So today we’re talking about Brain Integration. I wasn’t going to talk about this for a while, but one little Facebook post from a cousin, and suddenly my phone is blowing up and my inbox is full, and I realized I can’t put it off as long as I thought. I’m really excited to share this with you, because it is literally CHANGING OUR LIVES! You’ll see, it’s incredible. But one thing, before I start, I welcome your comments and questions, it’s a super cool thing, and if you didn’t chime in I would be disappointed. However, I do ask that you be nice. This is some fairly personal information, so treat it with love. You don’t have to agree with me, I’ll respect that, but I just ask that you do the same for me. Thanks!
So what is Brain Integration Technique (BIT)?
Our brains send and receive messages which control our body. When we experience blows to the head, lack of oxygen to the brain, or more commonly, traumatic events, it can block off the pathways in the brain, so messages aren’t sent or received the way they should, or at all. A traumatic event doesn’t have to be some huge, life altering situation, like witnessing a murder, or being caught in a house fire. It could be as simple as a break up, a car accident or even moving to a different town. What one person considers a trauma another person might not, and that’s okay, it’s relative to the person experiencing it. BIT is a technique that helps clear those neuro-pathways allowing the brain to function correctly and the messages to be sent in the fastest, most efficient way possible. This is done through acupressure and kinesiology (no, not needles, that’s acupuncture:) He uses energy, his and yours, to clear the pathways. This isn’t invasive at all, he puts his hands on the top of your head and a few places on the back of your head and neck, and muscle tests on your arm, and that’s about it. So for all of my “no touching” friends, this wouldn’t bother you at all. It takes a long time, depending on how much of your brain is turned off, and how difficult it is to turn it back on. Ethan’s took 9.5 hours, but Adia’s took about 7, mine was about 8. He lets you take little breaks here and there, and an hour lunch, but basically you lay on your back on a massage table for most of the day. He will do several shorter sessions if you would rather, but because we have to travel it just made sense for us to do it all in one day.
How did this start for us?
About 4 months ago I was traveling with a friend of mine from work and we were listening to a book by Daniel Siegel called Brainstorming. (On a side note, this is an amazing book, and you should read it if you have an adolescent or will soon. It isn’t another boring brain book, it’s actually a good read, and I would still think that even if I didn’t ordinarily like brain books.) My friend mentioned seeing something about brain integration at an ADHD conference she attended a year or so before. So I came home and started researching it. I found a website www.crossinology.com that is about the technique from the woman who developed it. This gives you a basic overview of what it is. Also on the website she has a list of certified practitioners around the country. I looked at the ones in Utah first, and because I live in the 4 corners area, I also checked out the ones in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona as well. I attempted to make contact with every one within a 10 hour radius, some of them I could reach, some never got back in touch with me. I checked out their websites, emailed, and called. I finally decided to go to Trevor Dimick of Rocky Mountain Health and Wellness in South Ogden, Utah. I decided on him for a variety of reasons. His website was good www.helpmenaturally.com and I got a lot of information from it. I also liked the testimonials that were on it. It really spoke to me because it listed a lot of things that Ethan struggles with, and claimed to either cure or at least help with them. I liked that he got back to me right away, even though it was in the evening and not during business hours - he explained that he gives his undivided attention to his clients during business hours, and I respect that because when he is working on us I knew he wouldn’t be answering his phone or texts in the middle of our session. I liked that he was honest with me and sincerely cared about doing what was best for my family, not what would make him the most money. He told me that he honestly didn’t know how much it could help Ethan because Ethan has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which is damage to the brain, and BIT doesn’t fix brain damage. There are a lot of symptoms Ethan has that could be caused from brain damage, OR they could be caused from trauma, and there was just no way to know for sure before doing it. He told me to think about it a lot before deciding whether or not to try it. He didn’t pressure me into it, and he even offered to research a few places and refer one closer to us if that would help. He was concerned about us more than he was concerned about our business. I liked that a lot because several of the other people I talked to seemed to be willing to tell me anything I wanted to hear just to get my business. (Two even told me they COULD cure brain damage, but couldn’t give me concrete information about it) But more importantly was the “vibe” I got from him. I rely a lot on guidance from God to tell me what to do with Ethan. It is a deal He and I made when I decided to adopt Ethan, and so far He has never let me down. He sometimes gives me good or bad vibes to help me know which good choice is the best one for us. Trevor got the good vibes and everyone else got the bad vibes. This doesn’t mean that none of the other practitioners are good for anyone else, it just means this was the right choice for us. And now that it’s over I can say with confidence just how glad I am we went to Trevor. I’ll talk more about that later.
