M was in his matriculation year  and  failing badly,  He was making a nuisance of himself in the classroom and the teachers were loosing patience with him.  He walked around disturbing everyone, giving a slap here and a punch there – almost as if he was not in control of his own actions. His mother called to ask if I could do anything to help.  How do I know, I thought to myself.  I have learnt to say ‘let’s meet and give ourselves three or four meetings and then decide.’

I had no idea of what to do when M comes along.   What will I help him with?  It is the last part of the year and so how do we choose what to study?

When he came, I was surprised to meet a very quiet, nice looking, well mannered young man.  I took an immediate liking to him and kept on asking myself “does this polite gentleman really walk around disturbing his class mates?” Difficult to believe.

During our initial conversation, I discovered that M had no idea of his behavior and that he was causing havoc in the class.  We started working like two detectives trying to discover  what annoys the other pupils and the teacher.  His first assignment was to write down things that he thought could disturb the other kids in every first lesson of every day during the week.  Slowly he started understanding the things that he ‘should’t be doing’.  I tried moving into the direction of learning strategies so that he could focus on his learning but I found absolutely no interest on his part.  What he was more and more interested in was the way his body reacted to things – why was he biting  his nails and how could I help him stop this.  He was curious in how and why, the ‘whole world’ makes him angry and how he feels his body filling up with more and more violence and then   bursting out in an uncontrollable reaction.  It seemed to me  that he was blocking all learning ability by wasting his energy on getting annoyed- not at himself , but everyone else.  Maybe I am not the address and he should be seeing a psychologist?  Decided that I would wait for a few sessions before suggesting this as I have a strange belief that if someone comes to me it means that they need me and I need them for some sort of learning.

Firstly I had to show him how his body was being depleted of energies by all this anger of his.  This was easy.  We had spoken about being partners and I could speak to him on a grownup level.  I taught him some basics of kinesiology and how we could check his body for the flow of energy and how it gets interrupted or weakened by anger.

One session he came into the clinic laughing and said:  ‘I have a stupid story to tell you: There was no Kelloggs for breakfast this morning and I was just about to shout and blame my mother and get into a bad mood, when something inside of me said ‘maybe you can have something else instead of Kelloggs or maybe you can even go to the shop and buy a packet?  And all of a sudden it was so easy not to get angry at everyone! ”

What a happy moment it was for both of us.  His mother hasn’t a clue what we do at our sessions, We do everything but cognitive learning.  He now understands himself better, He knows if he needs physical exercises to release tension or to release blockages in the body when feeling anxious.   He has started skipping every day to get rid of excess anger and also some weight.

At times I feel a bit guilty that we don’t do any school work together.  This week  he walked in as if a bright cloud had taxied him all the way up the stairs and before even saying hi, he proudly told me that he had got 91 for his first matriculation internal test. I then knew that we were on the right path!!!

And so what are learning problems??  Not sure anymore.  But I do know that one doesn’t always have to work with subject matter to make a huge difference!!