Brachial Plexus Injury and NeuroMovement®
Has your child been diagnosed with a brachial plexus injury?
How can NeuroMovement help brachial plexus injury in newborns and children?
See what is possible with NeuroMovement, an alternative approach that focuses on the brain.
Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement® is a science-based approach that focuses on improving the quality of the functioning of the brain. A better, stronger brain will create new connections, leading to new possibilities and transformational change. In the video below, Anat Baniel works with an 8-week-old baby with a brachial plexus injury to her left arm. During her first lesson, Devorah moves her arm for the very first time.
NeuroMovement®: An Alternative Approach to Brachial Plexus Injury
Many brachial plexus injury treatments focus on the manipulation of the joints and the muscles. With NeuroMovement, we have a totally different approach. We understand that the brain controls all movement. The challenge is to get your child’s brain to experience and recognize that there is an arm there.
“Movement Is the Language of the Brain.”
~Anat Baniel
How to Treat Brachial Plexus Injury with NeuroMovement®
Ongoing brain research demonstrates the enormous capacity of the brain to create new connections and find new solutions.
This is true even when a brachial plexus injury at birth results in severe limitations in movement. When a newborn or child has a brachial plexus injury, it is easy to think and feel that something is wrong with her muscles.
However, what your child’s brain first needs is to map his arm (to recognize that it is there). Through a wide range of random and highly-varied movements, his brain will do exactly that.
Using NeuroMovement and the 9 Essentials, we access the enormous potential of your child’s brain in order to create new possibilities for recovery of function and breakthrough results.
The changes we have seen in infants and children with brachial plexus injuries are remarkable, sometimes surprising, and often previously thought impossible.
For the best outcomes, we recommend that you bring your child to see an ABM NeuroMovement® Practitioner as soon as possible.
NeuroMovement® Helps a Brachial Plexus Injury: The Story of Grace
The story of Grace, a 13-month-old child who suffered a severe brachial plexus injury to her right arm and hand at birth, illustrates the potential for healing when focusing on the brain.
Before beginning our work, Grace received a variety of therapies and daily range-of-motion exercises, with little progress. Her mother was told that when Grace turned four, she would need a highly-involved surgery that would hopefully help her to be able to use her arm.
Fifteen minutes into our first NeuroMovement lesson, Grace spontaneously lifted and extended her right arm forward at shoulder height.
By the third lesson, Grace initiated putting a bead necklace over her head using both hands.
Remarkable Transformations with NeuroMovement: Grace Regains Full Functioning of Her Arm and Hand
In our approach, we use movement and touch as a language, to communicate with the brain of your child. Using NeuroMovement and the 9 Essentials, we provide your child with experiences (information) that will allow the brain to recognize the existence of the arm. This, in turn, will bring about the desired changes spontaneously.
Many children with a brachial plexus injury (like Grace) gain full, or almost full functioning through NeuroMovement.
In this follow-up video of Grace, see her use her right hand and arm as effectively as her left, a remarkable transformation from when she first started getting NeuroMovement lessons.
Click here to read excerpts from a letter written by Grace’s mother to a physician.
About Anat Baniel
A trained clinical psychologist, dancer, and close professional associate of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais for over a decade, Anat Baniel is perhaps best known today as the founder of Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement®.
She is the author of two highly acclaimed books about this transformational methodology: Move Into Life: NeuroMovement for Lifelong Vitality and Kids Beyond Limits.
Anat Baniel has experienced over 30 years of remarkable outcomes with thousands of children with special needs and adults with strokes, injuries, and other limiting conditions. It is through this experience that she developed her innovative, scientifically based approach with concrete and easy-to-use tools—the Nine Essentials—that enable children and adults to move beyond their limitations, making the seemingly impossible possible.
Anat Baniel’s work is at the forefront of the emerging brain plasticity field, helping wake up the brain to its greater potency for learning and change throughout life. Anat has trained hundreds of practitioners in this Method. She collaborates with leading neuroscientists, doctors, and educators including Dr. Michael Merzenich, Dr. Martha Herbert, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Dr. Elizabeth Torres, and others. She and her team work out of the Anat Baniel Method® Center in San Rafael, California.