We started off with Ethan first. They claimed it could cure ADHD, which sounded a little too good to be true, but worth a try. We also hoped it would help with his memory. He had a terrible memory. When he started 6th grade it took him three months to learn his class schedule and stop getting lost. It took him almost the entire school year to get his locker open. We have lived in the same house for over a year and he still couldn’t remember how to get there from school. We had the same phone number for two and a half years, and he couldn’t remember it. We literally spent hundreds of hours working on memorizing his multiplication facts, and still didn’t have them down. And don’t get me started on those stupid AR tests where you read a book and then take a test on them - he was a pretty good reader - grade level and everything, but he could NEVER pass those tests because he could’t remember what he had read. Memory caused problems in every area of his life, really. We were told it would help him do better in school, and that is the biggest thing I was looking for. I just wanted life to be a little easier. This year he has started to be required to do things that I can’t help him with as much, and I know that is only going to get worse as he grows, so I wanted to see if this could help him become a little more independent which would make his life more full and happy, as well as easier. In turn this would make my life easier too, which is no small thing. There were other things that sounded great, but I went deciding that if it helped even just a little with those three things - ADHD, memory, and school performance, I would consider it a success and anything else was just a bonus.
What was it like?
When I made the appointment Trevor sent me some forms to fill out about Ethan. There was some basic information about him, some details about his birth and toddlerhood, which, with some help from our birth family I did my best on, and a checklist of things Ethan struggled with. It also asked for any additional information that I thought would be helpful, where I told about his history, his adoption, the divorce, moving, and anything else I thought might be considered a trauma. I didn’t go into great detail, but let Trevor know of the main incidents. It might sound invasive, but it really wasn’t. And you can give as much or as little info as you feel comfortable with. On the day we went my biggest fear was that Ethan wouldn’t stay still all day long. If you’ve met Ethan you know he was a lot like that dog on UP! (Squirrel!) and I thought getting him to stay still and focus for that long was going to be a disaster. The good thing is, it was very interactive. We started out with a few tests. One was for reading comprehension, one was decoding some numbers and symbols, one was listening to a group of numbers and being able to repeat them forward and backward. Ethan did pretty poorly on the reading comprehension part, though he did better than I expected him to. He also did poorly on the decoding. He could remember three numbers forward, and two backward. Then he laid down on his back on a large massage table, and Trevor went to work. He did muscle testing, and acupressure. Ethan just chatted away to the guy, he didn’t have to hold too still or be quiet, or concentrate, which was a huge relief to me. Trevor allowed him to take a couple of breaks, stretch his legs and get a drink. He told us some of the things he was discovering as we went along. Some of his senses were off, he was mixing up left and right, he had an avoidance to florescent lights, and he had way too much peripheral vision (which is pretty common in ADHD kids - it’s why they get distracted so often). But one of the coolest things he told us - I thought anyway, was about memory. Trevor explained that up is where you access your visual memory - so when you are trying to remember a phone number you look up, side to side is your creative memory - when you tell a lie you usually look to the side, and down is your emotional memory - like when you are ashamed you look down, etc. So he took a pen and told Ethan to follow it with his eyes. He did okay side to side, but when he tried to access the visual memory Ethan struggled. Trevor did some clearing and eventually he was able to follow the pen both side to side as well as upward. Then he tried downward. Ethan’s eyes couldn’t follow the pen downward at all. They kept bouncing back up. That makes a lot of sense as I think about it. Ethan has been through a lot of trauma in his life. A LOT. Yet he never seems phased by it, it doesn’t bother