Left Brain/Right Brain and Touch and Movement

Often when we're singing but have no specific hand or body motion to go with our song, you'll hear me remind you to tap or stroke your child.  It's hard to get around to explaining WHY during class!  

Touch enhances the intake and processing of new information in HUGE ways!  Not only does it cause an emotional response from the person being touched, usually increasing the sense of safety and bonding, touch awakens the nervous system and aids in neural development of young children whose neural pathways are still being built and strengthened.

A Music Together mom who is a psychotherapist shared her experiences related to this subject:

When working with seriously traumatized adults, the therapist first has the person rate their level of pain.  Often, it's around 9 (with 10 being the highest level of pain).  As the therapist and the patient talk about painful experiences, the therapist lightly taps the patient on alternating sides of the body (right arm-left arm or right knee-left knee, etc).  As the session comes to a close, the patient often rates his or her pain level at 2 or 3 after the tapping.  According to the therapist, the emotional side of the brain is blocked with the painful memory, while the logical left side of the brain understands that the painful experience is in the past and shouldn't affect the patient any longer.  The two hemispheres of the brain are not communicating in agreement with each other.  The therapist's tapping encourages communication and linking between the two sides of the brain.