Unity Therapy Solutions is a therapist owned and operated small business that was established with the goal of providing skilled, outcome oriented communication and feeding therapy services while maintaining the principle that the body functions as a whole, interconnected unit.
Generally, we learn in school about all the parts and systems of the body and what function they serve. We also learn about the nervous system and how it works to link all the seemingly separate parts of the body to the brain. The nervous system acts as a highway feeding the brain so much information about how we interpret our world through our senses. What a huge job our nervous system and brain have! Our eyes, ears, noses, mouth/tongue, skin, joints, and inner ear all serve as investigative reporters to let our brain know what our environment is like, if we enjoy what we experience, or if we are in danger. The brain in turn considers this information and tells our body how to respond and stores some of the information away for later. So much is known about the sensory system and researchers continue to find more fascinating information about just how marvelous our brain and sensory system are!
Learning is a very complex task that can happen when our nervous system is functioning in a safe and engaged manner. What and how we learn developmentally and re-learn in rehabilitative situations are dependent on the fact that our sensory/nervous system must have a balance of information coming in. If one of our systems is under receiving/processing or over receiving/processing input, our brain is not able to completely absorb this new material that we are trying to learn.
This goes for learning in the home, school, or work environment; anywhere we are responsible for retaining new info or skills. Producing speech, understanding and using language, and eating/feeding are all skills that I consider to be new info since we must learn in childhood, or sometimes re-learn how to do following a neurological event.
Not only must we learn how to complete these higher level skills, but once a skill is learned, we are tasked with repeating those learned steps or to refer back to this new info many, many times a day. We use complicated combinations of speech sounds to request or exclaim our needs, create long sentences to share about what we love, and use our oral motor skills to take in and safely send nourishment down to our stomachs. Once again, the nervous system and the brain have very important roles in these jobs, too.
In learning about and becoming fascinated with the sensory/nervous system and how it factors into skill development in childhood, I began to read more and more about how our reflexes (conditioned and unconditioned) are a key underlying part in determining the functioning of our sensory systems. When primary and higher level reflexes are not integrated to a level where they work to support our systems, we can really have difficulty with skill development. In an effort to learn more about retained reflexes and how they impact communication and feeding, I found Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration® or MNRI®. I find that the groundbreaking work of Dr. Masgutova can be life changing. As an SLP, I respect what her research has and continues to support in the way of communication and feeding skill advancement through the reflexes.
Unity Therapy Solutions was established in 2019 to facilitate my desire to become a practitioner of this work to help children, teens, and adults all find a better quality of life through reflex integration.