ABR Summer Satelite

We just did our 6th training session of ABR therapy, a trainer comes to a California Satellite from Montreal Canada,  ABR Center, to train parents on how to do ABR therapy on their brain injured children. We started ABR when Annabelle was 15 months old, every session we get new exercises to do on Annabelle. ABR stands for Advanced Bio-mechanical rehabilitation, ABR is a hands on, time intensive, non- invasive, passive therapy that builds and strengthens the musculoskeletal structure, smooth muscles and fascia, which is the connective tissue that surrounds muscles and permeates the whole body.

ABR's objective is to halt and even reverse musculoskeletal distortions which hinder motor functions in the brain injured child. ABR is the only approach that does not focus on "managing" the child's limitations or take into consideration the brain injury. The sole  aim is to "reverse" poor mechanical integration in order to permit spontaneous development of movement. As long as there is incorrect structure there will be an absence of or incorrect movement.
Upon brain injury, tone of the smooth muscle and fascia decreases. Collapse of this internal volume leads to collapse and distortions of the surrounding layers (bony skeleton and the skeletal muscles attached to it)

Jaw Skull division Manual exercise

Ball Rolling Exercise

Machine set up for "shoulder and hips" exercise

I first learned about ABR when I was browsing for books about CP on Amazon and I read a negative review about a book  Sheri Walker said this "This was the first book I bought when my grandson was diagnosed with spastic diplegia. I found no hope in it and continued looking until I found Advanced Bio-mechanical Rehabilition. Their web-site is www.blyum.com. We have been doing ABR for six months and the changes are miraculous. Finally something to actually help our kids physically instead of teaching them to deal with less and less movement as they age" This review really sparked my interest "Thank you so much Sheri Walker" this lead me to go to Leonid Blyum's website, he is the "brain" behind ABR.

Then I was talking to a friend who also has a child with CP and she had also come across this therapy and she told me about Bird on the street's Blog and how Katy was doing ABR therapy on Charlie and she had documented everything. Well I couldn't stop reading, I fell in love with Katy and Charlie and all they do, and I am still addicted to her blog. 

We have 3 different types of exercises we do on Annabelle the first we learned in Montreal Spring '09 was the manual exercises, secondly in Summer '09 we got the machine, the bladders are placed on Annabelle with wraps and the machine applies pressure.  Thirdly in Winter '10 we were taught the newest technique ball rolling. I aim to do 3 hours of manual, 1 hour of ball rolling and then 10-12 hours of machine a day/night.

With the use of tools slow, light pressure is applied to various parts of the body, the muscles that are exposed to this constant external mechanical stimulus will remodel itself in response to this stimulus it will lay down more fibers so that this area becomes stronger. 


We have seen so many changes in Annabelle because of ABR but that is material for another post.

New machine set up "occipital"

Manual ABR "Top of shoulder"