It gets stronger between them.

Mom's smiles, hugs, touches are the key to raising a healthy and happy baby.

Maria Evgenievna BAULINA, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Clinical Psychology of the Psychological and Social Faculty of the Russian State Medical University, Member of the Expert Council JOHNSON'S® BABY: "At the first stage, from 0 to 2 months, the interaction of the newborn with the mother is dominated by touch, thanks to which the baby receives information about the existence of certain parts of the body, various postures and types of movements."

The benefits of massage

This type of touch, like massage, is one of the most important ways to establish a strong invisible connection between mom and baby. Children's preventive massage is necessary for every child from the first days of life, this is a great way to convey to the baby the whole palette of possible tactile and vestibular sensations: pressure, strokes, pats. This procedure helps to strengthen the cardiovascular and nervous system of the baby, normalize lactation in the mother, reduce the level of stress hormones in the child's body and in the mother's body, easy falling asleep and sound sleep of the child.

To carry out the massage, it is necessary to prepare a table on which the baby is usually swaddled. It is desirable to place it away from heaters, drafts and so that you can approach the child from any direction. The temperature in the room should be maintained at about + 22 ° C, so that the baby is comfortable during the massage, it would not freeze or overheat. It is best to carry out the procedure after an evening bath, then it will be easier for the baby to relax and tune in to sleep.

How toDo massage?

The technique of preventive massage is simple and does not require much effort.

The main thing is to start the procedure in a good mood, smile at the baby, touch it carefully and gently.

Head. Massage should start from the head. Gently, with the very tips of your fingers, massage the face and neck of the baby. You should be especially careful with fontanelles. A newborn has two of them: one is located on the crown, the second is on the back of the head, closer to the neck. Although these places are protected by connective tissue, they must be handled with great care. Then, with gentle movements, stroke the ears, eyebrow lines - from the bridge of the nose to the temples, the wings of the nose and lips.

Stomach. Massage with gentle stroking movements in a clockwise direction. It is not recommended to affect the liver area (right hypochondrium).

Breast. The chest muscles in newborns are poorly developed, so all movements must be very careful - from the center to the sides without pressing on the chest.

Brushes. Massage in circular motions with light pressure, placing your thumb in your baby's palm. Then each finger separately, clasping it with the thumb and forefinger at the base and moving towards the tip.

Pens. Holding the brush, raise the handle and, stroking, move in the direction from the brush to the shoulder.

Legs. Holding on to the foot, lift the leg and gently massage the outer sides of the thigh and lower leg in the direction from the thigh to the foot.

Feet. Foot massage is especially important. With gentle stroking movements, it is necessary to knead the upper side of the leg, ankle and sole. Then each finger separately.

Back. You should turn the baby on the tummy and massage the back in a circular motion, moving from the neck to the buttocks and back.

Helpers

The use of “intermediaries” in the form of creams and oils expands the range of perceived tactile sensations and brings other positive effects, such as reduced signs of stress during the procedure, greater moisturizing and soothing effect, better hand gliding and less pressure on the baby. When choosing massage products, give preference only to products that are clinically proven to be effective.

Remember, massage and touch not only bring you closer, but also help the baby develop harmoniously. Therefore, touch the baby carefully and gently, and you will notice that every day you become even closer to each other.

