ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on practices that assist students with significant sensory processing challenges, including sensory processing disorder (SPD). It examines the benefits of integrating movement with music, voice frequencies, and visual patterns synchronized with expressive features of emotion and the movement of others. The movements are synchronized to music to create smooth rhythmic moves that activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) into a calm but attentive state. The chapter explores the program's viability for school-age children of all levels of ability. Schools are overwhelmed by behavioral challenges that get in the way of learning. Behavioral interventions require processing by the pre-frontal cortex are known as "top down" approaches. The polyvagal theory emphasizes that our nervous system has more than one defense strategy, and that our defensive response is completely involuntary, beyond our control. If our nervous system perceives that our situation is safe, then the polyvagal system triggers the most sophisticated adaptive response to stress, using the social engagement system.