£0Retained Primary or Primitive Reflexes
Primary or primitive reflexes are developed in the womb and just after birth, to give us coping mechanisms and appropriate response to stimuli. Due to some form of stress during pregnancy, birth or early infancy, we retain some primitive reflexes, which have an adverse impact on our ability to learn and interact with the world around us. I used to work with a highly intelligent chap who could only think if he stuck out his tongue.
When I did the primitive reflexes course many years later, I realised this was an uninhibited reflex.
These early reflexes are located in the most primitive area of the brain, and operate involuntarily. We cannot control them. As we grow up, the higher parts of the brain, responsible for thinking and reasoning, and the motor and sensory systems, take over the functions of the primitive reflexes. These functions are then transformed into responses and actions that can be consciously controlled or modified.
If the primitive reflexes are retained, the neural structures of the brain, along with the adult reflexes, cannot develop properly. Our normal development of motor and processing skills and integration of the left and right sides of the brain, are affected. The person is stuck with seemingly immature responses to their environment. "Stop sticking out your tongue!" may be impossible for them until the reflex is inhibited.
To integrate or inhibit the reflexes, I give you a set of exercises to do for around a month. You may initially test for several of the reflexes, but by starting with the oldest retained reflex, there is usually a domino effect and the brain naturally inhibits the next few.
The reflexes are incredibly easy and quick to test for, and I do this as part of a general kinesiology balance. I email you the exercises for the first reflex to show, and you come back a few weeks later and we see whether you can move on to another reflex.
If you don't like noise, jump if someone approaches you from behind, dislike the feel of certain fabrics on your skin, fidget when sitting, hold a pen in a non-standard way, stick your tongue out to think....you may have a retained primitive reflex!
