How Gentle Touch Starts Optimal Development in the Body for Proactive Parents
Hello Proactive Parent, Grandparent, or Therapist,
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Home Improvements and Gentle Touch
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Gentle Touch, Breath, and Optimal Development
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Aug 5 - Aug 9 DO ML WITH ME Schedule and Links
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New YouTube Videos
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Blog Post Review
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Last Week's ML Support Topics
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Upcoming Webinars
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Upcoming Travel Intensives and In-Person Clinic Training with Michelle - Limited Time
Home Improvements and Gentle Touch
Seven years ago, as a young mother to two small children, one of whom had severe special needs, I decided that I did not want to spend hours every day cleaning my house. I needed to figure out how to organize my house so I could easily clean it in an hour or less every day and spend more quality time with my children.
For many years, I have envisioned a clean and organized home, and as a result, I have continually worked to find ways to organize my house more efficiently.
One big step towards this goal happened when my mother helped me move. She packed all my things into clear totes so I could see what was inside without having to open everything. It was genius!
That changed the way I organized things in my house. I spent many years trying different types of clear totes to organize my things, but nothing really worked. I still had to spend a lot of time cleaning my home. As more children were coming into my family the time it took to clean my home seemed to take longer.
About three years ago, I found some cubed shelving by Better Homes and Gardens. The space was manageable enough, but the totes didn't fit in there well. I tried the soft cloth cubes that fit inside the shelving, but since the cloth wasn't see-through, it was hard for me to remember what went where, and my children didn't put anything away in the right place.
My vision of having a clean and organized home that was manageable seemed very distant until one day, I found some clear totes at Wal-Mart that fit perfectly into the Better Homes and Garden Shelving. I could fit one large clear tote in per square, or I could fit two small totes.
This changed everything for me. I finally found a system that worked, and I knew it worked because it followed the principles of movement that Michelle teaches in Movement Lesson. So many people have told me, "I am so glad you found a way to organize that works for you," and I am here to say that this is not Erin's way to organize. I have found a way to organize with movement that works for everyone if they will put in the time and effort to do it.
I found a way to clean and organize my home optimally. It has been an undertaking to tear down all my old shelving and replace all my totes with these new totes. Most wouldn't do what I am doing because of the huge expense of time and money to replace all my old totes and to build new walls with which the totes fit. I had my husband build walls that mimicked the structure of the Better Homes and Garden's Shelving. But this is only the first step in my movement journey to organizing my home. In the following weeks, I will continue to explain how this organization method follows the principles of movement and how it can help you understand what you are actually doing with your child's optimal development when you give them the movement structure to organize their movements most efficiently.
What I really want to illustrate with this particular story is the breath of my idea. Breath is expansion, I took my vision of a clean and organized home and acted on it, incorporating the idea into everything that is going on in my home. I started my cleaning journey with an end goal in mind.
My personal purpose and my reason for being is centered on my family and the relationship I have with them. The breath of this desire is a continual outward action on my part as I strive to have cleanliness and order in my home.
Anyone who comes to my home and sees what is going on can see and know my purpose even when things look chaotic most of the time. It's not chaotic. Everything is happening in an organized fashion and with purpose. The breath of my idea is how I have clearly defined the reason why something is being done and then the who, what, when, where, and how just happen as I make daily efforts to bring the idea of cleanliness and order to fruition.
It hasn't happened instantly. The process is still ongoing, but it's happening a little every day.
I now want to take this illustration and relate it to the breath in movement that must be created when you do a movement lesson with your child. The changes I have seen in my children this last week have been phenomenal as I have come to understand and apply the breath of the gentle touch in ways I have never done before.
Gentle Touch, Breath, and Optimal Development
Again, what a week! I had amazing experiences with my kids. One noteworthy session was last Friday night. I can't tell you the countless hours I have spent working on Julia's back and felt like I made little progress in creating movement there.
Something in the last few weeks clicked about the gentle touch and my home movement lessons have not been the same. I know for most parents, it's just a lack of understanding the role gentle touch plays in creating optimal development in the body.
If you are like me, I have constantly asked myself:
"What is gentle touch?"
"Why is it important?"
"Am I doing it right?"
I have watched countless hours of Michelle's videos, attended training, and spent hours with Michelle talking movement lessons with her.
Studying the mathematics of movement and the role gentle touch plays in those mathematics, I finally understand what it is, why it is important, and how to know when I am successfully applying it. Last week's work on my kids was a testament to my success in understanding, applying, and seeing immediate results.
