Personal Advancement
Get your weekly brainerciseThe secrets to improving your golf game may not come from a golf pro, but rather from a Brain Gym instructor. |
|
 [ 2002-04-10 ] |
To find out, take this test by eCareerFit, the career assessment experts.
Brain Gym is a series of 26 specific physical movements designed to enhance learning ability. It can cause vast and profound shifts in the areas of health, relationships and careers by improving such things as listening skills, comprehension, co-ordination, focus and energy levels.
"I started doing Brain Gym because I had reached a frustrating plateau in my golf game. I couldn't break past my 18 handicap," says Dr. Paul Curlee, whose story is posted on the Brain Gym Web site.
"What I needed was to improve my basic level of physical co-ordination, which is exactly what Brain Gym helped me to accomplish. Within six months, I had won my first of four trophies and my handicap was down to 10."
According to Brain Gym Instructor Jill Hewlett of Aurora, the exercises are not only easy, they feel good to do. And, as funny as the name sounds, the results are anything but a joke.
"Brain Gym is the corner stone of Educational Kinesiology, which literally means 'to draw out someone's potential through movement,'" Hewlett says.
"It helps us access more of our brain potential and connect our mind with our heart, which can bring significant improvements physically, mentally, emotionally, or energetically."
The benefits of Brain Gym include:
Paul Denison, Ph.D., remedial educational specialist and founder of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation, originally developed Brain Gym over a period of 25 years in an effort to assist children and adults labelled as 'learning disabled.'
"He found that people didn't necessarily lack intelligence, but rather that their [learning] system was blocked not just intellectually, but emotionally and physiologically too. If you remove the block you can access incredible intellect," Hewlett says.
As a past career counsellor and mother of three, 43-year-old Barb Mousseau has found numerous applications for the practice.
She turned to Brain Gym four years ago to access more of her innate creativity, and was very pleased with the outcome. She even asked Hewlett to work with her son when he was struggling in school.
"My son believed that his best just wasn't good enough. But after working with Jill [Hewlett], he went from an 'I can't' to an 'I can' attitude and his marks improved," Mousseau says.
"It's an excellent career counseling tool too," she adds. "It connects a person to a more direct path that is right for them and helps them avoid a lot of hit and misses.
"It helps find your strengths and then all you have to do is take action."
"Most of the time we use a limited part of our brain, or get locked into one-sided brain dominance. Brain Gym helps to access a whole brain," Hewlett says.
Brain Gym is being used globally by teachers, athletes, business professionals, artists, seniors and parents, and is now being taught at several universities.
Where traditional teaching methods focus on in-putting information, Brain Gym is about drawing out our natural intellect. And, according to Hewlett, what we draw out, versus what we keep stuck inside, can be the difference between what we accomplish and what we don't.
For more information on Brain Gym, go to www.braingym.org.
(Ellen Goldhar is manager of people development at Sun Media Corporation ellen.goldhar@tor.sunpub.com.)
Would you ever work for a social or charitable enterprise in the third sector?