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| site collection
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| Svetlana Yakubovna Tyan
| Dmitry Yurievich Atlanov
| All about baby massage
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"Body language" is not just a fashionable term today. It is the foundation on which and from which all other languages ​​grow. Before naming an object, we must somehow perceive it, feel it. And only the body and its organs of perception are capable of this. Before mastering speech, the child must master gestures, facial expressions and articulation - the control of a complexly organized speech apparatus. If our thinking is based on speech, then speech is based on bodily practice, the physical activity of the child.
Modern psychologists are unanimous in that the child must master the coordinated movement of the arms and the whole body before he begins to confidently distinguish objects with the help of vision on the basis of "more - less" and "further - closer." In order to steadily distinguish the shape of different objects, it is important for the child to feel them.
But if this is so, then the signals that the child sends to the world are based primarily on bodily reactions, movements, postures, gestures and tensions. The problems of adults are largely rooted in incorrectly formed bodily reactions of the childhood period of development. And the problems of interaction between adults and children are rooted in the fact that the vast majority of adults simply do not understand and do not imagine how children interact with the world. Adults do not understand the language that children use to analyze and process information.
Obviously, the tools adopted in "adult" psychology are of little use in children's and completely meaningless in the psychology of the infantile period of development. Even an understanding of the peculiarities of the functioning of the infant's psyche leaves open for the practitioner the question of ways of influencing the processes of mental development in order to correct certain defects. Our book is intended to at least partly fill the gap in such literature.
We are not trying to make another manual on baby massage, although the practical technique of massage is given a significant place in the book. It was more important for us to present the material in such a way that it could be useful, first of all, for young parents, to equip them with an understanding of the characteristics of infancy and practical knowledge. For specialists in children's massage, this book will help fill in a certain lack of knowledge in psychology, and for child psychologists it will be relevant to get acquainted with the techniques of direct impact on the child.
Our book is devoted to a fairly narrow topic - body-oriented psychology and psychotherapy - and it is compiled as seen by people who have been practically working in this field for more than a decade.

The practical experience of the authors underlying the book is based on many years of practice in a relatively small settlement, a rural settlement in the Leningrad Region. This circumstance made it possible, firstly, to observe young patients for a long time, not only in specific conditions of therapeutic reception, but also in everyday life, and secondly, also to observe young parents and to know the peculiarities of their behavior and mental life. In many ways, this is what made it possible to obtain stable results in the work and to attract a variety of material - both from the field of psychophysiology and the psychology of personality and behavior.
Perhaps, for you, the reader, this book will tell you something and help you in some way in your life.
Good luck!

What we do has long outgrown the scope of massage and even the scope of family therapy. Probably, a specialist in these areas will see some features in common with his knowledge: something will seem completely new to him, he may not agree with something, but we talk about our experience and about our path, which does not worse than the experience and the way of any recognized authority.
We have to curtsy to specialists, because we have encountered pediatricians who understood the essence of our work only when it concerned themselves or their loved ones. We have encountered educators who have shown astonishing professional helplessness when it comes to their own children. We had to comprehend the complex malformations of children in different ways in connection with the behavior of parents, and we confidently say that there are such connections that neither parents, nor doctors, nor teachers ever take into account.
The basis of the method, and this is one of the areas of body-oriented psychotherapy, is work with the body. We start from the body in understanding the problems that a person faces, and we turn to the body when trying to influence higher levels of the organization of human life.

Body-oriented psychotherapy (somatic psychology) is one of the main directions of modern practical psychology. This is a synthetic method of “healing the soul through work with the body”, with human experiences and problems imprinted in the body.

The practice of body-oriented psychotherapy until the last days is based on various ways of working with trance states of consciousness of varying degrees of depth. It is assumed that consciousness is already present, which means that a person has managed to reach a certain degree of maturity. The problems that the child faces seem insoluble by the methods that are usually used in this direction of therapy. But when we talk about the problems of a child in the same way as about the problems of an individual adult independent person, we make a mistake.

A child is inseparable from his family, just as an adult is inseparable from his own experience and memory. A child who does not have experience of his own response to stimuli uses (borrows, appropriates) the experience of his parents and the experience of the family as a whole. This thesis needs no special proof. An example is children raised in a herd of wild animals, such cases are known. The child appropriates the experience of the animal.
But in order to start talking about the mechanisms of appropriation and reproduction of parental experience, we will have to talk in more detail about the development of the child.

