Brain Gym International

"Brain Gym International" is the trade name of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation,[1] a California nonprofit corporation that was incorporated in 1987[2] and that received its IRS ruling as a nonprofit in 1992.[3] "Brain Gym" is a registered trademark owned by the company.[4]

In the 1970s, Paul and Gail Dennison developed a set of physical exercises claimed to improve children's ability to learn and to be based in neuroscience; they called their approach "educational kinesthesiology".[5][6] The company makes money training people in the methods, and licenses the right to use the "Brain Gym" trademark to people whom it trains; the trained people use branded books and other materials they buy from the company.[6][1] Schools pay the trained people to work in schools, training teachers and working with students.[5]

In 2005 the company claimed to be selling its programs in 80 countries and by 2007 it had been widely covered in the press.[7] In a 2013 article in The Economist commenting on the wave of "brain training" programs being brought to market at that time, the organization was used as an example of commercializing neuroscience in a way that scientists found unsupportable but that received widespread adoption for a time.[8] The program was adopted widely in schools in the UK and appeared on many UK government websites as of 2006.[9]

The Brain Gym program calls for children to repeat certain simple movements such as crawling, yawning, making symbols in the air, and drinking water; these are intended to "integrate", "repattern", and increase blood flow to the brain.[7][10]

Though the organization claims the methods are grounded in good neuroscience, the underlying ideas are pseudoscience.[7][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

One of the underlying ideas is that the exercises are meant to ‘balance’ the brain hemispheres so the two "sides" work together better; there is also a notion of integrating the "top" parts of the brain with the "lower" parts of the brain to integrate thought and emotion, as well as integrating visual, auditory, and motor skills;

Another idea is that of "brain buttons" - spots on the neck that if touched in certain ways, can stimulate the flow of blood to the brain.[15][18]

Another set of underlying ideas is psychomotor patterning, also known as the Doman-Delacato theory of development, which claims that if motor skills are not acquired in the correct order, the result will be a lifelong deficit in learning ability, and also claims that these deficits can be overcome by going back and learning the skipped skills; this theory and claims to improve learning based on it were discredited in the 1970s and 1980s.[7][13] An example of this in the Brain Gym method, is to have children practice crawling.[13]

• Applied kinesiology
• Brain training
• Conductive education
• Experiential learning
• Fast ForWord
• Kinesthetic learning
• LearningRx
• Alternative Therapies for developmental and learning disabilities
• Sensorimotor learning
• Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head

• Official Brain Gym website
• The Skeptic's Dictionary: Brain Gym