Working in Movement

Try a little sensory motor experiment just for fun. Turn you head and eyes to look to your right, keeping well within your range of comfort and ease. The come back to the middle. Do this five or six times, very slowly. Take a short rest.

Now, instead of repeating the movement to the left, close your eyes and imagine yourself turning your head to the left. Don't just visualize watching yourself make the turn. Imagine what it would feel like if you were actually making the movement. What, precisely, would be involved in the movement? As part of this imagined movement, keep well within your range of ease and comfort. Do this imagined movement about five or six times, and then stop and rest.

After resting, actually turn head and eyes to gently look your left. Note the quality of the movement. Many people who do this little movement experiement report that they turn to the left was easier than the turn to the right.

By simply imagining this simple movement, your sensory motor system has all the information it needs to actually do the movement with a lightness and ease you may not have thought possible. This, of course, boosts your confidence in performing that movement. Not a big deal for a movement as simple as turning your head.

But what if the desired movement was complex, like, say, hitting a volleyball over a high net? And what if your muscular and sensory-motor systems were compromised, like maybe you'd been diagnosed with cerebral palsy? How confident would you be that you could hit the ball over the net? Or even that you could imagine hitting the ball with any degree of accuracy?

Recently, the Occupational Therapy department of the University of Toronto looked into these sorts of questions. They worked with CP kids, but didn't depend of having them imagine hitting the ball over a net. Instead, they used video cameras and computers to insert images of the kids into an on-screen volleyball game. By simply moving their arms, the kids could virtually "hit" the volleyball. And as their virtual skills improved, so did their confidence or self-image.

"They would say that it didn't matter whether they could do this activity like their able-bodied peers in real life, they could do it their own way in the virtual environment," says occupational therapy professor Denise Reid, who conducted the research with lead author and graduate student Stacey Miller. "They thought they were cool." [Virtual play boosts disabled children's self-image in Science Blog]

Other virtual reality games used at the school included soccer, snowboarding and dancing.

What I like here is the use of computers and video to augment the imagination process and fill out the self image. I posted on this previously, here, here, and here .