From grade school, people have been taught about the 5 basic senses- hearing, touch, sight, smell, and taste. However, they have not been taught about the 3 additional senses: vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive systems. These are some of the most important senses that our bodies use to thrive. I personally consider that the vestibular system is the most important sensory system that you have.
One of the reasons why I find that the vestibular system is important is because at a foundational level, it senses gravity. Meaning, it grounds you to earth. This system lets your body know how it is moving in relation to the gravity that it senses, and this in turn informs your body what it needs to do to maintain its posture and balance, so you won't fall down and hurt yourself. Are you upside down or right side up? How fast are you moving? How slow are you moving? Are you spinning or are you still? This system lets your brain know what is going on!
How amazing is that?! That your body naturally knows where you are, what you are doing, and that you are not floating around in some distant universe. When we have adequate vestibular responses, we can more freely move and explore our environments without fear of tripping, or falling, or feeling like we are going to go tumbling to Timbuktu. We can do things and try new things with confidence in ourselves and our abilities, which branches out to being more confident and engaged and establishing healthy relationships with the people around us.
For some people, however, their vestibular system may not react in a typical way. They may have a hypersensitive or underresponsive vestibular system.
HYPERSENSIVITE:
When someone's vestibular system is hypersensitive, it may lead to something called gravitational insecurity. This is when any movement, including only head movement, can create a fearful response. This can lead to a person becoming very rigid and even uncooperative because they only feel safe doing things within their limits. This can create issues at school, home, work, and with relationships.
SENSORY SEEKERS:
These are the kiddos that you may see constantly moving around, jumping, twirling, fidgeting, summersaulting, and moving from activity to activity.
-There may be no order or organization in what they are doing and how they are doing it.
-I find that these kiddos typically throw themselves around instead of doing things with coordination, control, and intentionality.
Under Responders:
-These people may be more of the bumps on a log because of decrease arousal in the nervous system. They are not really trying to do much of anything.
-These individuals may also not want to participate in activities that involve movement such as sports, Gym, recess because they may fall, trip over their own feet, and just appear overall clumsy.
-They may Have trouble staying in seats or even being aware of personal boundaries
-They may have trouble tracking objects with their eyes
-They may Have Difficulties with depth perception
-They may Have Difficulties with visual perceptual activities such as writing letters, reading, math, and reversing single and double digit numbers
-These individuals may also easily get lost and have difficulty giving directions and have difficulties with following multi-step directions
Activities to Help:
-The very first thing you should do when you encounter a person, child or adult alike, and they are rigid or uncooperative, acting out, not doing something that you expect them to be able to do, struggling to learn or complete an activity or task, or just have trouble with organization, including their own thoughts, try to be patient with them. When you are patient, you can see things more clearly and look at things in such a way that gets to the heart of the matter. So instead of your impatient reaction causing more discord, or anguish, or shutdown, your patience may lead to getting the correct help that the person needs, becoming a safe place for someone, deescalating an argument, and just allowing for more love and harmony and balance to abound.
For someone who is hypersensitive:
don't push anyone past their limits and be respectful of their choices and needs. Work with a trained provider like an occupational therapist who can build trust and introduce a sensory integration diet that is tailored to their needs.
Calming activities could be useful such as hugs, weighted blanket, weighted stuffed animal, massage.
For sensory seekers and underresponders:
-Do different activities that allows movement such as animal walks, obstacle course, standing up or sitting on a yoga ball chair to complete work tasks, fidget items
-go hiking, on walks, bicycle riding, martial arts, gymnastics
-create art projects but don't just stay at the table, go outside and use chalk, create a mural in the home (proceed at your own risk lol), face paint
-play games like simon says, red light, green light, hopscotch
As always, I hope that this helps and bless you in some way.
Disclaimer:
Though I am an occupational therapist, I am not your occupational therapist. The information that I provide is for general education purposes only. If you find that you or your child needs any help, seek out a trained provider and work in partnership with them.
