Our intention is to improve the lives of elders, helping them stay mentally alert and sharp, and reducing their risk of falls and accidents. You can participate as a group leader, a caregiver, or on your own. Perhaps you are aging, you work with elders, or you are concerned about your aging parents. Here's how to bring confidence and joy into the aging years. This brightly illustrated book, which links to 60 on-line demonstration videos, is loaded with dozens of movements (not exercises) that anyone can do, even the frailest elder. The payoff: increased coordination, sharper cognitive skills, better vision, and enhanced self-confidence. Preventing falls means preventing disaster! Staying mentally alert and sharp is paramount. Please go to our website MoveWithBalance.org to learn about our award-winning program. Move With Balance(R) is the winner of the 2012 MetLife MindAlert Award from the American Society on Aging in the category for programs designed to enhance mental fitness for the general population of older adults. One independent study shows a 38% reduction in falls for the treatment group. This is not a "workout" program in the usual sense with muscle-strengthening and limbering exercises as the primary goal. The activities combine coordinated movement with cognitive skills. For example, we move, but while we move we read, or recognize shapes, or recite a poem. The underlying principle: challenge the brain and body simultaneously with some sensory-motor activity, repeat until the challenge becomes easier or even automatic, then up the stakes by repeating the activity at a higher level. Once you buy the book, you have access to the videos. Along with full color photos of the exercises, the book explains the movements in depth, the why and the how. The videos give you a quick visual, and in combination with the book, should make it easy for you to learn the movements. The program is user friendly, light-hearted and playful. Move With Balance(R), based on the most current research in brain plasticity, vision training, and kinesiology, uses movement to help prevent falls and enhance cognitive functions. Our activities improve balance, sensory integration, spatial awareness, integration of the two hemispheres of the brain, brain timing and sequencing, reaction time, binocular teaming, and proprioception. Additionally, our mentoring system, of having active, mobile seniors "mentor" their more frail peers, reduces the isolation of elders by increasing socialization. Move with Balance(R) founder and director Karen Peterson has devoted the past 27 years to research into the brain-body connection, 18 of those years working with senior citizens, and the many ways that movement can correct neurological imbalance. "This program is based on cutting-edge science. It uses modified techniques that Olympic athletes employ with good success. I wholeheartedly endorse this work to make seniors safer and to help them lead more active and productive lives." - from the Introduction by Dr. Ed Manniko, OD
About the Author: Karen Peterson, MA has 40 years teaching experience: in many adult education programs, at several colleges, at many senior centers. Since 1987 she has been teaching movement, cognitive skills, sensory-motor integration, and vision training to children, business people, athletes, classroom teachers.. In 1994 she began teaching movement exercises daily to senior citizens. She loved teaching seniors, the perfect appreciative students. In 2000 Ms. Peterson created Giving Back, a 501c3 non-profit agency on Maui, whose intergenerational programs provide a structured way for active senior citizens to "give back" to children. In 2005 she expanded the program to include another angle: active elders mentoring frail elders. Ms. Peterson and Move With Balance(R), the program she created, won the 2012 MetLife MindAlert Award from the American Society on Aging in the category for programs designed to enhance mental fitness for the general population of older adults. "The Review Committee found the Move with Balance(R) model to be innovative, unique, and easily replicable, and noted that this is a program that truly engages older adults cognitively, physically, and socially." Ms. Peterson has written the book Move With Balance: Healthy Activities for Brain and Body, which allows you to replicate the program in your community for three different applications: the group leader model, the caregiver model and the personal model. The book clearly describes the why and how a combination of movement and cognitive skill activities, performed simultaneously, can lead to better balance and enhanced brain function. Videos are available to those who purchase the book on www.MoveWithBalance.org. Ms. Peterson is an entrepreneur who has started 3 businesses, all of them still ongoing. She is a Certified Educational Kinesiologist, a Certified Natural Vision Improvement Instructor, a Certified Touch for Health Instructor, and a Certified Massage Therapist.