Part of being able to successfully apply the ML gentle touch is that it is a belief in an end goal. So, when starting a movement lesson session, the key is knowing what outcome to expect with every session.
Where parents and professionals make the biggest mistake is that they think the end goal is a skill that starts or a problem movement that stops.
I have been there and have fallen into the same trap. My expectations have left me disappointed with my results and have given me an overwhelming sense that I will never be able to do a movement lesson like Michelle Turner does it.
After 7 years of intense study, I finally learned that the outcome I should expect with every movement lesson is optimal development. I finally understand that I get optimal development when the system can breathe, rotate, has self-controled momentum, weight transfer, counterbalance, and midline crossing.
What I really want to emphasize here is the breath that gentle touch creates in the system, not breath like breathing in and out with your lungs and air going in and out of your mouth, but that breath of life that is within every living being. I have heard Michelle call this "life force," but I didn't understand what she meant until now. Without breath, a fetus will not survive in the womb. Again, I am not talking about the breath that fills our lungs because a fetus in the womb does not breathe in that way. But a fetus does have a breath of life, which allows for the fetal movements that every mother feels in her womb as the baby is growing inside. If that life force dies, the fetus will die. It is this breath that the gentle touch elicits from the body and allows the baby to oppose gravity with rotational movements when it is born and throughout a lifetime of development.
Now, "opposing gravity through rotational movements" is a language that no one but Michelle has coined. How she came to intuitivly understand that is amazing. It took me 7 years to finally understand what that means. Of those seven years, it required two years of intense self-study of putting together the rotational mathematics that ultimately helped me logically understand and visually see the concepts that Michelle teaches.
When a person lacks strength in its life force, it lacks the ability to interact rotationally with gravity, and therefore, that person's milestone development deviates from this optimal timeline that Michelle has been teaching for almost two decades.
It is only by doing movement lessons and teaching the person's life force to expand and move outward that the rotational movements needed to optimize a system toward optimal development can occur.
As a parent, when doing a movement lesson on your child, the end goal you should keep in mind for every lesson is an optimal movement, which is (breath, rotation, self-controlled momentum, weight transfer, counterbalance, and midline crossing). When these movements are in the body, optimal skills will start and non-optimal skills will stop internally and externally. You, as the parent, do not get to choose what skills start and stop except that the optimal skills start and the non-optimal skills stop.
It is hard for a parent to know what skills are optimal development in the system and what skills are non-optimal. This is where Michelle's genius comes in. She knows the baseline of optimal development. She knows what functional movements indicate optimal development. With that baseline, you, as a parent, can know that everything else is non-optimal movement. The key thing for you to recognize with your child as you do movement lessons with them is that the movement is optimizing toward optimal development. If that is happening, then you know that you are putting optimal development into your child's system.
An example of knowing a baseline milestone of optimal development is crawling. Optimal crawling is a four-point classic crawl. Everything else, no matter its variation, is non-optimal crawling. Even when people are telling you that your child's crawling is fine, even if it's an army crawl, bear crawl, frog hop crawl, skipped crawl, one-legged crawl, and so on. These crawling types are indicators that non-optimal development is happening in your child's system. Somewhere, breath, rotation, self-controlled momentum, weight transfer, counterbalance, and midline crossing are not happening in your child's system.
What you have to decide as a parent is if you are okay with non-optimal movements or if you want optimal movements for your child. If you are okay with non-optimal movements, then you don't need to do anything, but if you are a proactive parent and want the best future for your child, then why wouldn't you do everything now to optimize your child's developmental movements so that the future can happen?
The number one reason you, as a parent, do not feel like you are giving your child the experience of optimal development is that you are not spending enough time creating breath in the system. If you go do an intensive with Michelle Turner, it's mind-blowing to see what she does with a child (or even an adult). Then you, as a parent, go home, and you feel like you can't maintain the amazing progress your child made while at the clinic.
Over the last two years, I have slowly unlocked the secrets to working on my kids like Michelle does and feeling like I am truly putting optimal development into my children's bodies.
Julia, who is one of my seven children, has severe scoliosis, and last Friday, I got her whole spine moving in 90 minutes. I spent 60 minutes on breath and then the last 30 minutes working on the rest of the movement process. I was flabbergasted to get that kind of movement out of Julia's spine. I have only ever seen Michelle do that, and now I can do it, too. If Michelle and I can do it, then you can do it, too. Don't give up just because you don't understand everything. If you have gentle touch and rotation, you know enough to make optimal changes in your child's system, and then as your knowledge and practice increase, you will eventually master those skills and continue to move your child to a life of independence you never thought would be possible.
