Hi, and welcome to the In The Cortex podcast.
We are your hosts.
I'm Paloma Garcia.
And I am Danny Paraconi.
And we're the founders of In The Cortex, an online community with programs that show
people the tools that they need to change their lives, their brain reorganization, no
medication, just movement.
When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start
to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life.
And now, on to today's episode.
Okay, welcome back to another podcast from In The Cortex.
I am Danny, and I'm here with Paloma, and we are your founders of In The Cortex.
And we have a really exciting episode today talking about something that one of our, someone,
a follower asked us to talk about, and it was all about dyslexia.
And so we're going to break this down from a brain perspective.
It's going to feel a little overwhelming because it is a lot of things.
A lot of information.
Yes.
So we're going to do our best to simplify it.
And if this is something that resonates with you, or if there's things that come up that
really hit home for you, just know that we're all learning together.
And we hope you can just tune into that space of being receptive and open to hearing this
information.
And the biggest part is that you understand that there's something you can do about it.
Exactly.
And that's our mission here at In The Cortex is to share the information and then how you
can help yourself live a more peaceful, harmonious, and easier life just in a nutshell.
So let's break it down, Paloma.
Let's break it down.
So let's just start really quickly with talking about what dyslexia even is.
Most of you have probably heard about it if you don't already know somebody that has dyslexia
because it's actually very common.
And it affects the way that people read, write, and spell.
So the ease of reading, writing, and spelling.
And it has a lot to do, of course it's classified as a learning disorder because what do we
really do in school and when we're learning things, we're reading, writing, spelling,
and doing all that stuff.
And it really affects the way that we see words on the page and we're able to interpret
them visually and the way that we're able to interpret them as information.
So it's not just what do they look like on the page, but what do those letters on the
page together mean in my brain?
So it has a lot to do also with decoding and the way that we're interpreting language
as well.
And today what we want to really focus on is looking at which specific reflexes are related
to the challenges that dyslexia encompasses.
So just so we can get it to be very as straightforward as possible.
And always keep in mind that there's a lot of overlap with these things.
Yeah, it's not just black and white and it's not like you have this, so then you have that.
It's a lot of, there's really a symphony going on in my brain, let's say.
And we want to read really quickly a text that explains primitive reflexes in case you're
newer to the podcast or in case you maybe kind of need a little bit of a refresher.
We know that that is always useful from the Child Development Center in London.
It's an amazing institution.
They do a lot of primitive reflex work as well.
And so this is what they have on their website.
We are born with a whole range of reflexes, a set of instinctive involuntary reactions
to a certain stimulus.
These reflexes have evolved over millennia to aid our passage from the womb to protect
us from harm in our vulnerable early months and to provide rudimentary training for later
voluntary skills.
If it all goes according to nature's plan, all the fetal and primitive reflexes follow
a similar pattern.
They initiate in the uterus, become integrated into the neural system.
This lays down the pattern for future controllable actions and responses, and then inhibits when
it's time to move on to the next developmental stage.
Usually all these reflexes should inhibit by the time the baby is one year old.
We'll take that with a grain of salt because some people it's one and a half, two, even
two and a half years old we've seen.
So always take that with a grain of salt.
But it's important to realize that these early reflexes are located in the most primitive
area of the brain, the brainstem.
And they operate involuntarily.
They're not voluntary.
That means we simply cannot control them.
As we develop the higher parts of the brain, the cortex, which is responsible for thinking
and reasoning, and the midbrain, the organization center of the motor and sensory systems, take
over the functions of the primitive reflexes.
These functions are then transformed into responses and actions that can be consciously
controlled or modified.
So that's when they become conscious is when the primitive reflex, the primitive brain
finishes developing and we're operating from the cortex, the higher centers of the brain.
If the primitive reflexes fail to inhibit, however, the more sophisticated neural structures
of the brain, that means the cortex, along with the postural reflexes cannot develop
properly.
The normal development of motor and processing skills and the integration of left and right
sides of the brain are affected.
The child is stuck with immature responses to their environment.
So act your age.
My litter might literally be an impossibility for them.
So that's just a really, I love the way that they talk about how it's involuntary involuntary.
Right.
Because we think, you know, we look at behavior and we think that things that people do, we
react the way we act, that we can control it.
But that's where this gives us so much empathy, right?
