When our central nervous system receives information from the environment, our brain organizes and processes this information and produces an output. If the input is not received or organized correctly and accurately, the result is incorrect output with incorrect feedback.

Sensory integration is the correct processing of sensory input which the brain receives. It involves selecting, enhancing, inhibiting, comparing, associating, storing and retrieving information to give importance and meaning to input that has been received and “sorted”. We can then produce appropriate output and motor response: a feeling, though or behavior.

We are constantly affected by messages relayed between the brain and body, the central and autonomic nervous systems. These messages act on the sea of neurotransmitters in the brain.

A person may be under-or-over-responsive to sensory input, and this may indicate that the central nervous system is not accurately receiving and then processing sensory information.

Severe sensory integrative deficits have a profound effect on a person’s ability to participate, perform tasks, and accept social interaction. Because sensory input is so vital to brain function, the person with sensory input is so vital to brain function, the person with sensory integrative dysfunction typically develops compensatory (maladaptive) behaviors to obtain needed sensory input. In addition, sensory integrative dysfunction tends to mask abilities and skills that have difficulty emerging until sensory integration improves. Our experience with individuals who have the most severe sensory integrative problems is that as they improve, new skills and abilities are spontaneously expressed at an increasing rate. This supports the hypothesis that sensory integrative therapy helps the brain more easily “catch on” to what is expected. Thus skills that have never been taught are suddenly are suddenly part of the person’s repertoire. When the brain doesn’t “get it” the person can’t “get it” either. The critical point is that maladaptive behaviors in someone who has sensory integrative dysfunction are well beyond that person’s control and tend to persist unless the needed input can be obtained another way.

Our goal in therapy is to attain a state of responsiveness that allows a ready state of attentiveness to move, see, hear, touch, taste and feel. This is when motor learning takes place for all our muscles, even for our eyes, mouth and ears, thereby storing sensory experiences for acquiring new skills.

Using a sensory integrative approach, we exercise the vestibular/cochlear system with movement and exercises for trunk muscles, arms, legs, eyes, ears and mouth.

"Our experience with individuals who have the most severe sensory integration problems is that as they improve, new skills and abilities are spontaneously expressed at an increasing rate."