How to Retrain the Brain

January 24, 2008 by Lisa

Brain Retraining is done through a series of physical exercises that selectively access a certain part of the brain by having the eyes look in a specified direction. The direction is related to a sensory stimulation point. Most of these exercises will cross the vertical midline of the body, which helps to integrate the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

The exercises necessary for brain retraining are: the cross crawl, the straight crawl, eye eights, ear eights, magic eights, and mirrors. Once the student knows how to do these simple exercises, then it is easy to go through the specified steps of brain retraining.

It is so simple to do, yet for some reason people seem a bit afraid of this. The sequence is like this:
1. Have the student perform an activity that is related to learning, such as having the student track his/her eyes back and forth.
2. Have the student say an affirmation, such as "I can easily move my eyes across a page when I read."
3. Have the student perform these activities: eye eights, ear eights, magic eights, and mirrors.
4. The student then performs cross crawls looking in a specified direction, such as up and to the left.
5. The student then does straight crawls looking in a specified direction, such as down and to the right.
6. Next, the student does cross crawls while looking in a wide circular pattern and straight crawls while looking in the circle pattern.
7. The student repeats the original activity and the affirmation.

That's all there is to it. I only have the kids do this activity once a week. Doing it more than once a week is not beneficial. It takes about a week for the brain to rewire for the specified activity. I have the student do one of these activities for three weeks in a row and then move on to another activity.