What is DMI? Is this really matters to you?
Dynamic Movement Intervention (DMI) is a physical and occupational therapy therapeutic strategy used to treat children with motor delays. The process is by increasing natural postural responses and promoting progress toward developmental milestones.
The purpose of DMI is to elicit from the child a specific active motor response in response to defined dynamic exercises recommended by the therapist. This all-encompassing solution integrates cutting-edge neurorehabilitation research, technologies, and approaches. DMI enhances neuroplasticity, allowing for the formation of new neural connections and the development of motor milestones.
What does DMI Therapy look like? What it includes?
DMI is a group of exercises that adhere to specific criteria such as
- Head to toe
- Direction
- A proximal hold that advances to a distal hold
- Forcing the child to manage
- Finish more of the movements themselves.
A basic symmetrical motor response, such as extension or flexion, to a more specific dissociated motor response, such as flexion of one limb while extension of the other. A kneel to half kneel stance is an excellent example of this.
Facilitation of rotational and transitional muscle control builds on postural control stability.
Aim of DMI Therapy?
Neuroplasticity is one of the theoretical foundations on which DMI operates. Neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to establish and recognise synaptic connections, particularly in response to learning or experience or after an injury.
It refers to a child’s brain’s ability to recover from traumas such as stroke by developing new motor pathways. DMI’s goal is to stimulate the formation of these pathways and synapses by presenting novel motor challenges and facilitating desired movement patterns.
Who is DMI for? Does your loved ones really need DMI therapy?
Affected children benefit from DMI motor intervention in terms of activating neuroplasticity in the developing brain, regardless of their level of cognition or the extent of neurological impairment or injury. This type of therapy may aid children with any type of motor delay, including Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, global developmental delay, hypotonia, chromosomal abnormalities/genetic disorders, spinal cord injuries, or acquired brain damage. Because of the significant neuroplastic changes that this treatment promotes inside the developing brain, children at risk, such as premature babies, can benefit from this therapy as well.
Why We Love DMI? Why we need to understand the importance of DMI?
Because of its emphasis on clinical reasoning, current research, the complete kid, and its multi-disciplinary/multi-modality approach, DMI supplements and enriches our intensive curriculum. DMI enables our team to not only incorporate more approaches and tools into the framework of a session, but also to create each plan depending on your child’s needs and the goals of the parents.
What happens before and after DMI?
Following a brief evaluation, the therapist will identify areas of deficiency that will guide treatment. The therapist selects workouts that will push the child’s neurological system to its limits while also developing the core and fundamental milestones. Movement against gravity, progressively more difficult support, provocation of desired movements, and postural and strength challenges are all part of the exercises.
During a treatment session, the kid will perform a variety of activities that give novel and varied sensory and motor challenges, and each activity will be performed approximately 5 times. Exercises can be repeated between sessions until the movements become automatic, resulting in better balance and function. Depending on the child’s skills, exercises are performed on a tabletop or the floor.
DMI Therapy complements other therapeutic procedures and therapy equipment nicely. These are frequently mixed in a treatment session to improve alignment and optimise outcomes.
What are DMI main focus areas?
- Gross motor skills– Improving children’s gross motor skills from birth through fostering automatic motor movement (Promotes Neurological Maturity )
- Gradual progression– Increasing the challenge on a regular basis to encourage the child to respond with greater freedom.
- Alignment and Postural Control – All exercises promote postural control and verticality while focusing on proper anatomical alignment.
- Range of Motion– Movement increases muscle and joint range of motion (Dynamical and functional stretching).
- Balance– The majority of DMI workouts focus on improving balance.
- Functional movements– Improving behaviours and skills that lead to milestones including rolling, sitting, standing, and walking.
- Somatosensory Development –The exercises’ powerful sensory input sends afferent messages to the brain, which creates specialised synapses that fine-tune balance, muscular control, and movement.
- Modifying tone, primitive reflexes, and abnormal patterns of movement– DMI attempts to give children with neurological dysfunction with normalised movement patterns to aid in the integration of disruptive basic reflexes.
- Global Development – Although DMI concentrates on gross motor abilities, many other skills improve as a result of this intense intervention.
DMI Makes kids stronger and allows other treatments effective
Dynamic Movement Intervention’s purpose is to provide an abundance of training options for therapists interested in learning DMI and to build a community of collaborative therapists. DMI will be able to serve more children now that training is easily accessible to therapists all over the world!
