Dyspraxia (also known as developmental coordination disorder – DCD) is a common condition affecting movement and coordination in children and adults. It is a hidden condition which affects all areas of life, making it difficult for people to carry out certain activities.
The Dyspraxia Foundation explains how dyspraxia involves difficulty coordinating large and small body movements. Physical signs of dyspraxia/DCD include the following:
- Movements appear awkward and lack smoothness
- Extra physical and mental effort is required to carry out movements that others manage easily
- Poor spatial awareness means more trips, bumps and bruises.
- Difficulty learning the movements required to carry out new practical tasks.
- Difficulty transferring motor skills to new situations or activities.
Signs of dyspraxia or DCD are present from a young age but may not be recognised until a child starts school or even later in adulthood.
Although there is no cure the NHS offers different forms of treatment for dyspraxia. These therapies can help with daily living:
- occupational therapy – to help you find practical ways to remain independent and manage everyday tasks such as writing or preparing food
- cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think
Following on from changing how you think we caught up with ROMBi inventor and Educational Specialist, Penny Georgiou to hear her thoughts on Dyspraxia and how puzzles can help to improve coordination.
Penny explains “by cultivating our ability to access and organise our inner intelligence, we can realise and accomplish whatever it is that we focus on. This process is logical. So, if we focus on our worries, we accomplish the realisation of our worries, and if we focus on our success, this is what will come to be realised. There is nothing outside of us that prevents our moving in the direction of our desire.
These are the terms that life offers to us - the issue is only that we don’t know it, are confused and believe its terms to be cruel and impossible (and they can be when we do not know the real nature of our power and wherein it resides). You can navigate your way through to a very different learning experience throughout life, which (in my view) is really the best way of living life.
In practical terms, there are many technologies and approaches that can assist eg:
- screen reading software, voice recognition software etc,
- working with a specialist tutor who can assist you to learn how to study with less and less strain,
- daily structured handplay is a must for prompt and more comprehensive increases in dexterity with greater ease than with specialist tutorials alone. ROMBi has been especially designed for this purpose.
Other very helpful approaches that I often refer to include:
- meditative practice (eg, Sadhguru ‘Success’ and ‘Peace’ meditations),
- there are videos about study skills and strategies available on YouTube;
- speaking with a counsellor
- for adults a starting point could be to enquire at your local college and seeing what courses you may be interested in and what support is available.
Worrying about issues doesn’t help and rather holds us back. When we are open to ask ourselves (or others) questions about creative possibilities, our faculties of mind can do their work in bringing them to our awareness.
We need to being setting aside everything that we think we know and isn’t working. This allows our ‘higher mind’(our capacity for knowing beyond what we currently think we know) to offer new perspectives that allows solutions to come about with clarity and ease.
As mentioned above, daily structured handplay, even if it is the same puzzle each day, gives our mind access to experiential impressions of coherent rigid-structures for building viable frames of reference for interfacing with daily life. Otherwise, we can only keep reiterating forms of thinking that don’t work for us.”
Penny’s research shows that, for individuals struggling with dyspraxia, picking up a puzzle instead of worrying, is step towards allowing the higher mind to offer new ideas when our ‘local mind’ does not know what to do. As we do so more and more often, this begins ‘training’ our minds to think in constructive ways routinely. New possibilities and opportunities begin to enter our awareness, along with manageable steps in the direction that we desire.
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