For looking at our own brains and looking at other people's brains and saying, whoa,
that is not on purpose.
They can't control that.
Right.
And so that's where it's good to take a deep breath and say, okay, this is where I can
help my brain get more organized and really, truly operate from the cortex, which is the
way that we're meant, quote, unquote, to operate in this.
Right.
That's at least that's the way that the world is set up.
Right.
The logic of the world.
And from that is everything is done through movement.
Right.
So we know when babies are in utero, we feel kicks, we feel movement.
We know babies are turning and twisting around or like, oh, look at that.
And there's so much to it.
So this is where we want to help you understand that the way you naturally do something gives
so much information as to where your brain is at.
And the cool part is the brain is so plastic.
It can take this information at any age in your life right now and it can help you do
it more efficiently.
So if you give it the right fuel, all of a sudden now your brain can now process it for
what it was meant to do.
And that's why we love the work we do because there's so much hope.
There is so much chance to go back and rewrite your story.
Start right now.
Our oldest participant is 90 years old.
Yes.
So with all that being said, we're going to break down the reflexes that are really connected
to what we call dyslexia.
And we're not really big fans of labels here because it really kind of, if you get the
diagnosis that you have dyslexia use it, then go, okay, great.
Now what do I do about this?
Like, do I just always have a handicap when it comes to learning?
And then that internalizes for a lot of people that I'm stupid.
I'm dumb.
I just don't operate the way I need to.
Right.
And our take is no, that's not helping you.
How about we look at the reflexes?
When those reflexes aren't integrated, meaning lying dormant because they've done all the
things that they need to do.
So now they don't have to be keeping you in survival mode anymore.
And once they have done their job and they're lying dormant, now we can let that cortex
come online and do what it's designed to do.
And we live more volunteer, we live in that voluntary space, right?
Right.
Where we can truly control.
Right.
And you can respond versus react.
Just really quick also to add, that's not saying that we're saying that dyslexia doesn't
exist.
We're saying that let's reframe it.
Let's look at it differently.
Let's look at it as what can we do about this, these challenges and difficulty that I'm
feeling or that my child is feeling or somebody that I know instead of let's put a name on
it and then make it feel like there's something wrong with me, right?
Cause that's not what this is about.
The whole point is that we can, there's so much we can do to make life so much easier.
Yes.
A hundred percent.
So, and this is what's so cool is that you have everything within you.
And this is what we teach you in our program is how to look at the movements and how to
make sense of them and then how to do them differently and more efficiently so that way
your brain's like, okay, cool.
I can now move on to the next level.
Exactly.
And I love this so much because as we were doing our research for this podcast, we really,
I was really connecting dots with so many people I know is like, oh my gosh, it's this,
it's this, this, this.
And while we think like from a very conscious standpoint, like, oh, I'm just not good at
this, we have to remember what society has created, right?
We've created this world of.
We go to school and we learn, we sit down and we learn in the space of taking information
and visually through our auditory senses.
We're just starting to bring in movement as a concept, right?
And like kids need to move to learn and think about all the learners out there because there
are so many different types of learning that are done through hands-on tactile, kinesthetic
approaches.
What happens to their brain when they're not getting the right information, the way that
suits their preference and helps them and take information?
So if you are resonating with a dyslexic profile and you're, you know, your decoding
is off or you're, you know, reversing things, that could just mean that your preference
is not in auditory or in visual.
In learning.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And Paloma and I have both experiences because we were talking about this too really quick
was when we were, you know, before brain, the before brain organization era, I was very
much the athletic movement person, very hands-on and kinesthetic.
Moving down at a desk and like having to intake information was painful and really hard for
me.
I had to work really, really hard.
And then Paloma, it was easier for her, but her brain in the movement world was really
challenging.
She was just like, not for me.
I'm going to be more of what would say like the nerdy kid and I was more of like the job
kid, right?
Yeah.
And so we certain our society start to like classify people as like, oh, that's just how
you are.
But have we ever thought of it as that's just the preference in which you learn and how
you intake information?
Like, that's kind of crazy, right?
So we're all smart.
We're all beautiful beings.
And that's what we're trying to share is helping you find that light within you.
It's so important to understand how the brain is developing.
So Paloma already mentioned the reflexes, the lower centers of the brain.
They're doing really important jobs from utero to about two, two and a half years of life.
Then from that point forward, now we're in the space for about like until we're close
to eight years old, we're figuring out our dominance.