him, he bounces back right away without getting upset or falling apart. At some point his brain must have decided, this is too much to deal with, and just shut down that part so he wouldn’t have to be hurt over and over. While this might sound like a good thing - he didn’t have to experience loss and hurt and pain, he also wasn’t accessing happiness and closeness and relationships the way he should. It took a really long time, but finally he was able to clear those pathways. He warned me that Ethan would probably talk a lot about the things that had happened to him, but he said not to worry about it, because he would do some emotional clearing at the end, so it wouldn’t be difficult for him. He would be able to identify the emotion and talk about it, but it wouldn’t re-traumatize him. After that we stopped for lunch. After lunch we did balancing. Ethan has never been able to balance at all. He would fall walking across a flat floor. He tripped over nothing. He constantly ran into door frames, and people and tripped going up stairs. So when Trevor asked him to stand on one foot I told him there was no chance that could happen. Ethan didn’t know how. Trevor promised to change that, so I sat back and watched. Through a LOT of clearing Trevor was able to help Ethan stand on either foot for 8 seconds. I was thrilled. This was more than I could have hoped for! But then Trevor told him to stand on one foot with his eyes closed. If you’ve never tried it before you should, it’s harder than it sounds. You use a different part of the brain to do that. Oh man, I thought Ethan was going to break his head open. He could stand fine with his eyes closed, but the second he closed his eyes he fell right over! It was crazy! So after a LOT more clearing he got Ethan to balance on his left leg with his eyes closed for 8 seconds, but still could only get 6 seconds out of the right leg with his eyes closed. Trevor said it might be something caused by the brain damage, but I was impressed anyway, so we moved on. Next came marching. He did a series of 6 different kinds of marching )same hand and foot, opposite hand and foot, same with humming, opposite with counting, etc.) which helped his right and left brains work together better. Then it was back on the table again to work on memory. He had Ethan remember numbers forward and backward like they had done at the beginning of the day. With testing and clearing Ethan was eventually able to remember 4 numbers forward and 4 backward, which is age appropriate (and which I NEVER dreamed was possible for Ethan) Then he did some emotional clearing. I won’t go into a lot of that, but Trevor talked to Ethan about his birth family, his adoption, the divorce, and several significant people, and incidents in his life, and cleared the negative emotions. When all of that was over, he tested Ethan again. He was able to do much better with the reading comprehension, and the decoding, he was able to put together some puzzles, which he hadn’t been able to do well before. And then it was time to go. Trevor told me it takes up to six months to see the full effects, though we would see some things immediately, and it is important to keep practicing those exercises (balancing, testing comprehension, testing memory, etc.) in order to strengthen them and see bigger improvements. He sent us home with a reading list for me, and a study guide for Ethan to help him learn his math facts better.
Because it was so interactive, and he was given time to move around here and there, it wasn’t as hard for Ethan as I thought it would be. He handled it really well, and while we was pretty ready to get out of there by the time it was over, he did a great job sitting still, and Trevor was very patient and not at all annoyed by Ethan. I know a lot of my autistic or ADHD parent friends are out there thinking “I would love to do this, but there is no way my kid will sit still that long.” I get you. I had the same concerns. I can’t say how your child will react. But I do know that Trevor was excellent to work with, and mentioned to me that he has worked with Autistic kids, in the past. He said he is willing to do shorter sessions to accommodate special needs. And he has tons of experience with kids with short attention spans - ADHD sufferers make up the majority of his clients.
And next, what you’ve all been waiting for: Have we seen any results?
YES! Holy Crap, have we ever!
But this post has already been WAY too long, so I’ll save all of that for my next post. Be looking for it some time in the next week.
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