Let's start from the moment of conception. The history of a person begins at least with the history of his parents. At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind not only the history of bodily development, but also the history of events, the history of human feelings and experiences, and here science is only getting closer to understanding the subtle mechanisms of inheritance and transmission of information, despite the huge amount of facts and generalizations accumulated in this area to today.
For example, it has recently been considered established that severe stresses, such as serious injuries, deform the genetic information in the cells of the wounded. This means that information about the injury in a certain way will be inherited by descendants. Obviously, something similar can happen in general with any stress experienced by one of the parents. This means that the old observation that happy parents give birth to healthy children can be considered legitimate. This, by the way, is confirmed by authoritative experts from many countries. A feeling, a strong feeling of love, gives the best guarantee that at the moment of conception, parents will not enter negative information into the child's genetic program. This, unfortunately, does not always guarantee protection against those deformations that are already inscribed in the genotype of the parents by their previous life and experience. But the relationship between genetically transmitted experience and its practical implementation is very complex.
Today, it still exists as a hypothesis, but the idea that the structure of the genome and the structure of information processed by a person in the course of mental activity is subject to general laws is becoming more and more popular, that they are in some way consonant and, under certain conditions, resonate with each other. Thus, depending on the prevailing information flows, strictly defined arrays of genetic information are activated, providing directed mutations.
The phenomenon, which in science is called telegeny, makes one think about many things.

Telegeny (from "tele" - far away, and "gene" - giving birth) - the child's inheritance of qualities that were absent from the immediate parents, but were present in other sexual partners of the parents.

It is no coincidence that a woman remembers her first sexual partner for the rest of her life, no matter how strong feelings connected her with him. It turns out that information about the first partner is imprinted on all subsequent children born from others. This is well known to people who are professionally engaged in selection and breeding of animals. The first mating of a female with an outbred partner leads to culling - such a female will never bring purebred offspring. By the way, the same applies to males.
Sexual experiences of both men and women, which are not accompanied by conception, nevertheless change the genetically transmitted information. Information about sexual partners is somehow fixed and embedded in the information space, or field, of children born from other partners.
Blocks of heterogeneous genetic information, obtained as a result not from two parents, are sometimes poorly compatible with each other, which leads to essential defects, degeneration. This circumstance explains why such great importance in antiquity was given to both male and female chastity. No one could become a high priest or leader, who in history has always performed magical, priestly functions, if there were doubts about his "purity of blood." This also explains why the custom of “the right of the first night” was so widespread in societies at the tribal stage of development. The first man for any woman of the tribe was the leader. It should also be noted that, firstly, the leader was the best man of the tribe. If he ceased to be such, then he was usually killed. Secondly, all children, including those subsequently born from other men, were still the children of the leader and, accordingly, bore some of his qualities. Thus, this custom is directly correlated with the tribal system.
These not too detailed arguments bring us close to understanding the causes of the so-called "karmic" diseases. The term does not pretend to be scientific, but it has taken root quite firmly in the mass consciousness. A large number of publications in the domestic literature of recent times have more confused than clarified this issue. In fact, there is nothing super complicated in this. As you know, the term “karma” itself goes back to the Sanskrit root “kri”, which literally means “action, deed”, hence “karma” in Russian is most accurately conveyed by the term “behavior”.

Karma (in Sanskrit “action, retribution”) is the influence of actions committed by a person on his current and future existence.

And this word is very accurate. "Behavior" includes the root of the "Vedas" - this is knowledge, knowledge, but at the same time controlled activity: hence the conduct, behavior. We are talking about both the informational component of any object or action, and the action, the act as such. It is this knowledge about the connection of information components with their physical carriers that underlies many now incomprehensible, "dark" rules, consecrated by thousands of years of tradition.
In the gospel tradition, Jesus speaks of responsibility not only for direct deeds, but also for thoughts about indecent things. In the theme of conception, this can be traced very precisely. Happy people are clean. If parents conceive a child, while thinking about the “maternity capital” that they will be provided with after his birth, then the child will not only not be happy in his life, but will also get one of the so-called “karmic” diseases, for example, neurodermatitis. In our practice, there are such cases when the cause is the same - literally the one that we cited, and the diseases are different, but they have in common that they are “karmic”, created not by ecology, not by the physical illness of the parents, but by their wrong way of thinking, ignorance, obscurity, licentiousness, etc.
These are absolutely outrageous examples, but, say, not so rare cases when a woman decides to conceive a child, guided by the desire to prove something to someone - for example, that she is healthy - or not to be alone. In these cases, the child is also not an end in itself, but only a means to something, and, therefore, his karma will be burdened.
The processes associated with the concept of generic karma are also quite real. Certain stereotypes of thinking are inherited, and there are such powerful unconscious attitudes that they reproduce themselves in several generations of the same kind, sometimes providing a literal reproduction of certain life situations. And where, if you think about it, will other positive stereotypes of behavior and thoughts arise?

