Michelle’s Chi for Children
Michelle’s Chi for Children:
A series of Tai Chi movements for improving mental focus, fine motor skills, reflexes, and hand-eye-cordination, helping children become better at organizing their brains.
My classes are taught throughout the Santa Cruz, and Pajaro Valley School Districts.
I developed this activity program from two ancient forms of movement for physical fitness, health and well-being:
QiGong and Tibetan Tai Chi (a low impact as well as cardiovascular Martial Arts form)
My three main objectives:
1. To help parents and teachers create a calming and orderly exercise routine that fosters an ambience that is conducive to learning.
2. To help children develop healthy lifestyle habits from an early age that they can utilize
for the rest of their lives.
3. To build a positive attitude towards exercise --
whether the child has a natural aptitude for it or not --
by making it fun and engaging the student intellectually at the same time.
In children, these movements increase the brain-body connection for hand and eye co-ordination, and ease the aching joints sometimes called growing pains.
In all of my classes I teach the Tai Chi Criss-cross, aka Super Brain Yoga.
Pilot studies of the effects on school children include children with disabilities such as ADHD/ADD, developmental and cognitive delays, Down syndrome and specific learning disabilities.
- Children studied showed significant increase in academic and behavioral performance, greater class participation and improved social skills.
- In one study, the result of an electroencephalograph showed increased amplitude in the parieto-occipital region of the brain following the Superbrain Criss-cross.
- This indicates increased brain electrical activity following the exercise.
- More studies on the effects of the Tai Chi Criss-cross or Superbrain Yoga® are being conducted.
Movement Forms
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Lower Grades Gentle Forms
Upper Grades Basic Movement
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The proven brain and body benefits of these forms have enhanced practitioner’s well-being for thousands of years. Over the years, I have seen actual evidence of improvement in my own students with dyslexia, ADHD and balance problems. Miami University of Medicine has recently published these same results in their research journal.
After doing the arm-cross-over-squatting sequence, EEG scans of the brain show the right and left hemisphere are synchronized.
See the CBS report on this amazing research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSwhpF9iJSs
More information on the brain synchronization: http://www.superbrainyoga.org/
After doing the arm-cross-over-squatting sequence, EEG scans of the brain show the right and left hemisphere are synchronized.
See the CBS report on this amazing research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSwhpF9iJSs
More information on the brain synchronization: http://www.superbrainyoga.org/