We're figuring out what side of the brain we prefer to use, what I we prefer to use.
And we start figuring out the dominance in which our brain is in taking information.
And there's so much research about like where you live in the world, how the information
is presented to you as a kid that affects this.
So it's important to know that if you are working with a child or someone younger and
they're still reversing letters and they're still not getting certain facts, well, maybe
it's because their brain just isn't ready to do this yet.
And about eight years old is when the brain's ready to come online and start really picking
how to wait and take information.
So this is something really important to know.
And this is why our society again, as little backwards on why we're teaching kids to read
and write at four or five years old, it's just we're not designed to do it.
So that's a plug for a different podcast.
Anyway, I had an explain to us, Paloma, the concept of some of the reflexes and how they
have a relapse with dyslexia.
Absolutely.
So dyslexia has a lot to do, of course, with the eyes and that's kind of, you know, natural
and a lot of people that actually start to show some learning challenges or learning
difficulties in the classroom.
The very first thing that they're going to be checked for is visual, right?
Visual challenges, visual impairment, whatever it might be.
That's usually what people, you know, professionals and teachers and doctors will look at first.
And it's important to take into account that auditory processing also plays hand in hand
with dyslexia because it's the way that we're processing the world.
So just think about this as we go through these reflexes for us to be able to interpret
information from the page adequately or efficiently, our eyes, our visual, our auditory systems
and our vestibular systems all need to be working pretty efficiently because the eyes,
of course, are the ones that are processing the actual words, right?
The ears are also processing the sounds that made us understand what the words were, right?
So when we learned the language, that's where that came from, right?
So that's how we're putting knowledge and actually bringing together what the meaning
is in our vestibular system.
Believe it or not, has so much to do with it because that's the vestibular system is our
relationship with gravity.
It's our balance.
And so it tells us where we're balanced and where the center is of whatever we're looking
at, whatever we're hearing, whatever we're experiencing.
It's very important for, because we have two sides of our brain and two sides of our body,
for our body to always know what the center point is of anything that we're trying to
do, right?
And operate because we need that point of convergence for anything that we're interpreting.
So that's just to set the stage.
So the moral, for example, is the reflex that is our infant startle reflex.
And so the moral has a lot to do with the way that we process our sounds and the way
that we process lights and changes in light.
And so if our moral is not integrated and still present at the age when we're trying
to read, it might be interpreting sounds that are way too loud or not loud enough.
And so that's, that's interfering with the way that we're processing what we have on
the page.
And once again, language and everything, all the other stimuli that are around us.
It also might be that if our moral is on, we're very, very sensitive to light.
So if we don't have the right lighting in our classroom where we're trying to learn to read,
then that's going to make it really, really hard for our eyes to actually be able to focus,
to literally focus, find the focal point of each word that we're reading or writing
or looking at the board and think about the type of lighting that most schools have.
It's fluorescent lighting and fluorescent lighting is very, very abrasive to the eyes,
especially to a brain that is in survival mode, because you process that even more intensely,
right?
And so if you have people that have a moral reflex that is present and that is not integrated,
much prefer to be in like lower light.
You know, you'll go into their house and all the lights are dimmed or the room, you know,
the, the dark curtains are drawn down all the time.
And that's because it's just so overwhelming to their system.
And they figure out a compensation of like, I'm just going to get rid of the light.
100%.
And really quickly, when a baby has, we want the baby to have this moral reflex on and
it's literally activated by any time there's like a loud sound.
If you make a loud noise, you notice that a baby will naturally will fling open their
arms, their hands will open up and then they'll have a big gasp, a big breath of air.
And then they start crying, their skin turns red and it's like, the system is like ready
to go, right?
Oh, survival time.
And then once they realize there's no threat, they curl back into whatever sleepy businesses
they are.
So you see this activated time and time again in the first like two months of life.
So imagine this, if a baby doesn't get to do that enough, it stays on and active because
the brain's like, I didn't go through the right period of getting this thing integrated.
So then these kids are in classrooms with activated, constantly activating this survival
mechanism of it's time to go, it's time to survive.
And it's like, could you imagine, and we did, I used to have this on very later in life,
where everything felt like fight or flight mode.
A threat.
Absolutely.
Of course this is going to affect your learning, because you're like, threat where?
Who was?
Exactly.
