In TrainMovePlay Family Fitness Fun Playshops, we activate vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses with games, yoga, obstacles, and more.
Read more about our playshops in the FAQs: Family Fitness Fun playshops article.
Vestibular Sense
Our inner ears house an organ called the vestibular apparatus that is full of fluid which moves around as we move. Our brains interpret the movement of the fluid as various kinds of bodily movement – fast, slow, upside down, etc. If your vestibular system has ever been highly disrupted, ie, on a rollercoaster, you may have experienced a disconnect between the shift in the vestibular apparatus and your brain’s ability to process that information, also known as, dizziness. Or if your ears have ever been swollen with congestion, you may have felt you were moving too fast or too slow.
Humans, especially children, need stimulation of our vestibular systems, to
- learn how to control our bodies
- recognize where we are in relation to the Earth, and
- gain and maintain balance.
To stimulate our vestibular systems, our playshops use games that include
- swinging
- spinning
- going upside down
- rolling
- rotating/twisting
- and balance.
Tactile Sense
When we hear “tactile sense,” we generally think of one major organ: skin. Our sensitive skin recognizes…
- pressure
- hot and cold
- texture, and
- pain,
…among other sensations, and is in constant communication with our brains, using these sensations to interpret the environment. Having efficient access to our tactile sense, not just in our hands and feet, but throughout our whole body, affords us more confidence and ease of movement.
In playshops, we often begin by singing a song that “wakes up” our skin with…
- patting
- poking
- brushing
- tapping
- squeezing
- pressing and
- rolling our skin.
Proprioceptive Sense
Inside your joints, muscles, and connective tissues are special cells that communicate to your brain information about where your limbs are in space, in relation to each other, and in relation your body. They also afford you the ability to control and regulate how much force and pressure you are exerting.
Proprioception affords you the ability to close your eyes and lift your arm overhead. You don’t need to see your arm to lift it, and you don’t need to guess at how much force or effort it will take to lift your arm, if you have healthy proprioception.
Children who are still developing their proprioceptive senses may do things like knock over the milk glass because they honestly did not know where their hand would land and how fast it would travel when they decided to move it. Proprioception, like most of our senses, develops in childhood and declines with age. So it becomes easier to miss a step or trip over a small object as we get older.
In playshops, we guide proprioceptive development with activities that explore
- moving our bodies into various shapes
- jumping over objects
- pushing
- pulling
- dragging, and
- lifting heavy objects.
Interoceptive Sense
We also include interoceptive sensory games in TrainMovePlay playshops – Interception is our sense of what is going on inside our physical bodies, like
- heart rate
- breathing rate
- hunger and thirst
- muscular tension, and
- temperature.
If you have ever, “felt a cold coming on,” you have experienced your interoception.
While not always included in typical “sensory-integration play,” we think it is super valuable for the establishment of emotional regulation. How? Take this example:
When a child can articulate,…
“My body feels hot and tight,”
…she may start to NOTICE,
“My body feels hot and tight right before I get angry,”
…and then DECIDE…
“My body feels hot and tight, so I am going to walk away from this discussion and take a break from this person instead of getting into an argument right now.”
Interoceptive training is also super easy to include – we just reflect on the other things we are already doing. “Wow! You tried that jump and didn’t quite make it! How did it feel when you landed somewhere different than you thought you would?” We also use activities that explicitly explore how our bodies feel from the inside out; our embodied experience.
Join us for a Playshop
Ready to join us for a Family Fitness Fun Playshop?! Look for more info in our FAQs: Family Fit Fun article or use the Contact page to let us know if you have questions or requests for specific activities to include. Check our social media for the next playshop dates.
Movement for All, Movement for life
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