Therapies

ShenMen / Spirit gate offers a variety of therapies. Each therapy works to re-enliven the health-giving processes within us, helping to bring warmth and organization where needed. Oftentimes therapies are combined to support outcomes.

Extra Lesson

Extra Lesson, developed by Waldorf Teacher Audrey McAllen, is a program that consists of movement, drawing and painting exercises that aid in the growth of the senses: touch, balance, self-movement and a feeling of well-being. Neurological research tells us the importance of these senses for healthy brain development in children. This sets the foundation for a child to learn with ease. Extra Lesson helps both adults and children.

RESOURCES: 

Balance In Childhood and Adolescence
Healing Education
What Is Extra Lesson?

Masgutova Method

This therapy offered by Shen Men / Spirit Gate was developed by Svetlana Masgutova in Russia and is showing great success in helping children with learning, behavior, or movement difficulties around the world. This work facilitates the myelination of important pathways in our brains that allows for learning with ease and allows for continued growth and development. The work enhances sensory integration and neurostructural integration.

The Masgutova Method integrates early reflexes, working to correct dysfunctional movement patterns that can profoundly and positively affect physical, intellectual, emotional, and personality development. This method optimizes fine and gross motor systems, vision, hearing, and articulation skills which in turn improve concentration, memorization, thinking, and the development of inner control.

RESOURCES: Svetlana Masgutova Educational Institute

Main Lesson Support

Some children have a hard time learning in an environment with a lot of sensory stimulation; lots of noise and/or visual clutter. Some children benefit from material being presented with a multisensory approach.  When needed, time will be taken to work individually with the Morning Lesson content covered by the teacher to address how your child learns best.

Rhythmical Massage

This unique form of massage is a gentle, enlivening therapeutic art that works to support and balance physiologic functions of the body. Archetypal forms of line, circle, and lemniscate are the basis of the massage movements. The work helps individuals to relax, breathe, and become more connected and aware of their bodies. It helps to integrate their senses on many levels, especially their sense of touch that is so important to feeling safe.

RESOURCE: Rhythmical Massage Therapy Association of North America

Chirophonetics

This therapy was developed by Albert Bauer, a doctor and speech pathologist, to help children acquire speech. This therapy combines touch and the voice to administer the healing power of sounds to an individual. Each sound is spoken by the therapist who, at the same time, replicates the movement of that sound through a specific form, massaged rhythmically into the back, the arms, or the legs of a child. This therapy has been shown to help children start to imitate and has been found to support and strengthen development with children who have speech delays or any developmental delay.

Horseback Riding

The care and riding of horses help riders learn respect, care, empathy, boundaries, trust, self control and responsibility. The children work in partnership with the horse. A horse’s movements are multidimensional, repetitive, rhythmic and consistent. The act of riding can support sensory integration, balance, coordination, strength, proprioceptive input, social participation, initiation, and sequencing. The horse is a great treatment tool because its movement almost directly stimulates the human gait. When a rider is maintaining his or her balance over the horse their body is strengthening all those muscles, large and small that are responsible for keeping them stable and balanced—this is called core strength.

The rider is stimulated in a host of ways through their sensory pathways. They are stimulated physically, through touch, visually as the landscape passes by, and the vestibular system is stimulated as the head moves in space with the movement of the horse. All this allows the body to develop new and lasting pathways that translate into functional abilities in movement.

Simplicity Parenting

Kim John Payne has written several books which offer an orderly and effective pathway to reducing cumulative stress in children’s and families lives. This approach has been used worldwide with great results in helping sensitive children. By simplifying four realms at home and understanding why children test boundaries and how to meet them; parents can create a place where connection, creativity and relaxation can thrive.

Colorpuncture

When our original energy is disturbed or unbalanced, we become ill. Colored Light Therapy (Colorpuncture) offered by Shen Men / Spirit Gate was originated by a German scientist and naturopath Peter Mandel, who after 25 years of empirical research, developed this unique system of healing. By stimulating the body with the precise input of light photons, which in turn activates our own light biophotons generated within our bodies. This invites our life energy to rearrange itself to a new state of balance and health.

Colorpuncture Treatments

Colorpuncture involves focusing colored light on specific “acupuncture” points on the skin in order to energize powerful healing impulses in our bodies. Colorpuncture is a noninvasive therapy and enjoyed by children and adults.

Healing Benefits

Colorpuncture is a powerfully holistic healing system which offers a new way to get to the very roots of many health problems. It is designed to address the nonphysical origins of illness as well as the physical symptoms. Colorpuncture therapy works to gently unlock and release emotional trauma and blocked soul information which often underlies our illnesses. Patients report not only changes in their bodies, but improved emotional outlooks as well.

RESOURCES: U.S. Esogetic Colorpuncture Institute