Already in the period of intrauterine development, the fetus has a memory and a reaction to external stimuli that carry information about those structural levels of the environment with which the fetus is not in direct contact. For example, data from psychoanalysis and studies of age regression under the influence of hypnosis, as well as data from body-oriented therapy, indicate the emergence in the embryonic phase of development of stable connections that manifest themselves at the level of behavior in later periods of human development. Simply put, the fetus remembers all the states of the mother and, indirectly, the states and emotional reactions of the father.
In July 1983, Dr. Verney, a psychiatrist from Toronto, organized the First American Congress on Pre- and Perinatal Education, which was attended by many experts from European countries and Canada. A number of interesting reports have been made about adults whose suffering was caused by subconscious information about the events that happened to the mother during pregnancy.
Modern scientific ideas about the development of the fetus agree that the central nervous system develops throughout life. But it begins to function even in the mother's body. T. Verny noted that the fetus begins to respond to noises starting from the 24th week of development. Special studies have shown that the fetus perceives not only the noises of the mother's body, such as the beating of the heart, but also external sounds, voices. If the mother reacts emotionally to certain sound stimuli, then the child learns to respond to these stimuli in the same way. Moreover, for example, the experience accumulated in Dianetics, despite the ambiguity of attitude towards it, claims that the fetus remembers not only the general emotional background, but also the exact words of the parents. From the 6th week of development, the fetus definitely reacts to light. It even reacts to a light beam directed at the mother's abdomen by turning away or jumping up and down.
Studies of the chemistry of the mother's body, carried out back in the first half of the 20th century, showed that in moments of anxiety, the mother's body releases special substances - catecholamines - which also penetrate the fetus's body, causing it to worry. A 28-week-old fetus has pronounced mimic reactions to different taste sensations: negative - to bitter and salty, pleasure - to sweet. Not only that, his facial expressions provide an expression of developed emotions - anger, joy, fear. Motor reactions are also diverse: at the age of 11.5 weeks of intrauterine development, a grasping reflex appears, a sucking reflex at 13 weeks, squinting at 17, and respiratory movements are recorded at 20 weeks. The encephalogram captures brain activity in the last months of fetal development, which is characteristic of sleep in two phases - "slow" and "REM sleep".
A group of French specialists have published research results indicating that the fetus has an active sensory system. As you know, the sense organs and the corresponding centers of the brain develop by the third month of pregnancy. At 6 weeks, brain activity is recorded in the embryo. At 7, synapses are included in the work, transmitting signals between the fibers of the nervous tissue. At this age, the first reflexes appear in the baby. If you touch his nose or mouth, he will throw his head back. From touching the hand, the 9-week-old fetus will make a grasping movement, when touched, the eyelids will move their eyes. If the impact on the arm is painful, the arm will withdraw.
Modern devices and methods of research made it possible to make a film that shows the behavior of a fetus undergoing an abortion - he literally experienced panic, tried to avoid being touched, to avoid contact with the instrument, to squeeze into the walls of the uterus. The fetal encephalogram recorded a reaction characteristic of severe stress, its hormonal release was terrible. Thus, speaking about the intrauterine period of development, we have to admit that the fetus is capable of experiencing, emotional reactions and directed motor (I would like to say behavioral) activity.
At the end of the third month of life, most of the body of the fetus begins to feel touch, and there are enough of them, since the baby actively tosses and turns himself, coming into contact with the fluid, umbilical cord and walls of the uterus, and feels the movements of the uterus. The sense of touch develops before the other senses and plays an extremely important role in the formation of the brain and the harmonious activity of the nervous system of the child. The fact is that the organic matter of the brain is formed not by itself, but under the influence of signals entering the brain.
The inner ear is formed at 8 weeks, then the outer ear develops, and the entire hearing system is formed by 5 months.
If the father regularly talks to the child during the wife's pregnancy, then almost immediately after birth the child will recognize his voice. Often parents also note that children recognize music or songs heard in the prenatal period. Moreover, they act on babies as an excellent sedative and can be successfully used to relieve strong emotional stress.
