And welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Ken John Payne. Here we are again, we've done it, and this is a bit of a follow-up from last week's podcast. And just in case you weren't able to hear that, I'll do a very brief nutshell of it, but do have a listen back, because we're picking up where we left off with how to soothe and calm and prepare a child and more center them, you know, like how can we center a child to prepare them for the day.
And in our last podcast, we talked about a touch, a gentle touch, a gentle massage that involved both muscle conformation, squeezing gently, gently, like a hand hug, gently squeezing up the arm to the, you know, and then opening the finger joints and the wrist joints and then gently rocking them back together, opening them and then rocking them back together very, very gently, it's a lovely feeling and then squeezing up the arm or up the leg, which and then opening the elbow or the knee, opening very gently and moving, it's just a beautiful, warm hand hug that opens and closes. And we covered that in some detail in the last podcast. So have a look back or listen back to that.
Now one more step I wanted to take in how this can also be used. But first, just also a little explanation. Some questions came in about this.
And one of the things to understand of when we lengthen and then compress and we open and then close, what we're doing, I want to emphasize this, what we're doing is that we're sending confirming muscles that help a child with their sense of proprioception. And I mentioned the three turbulences that a child needs to assimilate, needs to kind of get a handle on is that there's a lot of visual turbulence, a lot of things moving around behind me, in front of me, noises above me, perhaps up the stairs, wherever. There's a lot of auditory, same deal.
But then there's a lot of movement turbulence, a lot of stuff. And what that does is it draws you out. And there's this basic principle, if a child's being drawn out, that's fine.
That's just part of the day, of course. But they need to be drawn out from a center. In other words, you move out from base camp.
You go on the expedition spatially, movement-wise, visual, auditory. You move out into that expedition of the day, but you move out from base camp. And the base camp is this being able to calm and center a child before the journey of the day begins.
Now one of the other ways that this can be used is not so only with proprioception, right? Where am I in space? Which is a wonderful thing to be able to do for a child, because otherwise they get very, very disoriented outside themselves. It's proprioception. But the other is intrioception.
And intrioception is more where am I inside myself? How do I orient inside myself? And intrioception, examples of intrioception, let's take some examples for a young child, a little one. When my belly low down has that feeling, I need to go poop. When I'm thirsty, I get this feeling in my throat.
I can sense it. I can read it. I need to have a drink.
Other examples are for a younger child, but this involves older children too, more obviously. When it's very cold outside, I won't go out in a t-shirt. I'll put a jacket on.
But when it's very hot, I'll take my jacket off. My tummy is rumbling. And so I read that.
I read that sign, and now I know to eat. These are all examples, there's many others, but these are all examples of intrioception. And the reason I mention intrioception and not just proprioception, proprio being outside ourselves, intrio, inside ourselves, is that the same muscle conformation, joint compression, the same yummy, yummy, squeezy, squeezy, pulley, pushy, can help a child in all kinds of situations.
For example, I'll give a couple of examples. If you're potty training a child, what you can do to help them read their own body signs is to do some squeezy, squeezy, pulley, pushy, have my two old crocodiles visit, excuse me, my gummy and yummy, my two old toothless crocodiles, and have some squeezy, squeezies, and Mr. Pulley and Pushy, Mr. Pulley and Mrs. Pushy, or just friends Pulley and Pushy, and have them visit. And so what you're doing, what you're doing here is you're introducing to a child their ability to read their body signs.
And when they read their body signs in this way, it helps them release. Then they, oh, my tummy, my bowel, you know, feels heavy. Oh, and I'm sitting here, I'm going to release, and the pee or the poop can flow.
But what the massage technique, that wasn't me, by the way, that noise, if you heard it, that was my dog, who's just, my dog likes to take part in these podcasts sometimes, is what you're doing is being able to have a child read their body signs, but the way in which you're helping them read their body sign is with this muscle conformation, joint compression, which, as I mentioned, brings balance to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So a child's not all out there. They're not knowing where they are in space.
They're not vigilant. They're not trying to look around. They can now center themselves.
And the more they center themselves, the more intrioceptively they'll read their body signs. They'll read what their body is telling them and then be able to release. So I hope that makes sense.
The same is true for the children who are finding it difficult to eat. What you can do before meals is just have a little taco hug. Bring them in, you know, you're getting the meal ready, everything's set, everything's and say, okay, come on over now.
Pulley pushy time. Squeezy, squeezy. Or if a child's playing, and this is a hidden benefit of this, if they're playing, let's say they're a younger child, and you come and you sit behind them, you put them between your knees, taco them right around behind them, and then do some pulley pushies, and it's all silent.
You're saying nothing at all. That helps a child transition, because now they read their body signs. They read that they're hungry.
They're actually hungry. And you know, they're hungry, right? Because you've been careful with snacks too close to supper, and you've done all the right stuff. But now you need the child to read their internal body signals.
So now we, you know, you can just come behind them, do some, do some gentle, confirming, centering massage, some centering squeezies and pulley pushies, bring them into themselves. And it has this hidden benefit of you're connecting with a child, which is lovely, right, wordlessly. And you're also helping them connect with themselves.
You're connecting with them, and they're connecting with themselves inwardly. And that can help them understand, I actually am hungry. And this is, these are all these, these intrioceptive things you can do.
For another quick example, maybe just one more. There are so many. But one more quick example.
You're at the playground, and a child's getting right out of themselves. You know, they're right on the border of just losing it. And you bring them over, and you do some centering touch.
And out of this centering touch, the squeezes, the pulls, the pushes, the openings and closings. And they're a little bit breathless, and they're getting it. And you see their breath starts to regulate, their heartbeat starts to regulate.
They start to understand that actually they were about to almost hyperventilate. And they intrioceptively understand their body signals, that my little heart was beating way too fast, my breath was very, very short, because they lost track of that. They lost track of reading their body signs.
So rather than telling a child to calm down, calm down, you know, would you please just calm down, love? That's, we know, you know, how successful that is. The, not very right, often. Bring them in, taco hug them, bring them in, put them between your knees, bring your arms around them like a big arm curtain on either side.
Squeezy squeezes, pulley pushes, and let them read their own body signs, because they will. Because it's involuntary, and they can't help it. The brainstem will start, not might, will start picking up these signals, will start then intrioceptively centering themselves.
And so a child, what you're doing is over and over, coaching a child to self read, and self soothe. And you can, there are so many opportunities through a day to be able to do this. There's no shortage of opportunities, right? So this is the aspect of it, of helping a child actually be able to read what's going on inside them, rather than you telling them from the outside, what they should be doing.
The previous episode of the podcast was about more proprioceptively, right? What's outside. Now, with today, what we've looked at is inside. And these two things, over and over and over again, it's, it's the repetition of it.
It's having a child get used to it. And then what starts happening is the magic of myelination. That those pathways in a child's brain start to be not only laid down, but followed.
And, and eventually what you get is a child able to self soothe, because they know where they are in space outside themselves, and they can read what's going on inside themselves. And that's a very secure and resilient child. Okay, big themes, right? But, but little steps.
Okay. I sure hope that's helpful. Bye bye for now.
