The Lydian Center for Innovative Medicine :: Cambridge, Massachusetts :: About the Center

The founding of the Lydian Center was for years a dream I didn't know I had.

My first interest in the intersection of movement, healing and education came at age eight when I flunked out of 3rd grade. A delay in visual developmental had made it impossible for me to learn to read. I was a very bright child who loved learning and going to school, but as the tasks at school became more vision dependent, school became a set-up for failure. As I struggled in the public educational system of the 1960s, my confidence eroding with each bad report card, a fortuitous visit to a forward thinking optometrist saved my life. The kindly old doctor gave me exercises and recommended a cessation of all near work. He was confident that given a few stress-free years the eyes and the brain would figure out the mechanics of reading and I would develop binocular vision.

So, my parents gathered the courage to take the very unusual step (in 1969) of taking me out of school entirely. At that time, there was almost no resource for families with children with disabilities, and no home schooling movement. The next two years were heaven! I did no reading at all, playing out of doors in rural Massachusetts, leading the busy life of a curious child. The gamble paid off - at age ten I spontaneously began to read. The educational problem was actually confusion in the visual system that needed time and specific movement exercises to correct. Though I am forever grateful to my parents for removing me from a failing situation, I am left wondering how much more quickly I would have progressed if I had had more than time, mother nature and a few eye exercises to help me.

For nearly 20 years I have followed the work of educator Paul Dennison, Ph.D., and his ground breaking work with learning disabilities and movement. In developing his educational system called Brain Gym®, he drew heavily on the work of behavioral optometrists and chiropractic kinesiologists. More recently I have discovered the amazing work of Charles Krebs, Ph.D. and his truly innovative brain integration techniques. He also builds on the work of Dr. George Goodheart and the early chiropractic kinesiologists in a technique he calls LEAP (Learning Enhanced Acupressure Program).

With my intense interested in educational interventions, as a Doctor of Chiropractic I have worked to find ways to assist the body to heal and, ultimately, learn. Non-force chiropractic stabilization of injury to the structural system allows the central nervous system to better integrate and improve in efficiency. With structural stabilization, pain, gross and fine motor dysfunction, and many behavioral problems and learning "disabilities" simply disappear. Healing of the structural system and reorganization of the central nervous system is learning in its most powerful sense.

Over the years I have come to understand that healing, learning and change are influenced by the structural system, but also by cranial rhythm, the energy flow of the meridian system, electrical communication throughout the body, mind, spirit, and emotions – all housed in a corporeal structure that moves.

When putting together the Lydian Center team, I was interested in assembling a group of health care practitioners who share my interest in this fundamental assumption that movement and brain integration is the door to learning and therefore healing. No one intervention can heal everyone, but at the Lydian Center we are developing a common language to talk to one another about where health and education find their most profound intersection. Housed under one roof, we share the understanding that a truly holistic approach to health, development and change requires communication across disciplines. We meet regularly to explore how our specialties can complement one another, and take joy in learning from one another, developing new techniques to empower ourselves and our clients to reach our fullest potential.

Dr. Lydia Knutson, D.C.