Movement Therapy Programme with Children with Mild Learning Difficulties in Primary Schools in Saudi Arabia: Links between Motion and Emotion

Abstract

Movement therapy, as a body-mind intervention, aims to enable emotional and social changes in children and adults, based on the premise that physical and behavioural changes also facilitate psychological changes and that ultimately further integration is achieved which is the basis of one's wellbeing. The existence of comorbid difficulties and cognitive delays in children with learning difficulties heighten the need to investigate whether movement therapy can indeed enable physical and emotional integration, as relevant literature suggests. This chapter reports on such an investigation involving children with mild learning difficulties in primary schools in Saudi Arabia. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with a sample of sixty (N = 60) primary school male pupils aged 6-9 years with mild learning difficulties. Although the sample was small, findings suggest that group movement therapy may be a useful intervention in enabling integration between observed emotional/social and physical/behavioural markers in children with mild learning difficulties.