The relaxation technique is one of individualized care methods of a project run by a team and based upon the capacities and the disabilities of every patient. It is a “let-go” technique that allows patients to rest and stop any physical activity.

Targeting muscle tone regulation, this therapeutic technique particularly reinforces self-confidence, restructures body schema, improves patients’ relationships, enables patients to tolerate physical contact, establishes tonic-emotional dialogue and non-verbal communication, controls heartbeats, reduces fatigue and nervous tension, boosts memory and imagination and concentration, reduces anxiety, and helps patients to adapt to stress and maintain self-composure…

SESOBEL’s relaxation sessions are vivid and mainly adapted to the needs of young patients. Diverse methods are implemented simultaneously and adapted to the needs of different groups. The sessions encourage youth to focus on themselves and recognize different body sensations. As the sessions progress, the patients are expected to find or restore entire, unified body consciousness and to attenuate tonic state.

At SESOBEL, body expression sessions are set for groups of children and youth following different educational programs.

Through a set of exercises inspired by dance therapy and gymnastics, this approach appeals to emotions, senses and movements. It helps youth to harmoniously develop control and flexibility of their bodies, which contributes to well-being.

Within dynamic framework, youth are invited to experience different ways of moving whilst making use of the surrounding space. They are also encouraged to send messages to others through eye contact, touch, as well as conventional or non-conventional gestures.

Expressing emotions through facial expressions and body postures is also encouraged…

To guarantee the dynamism of our psycho sensory therapy, we offer SESOBEL’s children and youth aquatic treatment. In fact, the paddling pool is a play area that allows children to loosen inhibition, instability and uneasiness, and to maintain self-composure…

In the paddling pool, our assistance focuses on the triple dimensions of “satisfying” maternal aid that Winnicott describes. The three key aspects of the environment identified by him are: holding, handling and object-presenting. Moreover, in this aquatic environment, the psychomotor therapist makes use of water characteristics to provide the child with sensorimotor stimulation, which is essential for development. Liquid, water is fine matter that allows smooth body movements. It looks like someone who can hold patients and embrace, touch, caress, massage, calm them, as well as make them feel their body limits. In this case, contact is sensory, and skin plays primary role (Potel, 1999). Water is also characterized by its indestructibility and extreme sensitivity, as well as reaction to the slightest movement. It can flow indefinitely, taking the shape of different containers.

In such conditions, children are encouraged, through sensorimotor experiences, to establish tonic dialogue and get connected with their own bodies and others’. Subsequently, they discover their own bodies, their capacities and limits, others’ and the surrounding environment.

In parallel, relaxation in water will particularly promote sensations of their body limits, of muscular and articular relaxation, as well as of freedom of movement. Furthermore, the sensation of verticality in the corporal axis is stimulated while progressively allowing children to stand on the ground and to straighten and move with freedom in all directions.

Senses play an important role in the harmonious development of human beings. Since birth, every person is exposed to varied stimulations (taste, tactile, olfactory, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive) that are filtered, organized and processed by the brain. The neurological process called sensory integration allows one to produce an adapted response and reach his/her goal.

Children with physical or mental disability or with Autism Spectrum Disorders might suffer, since birth, from sensory integration disorder altering their growth, behavior, communication, coordination and their self-esteem. These children badly perceive stimuli they receive daily, and their self-regulation capacities are weak. Consequently, they either are hypersensitive or hyposensitive to stimulations or searching actively for these sensations.

At SESOBEL, individual or team sensorimotor sessions are conducted, during which psychomotor therapists offer varied stimulations to children in order to increase their sensory experiences and allow them to better process and integrate the proposed sensory information for better harmonious psychomotor development. This will also lead to regulating the intensity of the social, emotional and behavioral responses.