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BodySoxTM
 Originally developed with attention-deficit and eating disordered individuals, its stretchy, resistant walls provide a tactile means of self-referencing that improves body image and sensory integration. Children with autism or other sensory processing difficulties love BodySox's enveloping deep pressure quality. Let them use it during group time to help them stay calm. Never force a child. Those who crave tactile input will love it..those with tactile defensiveness must be respected. Never force a child into the BodySox.
USING MOVEMENT ACTIVITIES
TO DEVELOP SOCIAL INTERACTION
Presented at the 2000 NW Autism Society in Seattle
Intro: Why use movement
In order to be able to interact appropriately with others we have to be comfortable with ourselves and our bodies and know how to read non verbal cues from others. One of our first modes of perceiving is through body sensation and kinesthetic awareness. Our first identity is a body sense or as Freud viewed it, a "BODYSELF" Many disorders stem from early inadequate sensory feedback that can be reversed with developmental movement and sensory integrative work, the work of dance/movement therapists and occupational therapists. Many of the props you will use today come from working with attention deficit and eating disordered individuals. Today we will be giving you ideas on how to use movement activities with these sensory integration props to foster three types of social interaction. Self Expression, Reading Others, and Reciprocating from Laurie Simons book Interplay Groups. Props in general grab a child's interest, serve as a transitional object, and a way to transition from self to other. As a child begins to experience their bodies as part of themselves, an identity forms and the ability to attach to others ensues.
Self-Expression
1. Discover Your Body/Pre-Socialization
Expansion/Contraction. See how big you can be inside your Bodysox. Now get small. Alternate between growing as large as a ........ and shrinking as small as a .........
2. Establish boundaries, improve proprioception by exerting pressure on joints, muscles
Move your neck and head in circles inside the Bodysox. Try the same outside the Bodysox. Feel the difference. arms and hands/ press and pull, legs and feet/ stretch against the fabric and then bring one leg outside/ elbows and knees press against the fabric, move one outside.
3. Self development through imaginative play
Moving Creatures of the Sea, Earth, and Air.... manteray, shark, jellyfish, seaweed, waves, sea urchin, starfish, earth worm, turtles, alligators, crocodile, four-legged animals....
Select music and a category. Children move in the BodySox expressing animal movement and sound qualities. When you stop the music tell them to freeze into a shape that expresses who they are. Imaginative play develops a self and prepares child to assert needs
Reading Others
Reading body cues of others, noticing/acknowleging
Observing students try to name or guess the creature. Demonstrate how shapes can look like objects or express a feeling. Ask children to make shapes and imagine what they may be or what feeling they are expressing. At the freeze ask observers to name the sculpture, add to it with another body shape or even draw it.
Reciprocating
Contact games/Modulating touch
1. At the freeze, touch one body part. Child responds either with a sound, movement, or word
2. Child must then use that body part to link with designated object or child to begin large puzzle construction. (Reading Others)
3. Children roll on floor until they touch another roller. They can either roll away in the opposite direction or stay and continue contact. Use images to promote safe, contact such as "coming home to your nest", "staying warm and protected in a storm", "members of a private club"
Article published in 101 Play Therapy Techniques
edited by Heidi Kaduson and Charles Schaefer
published Jason Aronson Inc.,1997
BodySox, winner of the 1993 Early Childhood Director's Choice Award, is a lycra stretch sack with velcro opening that enwraps the whole body. It was designed by dance/movement therapist, Kimberly Dye, to facilitate a corrective body image, body boundary, and imaginative play for attention deficit children and eating disordered adults. Its four-way lycra stretch fabric provides tactile feedback that can be reminiscent of early mother/infant bonding, a necessary step in body image formation.
It creates an experience of "I can see you but you can't see me" which increases a sense of personal safety, loosens inhibition and stimulates a spirit of play, the backdrop for therapeutic interaction between client and therapist. Children freely enter the imaginal space inside BodySox' protection and dance images such as rolling rocks, hatching eggs, moving puzzle pieces, or birds of flight. Relationship between mover and observer can develop spontaeously through storytelling or shape naming.
Material of a developmental nature often arises during sessions. Inside a BodySox is akin to Winicott's "holding environment. The containing, wrapped feeling can satisfy those with inadequate early bonding by recreating an inutero, or symbiotic experience. Slow rocking or rolling movements can also be soothing to hyperactive or depressed children.
Mahler's phases of separation can also be simulated and moved through accordingly. The fabric can be pushed, pulled and pressed away from the body as a way of enlarging the personal kinesphere and separating from the "status quo". Individual body parts, an arm, a leg or head, can begin to emerge from the confines of the walls by extending through the velcro opening. This exercise can bring up issues of bodyshame, feeling exposed, or separating from the familiar. As the client works through negative feelings and spends as much time inside the sack as feels comfortable, they can gradually be encouraged to emerge at a pace that feels right. Emerging can than evoke feelings of freedom, excitiment, and/or readiness to become separate.
An example follows: An adolescent struggling with anorexia, liked to hide on mother in the house at various time throughout the day. Mother was not amused by the game and would often become fearful of the adolescent's intention. We began working/playing with the BodySox as a way of meeting the client where she was, simulating the hiding experience, and exploring how it might fulfill an unmet need. The BodySox became a hated object, symbolic of the pressured, entrapping quality she experienced in relation to her mother. She pushed and pulled and expanded the walls of the BodySox . Upon encouragement to dialogue with the walls of the BodySox, the client began to access and express aggression towards her mother. Her hiding behavior decreased as she began to verbalize her feelings towards mother. The BodySox experience helped her to create healthy boundaries that began to replace her refusal to eat.
BodySox Page | For Therapists Page | 
