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Amazing Babies: Essential Movement for Your Baby in the First Year
By Beverly Stokes

Understanding development movement is, in my view, an essential component to being a well-rounded somatic therapist, whatever your chosen mode of work. Many of our clients' movement limitations and pain problems are based on "missing pieces" in the jigsaw puzzle of early movement patterning.

Simple movement patterns, such as orientation, reaching, pushing, and coordinating eyes and hands, provide the groundwork for more sophisticated movements later. Attempting these sophisticated movements--and I would call sitting in a chair and doing office work all day a sophisticated movement--without these underlying basic patterns in place is an invitation to dysfunction and chronic pain. A perceptive eye can pick out the missing abilities, and with some simple restorative exercises our work can go further and the relief from pain can last longer.

Until now, it has been hard to find a source for this material that is simple enough to grasp without a lot of technical background, yet complete enough to be useful to the practicing therapist. Although Beverly Stokes designed it as a handbook for parents, Amazing Babies fits the bill for bodyworkers. It covers the first year of development, from birth to independent standing and walking. This very practical book explores the kind of movement discoveries a baby will be making, month by month, with acknowledgement that not all babies develop on the same schedule. Each chapter includes several kinds of information, all of which combine to form a complete picture that makes sense of movement development.

Multiple picture sequences from videos that show the pattern in the babies themselves; parent-baby interactions show the parent how to initiate various movements in dialogue with their babies; adult movement explorations encourage adults to explore the same movement sequences in their own bodies (exercises which are perfect for clients attempting to recover lost areas of movement from these developmental tracks); and highlights from each month of development.

These features make the progressive overlay of movement skills comprehensible, without oversimplifying the wondrous complexity of it all. Basic movement patterns are clearly illustrated and explained, including orientation responses in gravity; yielding, pushing, reaching and pulling movements; hand-eye coordination; and the progressive series of locomotion patterns.

The successful negotiation of these patterns is basic to the development of the brain and is the underpinning to successful communication and emotional responses, as well. As Thomas Verny, M.D., points out in the introduction, "Interaction with the environment is not merely one aspect of brain development, as has been thought, it is the absolute requirement ... Experiences prior to age three largely determine the architecture of the brain and the nature and extent of adult capacities."

Stokes is the founder of the Center for Experiential Learning in Toronto, though she can be found throughout the United States giving workshops on developmental movement. Her work is based on the Body-Mind Centering work of Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen, with many years' additional experience observing, filming and analyzing babies' movements and interactions.

Her book is imbued with her love of children, and her passion for a successful family based on loving play and the ultimate goal--a secure, autonomous child. Stokes' work allows us to help our clients become secure, autonomous adults, and I recommend this book wholeheartedly to any new parent, as well as any therapist interested in healing their clients at the most fundamental level.

Amazing Babies includes many photos and drawings; is well-designed to be accessible; and features a glossary, references, summary guide and index. Amazing Babies is also available in a wonderful video version, but the video does not include prescriptive detail on the adult rehabilitative level.

--Thomas Myers studied directly with Ida Rolf, Ph. D., and Moshe Feldenkrais, Ph.D., and has practiced integrative bodywork for more than 25 years in a variety of cultural and clinical settings. He directs Kinesis Seminars, Inc., which develops and runs international training courses for manual and movement therapists.