulty in the early grades rarely does better later on unless the physical cause of the stress is somehow addressed. Moreover, since learning is measured by results rather than by process, stressful compensations are often acquired and carried throughout a learner’s life.

Paul found that the physical activities and techniques he was developing could sometimes ease the compensatory patterns that had arisen in his clients and encourage co-ordinated and integrated movement patterns. As the physical blocks released, learners were better able to express their innate intelligence and abilities.

Educational Kinesiology draws on techniques and tools from a number of disciplines, including behavioural optometry, kinesiology, postural alignment therapies, learning theory and sport. More information on the founders and the Edu-K organisation can be found on the tabs above.

What are Brain Gym® activities?

Through trial and experience, Paul developed a core set of 26 physical activities, which he named ‘Brain Gym’ activities. The Brain Gym activities became the foundation movement programme of his Educational Kinesiology system. You can click on the tab above to find out more about Paul and Gail Dennison and how the Edu-K programme came into being.

Brain Gym movements, exercises or activities recall the movements naturally done during the first years of life when learning to co-ordinate the eyes, ears, hands, and whole body. Clients, teachers and students have been reporting for over 30 years on the effectiveness of these simple activities. Even though it is not fully clear yet ‘why’ these movements work so well, people in many countries report they bring about perceptible and meaningful improvements.

You can learn all 26 activities by attending the Brain Gym 101 Foundation Course or the Brain Gym 26 Movement Course. These courses are the gateway to becoming a Brain Gym Movement Facilitator, offering greater scope to teach the movements as an independent professional. Further professional level training broadens the opportunities to use the Brain Gym activities in other contexts and to learn many other techniques from the Educational Kinesiology programme for self-development.

What are the concepts behind the Edu-K programme?

Edu-K worldwide

Originally created to help children and adults who had learning challenges, Edu-K is now used by people in over 80 countries to bring balance in their lives and enhance their abilities across a very wide range of areas. The international Educational Kinesiology Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in the US: www.breakthroughsinternational.org and you can find a worldwide map here. In the UK, the affiliated professional membership body is the Educational Kinesiology Trust Ltd, a private company run on a non-profit basis with a Board of Directors who donate their time for free.

Accessing Edu-K

Edu-K can be accessed through private sessions, customised trainings and courses with licensed Brain Gym Instructors and Consultants. Books and materials are also available. To find out more about what Edu-K may hold for you, we recommend you contact your local Edu-K Professional. They will be happy to discuss the types of issues people hope to improve by attending a session and the skills they could acquire by attending a training.

If you would like a taster of the Edu-K programme, why not book a session for yourself or attend an introductory course. Some Edu-K Professionals specialise the focus of their session work, such as with children, adults, sport, early motor development, writing skills etc. You can find out more about individual specialisms in the Profile Pages linked to each listing in the professional directory.

Background to the Edu-K programme

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: https://breakthroughsinternational.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 the tab at the top of this page.