PART I – Brain Reflexes – What You Should Know For Your Child and Yourself
Brain Reflex Therapy, developed by Dr. Bruno Chikly, M.D., DO, LMT, is hands-on, non-invasive, fast-acting and relatively simple to apply affecting body, emotions and cognition of adults and children. When our hand touches a hot stove, we jerk it away. When the doctor taps a knee, the leg kicks forward. These automatic actions are reflexes, involuntary physical reactions to external or internal stimuli acting on our bodies. Reflexes are linked to specialized neural pathways that allow us to act upon signals before they reach the brain—meaning we can react quickly to important environmental cues without the need for conscious thought.
Nothing grabs our heart strings like a newborn wrapping their little hands around one of your giant fingers. Newborns have a unique set of primitive reflexes that help with the birthing process, early stages of development and are a crucial step in the maturation of the nervous system. Primitive reflexes are important for protection, nutrition and survival, and help the body get organized at a very deep level. As the child grows, these primitive responses become inhibitory and are replaced with higher-level reflexes like voluntary motor skills, called postural reflexes. The integration of reflexes may correlate with the acquisition of a new skill for the child.
However, if these primitive reflexes persist beyond a normal developmental timeline, typically within the first year of life, the child may fall behind developmentally. The reflexes should have become inhibited and will stay inactive in the brain, but they don’t completely disappear. If the reflexes remain active, they can inhibit development. These are called unintegrated, uninhibited or retained reflexes. When our reflexes are retained or uninhibited, our brains need to work harder to accomplish tasks that are not yet automatic.
Many children and adults have neurological disorders, learning disabilities and cognitive challenges. When tested, they often are found to have retained primitive reflexes that inhibit development and impact them physically, behaviorally, emotionally and socially with numerous dysfunctions.
No one really knows how these reflexes get retained or uninhibited. Possible reasons could include the emotions of parents and family, birth process, toxicity, pollution, vaccinations, physical/emotional stress, diet, lack of movement or stimulation, environmental stress or head trauma. Later in life, because these reflexes are just inhibited, great physical or emotional stress, illness or trauma may cause them to become uninhibited and cause some sort of regression. Adults can see the reoccurrence of these developmental reflexes in many pathologies, including trauma, whiplash, PTSD, Parkinson’s, stroke and dementia.
The brain is extremely plastic, meaning it can change for better or for worse at almost any age. Children who have fallen behind developmentally are often able to regain lost ground, if given proper guidance, and adults can finally achieve some sense of normality.
Catherine Perman, LMBT, CMLDT, is the owner of Body Therapeutics, LLC, For more information, call 917-701-1162, email cperman@cs.com or visit iahp.com/Catherine-Perman.