And it's not conscious, right?
It's involuntary, involuntary.
It's not voluntary.
So our brain, you know, even though logically we know it's just a classroom, it's just a
letter on the page.
Our primitive brain is like, absolutely not.
This is life or death, bro.
Let's get out of this.
Right.
And so that's where we're tripping up our whole nervous system.
When all we need to do is, all we need to do quote unquote is read a letter, right?
But there's just so much more.
And that's why this stuff is so complex, because we can't see what's going on instead of somebody
else's brain.
And so I think it can be so frustrating for teachers, for parents to be like, you know,
they said this on the child institute, the development institute as well, their website.
And then they say, act your age is not, is physically impossible, right?
And so that's where we're, we have those huge disconnects.
And we're like, what's going on with this person's mind?
Well that might be what it is, right?
It's involuntary.
100%.
Then we have the 18 are the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex.
And so we're not going to get too much into what each reflex does in this podcast, because
we will be here for 17 days straight.
And that's just too long, you know, it's too long for podcasts.
I don't think it'll even be able to upload.
So if you want more information on each specific reflex, we have so much info on our Instagram
and we have the basics of brain reorganization, which is a program that is free.
You can find it at the Lincoln bio of our Instagram page, and we also have podcast episodes
that have talked about this in the past.
So there's a lot of ways to get this information, but the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex has
a lot to do with our balance as well, our vestibular system.
Remember that knowing left from right, because what it does is it, it's kind of like, it
creates like a, or it has like a wall in between the two hemispheres, right?
So we have our left hemisphere and our right hemisphere.
And in the middle, we have a little bundle of nerves that's called the corpus callosum
and the corpus callosum is there to connect the two hemispheres, right?
When our AT&R is not integrated, so it's still present.
It's like it creates this huge massive wall in between the two hemispheres.
So what does that mean?
It's going to be a lot, a lot, lot harder to do anything that involves crossing the
midline, any sort of cross laterality.
That's the number one thing you need to do when you're reading cross the midline, because
you're going from left to right, right?
And so that's something that a lot of people will notice, right?
With kids that have the, the challenges with reading or dyslexia specifically is that they
have a really hard time going from left to right or they're lose their spot, right?
So they're reading, reading, reading, and then they're like, well, and you kind of
are like, why, why did they not read that word?
Well, their eyes literally just jumped from one page of the, of the part of the page to
the other, right?
And so that's something that's really important to not have.
So to have that reflex integrated, integrated.
This also because of that difference between the left and right hemisphere is going to have
ambiguity in their laterality, right?
So not necessarily knowing which hand is which, first of all, which one's the left and which
one's the right, and not knowing which hand to use to pick up a pencil.
You know, if you haven't really had that laterality, if your hemispheres aren't connected, it's
hard to really establish a dominant side, first of all.
And then on top of that, you're, you're confusing it all the time.
That makes it even harder.
And when you're writing, when you'll see how, when, when children are writing, and this
goes hand in hand, this is dysgraphia more than dyslexia, but it always, it usually goes
hand in hand is when writing there, if they're turning their head to one side, then they're,
they have a complete collection of the other side of their body.
And so what that creates is also kind of like a disconnect between the hand and the eye.
And so the hand-eye coordination is going to be really hard.
And that of course, it's extremely important for when you're writing on a page.
Right.
And the 18 hours really looked at as the eye tracking reflex.
So that's what Paloma said is being able to get your eyes to track effortlessly across
without skipping a beat.
And here's the thing, like so many times when this sort of stuff happens and so many of
our participants will be like, Oh my gosh, all of a sudden my son's hitting the baseball
at baseball practice or all of a sudden when I go in my teenagers learning how to drive
and they look over their shoulder, the car's not going with them anymore.
Right.
Because that'll happen because whenever the head turns that hand, that arm will have
that natural reflex to want to straighten and then open because when a baby's doing
this, they're lying on their back with their head turned down the straight arm.
So think about how much extra you're having to work every time your head turns.
You want your head to independently rotate and move without your arms going with it.
As a baby, you want that connected, but not when you're older and not when we're trying
to learn to read and write and do all the things.
So this is a massive reflex.
This one you could really see effortlessly.
If you want to check on your child really quick, you can just take your finger out in
front of their eyes and you can have them track smoothly from left to right.