As for the action of the mother's voice, it is so great that Dr. Tomatis manages to relieve tension in children and adults and return them to a state of balance simply by listening to a recording of the mother's voice made through a liquid medium. In this case, patients perceive the voice as they perceived it while in the womb and floating in the amniotic fluid. This return to the prenatal period, characterized by safety, allows both young and old patients to establish a new contact with the primary energy and eliminate unwanted phenomena.
The fetus also perceives the music that the mother listens to during the concert. He selectively responds to the program. Thus, Beethoven and Brahms stimulate the fetus, while Mozart and Vivaldi soothe it. As far as rock music is concerned, only one thing can be said here: it makes him just rave. It has been observed that mothers-to-be are often compelled to leave the concert hall because of the unbearable suffering experienced from the violent movement of the fetus. Thus, the fetus makes it clear that they should listen to different, more structured music.
Constantly listening to music can become a genuine learning process. In his television interview, American conductor Boris Brot answered the question of where he learned to love music as follows: "This love lived in me even before I was born." Getting acquainted with certain works for the first time, he already knew the violin part even before he turned the page of the score. Brot could not explain the reason for this phenomenon. Once he mentioned this to his mother, who was a cellist in the past. She looked at her old programs and found that her son knew by heart exactly those pieces that she learned while pregnant.
Vision, which is impossible without light, is in a state of temporary inactivity. The fetus perceives only a weak orange light, and even then with direct illumination of the mother's abdomen. The sense of smell, which manifests itself only in the presence of air, is also inactive until the moment of birth.
The taste is already well developed, the fruit even showing a preference for one over the other. Every day he absorbs a certain amount of amniotic fluid. Adding sugar to it by introducing its solution makes the fetus greedily "swallow" a double portion. When using a bitter solution, the amount of liquid consumed by the fetus is extremely small. Moreover, it was possible to obtain an image of the fetus with a grimace of discontent, which is a consequence of negative taste sensations.
However, a developing creature remembers not only sensory information, but also stores in the memory of the cells information of an emotional nature that the mother supplies to it.
Psychologists and psychiatrists have revealed the presence of another significant factor - the quality of the emotional connection that exists between mother and child. The love with which she carries the child, the thoughts associated with his appearance, the wealth of communication that the mother shares with him, influence the developing psyche of the fetus.
From the end of the third month, the finger of the fetus is often in the mouth. Thumb sucking can be caused by prolonged sadness or anxiety in the mother. Joy, excitement, fear or anxiety affect the rhythm of her heartbeat, blood circulation and metabolism: when the mother is happy, the blood carries hormones of joy - endorphins, when she is sad or anxious, stress hormones - catecholamines. The corresponding sensations (safety or danger) are also experienced by the child.
A small fetus, of course, still unconsciously perceives these signals, but with its whole being it already feels how it is treated: with joy or anxiety, calmness or fear. The attitude of the mother, the place that the baby occupies in her heart, directly affects his growth, development, sense of his place in the world. Moreover, external stress factors do not directly affect the baby - only the mother, passing them through herself, cuts off their impact on the child or not. Strong emotions of a pregnant woman do not harm the child at all, on the contrary, hormonal changes, the diversity of the mother's inner life have a beneficial effect on the development of the baby. It is worse if the mother is in the grip of negative experiences for a long time, cannot or does not want to get rid of them.
A survey of five hundred women showed that almost one-third of them had never thought about having a child. The children they produced were more likely to have nervous disorders. At an early age, these children cried much more. They also experienced certain difficulties in the process of adapting to others and to life.
Thus, mothers paid for ignorance of the fact that the nutrient medium for the development of the fetus is their own feelings and thoughts, and the need for love arises in a person even before birth.
Emotions and the space surrounding a person are characterized by a very close relationship. Misfortune, mental pain cause sensations of constriction of the heart, lack of air. Negative emotions such as fear, jealousy, anger, lead to a feeling of heaviness, poor health and enslavement. Joy, on the other hand, causes a feeling of spiritual comfort in the mother, which positively affects the child.

