Brain Maps

Movement and the Emerging Mind

Maps organize and orient

Our free-wheeling, creative brains depend on internal networks and maps to work well. The brain’s primary networks are generated during babies’ movement. As we grow into ages and stages, our more complex movement combinations create more complex maps in the brain. These maps are the basis for thinking including math, writing, problem solving and sciences.

Body maps and gravitational maps

Our first brain movements begin in utero and continue during the first years. Active babies, toddlers and preschoolers create core organization through body maps and gravitational maps. During movement internal senses of the joints, ligaments and muscles generate body maps. These sensory maps of connection within oneself are fundamental in forming a sense of self and in forming good boundaries for both connection and separation between self and other.

A child first feels support from mother and father as caregivers, then he feels the earth as a support. Another internal sense, the vestibular system in the inner ear, generates a gravitational map during movement. The well-rounded experience of three dimensional movement gives the child feeling of connection in gravity and support from the earth. Gravitational maps also underlie a stable sense of self, flexibility of mind, self-sufficiency and ability to take one’s own standing in the world.

Body maps and gravitational maps underlie our abilities in spatial mapping and spatial intelligence, well-recognized as essential for math and sciences.

Children who lack well defined body maps and gravitational maps may experience problems with anxiety, poor attention, running into others, hitting or kicking, conflicts with other children, clinginess, demanding routine, over-dependence, poor boundaries, or poor connection with others.

Brain development through movement is lifelong

Children continue to combine and recombine developmental movements that organize the brain as they grow. The emergence of attentional networks and internal maps provide all of us with internal resource for alertness, relationship and intelligence.

The complex brain thrives on holistic experience that creates connection. At any age we can move the mind to learn ease, to fulfill who we are and improve our ability to relate in the world.

Catherine Burns, movement therapist, RSMT, and craniosacral therapist, specializes in core neural integration through developmental movement for babies and children. Her special concern is a sound function of the brain for relationship, attention, cognition and the child’s emerging sense of self.