Can their eyes stay on your finger without turning their head and can they keep their
eyes in a smooth pursuit going left to right?
If you have a kid that you already know has a little bit of a challenge with visual things,
I would do something bigger than the finger because sometimes a finger might even be too
small for them to focus on.
So if you take like a bigger racer or like, yeah, one of these like little Lego pieces,
put it on the top of the pen and of a pen and that'll make it easier to check it.
And don't, and if they do turn their head when they're tracking, you just ask, do you
think you're moving your head right now?
And they'll be like, nope, you go, okay, great.
That's information.
Again, we're building compassion for understanding why we do what we do and we're not trying
just to correct it and let them know they're doing everything wrong.
We want them to understand.
Oh my gosh, this is a reflex.
Remember what is it?
It's involuntary.
They cannot override it.
It has to go, this is why we say through the movement, it has to be done through the root
so it's effortless and they don't have to think about it.
Exactly.
It's not about getting it right.
It's about what information is this giving me about this person's brain, right?
And it doesn't have to be a child, by the way.
Okay.
Then we have the spinal galant reflex is a reflex that is mostly there for the movement
of the fetus in the uterus to get out through the birth canal, but it also works as a conductor
for the sound vibration.
So remember sound, we hear it as sound and melody and, you know, the cadence of somebody's
voice, but it really is all just vibration.
And so that's from the time you're in the uterus.
It's important for your body to start to adapt and understand how to process these vibrations
as sound.
And so if the spinal galant reflex is retained, then we're going to have a lot of difficulty
with understanding and processing sounds.
So that's another thing, right?
With the auditory processing that goes hand in hand with the dyslexia.
And it's also going to help synchronize the upper and lower body because it usually is
active.
Well, it is active in the lumbar area.
So it's kind of like we have the left and right midline and then we have the top and
bottom midline.
And so the spinal galant really helps with both of those.
And this sounds like it doesn't have that much to do with reading.
But once again, if you go back to what we said in the beginning, knowing where your center
is is extremely important for being able to read.
So if you don't even know where your own body center is, how are we supposed to find the
center of the page and the word and the thing that you're trying to interpret, right?
It's so much.
And also this reflex looks like if, if it's on for a child, they have like ants in their
pants.
That means they're always constantly wiggling and fidgeting and they can't sit still.
And then you tell them to pay attention.
They're like, to what?
Because everything is overwhelming their system right now.
So they can't hold their focus on anything.
So how do you decode sounds?
How do you look at words on the page and, and, and when your brain is not able to process
out what's not important?
So this child is always going to be, and usually like the dyslexic profile very much matches
the ADD ADHD profile.
Because there's a lot of connection there.
And again, let's look at the reflexes and how much of those reflexes are connected when
you read what's connected to each reflex.
So instead of seeing them as just always being distracted, it's like, huh, what?
I will say schools, I figured a lot of this stuff out and they've figured out workarounds
to help with the compensation.
So they put those vestibular cushions under their child so the child can wiggle or they
sit on balls, right?
We see this a lot now.
Um, but the problem with that is if it's still involuntary, guess what that ball turns
into an even bigger distraction.
And then we're playing with the fidget spinners and all those things and whatever it is.
And then they become a distraction.
So we're not again addressing the root.
So the next reflex we're going to talk about is the tonic labyrinthine reflex, which we
call it the TLR.
This one is really like when the eyes begin to converge and look at one point together.
So it's the eye teaming, eye convergence.
And this comes from, so when a child starts to be able to get on their hands and knees,
this is such an important reflex just to be able to come out and do its job.
Because if you avoid and never crawl, remember when the CDC took out crawling as a major
milestone, we all shook our heads, right?
Because the way you put your hands down on the floor literally will tell us what's going
on with this, this reflex right here.
So you can try this, go ahead, get on your hands and knees, look at what position your
hands naturally want to go to.
So many people naturally want to put their hands out to the side.
And it's a direct indication that your eyes cannot team.
And then imagining trying to look at one point on the page with both of your eyes is really
hard.
That's something that I still struggle with.
I need to work on my TLR.
And I noticed that if I, when I don't crawl and I don't keep for a while, my eyes, I'll
see a picture of myself and make, oh my gosh, my eyes are not deeming.
I can do it right now.
If you want to check somebody's eye teaming, you can also do the same thing with the pen
or pencil.
