From Frustration to Hope: How BodyTalk and The Family Hope Center are helping kids find possibilities for healing
By Ruth Vincent

Kevin is a normal, happy kid. Grinning broadly with dimpled cheeks, he talks excitedly about his favorite baseball teams and how his own game is improving. He's very articulate for his age, and does well in school. He's friendly with a mischievous sense of humor. He doesn't seem like a child who is brain injured.

"Our first step is getting parents to shift their paradigm that healing is possible for their neurologically injured child," says Mathew Newell, director of The Family Hope Center, an international organization based in Bluebell Pennsylvania which treats children and adults with neurological problems such Autism to Cerebral Palsy from Mental Retardation to Epilepsy to Attention Deficit Disorder and many other diagnoses. "In most cases these families have been given a label, a diagnosis or syndrome, for their child and have been told by the medical community that their child will never live a normal life. So before we even begin treatment, we shift that paradigm; that healing, even complete recovery, is possible for the child."

What makes The Family Hope Center unique is the comprehensiveness of their approach, and that they integrate BodyTalk into the work they do. The Center is a team led by husband and wife Mathew and Carol Newell, who both have a background in occupational therapy. The core team includes Matthew, Carol, an on-staff physician, and a nutritionist. They also offer cutting-edge therapies such as cranial sacral, myofascial release, a hyperbaric chamber, and most recently, BodyTalk.

The Family Hope Center was already seeing good results with their program of neural development, cranial sacral therapy, and nutrition, however, director Mathew Newell felt like there was still a missing piece. It was then that he learned BodyTalk from Karen Atkins at The BodyTalk Center in New York City. "BodyTalk has given us deeper insights," says Mathew. "It helps us to zero in on what is the top priority to address."

Many of the families who bring their child for treatment at The Family Hope Center have no previous experience with alternative healthcare modalities like BodyTalk. But they come to appreciate its benefits. When ten-year old Kevin is asked about his BodyTalk sessions, he replies, "At first, I thought it was weird," he laughs. "But it gives me more energy." Bruce Kirk, Kevin's father, explains. "There are so many different modalities you can use. We went to a lot of specialists with our son, and it was like they were all looking at him through a microscope; they couldn't see the whole picture. The great thing about BodyTalk is that it's a tool that lets you take a broader perspective on things."

BodyTalk helps The Family Hope Center shift the perspective from the injury in the brain, to the whole person, and work with their whole mindbody. Within the BodyTalk protocol, staff identify what therapies would be best for the individual child; it can also help create overall balance in the body so that clients are more receptive to treatment. In severe or dire situations, BodyTalk is often the go to treatment, since the child may not be responding to other methods.

Kevin Kirk's particular story may be unique, however, his family's experience of frustration and getting nowhere with the conventional healthcare system is sadly familiar to many families whose child was given a neurological diagnosis.

Kevin, now 10, had a brain tumor when he was 5. He had surgery to remove the tumor, however, there was bleeding into his brain. "Kevin came out of the surgery severely impacted," says Bruce Kirk. "He could no longer walk or sit up. He had trouble processing information. And he wasn't developing like his peers, physically or mentally."

For the next four years, Kevin's parents took him from doctor to doctor trying to recover some of what had been lost. "We followed the main stream medical route at first and went through countless episodes of physical therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy." But the treatments weren't helping. "I had a physical therapist tell me that where he was in terms of his cognitive and motor function was basically where he was going to be for the rest of his life and we should just stop coming to physical therapy, because it wasn't going to do him any good. But we decided not to give up."

That's when the Kirk family discovered The Family Hope Center. "I had been on the phone with them for just a couple of minutes and I realized immediately that their approach was fundamentally different from what I had experienced for the last painful four and half years."

The Family Hope Center's program is designed to replicate the natural development of the brain. Ten year old Kevin describes it best, "The program involves what babies do in stages..." A baby's brain develops one area at a time, starting with the oldest parts of the brain, the medulla oblongata and the pons, responsible for basic body processes and motor skills, and then develops the limbic and cortex layers of the brain, responsible for emotions and higher intellectual thinking. This is mirrored in a baby's progress from being able to focus their eyes to crawling, to creeping, to learning how to walk and learning how to talk.

But what if this developmental process hasn't happened for a child, or what if it's been interrupted? What if a child can't see or can't hear, can't walk, or talk, or read? "The conventional medical approach," says Newell "would be to give that child a label which describes the range and severity of their symptoms, such as "Autism," "Cerebral Palsy," "Blindness," or "ADD". But these diagnoses, and many others, are all labels, and syndromes, that are symptoms of the brain not functioning at its optimal capacity."

"The brain grows by use," explains Newell. "The conventional approach is, if your child can't walk, don't frustrate them by trying to make them walk, just put them in a wheel chair. But there's no way to graduate from a wheel chair. We get kids to crawl on their belly, and then creep on their hands and knees. Then they progress to walking. The brain is not a static organ. It is capable of growing and building new neural pathways. But the brain grows in response to stimulus. You have to target the affected areas of the brain with stimulation, and then it will grow." Nutrition also plays a huge role in The Family Hope Center's program. "Most people don't know that the gut produces fifty percent of the neurotransmitters for the brain," says Newell. "We get parents to understand how important nutrition is for healing their child."

The Family Hope Center sees the child's family as the greatest asset in their recovery. " The family, because of their intense love for their child and natural motivation to help them, can, with the proper training and support, become the best therapists for their brain-injured child," says Matthew. The parents of every child treated at The Family Hope Center are asked to take a three-day seminar in which they learn about the brain and are taught the different therapies they can use with their child at home. "We spend several hours a day doing the program with Kevin," says his father, "but it's time well spent."

The Family Hope Center believes that it's imperative to support the parents as well as the hurt child. It's not only the children being treated at The Family Hope Center who receive BodyTalk sessions. Their parents are frequently given BodyTalk sessions as well. It provides them with a valuable tool for their own physical and emotional health and can alleviate the pent up stress of caring for a neurologically injured child.

The Kirk family is extremely happy with the results they've seen after just seven months of treatment at The Family Hope Center. "We had a follow up visit with one of Kevin's pediatricians," says Bruce. "She hadn't seen him since he started treatment here and she was stunned, just flabbergasted, by how well he's doing."

When asked what changes he has noticed in himself, Kevin replies, "I think my energy has improved. I'm more active than I used to be. I used to always stay in the house in a lounge chair playing Play Station. Now I'm working out, doing the program. And I'm doing better with my reading and writing. Before my language tests were like 65%, now they're like 90%."

"He's happier, too" his dad adds. Kevin grins.

His father confides when Kevin is out of the room, "the biggest change we've seen in Kevin is that now he has hope. I know it sounds clich, but truly he's hopeful now, and before he wasn't. He had given up. Now he has hope and he didn't have hope before. That's huge. He loves baseball, and before the treatment he couldn't hit or catch a ball because of his neurological impairments. Now he's playing baseball, and he's seeing his batting average improve. He's noticed the improvement in his cognitive ability. He's noticed that now he's able to process information faster. And I think it's almost more important that he sees his improvement as that we, his parents, see it."