Message from Dr. Lydia Knutson
My first interest in the intersection of brain integration, healing and education came at age eight when I flunked out of 3rd grade. A delay in visual developmental had made it impossible for me to learn to read. I was a very bright child who loved learning and going to school, but as the tasks at school became more vision dependent, school became a set-up for failure. As I struggled in the public educational system of the 1960s, my confidence eroding with each bad report card, a lucky visit to a forward thinking optometrist changed my life. The kindly old doctor gave me exercises and recommended a cessation of all near work. He was confident that given a few stress-free years the eyes and the brain would figure out the mechanics of reading and I would develop binocular vision.
So, my parents gathered the courage to take the very unusual step (in 1969) of taking me out of school entirely. At that time, there were almost no resources for families with children with learning disabilities, and no home schooling movement. The next two years were heaven! I did no reading at all, playing out of doors in rural Massachusetts, leading the busy life of a curious child. The gamble paid off - at age ten I spontaneously began to read. The educational problem was actually confusion in the visual system, which time and specific vision exercises eventually corrected. Though I am forever grateful to my parents for removing me from a failing situation, I am left wondering how much more quickly I would have progressed if I had had more than time, mother nature and a few eye exercises to help me.
For nearly 25 years I have followed the work of kinesiologists and behavioral optometrists, wondering what factors led to my eventual ability to read. More recently I have discovered the remarkable work of Charles Krebs, Ph.D. and his truly innovative brain integration techniques. His work stands on the shoulders of early chiropractic kinesiologists.
With my intense interest in the intersection of health and education, as a Doctor of Chiropractic I have worked to find ways to assist the body to heal and, ultimately, learn. The low-force chiropractic technique, Axial Stability Method®, has proven to be a remarkably effective tool to help the central nervous system integrate and improve in efficiency. By stabilizing the structural system, many behavioral problems and learning "disabilities" simply disappear, along with the expected improvements in pain and gross and fine motor skills. Healing of the structural system and subsequent reorganization of the central nervous system is learning in its most powerful sense.
I founded Lydian Chiropractic with my husband, Fred Langenegger, PhD, in 2001. As the years went by, it became increasingly clear to us that to really uncover the mysteries of health and healing, we needed an alternative medicine think tank. In 2007 we opened the Lydian Center for Innovative Approaches to Health Care. The Lydian Center team is now a seasoned group of a dozen practitioners. The unifying principle of our approach is our shared understanding that if given the information it needs, the brain-body system will heal itself, naturally moving toward increased health and organization. Our role as practitioners is to provide this information to the best of our ability.
So, my parents gathered the courage to take the very unusual step (in 1969) of taking me out of school entirely. At that time, there were almost no resources for families with children with learning disabilities, and no home schooling movement. The next two years were heaven! I did no reading at all, playing out of doors in rural Massachusetts, leading the busy life of a curious child. The gamble paid off - at age ten I spontaneously began to read. The educational problem was actually confusion in the visual system, which time and specific vision exercises eventually corrected. Though I am forever grateful to my parents for removing me from a failing situation, I am left wondering how much more quickly I would have progressed if I had had more than time, mother nature and a few eye exercises to help me.
For nearly 25 years I have followed the work of kinesiologists and behavioral optometrists, wondering what factors led to my eventual ability to read. More recently I have discovered the remarkable work of Charles Krebs, Ph.D. and his truly innovative brain integration techniques. His work stands on the shoulders of early chiropractic kinesiologists.
With my intense interest in the intersection of health and education, as a Doctor of Chiropractic I have worked to find ways to assist the body to heal and, ultimately, learn. The low-force chiropractic technique, Axial Stability Method®, has proven to be a remarkably effective tool to help the central nervous system integrate and improve in efficiency. By stabilizing the structural system, many behavioral problems and learning "disabilities" simply disappear, along with the expected improvements in pain and gross and fine motor skills. Healing of the structural system and subsequent reorganization of the central nervous system is learning in its most powerful sense.
I founded Lydian Chiropractic with my husband, Fred Langenegger, PhD, in 2001. As the years went by, it became increasingly clear to us that to really uncover the mysteries of health and healing, we needed an alternative medicine think tank. In 2007 we opened the Lydian Center for Innovative Approaches to Health Care. The Lydian Center team is now a seasoned group of a dozen practitioners. The unifying principle of our approach is our shared understanding that if given the information it needs, the brain-body system will heal itself, naturally moving toward increased health and organization. Our role as practitioners is to provide this information to the best of our ability.