The most important thing you need to understand and believe is that when you do a movement lesson with your child, you are putting optimal development into their system. Again, you won't get how to create breath in the system right off the bat. Rotational movements will be a foreign concept to you. You are just looking for your child to perform milestones, but your vision of development for your child must be higher than just getting to the next milestone; your vision should be optimal development in all aspects of life. Working on your child in this way, you will always be satisfied with the results of your home movement lessons.
Remember that when optimization is happening, you can see milestone performances, but not always. You may see things like more ease of movement and stamina, more variety of play, more independence, increased cognition, new language and communication, visual skills, better social skills, and so on.
Optimal development is not about getting your child to the end, its teaching their body how to experience the journey that creates the end. Every child will go at their own pace but they will do it with a purpose in mind versus having developmental movements that have no purpose or end goal.
Developmental movements that have no purpose is development
- that platues
- it looks awkward
- developmental milestones can be skipped or take a long time to get from one to the other
- speech can be delayed
- cognitive can be delayed
- vision is delayed
- and so on
In my live ML home sessions, I show you how to work more effectively with gentle touch and breath. below is my schedule for his week.
If you want to learn gentle touch more intuitively, Michelle offers online trainings: Beginners Touch, Segement One Training, and Mastering the Touch Training.
You, as a parent, do not need to spend 7 years like I did figuring out Movement Lesson. You still need to learn development and the movement process, but you don't have to spend hours wigging it like I did.
Michelle and I are working diligently to significantly shorten the amount of time it takes you to see the profound changes you can make in your child's development.
You don't need to be Michelle, you don't need to be me, you need to be you. You can be you and you can give your child the gift of optimal development as you exercise this seed of faith that optimal is possible for your child.
If you are going through a course and you are not getting it, ASK QUESTIONS and we will do everything in our power to explain and reexplain until you get it. In the mean, time, you have to keep practicing and trying and applying the movement process with diligence and faith. Michelle and I don't work by faith anymore; we know exactly how to create optimal development in the system and do it with amazing success. We are here to teach you how to do the same by giving you the steps we took to learn it too.
Do ML With Me Schedule - August 5 - 9, 2024
Below is my schedule for the ML Home Application.
You don't have to figure this out alone. Pick a time and come Do ML with me!
The passcode is Optimize for EVERY Zoom link.
On Monday, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:55 a.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on Speech and the Reaching Up Milestone
ZOOM LINK:
On Monday, from 6:00 p.m. to 6:55 p.m. MDT, I will work with my typical 6-year-old (for 30 minutes) on Pubic Bone Strike
I will work with my typical 8-year-old (for 25 minutes) on increasing momentum in the hips and knees for more coordinated running.
ZOOM LINK:
On Monday, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:55 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on Speech, Mouth, and Tongue Work in coordination with the Reaching Up Milestone
ZOOM LINK:
On Tuesday
- from 2:15 to 2:45 p.m. MDT, I will be working with my husband's shoulders, incorporating Michelle's Grabbing the Feet Exercises (31 years old).
- from 2:45 - 3:00 p.m. MDT, I will be working with creating more breath in the spine with my active 3-year-old.
- from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 2-year-old on seizure recovery and breath in right arm.
- from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 5-year-old on the feet and increasing momentum.
ZOOM LINK:
On Wednesday, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:55 a.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on Nose and Midline Crossing to optimize speech functions.
ZOOM LINK:
On Wednesday, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:55 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on breath and spine to optimize speech functions.
ZOOM LINK:
On Thursday from 7:00 to 7:55 a.m. MDT, I will work with my 16-month-old on breath and heavy head.
ZOOM LINK:
On Thursday
- from 2:15 to 2:45 p.m. MDT, I will work on myself working on breath and head function (34 years old).
- from 2:45 - 3:00 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 3-year-old on vision and hip coordination.
- from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 2-year-old on seizure recovery putting breath into spine and vision
- from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 5-year-old on hands and movement structure
ZOOM LINK:
On Friday, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:55 a.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on weight transfer and the shoulders and the Reaching Up Milestone.
ZOOM LINK:
On Friday, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:55 p.m. MDT, I will work with my 7-year-old on weight transfer and the head and the Reaching Up Milestone.
