Book Review by Lia Constanda, "Smart Moves"

“Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head”, by Carla Hannaford, Ph.D.

  Reviewed by Lia Constanda

The book was originally written in 1995 by neurophysiologist and educator Carla Hannaford. The second edition was published in 2005.The book is significant to the understanding of child development and education. The writer makes it clear that learning is not all in our heads and that we need to learn to use the connections between body and mind in order to maximize learning.

The writer addresses the relationship between sensory experience, sensory learning, emotions and cognitive development. She stresses that physical movement and emotional safety from early infancy are crucial for the development of nerve cell networks, which are fundamental to the process of learning.

She explains that senses and emotions play a key part in the process of learning even before we leave the womb; that sounds and music are important even before birth; that early childhood milestones such as“crawling” are building blocks in the child’s capacity to learn, as this stimulates the 2 hemispheres of the brain, resulting in a heightened cognitive function and thus increased learning. She stresses the importance of play in the development of imagination and how in the later years this becomes the essence of creativity and high-level reasoning. The book emphasizes the importance of movement to learning and development of mental capacities. Movement and play profoundly improve not only learning but also help people to deal with stress and improve creativity and health.

Dr. Hannaford explores why and how integrative movements like Brain Gym, Tai Chi, yoga, singing, dancing, playing a musical instrument, and even rough and tumble play enhance the capacity for learning in everybody. She backs up the benefit of the Brain Gym with examples from her professional experience in that some children who sustained brain damage from childhood abuse, and, others who were either emotionally handicapped or mentally retarded were able to make remarkable progress in their academic work, due to play and movement.

Dr. Hannaford examines closely the connection between body and mind and the essential link between movement, senses and emotion for the benefit of effective learning.

She stresses the importance of teaching students in a way that goes in line with their natural body development and progression of skills. For example, she advocates postponing the emphasis on silent reading until a child’s inner voice is develops which is around the age of 7.

She identifies stressors that impact on learning such as medical reasons and technological ones. For example the overuse of TV, computers and computer games erode creativity and impair the child’s ability of developing a rich vocabulary. She also feels that digitized sources of sound from TV, computers and computer games are not helpful to the child and that benefit comes from the interaction with natural sounds and the human voice, as these expose a child to the full range of harmony.

All in all much of what she recommends is common sense. In conclusion she states that it is the activation and balance between the body and mind that allow us to become effective and productive thinkers. In other words she advocates that the body/mind interaction stimulate a healthy mind in a healthy body.

“ Mens sana in a corpore sano.”