And you're going to hold it out kind of like as far as a paper would be, right?
From where you're reading.
Then extend your arm or kind of go arms length away from that.
And you're going to ask them to focus on one part, right?
So here, Danny's focusing on the yellow part.
I'm going to be focused on the blue part of my, of my pen right here.
Follow it.
And you're slowly going to bring it in closer.
Can you see my eyes, Danny?
Here.
It's easier when someone else does it for you, but yeah, you can see that you're right
and then out.
And my eyes like that hurt my eyes.
And I'm bringing it back in and usually you can see that one eye will go in a little bit
slower and one will go a little bit faster.
I don't know which one was which.
Yeah.
First year, right?
When wasn't going in as much and then your left eye.
So you were picking, you're like, one eye can do it together.
I can't.
So they're not doing it as a team.
There you go.
It's one or the other.
Yeah.
So then these people will close one eye.
They'll tilt their head, they'll cover their eye when they're working.
And then again, they're not able to just process the information for what it is.
It's getting skewed.
Everything's getting skewed.
Plus, if you're looking, if your one eye is looking, so this is where it's also very
interesting.
Of course, the visual system, which we're going to talk about in a little bit just right
after the reflexes.
But if one eye is looking at one part of the word and the other eye is looking at the
other part of the word, you have to fill in the middle.
You know what I mean?
Like there's also like your two eyes.
It's just again, just more things for your brain to be processing all at the same time
when you're supposed to be reading a word and like immediately knowing exactly what
it says.
And it's just once again, where those expectations of like, act your age, reading at age level
or grade level, whatever it is, all in quotation marks.
That's where we're like, how about reading a brain level?
Not at a, oh, what good slogan.
That was really good.
Read at your brain level.
Reading a brain level.
Forget about age.
Forget about your brain level.
Let's read it brain level.
Seriously.
Okay.
That was really good.
Yeah.
So the last reflex then is the symmetrical tonic neck reflex.
And this is when you're able to readjust from one distance to another effortlessly.
So if you're looking down at your paper, you look up to the whiteboard or you come down
to the whiteboard or I literally see this in my child copying from one piece of paper
to the next where you're literally just turning your head and looking from one piece to the
next.
And this is the natural ability to do so.
Yes.
If you were not given the opportunity to get this reflex integrated, of course this is
going to be hard.
Of course you're going to mix up your letters and your words.
And of course you're going to look like you have a challenge when it comes to all sorts
of learning.
All of these learning things.
And this is something really interesting that was in the book, the reflexive learning
and behavior.
If you're a podcast listener, you know we reference this book all the time.
It's our absolute fave.
And there's a part where she's talking about Trevor Roper who is a researcher.
And that is somebody who was looking at all the visual components of learning and kind
of looking at the up close vision versus far away.
And so the people that are myopic, that means that you can see up close and much harder
for you to see far away.
Just happen to have a tendency for more activities that are done up close.
Like writing, like writing, like art, like drawing.
And the people that have the opposite have much more of a tendency to go toward much
more out there things.
So sports and things that are further away.
They like to look at telescopes and they like to do the different things that are further
away because that's what's easiest for them.
So these are also things that we check up to personality.
But a lot of the time, and that's what you were saying in the beginning of the podcast,
it's not just our personality, it's our brain.
And so you might be somebody who's just decided, Oh, you know, I'm more bookish.
I'm really not into sports, but it's just because your brain couldn't do it.
So once you give your brain that ability, then you can explore also a different facet
of who you are as a person, which is also really cool.
Oh, I love that.
And think about too, when you're on your hands and knees, this distance of where your hands
are to where your head's at is such a big deal because this is your reading distance.
This is how you're interpreting information in front of you.
So that's really setting the stage for how are you going to be able to process this information
when you're at that space when it's time to do it.
Okay.
That was just addressing the reflexes.
Okay.
So reflexes, we have to remember this.
They are always interweaving with all the other sensory systems happening.
Plus, we've got our lower brain, which is our creeping and our crawling.
Yeah.
The pons in mid-brain.
So when you're doing specific movements like creeping, like on your belly where you're
moving from point A to point B, that when you're doing that movement, it's bringing
in the reflexes that are during that time period to work together.
And then when you go into your crawling phase, when you hit about six months, then you're
bringing in all the reflexes that are geared towards your crawling and all your mid-brain
functions.
So this is why it's so important.
