Rebounding has been used as part of a therapy for children with learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder (ADD) and autism. Prior to her death in 2007, Alfhild Akselsen, Ph.D., founder of the Texas Association of Children with Learning Disabilities, based in Austin, witnessed a lack of mind/body coordination as the underlying problem for many of these children.
"Learning-disabled children have extremely poor coordination, balance, and rhythm," said Dr. Akselsen. "The usual difficulty bringing on a lack of coordination is that one side of the body is not working." She uses rebounding as part of her therapy to teach the child's mind and body to communicate more effectively, and to help the children develop muscle control and improve coordination. For children with these conditions, the main problem is neuromuscular dysfunction, not reduced intelligence, said Dr. Akselsen. She used exercises, rebounding, deep nerve and light sensory massage, nutrition, and neuromuscular training to teach the child's body to respond to the brain's output. "There are multiple places in the body where there may be a neurological short circuit. When it affects a muscle, the brain's command to the left hand to move may cause the right hand to move. Or the left hand may move but also the left foot comes along with it," explained Dr. Akselsen.
She uses various testing exercises to build neuromuscular coordination. One exercise with the rebounder has children bounce with their eyes focused on a fixed point; this helps improve their visual coordination. In another, children hop on one foot and then the other while on the rebounder to develop their sense of balance.
Rebounding had been part of Dr. Akselsen's therapy for learning-disabled children for many years and she contended that even healthy children should begin rebounding routinely at preschool age. "When you are rebounding, you are moving and exercising every brain cell just as you are exercising each of the other body cells," said Dr. Akselsen. "Toxic heavy metals are leached out of these brain cells to free up the neurons to work more effectively. Rebounding has you work from the outside, from the nerve endings in toward the brain."
Dr. Akselsen has seen some remarkable results from her rebounding therapy. Children who had been unable to express themselves during their first 15 years of life, having a vocabulary of only a few words, were able, after a month or two of therapy, to speak in complete sentences and express their thoughts. "When the physical defect is corrected, the mental defect is also corrected," concluded Dr. Akselsen.
According to a German study involving 20 patients ~ Rebounding also benefits brain-injured children. Trampoline therapy was judged to be a useful part of their medical rehabilitation treatment, producing improvements in standing balance and movement coordination.
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