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edusearch articles |
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| Educational Kinesiology and Wellness |
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| Author : Edusearch
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| Created : 19 Feb 2004
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| Last Revision : 19 Feb 2004
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Paul and Gail Dennison
January 23, 2004
Educational Kinesiology (Edu-K) is a distinct and dynamic branch of education, one founded on the principle that movement is the basis for all learning. The Latin root word educare (“to educate”) comes from educere (“to draw out”), and kinesis means movement. In Edu-K we say that movement patterns influence function, while function likewise influences movement patterns. The Edu-K processes are designed to facilitate whole-brain learning for academics, business, sports, and other daily-life activities.
Human beings share a physical functioning that is both wonderfully simple and profoundly complex. In Edu-K, our focus is on the physical and mental skills, as well as the emotional qualities, that we want to support. Anecdotal research shows that many people who use this program experience increased fitness and well-being—a general feeling of good health—as a natural byproduct of their enhanced self-expression and greater ease in performing everyday functions.
Edu-K, including the self-help program Brain Gym® and its co-process, Educational Kinesiology in Depth: Seven Dimensions of Intelligence, is used primarily by movement educators. Such practitioners know well that this field of study offers individuals a way to reconnect with innate intelligence and to develop or restore both physical and mental functioning.
Edu-K is also often used by physicians, mental health professionals, allied health professionals, and others to support and maintain their patients’ and clients’ health. Such professionals may work either in a nonmedical model of health enhancement or in a medical model (academic or complementary), if they are trained and licensed to do so. Both medical and health-enhancement professionals know that Edu-K empowers people to define and realize their goals of well-being and of skilled reading, writing, and communication; to achieve coordination of their skills, desires, and needs; and to improve their ability to release stress and find balance.
Even when used in these ways, Edu-K remains a nonmedical method, employing only its own well-established educational terms (such as pace, noticing, coordination, and integration) that accurately reflect the Edu-K work and process, and making no use of medical terms (such as therapy, symptoms, diagnosis, or treatment) or of any medical or academic labels.
Brain Gym Instructors are not licensed to diagnose, treat, or attempt to cure any medical condition. In Edu-K, we see human beings and their bodies as dynamic, not static; what’s important to us is how a person actually functions. By that we mean: What is the relationship between an individual’s goal or intention and his or her daily patterns of movement?
Thus Educational Kinesiology is not part of any medical model. It is a purely educational form of human interaction, designed to complement any course of learning or personal development being pursued. In Edu-K, we observe that health derives from the body-mind system’s ability to function creatively in wholeness. This kind of health is more than a lack of illness. It is the ability to take vital and appropriate action in one’s life and to include rest and restoration as needed.
Printed with permission.
For more information contact Glenys Leadbeater
09 2998871
[email protected]
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