Probably, there are no parents who would not want their children to grow up happy and healthy. Moms and dads are well aware of how important sunlight, air, proper nutrition, clean water, and adult care are for the health of their little children. However, they do not always fully realize the importance of physical activity, especially when it comes to children in the first year of life.

Often, mothers are happy when their baby lies calmly in the cradle or sits in the playpen, sorting through toys. They do not understand that limited movement can have an extremely adverse effect on a child's health. Compensate for this lack of mobility can special classes, massage, gymnastics.

Baby massage up to a year: benefits and significance

Firstly, massage contributes to the development of all organs and systems, strengthening the entire child's body. This has an impact on:

• Musculoskeletal system

Muscle tone is normalized, hypo- and hypertonicity of muscles disappears, problems of feet turned inside and out, insufficient dilution in the hip joint of the legs, and clubfoot are solved. Improves motor skills in babies. The child quickly learns to sit down, crawl, stand up, walk.

• Cardiovascular system

Muscle-directed action and rapid breathing contribute to an increase in heart rate. At the same time, the heart muscle remains in good shape, the pulse normalizes and stabilizes, which also has a very positive effect on children's health.

• respiratory system

Manipulation movements enhance ventilation and development of the lungs, as a result of which their protective functions against the effects of infectious pathogens and external factors are strengthened.

• Skin

The delicate and sensitive skin of babies is very easily damaged. Children's massage (Pictures, allowing you to learn how to do it correctly at home, can be found on our website) increases the firmness and elasticity of the skin, prevents the appearance of a rash on it.

• blood microcirculation

There is a positive effect on blood flow, cells are saturated with oxygen and nutrients many times faster.

Secondly, if the massage is carried out by parents, then exercises in , accompanied by gentle touches of mother's or father's hands, not only bring pleasure to the baby, but also make his emotional connection with parents, grandparents stronger.

Who and where can massage a child

Professional children's masseurs can be found in almost any medical institution. You can sign up for a massage course at the clinic or invite a specialist to your home. However, parents of older children are looking for opportunities to “combine business with pleasure” and send their children to kindergartens staffed by an experienced massage therapist.

The presence of a specialist in kindergarten relieves parents of the need to spend time on daily visits to a medical institution, and also allows you to protect your child from the risk of infection with a variety of diseases. in the clinic. Massage therapists in preschools often have solid experience. Hundreds of children pass through their hands, so they are well versed in a variety of types of manipulation. Plus to everything massage in kindergarten, in most cases, is a free procedure, which is also good news.

In preschool institutions, both general strengthening procedures and corrective massages can be carried out. In the first case, manipulations can be carried out even without any special medical indications and supplemented with physiotherapy exercises. All these actions are designed to strengthen the child's body, improve its development.

In kindergartens for children with special needs, the main goal of the classes is not only in general development, but also in supplementing, strengthening the complex treatment of a certain . From masseurs, in this case, a greater level of professionalism is required.

Children's massage at home

Of course, therapeutic massage should be entrusted exclusively to specialists in their field. However, with general strengthening manipulations, any mother can also cope.

Children's massage at home can be started already from the age of 1.5 months of the child. It is recommended to choose a time for this between feedings, when the baby is not hungry and nothing bothers him. The following types of movements are used in massage:

• Stroking

With the help of strokes, the mother prepares the skin of the child for more active influences and relaxes his muscles.

• Rubbing

The movements in this case are slightly more intense than with stroking, and are carried out with the fingertips in a straight line or in a spiral.

• kneading

Tong-like kneading involves an energetic and at the same time delicate grip of the muscles with three fingers.

• vibrating

From the first months of life, shaking is allowed, and closer to a year, gentle tapping with fingertips or the back side.

Parents who want to massage their child at home should definitely look into this issue in more detail. Irina Semenovna collected special methods of classes in her book Krasikova. Children's massage, gymnastics, proposed in this manual, take into account the specifics of the psychomotor development of children, from the first days of life to the age of three. Separately, the author considers the features of classes with children born and / or suffering from diseases, the treatment of which differs in duration and is impossible without the participation of parents.

Children's massage in combination with physical therapy or gymnastics is a guarantee of the full physical and mental development of the baby. Do not hesitate, working with specialists, supplemented by the efforts of the mother, will help your child grow up as a healthy and harmonious personality!

Good luck everyone, see you in the next article.