You can't just see primitive reflex integration.
You can't just go creep and crawl.
You have to do both pieces of it because it will affect our auditory system.
It'll affect our visual system, affect our vestibular, our proprioceptive, all the systems
that are finally working together.
So it's so much.
We think babies don't do anything in that first year, but holy cow.
Holy cannoli.
It's so much.
And just really quickly to illustrate, we're not going to get too deep into the auditory
and the visual systems, but this I think is really interesting is the way that we process
sounds that the auditory part of the brain is in the left hemisphere.
And that means that when we process audit sounds through our right ear, we are doing
a much more efficient job because our right ear goes directly into the left hemisphere
to process.
And then we're able to understand what that sound was.
When we listen through our left ear is listening, not hearing, listen through our left ear.
We have to go into the right hemisphere because that's the way our brain is wired.
Right left side is the right hemisphere.
And then we have to jump over.
Remember, if you have that retained AT&R, that's going to be hard to jump over this
brick wall and then get to the left side to the auditory processing.
And then we're able to understand what it means, right?
Or to process that sound for further and more and more, more like the higher centers.
And so when we're learning to process sounds, we are kind of like fine tuning the balance
between the left and the right ears and which is going to be our dominance.
And it has been established that people that have a right ear dominance have a much easier
time of interpreting sounds, of hearing, of auditory processing sounds.
And of course that goes hand in hand with reading, right?
Because what you're hearing then becomes what you know, what you learn.
And then what you read goes hand in hand with that.
Remember, we talked about that in the beginning.
So if you have a little bit more of a tendency to go to the left ear, then this might be once
again adding another piece onto all the stuff that your brain has to process.
So without going too much into the detail of that, I want everybody who's listening to
the podcast right now to do a quick little test, which is stand in front of a wall, look
at the wall and imagine that on the other side of the wall is the best juiciest piece
of gossip you've ever heard in your life.
Okay.
You're like, Oh my God, I need to hear this so good.
So now I want you to slowly get closer to the wall and put your ear up to the wall to
listen to that juicy gossip.
Which ear did you favor?
Was it the right or the left?
And now think about it.
And what does that tell you about your brain with what you just heard?
That is your dominant ear.
You can do this for all of your senses, right?
So you can figure out what is your dominant ear when it comes to hearing and then also
what is your dominant eye?
The eye is not as key, but having them work together is super important.
So if you want to put your eye through a telescope, like which eye do you close?
Which eye do you keep open?
Which is your dominant?
So I know I have a left dominant eye and I have a right dominant ear.
And what's so crazy is when we dive into all of this, I always like to talk about my son
because he's such an amazing sport and he understands this stuff because we talk about
it and he's not even eight yet.
But he has a dominant left ear and he, we didn't check his eyes, but I'm not sure about
that.
But anyways, he's a dominant left ear, but I also know he doesn't have his symmetrical
tonic neck reflex integrated all the way.
And so this is the piece.
Here's the information.
I just talked to his teachers and you know, they're amazing.
They're so sweet.
And they're like, Danny, I think we should talk about maybe a learning disability.
Do you think Axel has one?
And I just confident like, okay, cute.
Thanks for your feedback, but I'm not going to take that because then that puts this pressure
on me.
Oh, great.
Now what?
And on him and on him and oh, something's wrong.
So instead of me spiraling, which I would have done before all this work, I just go,
you know what?
I'm glad that other people can see this, but I'm going to give you a different take because
this is what our goal is, is to normalize that we're all different, but normalize that
you can do something about it to ease whatever challenge you're facing in your day.
So for Axel, and this goes for a lot of people.
And we say this every time, if you have retained primitive reflexes as a child and you don't
do anything about it, they turn into retained primitive reflexes as an teenager and as an
adult and so on and so on.
And how many times have you seen adults that just can act right?
You're like, okay, what is it?
Right?
There's a lot of things.
But anyways.
So Axel, it's like, okay, instead of him just being diagnosed as a learning disability,
what if we looked at it and say, oh my gosh, he's working so much harder than he needs
to because he has a left ear dominance, which we now know he has to process things differently
and he has retained primitive reflexes.
And the cool part is, is yes, you can do stuff to help with your dominance.
But the more important thing that you can do right now is you can go integrate your symmetrical
tonic neck reflex.
You can do all your other reflexes and we can keep working on all of our other good
stuff.