ZOOM LINK:
If the schedule above is confusing to you, below is a picture showing the times I am working on my children. If your email browser blocks pictures, be sure to approve the content in this email so you can see the image below. Remember that the time zone is MDT.
Some things to remember:
- The time zone is MDT (Mountain Daylight Time)(Colorado time zone).
- You can attend any Zoom, but if you have an active or less active child, typical to severe special needs, I tried to specify on the calendar when you can catch a session that might be more fitting for your particular home situation.
- You can hop on, be on mute, and turn your video off if you would like. You are not required to talk during this time, but you are more than welcome to observe a home session if you want to do that.
- You are not required to do the same thing I am doing. I will be doing my home ML session, and you can be doing yours.
If you still have questions, please email Erin at [email protected] and let me know.
If you have specific lessons you would like to see me do with my kids, please reply to this email and let me know.
Parents and professionals have loved this unique insight into my home movement lessons; I hope to see you there, too!
My goal is to encourage you to make your own ML schedule with your kids and then organize your lives to stay true to that schedule. It's okay if my times do not work for you. Make a schedule that does, and then start consistently doing your movement lessons.
Remember to define the exceptions to your schedule so that you don't beat yourself up for not sticking to it, and then stick to your schedule otherwise. (Like when I go out of town, and I am not with my kids, I am not going to beat myself up for not being able to work on them) Sticking to a schedule is critical to seeing change and feeling like you are genuinely making a difference in optimizing your child's development as you give them optimal movement experiences.
If you are not sure where to start, start by:
(1) Enrolling in the Fast Start Support Program - CLICK HERE to join for 60 DAYS FREE!
(2) Do the "What is Movement Lesson Course." Do that course for a week
(3) Then you want to spend at least one week with each of the developmental courses, doing them in order so you can learn how to evaluate and see optimal movement and development
(4) If you have done all the courses in the Fast Start Support Program, then you want to get into the Complete Optimal Development Program so you can start Segment One Training - CLICK HERE to join
(5) if you still have questions, respond to his email.
If you are in a Movement Lesson support program,
- I help you understand and learn Movement Lesson faster
- I teach you how to start having immediate success in optimizing your child's development
- I help you transition into Michelle's language of development and the movement process so you can really catch the essence of what she expresses in her videos
- I help you feel hope and confident that you can do this
- I fill in the gaps that are preventing you from having more frequent and amazing home movement lessons
Below, you will see new content published this week and where you can find it. Again, don't feel like you have to go through it all; watch what is relevant to you today and what you need. If you need help finding content, please respond to this email with the specific information you are looking for.
Catch the New YouTube Videos of the Week.
>>> CLICK HERE to watch our MILESTONE MONDAY video on "(Non-optimal) Pulling to Standing vs. (Optimal) Coming to Standing"
. >>> CLICK HERE to watch our WEBINAR WEDNESDAY video on "Unlocking Development Milestones The Power of Foot Grabbing"
>>> CLICK HERE to watch our FREEDOM FRIDAY on "NICU and Optimizing Development - 3 Tips for Proactive Parents and Exercises"
>>> CLICK HERE to watch our most recent ALL ABOUT MOVEMENT Podcast Episode, "How to Evaluate for Movement," with Michelle Turner and Scott Davies
Read our Blog
>>> CLICK HERE to read about "The Power of Improving Movement By 1% Daily"
Last Weeks ML Support Topics
You can watch the replays of these zooms if you are in our Optimal Development Program (Fast Start Support Program). CLICK HERE to join. To review the videos look in the archived Monday and Wednesday Zoom Products.
Last Monday's Support Zoom Topic: Burnout and Mom Guilt
Last Wednesday's Vision Support Zoom Topic: Vision and Breath
Michelle's Upcoming Webinars - CLICK HERE to sign up to watch them live
- (AUGUST 8, 2024) Optimal Development and Crawling
- (AUGUST 22, 2024) Warning Signs: Crawling
Travel Intensive Opportunities with Michelle Turner
The Czech Republic (September) - SOLD OUT!
Orlando, Florida (November) - SOLD OUT!
Training Opportunities with Michelle Turner
Beginners Touch Training in Arizona
>>> CLICK HERE to reserve your spot now! (October)
Newborn Movement Assessment in the Czech Republic
>>> CLICK HERE to reserve your spot now! (September)
Remember, whenever you do a movement lesson, you give your child the gift of optimal development.
Respectfully,
Erin Fulks
Movement Lesson™ Practitioner
Movement Lesson™ Support