Qigong Massage

So, this week my main focus was on getting the parents started on the Qigong massage with the children. 
After practicing the massage with a group of parents on each other, I told them that they should practice the massage at home with a partner or another sibling but that they should wait with doing the massage on the child with ASD as that often is challenging and that we would look at it together in the first therapy session. But when we had the first individual session I asked how it went with practicing the massage and nearly all the parents had already started to do it with their child. This just shows me how motivated they are for doing this treatment. Some parents even already told me that this massage helps their child to relax more and sleep better - which is great! 
It’s so interesting how each child reacts differently. Some children can’t even lie down for the massage and just wriggle and scream and scramble to get up again. With those children we start in sitting position or even in standing as their system is too alert to let them relax and lie down. For some of them we had to do the whole massage in sitting. Some of them started in sitting but then got more relaxed with the massage and even ended up lying down for the last part. Others had no problem with lying down and cooperated through the whole massage and you really could tell that they enjoy it. Some start to have eye contact and interact and with others you had the feeling they don’t even notice that you are doing the massage and just are playing with a toy as if you weren’t there. But most of them in some way showed that they like the massage. Be it even if a child who always is very active needs a break to move around and then after a minute lies down on the mat again without being told because it wants to continue with the massage. One child even fell a sleep at the end of the massage because it relaxed her so much!
Next to this therapy for children with ASD I worked with children with cerebral palsy, infantile Beriberi and developmental delay and a girl with Rett syndrome. But more about that next week!