So then he has hope and then he's not sitting there going, great, now I'm just going to
be stupid and not, you know, ever able to achieve things.
And now we can help him understand, well, what kind of learning helps?
What preference do you have for learning?
How do you prefer to learn?
And I already know about Axel.
He likes to move movements, his language of learning.
So let's get this kid moving and let's not put him in a traditional classroom.
Because he won't thrive.
He needs to do something that is out of the box because that's how he's going to find
his true potential.
So that's just something that we want to make sure you all understand is that we're, we're
all about options and hope.
And then when it comes to the visual system, learners, this is a really interesting one
and also the way to check if you're left or right eye dominant, by the way, is also to
just kind of imagine that you're looking at something, you're looking at the gossip,
you're not listening to it at this time, but it's kind of far away.
And so which eye do you go to cover?
If you really want to focus on, on what you do, if I tell you to cover one eye to be able
to really focus on something you're seeing, which one do you cover?
And so the one that's uncovered is your dominant eye.
And this is just a tiny little tidbit and then we'll, we'll end the episode.
Learners with left eye dominance will initially want to look at the right side of the page
first and then move to the left.
So in the Western world where we read from left to right, this makes it just that much
harder because the dominant eye is the one that sets the stage for reading.
Even though of course they're both teaming or what ideally they're both teaming, they're
both looking at the same spot.
The one that's leading it is the dominant eye.
And so if the reflexes are getting in the way as well, that's just extra work for the
eyes.
So if you're somebody with the left eye dominance, just take that into account as well as like
a little bit extra stuff that's going on in your brain that might be making it a little
bit harder.
Yeah.
And so that's what this is all about.
So you can look at it as there's just more to it.
There's more to the story.
And when, you know, you go get a diagnosis and they tell you have dyslexia, you just
go, Oh, okay, this means that there's reflexes on that means that I can go integrate them.
That means I have a different dominance profile and I need to take information in differently.
And it's just the more, you know, about you, you can help navigate and make your life just
so much easier.
So much easier.
And that's what we're here to do it in the cortex.
Which is normalize all of this and help you understand that there's simple, simple movements.
There are simple movements you can do daily that my four year old does alongside me.
So they're simple.
We have 90 year olds that are doing it and you do it daily and then your brain's like,
okay, cool.
Now I know I can see the world for what it is versus distorting it and tweaking it and
making everything skewed.
So if you have questions about anything we talked about today, please send us an email
at hello it in the cortex.com.
We have a super amazing program coming out April 1st with Dr. Greer Kirschenbaum and
she is a neuroscientist in a doula and we're doing a parenting program with her and it's
going to be rather amazing.
So please sign up and we have a special logo for that.
So stay tuned for that.
Oh yeah.
Buy one get one.
So do it with a friend.
Bring in the accountability and the excitement and motivation that comes with doing something
together with your friend.
It's for your own sake, it's for your family's sake and for your kids' sake whether you
have them or not yet.
Which is the case for me of course.
And are we going to do it again?
Let's just talk about our social media shall we?
There we go.
Our social media in the cortex underscore us is the Instagram the gram for all the baddies
out there who like to abbreviate in underscore the underscore cortex.
That's our tick tock.
And the cortex underscore us is also our FB or our Facebook and our YouTube channel is
in the cortex underscore us as well.
I believe I don't actually know that right now.
Yes it is.
Okay.
And website in the cortex.com and just always reach out.
We're super excited for the program.
Make sure you secure your spot for the program before March 29 because we there's going to
be a lot of stuff to like look over.
So we want you to have some time before we get started.
And that's really when we're closing off the the signups.
Of course if you have extenuating circumstances and you messages afterward we'll see what
we can do but we really want to get everybody in there so that on April 1st Monday, April
1st we're starting with everybody and it's going to be just the coolest thing ever.
So yeah.
And please share and subscribe and tell your friends.
Read it and read it and let everybody know that life can get easier.
Yes, it's that simple.
You just have to do some movements and then all of a sudden your life just gets easier
and we live this and we just want the world to know about this because we see so many
people that are feeling challenges and these are tools that will help you get further along
on your journey to really just really enjoy this experience of being human.
Right.
So it's all about sharing with all your friends.
Thank you all for listening.
We appreciate you and you have an amazing rest of your week.
Thank you.
Bye.