Transform The Life of Special Needs Children Through Movement | Jim Kwik & Anat Baniel

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today and the topic is really about how do you transform the life of your child with special needs? And we're excited to have back on the show a friend of mine, Anat Banyal. She's a trained clinical psychologist. She's a dancer. She's a bestselling author of a number of books, including Move Into Life. If you're watching this on YouTube, you see the picture here. And this is really neuromovement for lifelong vitality. And I'll put a link to our episode where we talked about using that for greater strength, flexibility, energy, mental clarity, and also the topic of today, which is Kids Beyond Limits: Breakthrough Results for Children with Autism, Asperger's, Brain Damage, ADHD, and Undiagnosed Developmental Delays. Thank you for being back on the show, Anat.

Oh, love being back here with you.

Yeah. Thank you. So in the last episode, we covered a lot of information. We talked about using our body and you talk about the 9 essentials. And we covered some of them in the previous episode. I encourage everybody to go back to the— we'll put links in the show notes to that episode, or you can watch it on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube. In this episode, I want to talk about children with special needs. This is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I mean, I think we all know individuals of all ages and stages of life that could use the work that you do. You know, and also my mother, when I had my learning difficulties and I had a few traumatic brain injuries as a child, she actually became a special needs teacher in the public school system, you know, where she spent a good few decades. And so it's a real passion, you know, for me to help bring this information out and give resources to people who are looking for resources. And I encourage everyone to listen to this because I guarantee you there will be Usable, practical strategies for all of us. And so thank you again for coming back. And let's talk about this. Why did you write this book, Kids Beyond Limits? And you talk a lot about possibility. And, you know, I really— our community loves, you know, this idea that we could go beyond our limits and become limitless.

Well, I wrote the book, I think, because of 2 reasons. One is what I knew was possible. And I knew what the children that were brought to me, what the parents were told was possible and what the teachers believed was possible. And it had no relationship. You know, I realized that changes that happen have to happen in the brain. Of course, we are a whole system with body and brain and emotions and everything. But, and the brain works in a quantum way. It doesn't work in a linear way. It's an information system. And I got to think about it that way as a result of seeing the changes. My father, he was 103 and he— so he had a wonderful life and passed away a few months ago. And he was a brilliant scientist and inventor. He was a chemist and a biochemist and so on. And I, one day I asked him, I said, what does it mean that the brain is a quantum system? What does it mean that it can upgrade its own energy? And And he actually talked to me about how we spend energy to create order and we upgrade the system itself. I mean, the brain is a— can upgrade its own self more than any other organ in the body. All organs self-organize, but the brain can really upgrade and upgrade itself. And then, you know, one day I did a workshop for physical therapists and they brought a little girl that couldn't crawl. And I did a demo on— she was 4 years old. I did a demo and in 10, 15 minutes she started crawling and I didn't even tried to make her crawl.

Wow.

Her brain just got it. And the therapist, it was many years ago when I lived in New York, so it was a really big gift that she gave me. She said, well, I do what you do. You know, she saw me moving her legs and so on and arms and then, and, and so how come she crawled with you? I said to her, we obviously do not do the same thing because she had a different outcome. I said to her, but let me think about it. And what I realized the difference was that I used movement to activate the brain of the child so they can do the job of learning Okay. I wasn't teaching the child to crawl. I was interacting in the dynamic relationships between the parts in a way that the brain could feel it and start utilizing it into what all babies do. Now, most babies, nobody teaches them to crawl. So how do they learn to crawl? So I know it's a little elusive when I say it like that. So maybe ask me something that I can help the audience.

No, that's wonderful. We know, you know, as your body moves, your brain grooves. And It's not a one-way street that as you move your body, it helps, and you use your brain in different ways, it affects your body and your body affects your brain. They're one system, obviously. Maybe you could walk us through an example of what our listeners could do for themselves or for that child in their life.

Okay, so I think the adults that interact with the child, parents, which now I work with parents and I call the course From Fixing to Connecting, or therapists or teachers, we also work now with the school district in Canada Which is really fascinating, that the first thing to back off, and it's before even my essentials, is to back off from attempting to fix the child, to make them do what they can't do now. I say, if he could, he would. If she could, she would. So what can you do? And that's where the essentials come. So you and the essentials are each a way for the brain to be able to notice what's going on and do its job better, get information. So let's say you have a 2-year-old or a Or a little— so let's just take a 2-year-old and you're going to put a shirt on them, dress them, help them dress, right? That means they're gonna move. You either ask them to move their arm or you move their arm. And you can do it in a way where you ask them questions. You know, children, you say, oh, is the arm gonna go up or not? Is mommy touching the arm yet or not? By asking questions to co— and at the beginning, they might have no idea what you're talking about. But you're calling upon them to try and make sense of what's happening. And it's going to happen anyway. The arm is going to go up. Does the shirt, maybe if it's in the morning, feel a little cold, cool on the skin? Do you like it? Do you not like it? That means you give them a lot of distinctions, opportunities to feel themselves and notice one thing versus the other. We just talked about it in the previous podcast. The brain needs to perceive differences or it has no new information. If it has no new information, it can't learn. And it learns only to the degree of refinement of the perception. So to move the hand like this is extremely refined. So babies in the beginning don't move their arm like this. They haven't created enough neural networks to do that. So my first thing is pull back from fixing and get interested in the child and observe the child and see what they do. Because that's already them being intelligent. And then work with that. So movement with attention to the feeling of self. So what I did, what I realized from this example story with the PT, is that the difference was that I worked with a child, another is essentially slow, slow enough, touched her in a way that I felt whether she was responding to me or not. And the way she responded or didn't guided me how to do the next thing. And within 10, 15 minutes, she came home to herself. She was able to make sense of her body enough to be able to be on all fours and start crawling forward.

