Therapy's EIGHT GR8 senses!

As a pediatric physical therapist, I use positioning and handling techniques to help your child experience the best facilitation possible to experience normal and typical movement patterns. Alignment is one such technique that produces and facilitates optimal strength, ability and function of a task. What helps this sort of achievement? Utilizing all Eight Senses. Eight you say? Yes Eight! Well I remember Five? We have taste, smell, sight, hearing and feeling? What else? There are proprioception, interoception and vestibular senses as well. And that makes Eight. GR8! lets talk…

So those are fancy words, Proprioception, Interoception and Vestibular! Yes they are! Proprioception is given to our body by our joint receptors telling us if we are falling forwards or backwards. That is one example. Or if someone is lifting your arm up or down. Interoception is what our internal organs are telling us. Like that I am hungry or full. That I have to go to the bathroom. And we all know that those things can affect your ability to do therapy too! Vestibular is a fancy word for the inner ear or semi circular canals. The fluids in our inner ear ( way back in the base of the skull) move tiny hairlike structures that tell us if we are moving in space or not. It also lets us know if our head is tilted or straight. Quick movements of the head can sometimes trigger a dizzy feeling if this system is not working properly. When this system is not working well or overstimulated ; we may get dizzy. This can cause you to feel like you are gonna throw up after being on a spinning tea cup ride at the carnival. In the latter case, your system works, it just got a little too shook up or “spun out of control”.

Stay tuned for therapy ideas that illustrate 8 GR8 senses.