What: Proprioception is the concept of knowing where your body is in space (body awareness) and the ability to safely maneuver around your environment. It also includes the use of heavy work activities and the ability to stimulate the joint receptors.
Why: Proprioceptive input is important for a child’s development because it helps them to feel a sense of self, aides in self-regulation and promotes success in both fine motor and gross motor activities. It is also important as it helps a child to be aware of their “personal space” and how to appropriately engage with their peers without overstepping their boundaries (e.g. hugging without asking) or not engaging enough (e.g. decreased eye contact).
Activities to provide proprioceptive input:
- Wheelbarrow walks
- Bear hugs
- Body pillow “sandwich” (have child lay between two large body pillows and provide them with moderate squishes)
- Frog jumps
- Jumping on a trampoline or on a mattress
- Pushing a heavy basket/cart (e.g. fill a laundry basket and have child push across the house)
- Pulling a heavy wagon
- Squeezing or rolling playdough/theraputty
- Bouncing on a pogo stick or on a hippity hop ball
- Climbing a rockwall
- Monkey bars
- Tug of war (e.g. use a towel to play tug of war with a partner using both hands; place pillows behind each child, so that if they fall or lose their balance, they can crash into the pillows)
© 2021 North Shore Pediatric Therapy
What is Proprioception and Why is it Important?
Proprioception is the body’s ability to receive input through receptors in the skin, muscles and joints, and transfer the information to the brain through the nervous system so that the body can sense itself. To put it simply, proprioception is the sense that tells the body where it is in space. Proprioception is very important to the brain as it plays a big role in self-regulation, coordination, posture, body awareness, the ability to attend and focus, and speech. Many children with sensory processing disorders, Autism, and ADHD struggle with one or more of the areas listed above because of their body is not processing the proprioceptive input effectively. Signs of proprioceptive dysfunction or under-registration include:
- Poor Motor Planning/Coordination & Poor Body Awareness (difficulty understanding personal space or understanding boundaries when playing with others, presents with delay in gross and fine motor skills, bumps into people and objects frequently, difficulty riding a bike, difficulty going up and down stairs, difficulty with speech)
- Poor Self-Regulation Skills (emotional, difficulty attending to task, mood swings, frequent meltdowns, difficulty with sleep)
- Sensory Seeking Behaviors (plays rough, taps or shakes feet while sitting, chews, bites, likes tight clothes, pushes or hits others, writes too hard)
- Poor Postural Control (slouches, rests head on desk while working, leans on everything, poor muscle tone, unable to balance on one foot)
Children that have difficulty sensing or processing proprioception often try to self-regulate by engaging in activities and/or behaviors that provide intense or frequent proprioceptive input. Proprioceptive dysfunction can be addressed and improved by Occupational Therapy through the use of sensory integration and developing a healthy sensory diet. If your child has difficulty with sensory processing or demonstrates difficulty with any of the above signs, contact Sonoran Sun Pediatric Therapy to schedule a free Occupational Therapy screening.
What is the proprioceptive sense?
The proprioceptive sense tells us about our body position. It is stimulated every time we move. Each time we use our muscles or stretch and bend our joints. Receptors for this sense are all over our body, deep within our joints and muscles. Therefore, whenever we push, pull or lift heavy things we really stimulate this sense.
Therapists often call proprioception the ‘safe sense’. This is because activities which stimulate this sense have an organising effect on the brain.
“Proprioception from Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own” and capio to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of one’s own parts of the body.
– Wikipedia
Activities which stimulate the proprioceptive sense:
The proprioceptive sense & alertness
We can manage our own levels of alertness with proprioceptive rich activities (like those listed above). This is because proprioceptive input, along with deep pressure touch (including a massage, or a big hug!), is the most accepted and tolerated form of sensation by our body.
Proprioceptive input can be: regulating, calming, soothing, organising and/or alerting, depending on the current state of our nervous system. For example, if your child is over-excited, finding it hard to concentrate, proprioceptive activities can help them to feel more grounded, enabling them to focus.
If however, your child is feeling drowsy, finding it hard to wake up and concentrate, proprioceptive activities can help them feel more alert, without being over stimulated.
Sensory rich activities are those which involve the steady stimulation of several senses, including the proprioceptive and vestibular senses. These will help your child to organise their senses. This sensory organisation is fundamental for enabling and supporting learning.
Of course throughout the day, our levels of alertness will naturally alter. In the morning we should be gradually increasing our level of alertness to wake up. At night we should be lowering our state of alertness, so that we can sleep.
For optimal learning, our level of alertness should be somewhere in the middle. We should be ‘calmly alert’ (neither over excited nor drowsy). In this calm, alert state we can focus on what we are doing long enough so that we can truly understand it.
Managing levels of alertness for learning
What is The Reticular Activating System & what does it do?
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a small area at the base of our brain with wide connections throughout our brain. All of our senses (except smell) follow nerve pathways which are connected to our RAS.
The RAS has a major role in the regulation of alertness levels (among other functions).
The RAS enables us to focus our attention, acting like a filter to dampen down the effect of repeated stimuli. For example, as you are reading this, a fly may be buzzing across the room. At first you are distracted by the sound, but after a while, your RAS filters out this distant buzzing noise. Thus allowing you to keep your attention on the blog post.
Our RAS needs to be neither over nor under-excited for our body to be at the ‘just right’ level for learning. It keeps us in the calm alert state by steadily filtering out unwanted sensory information.
The RAS contributes to regulating our overall level of alertness, including our sleep/wake cycle. In the morning, our RAS system becomes more excitable. At this time we gradually become aware of incoming sensory information. This may include bird song outside, or our alarm clock. As a result, we become more alert. At night time, our RAS system should be less excitable. This means that our body becomes less responsive to the world around us. This less responsive state allows us to relax and sleep.
How proprioceptive sensory input can affect the RAS
Light touch, auditory (hearing) and painful sensations follow pathways with close connections to our RAS. These sensations are often associated with danger. It is logical then that this kind of sensation will alarm the RAS.
To go back to the example of the fly; you may have been able to ignore the distant buzzing while your RAS effectively filtered it out. However, if the fly suddenly buzzed loudly in your ear and touched your face, your RAS would be instantly excited. You would become hyper-alert to the fly. Your attention would have moved away from the blog.
Using proprioceptive activities to improve focus & relieve anxiety
In contrast, it is thought that deep touch and proprioceptive sensations follow neural pathways which are not so closely connected with our RAS. Indeed, by processing of these types of sensations, we may actually help our RAS to become less excitable.
This may explain why activities which activate the proprioceptive sense help us to feel more grounded and less anxious.
TIP: Deep massage and a weighted blanket can also help relieve anxiety and especially help those children with sensory needs.
Further reading
If you’re interested in learning more about the proprioceptive sense, take a look at these links:
- LemonLimeAdventures – the viewpoint of a teacher and mum to a child with sensory needs
- The Scientist – why knowing where our bodies are in space is critical for the control of our movements and for our sense of self
- Brain Balance – Proprioception explained
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