That's outstanding. And I can't imagine the amount of joy for that family to be able to see that kind of transformation. And so I encourage everybody to listen to the first episode so they get more of the essentials. So this, you have the principles so you understand the process And behind every principle, I believe there is a promise. What are some of the guiding principles behind your work? When you have a client that you're working with and maybe it's a child with autism or Asperger's or ADHD, what is your thought process?

So, and then I'll also give another quick example as an answer. My very first principle, there is a human being, whether it's the youngest I worked with is 5 days old, that were referred by the obstetrician, and then of course every age in between. And my basic principle: there is a living, feeling being there, that their experience matters. The felt experience of you, if I were to work with you, or the child, is of the utmost importance. And the brain The first thing it needs is connection, the experience of connection and safety.

Connection and safety.

Connection and safety. And I don't know, I never know which one to put first, but I think connection creates safety. We need to be benevolent leaders to the children. We don't make them do things, but we are in charge, of course. I mean, they need us to be leaders. So my first principle That being there doesn't matter how far out it looks or it's so young it probably doesn't know or— that is absolutely not the case. There's a full person. And if we just start with that, already what we do and how we do with the child will make a huge difference for the child. The next principle is the intelligence or the ability to learn, however you want to call it, because it's not indicated by what the person can do already or how well they do it.

Hmm.

So when I get a child, I look at what they do and don't do. I even learn how intelligent they are sometimes from their failures because the way human beings can fail is spectacular. You can't make a cat fail this way. You can't make a dog. It takes a human brain to be brilliant to fail so good. And it's sincere. It's not like I'm trying to be nice or not. So the other thing is we have to interact with a child where they are now and we need what I call go with the system. That means, so let's take a child first on the autism spectrum. Some of those kids, they scream very loud, they don't talk and they have sometimes very high-pitched voice, kind of like piercing sound and it has very little variability in it. So I can hear a sound of a nonverbal autistic person and I know they have autism. Because the brain wasn't able to perceive differences and create the variability that we have in our vocal expression. So I had a kid like that. I could hear it. I was waiting to— it was the first session. And from the waiting room, I was hearing this piercing loud sound. And I went like, oh, the child is on the spectrum. And everybody says, do an inside voice. Do a good shh inside voice. And I go like, this is like ridiculous. All he feels is that he's wrong, but he doesn't know what inside voice is anyway. It's a very abstract concept. Concept. So he comes to my room, I get him on the table, and he does the sound. And I said to him, you know, I'm pretty old. I said to him, I don't hear very well. Can you make the sound louder? And I made his pitch louder so he knew what I was talking about. First of all, talk about variation. I got this kid's attention like there's no tomorrow. You know, he looked at me. And then he did it. And I said, that's a little better, but I need louder. Basically, I got him to hear what he's doing. And then when he got too louder, I said to him, now that's a little too loud. I said, can you make it a little less? And I made less. And then immediately I asked him to do it louder because that was his comfort zone.

Mm-hmm.

And that was the last time he did this high-pitched voice. That was it. It was over. He could hear the difference.

Amazing example.

I'm very passionate about this stuff. I can tell myself I'm not gonna get too passionate, but I can't help it.

Oh no, we appreciate your passion. And also you've taken your passion and you've made it your purpose, you know, also as well. And I know our audience appreciates that also as well. I encourage everyone who's listening to get their copy. If this resonates with you and you wanna go deeper with Anat, make sure you get Kids Beyond Limits. You know, this is something that if you— a great book to be able to gift also as well. If you're— while you're on Amazon, you could get a copy of Movement into Life also as well. And it outlines Anat's process and the principles in more time and more depth that we have time for here in this conversation. Anat, how do people stay in touch with you? Where can they go if they want to find out more about your services or you know, want your additional support?

Sure. It's my website, annatbanielmethod.com. And on YouTube, we have a channel with a lot, a lot of short videos of the work with children samples. So we have parents just watching, I don't know, dozens and dozens of them. And some of them even imitate what they see us do. And then they sometimes get outcomes and they let us know. Of course, Facebook, you know, the social media channels.

We'll put all the links, including to, you know, some of your giveaways onto jimkwik.com/notes. Thank you for making all, so much of your knowledge and your wisdom available to the world and, you know, obviously to our community as well. And so, I wanna make sure everybody, you don't leave here without taking some kind of small, simple step. So, make sure you do something. Maybe you follow Anat on social media. You could go to our notes and see her website, see some, make sure you go to jimkwik.com/notes. To see the summary of these kinds of conversations. And I encourage you, if this episode resonated with you, to be able to go deeper with her. And because you are out there, you're helping people to learn and you're elevating their learning and also their life. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Jim.

And to everyone who's listening, thank you so much. Make sure you screenshot this episode. You can tag Anna, tag myself so we get to see it. I'll repost some of them also as well. Thank you for being engaged. And until our next episode, remember to Be limitless, everybody. Hi, Kwik Brain. It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and You find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text And we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question, and I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.