The new Touch For Health School training for improving your ability to perform at school, work, with sports and relationships while improving your energy levels and postural balance.

I am very pleased to introduce you a series of courses that are part of the new developments and programs of the Touch For Health School. The Touch For Learning courses are the results of 18 years of study and research in the field of learning, mainly done by the daily application and development of techniques and procedures with clients and people with various kind of learning, relationships and physical challenges.
Even if new for the international audience Touch For Learning is already well established in its presentation and application formats as it has been successfully used by myself and many of my students and has already been taught by other Touch For Health Instructors in Italy.

Touch For Learning basic philosophy
The ability to learn largely depends from the training that we give to our nervous system. The brain and the nervous system are a very sophisticated computer that is programmed by the activities that we do, which in turn are widely influenced from the environment in which we live. There are no activities that are totally predetermined by the nervous system on its own. We always need an outward example and influence to learn any particular subject, action or life issue. We have a potential intelligence ready to be used in any specific activity. This potential intelligence has predetermined genetic memories that help or limit our learning ability for a particular activity. The bigger is the power of a genetic memory relative to a specific activity, the bigger will be the resources or the limits that we will have to face. An outward environment is always needed to facilitate the expression of the learning potential. For this reason it is of utmost importance what we learn during the very early years of our life, as it will greatly influence all our future learning skills. Nowadays we know that the idea that we have of life is largely influenced from the behaviour of those who surround us and from the environment in which we live. This influences become our learned idea of the world that does not always match with our predetermined genetic potential and, above all, with the intimate spiritual reality within each one of us. Therefore learning often becomes a fight between our innate tendencies and our learned ones, neither one nor the other being necessarily the “Holder of truth”. The ability to increase or decrease our learning skills is therefore always based on the ability to make the best choice at any given time.

The diagram in the following page summarize and widens the concepts mentioned above. Within the right hemisphere we record the innate tendencies and in the left hemisphere we tune in with the learned ones. In the middle of the body, starting from above, we find the spiritual, affective and physical control centers. In the trunk we have the energy storage and distribution centers, with the superior part that is influenced by the affective control center and the lower one influenced by the physical control center. Likewise, the upper limbs are  the expression of the affective energy and the lower limbs  are the expression of the physical energy. The ability to create a balance between the genetic and learned tendencies allows an optimal functioning of our nervous system. The possibility to have our learning skills always available to us is also influenced by the quantity of available energy that is able to be expressed through the physical body and by the influence that our values have on such energy.

Touch For Learning brief History and acknowledgments
Touch For Learning has grown out of the Educational Kinesiology Workbook created by Phillip Crockford in 1986 for the Touch For Health Foundation and originally taught in two seminars for a total of 20 class hours; further additions, deletions and changes where made in 1990 by Hap and Elizabeth Barhydt during their time spent working at the Touch For Health Foundation; such edition was called Enhanced Learning. After much practical work using the techniques of both editions I spent much time in reorganising most of these author’s good work according to the new findings that were brought to light when I was faced with challenging clients in my own private practice as a kinesiologist. The concepts and techniques that I developed and are presented in Touch For Learning are based on what I have seen that has given me the best results. While the technique were refined I came to realize that in most cases the lesser was the initial physical impact on the change that I was activating in a human being, the bigger was the final result. I learned to watch and look more for details and slight changes than for the most appearing ones. I am therefore very happy to present to you this tool that is a condensation of many years of my thinking plus the ideas, ability and wisdom of many fine minds that have imparted me their knowledge. I thank the authors of the manuals mentioned above and a special thank goes to Dr. Paul Dennison, Dr. John Thie and Dr. George Goodheart for their pioneering and important discoveries in the field of learning and subtle energy work applied to the human being, which have been an inspiration and a background for my work with Touch For Learning. Thank you to all my kinesiology and spiritual teachers for inspiring me not to  accept  human limitations as something that cannot be overcome.

Touch of Learning is organised to follow the natural neurological order

If we want to be sure that our nervous system will support us in any endeavour we need to have a focused and willing mind first of all. Just like Touch For Health, also Touch For Learning is a goal oriented protocol. I am a strong believer in the need of giving time, before any hands on work is done, in setting a goal during a kinesiology balance. This is the time when the mind is able to focus on what it really wants and then we can look for the energy, the strategies and the will power to accomplish it. Using kinesiology without a goal setting procedure it is like to prepare an army for a mission while leaving its general on stand-by. In Touch For Learning you will find some hints that will show you how to support the creation of effective goals.
Once the mind knows what it really wants we can organize the neurology around it, Touch For Learning applies old and new concepts of Kinesiology in a specific order based on neurology studies of the natural unfolding of the human being. There are specific steps of neurological organization that have to develop and be established for allowing us to easily perform certain activities. Such steps greatly involve our postural receptors in the eyes, head and muscles and the ability to create the largest number of connections between the two sides of the body through our brain. While we learn and grow trough our body and brain we develop strategies as well as compensations in the attempt to get out the best from what we learn. Compensations are usually developed when we try to move around an undeveloped neurological step or connection. A simple example: if we have difficulty in focusing with one eye, we will try to compensate with the other eye; this will support a postural adaptation for using primarily such eye and will enhance more the brain qualities related to that eye.

In Touch For Learning first we make sure that the specific neurological steps needed for creating the connections have been activated and then we look for the specific factor or factors that limit our performance.

We know that a neurological development may be stopped by emotional and mental causes as we certainly do not want to develop a certain ability if we feel that it creates emotional instability or there is a negative mental pattern associated to it. A series of approaches are included in Touch For Learning to address such issues and transform the negative feelings and self-talk in positive ones that allow us to process the needed neurological steps for improving our learning abilities.  

Nutritional aspects are also considered with a different approach than just the knowledge of those foods which are beneficial and those which are stressful. In Touch For Learning 2 we explore three different approaches to the nutritional energy, whose goal is to raise the energy levels of our organs and meridians and understand the connections between nutrition and unresolved life issues, including those ancient ones that keep our high potentials locked because we are unable to use such energy in an organised manner. By using nutrition with an approach similar to homeopathy we stimulate the system to unfold its energy and direct it for our specific goals of life.
Specific techniques for the standard learning skills, such as reading, writing, listening and memory are also included in Touch For Learning. The corrections do consider the sensory coordination aspects as well as the emotional and mental aspects.

Will be continued

Maurizio Piva, Italy, Kinesiologist, Naturopath.