Occupational therapy – Utilizing climbing as a therapeutic activity
A long time before I knew there was such a sport called “Rock climbing,” as a young child, I felt the urge to climb high, and the yearn for rocks and cliffs. A surrealist life changing first event, was a climb, a “free solo” climb, with a couple of friends, neighbors of mine, up a new “cliff” that was created beside our building, where a huge crater was dug as a basis for building a new skyscraper. We kids decided to climb together up the new “cliff” 4 stories high. They arrived safely at the top. As I, climbed two thirds of the way up the cliff and then I suddenly lost my grip and plunged down all the way back to the bottom of the crater. First ascent, not a tremendous success…. But still, the burning flame of desire for hanging at the edge of a cliff that started that day, kept on burning! Later, as a 15-year-old youth, I discovered the magic of rappelling and rock climbing.
My twin’s pregnancy got me to pause and set aside my beloved hobby, for a prolonged period.
But then, a difficult event led me, along with my twin boys, back to the climbing wall.
When my twin boys suffered difficult abusive experiences at their kindergarten, the climbing gym became the empowering factor, the healing and strengthening place. It became the place we arrived to regain self-confidence, to build self-esteem, to start feeling renewed capability and strength. Obviously, all this also happened with the aid of the connection with the adorable people we met at the climbing gym, as is often so typical of the communities you meet while participating in that area of sport. Especially special was the bonding created between my children and Oren Nogrady, their coach, who challenged them, encouraged, pushed on, demanded and reinforced.
The wall climbing activity for my kids, whose self-confidence was so severely damaged, gave the ability to shout aloud from the heights, run freely, initiate, feel responsible for others. The ability to laugh with joy and go wild freely, talk to people around them and invent so many creative, funny, new ideas.
But my own children are a mere small example. So many children, youth and adults experience life forming experiences, in this unique environment.
Hence, I would like to explain more, about the advantages that therapeutic climbing withholds:
The emotional aspect: Climbing confronts the child with a vast variety of situations, challenges, dealing with difficulties, with the need of endurance, experiences that result in success, feelings of capability and ability, empowerment and feelings of overcoming obstacles and difficulties. Dealing with fear and conquering fear. Bliss, a feeling of pure relief and a vast variety of feelings and emotional experiences.
There is a special uniqueness in being in such a challenging environment. Climbing up high also intensifies the emotions that the child experiences!
The negative, as well as the positive feelings might be intense.
Hence, it is a good place to deal with the necessity to be able to modulate intense feelings and practice the variety of responses one might produce to different feelings.
Climbing requires planning and thinking, alongside developing responsibility, managing impulsive reactions, delayed gratification, self-control and being able to follow strict laws.
For many kids, this is a safe place to express their feelings, even when it is difficult for them.
From that derives my way of viewing the communicational, social and language elements:
When emotions are experienced in such intensity we would naturally hear, around the climbing wall, sounds of joy, happiness, and on the other hand shouts of strenuous efforts, sounds of disappointment or frustration.
Sport, movement, enjoyable, exciting activities, and the feeling of height encourage producing sounds, shouts, and speech. For example, kids tend to be very “noisy” when they climb, swing, and play on playgrounds. Therefore, it might also encourage communication for children with communication difficulties. That way the basis for communication begins spontaneously through emotional and sensory experiences. But it does not end there. Communication is often a necessity during climbing! Many indoor climbing walls / natural cliffs rise high above the ground and the climber is guarded by a belayer that safeguards him with a rope. That forces the climber and belayer to be in continuous connection between them. And while bouldering (climbing short climbs over a mat, without a rope) there are times when one climber guards the other climber with his own hands (Spotter), caring for him from behind his back.
There is mutual assistance while climbing, comradeship. Climbers, grown-ups, and kids, tend to encourage each other, push each other to achieve new personal peaks, reinforce one another.
Climbing raises different feelings and interactions: jealousy, admiration, a sense of competitiveness, joining forces to achieve common goals, supporting each other, being empathic towards one another, etc.
Another significant characteristic of the activity at the climbing wall is that the activity can be a meaningful task in common for parent and child, for siblings or other family members taking part together. It is very typical to see children encouraging their parents to succeed, while climbing, watching them with pride or with disappointment when they fall. On the other hand, you can witness parents supporting their children, guarding them, guiding them. Tensions might also arise in this environment, as well as feelings of ventilation and mutual pleasure.
Climbing, on the one hand, is a sport that confronts the climber with personal goals and an attempt to improve his personal ability. On the other hand, during the activity at the climbing wall there is always social interaction with the climbing gym crowd. The activity can be individual, or a group activity.
Apart from emotional, social, and communicative skills, climbing can strengthen and improve a wide range of skills and enable the achievement of therapeutic goals in various fields.
While participating in climbing activities, one often climbs set routes, which are usually determined by the colors of the stones and by the instructions of the coach. Therefore, in the cognitive field, the field of thinking and learning, the child is required to understand instructions, pay attention to details, concentrate, be able to split attention, use his memory to remember the different pathways that the child was asked to follow. The ability to plan and maintain a sequence of actions, the ability to make decisions and solve problems is also needed.
The activity involves various components of visual perception, such as: diagnosis of figure and background, spatial perception, spatial orientation, diagnosis of size, shape, colour, directionality.
In addition, the enjoyment and motivation that the activity creates can allow us, the therapists, to combine a wide range of different learning goals, while engaging in climbing, including goals in the field of writing and graphomotor abilities, in the field of arithmetic and more.
The activity involves several ways of learning and teaching: learning through observing and imitating one another, through listening to instructions, through self-inquiry and personal experience and more.
And finally, naturally, sports activity is associated with the strengthening of the field of motor skills and with sensory integration and modulation. In the motor field, indeed this sport requires and encourages stability, development of balance skills, improves posture and strengthens muscles. Not only the gross motor skills are affected by the climb, but also the fine motor skills and palm functions. Small grips on the wall are needed, using the fingertips requires motoric hand separation of the fingers/palm muscles (using small movements of the fingers, gentle movement of the palm). The climb develops coordination between various parts of the body, coordination between hand, eye, foot, bilateral coordination. It also develops motor accuracy, requires maintaining a movement sequence and develops good motor planning ability! Through climbing you can encourage and develop a variety of motoric goals.
In the sensory realm, it is an activity that stimulates all your senses. A stimulating activity that also requires many moments of waiting and resting and requires a lot of self-control.
Indoor climbing gyms are usually loaded with intense stimuli, whereas while rock climbing in natural environments, we may also meet an environment with low level of stimuli, peaceful, and relaxing.
The climbing wall gym is often a busy, sometimes very noisy environment, with loud people’s sounds and music. The climbing wall is visually laden with the coloured stones, and one needs the ability to filter the various distracting stimuli to be able to focus attention on the grip you are supposed to hold, the route, the voice of the person accompanying you, the instructions and so on.
The activity of climbing and ascending, hanging on the wall in various positions, in various positions of the head, jumping or falling from a height, swinging on a climbing rope, and sliding down with it, greatly stimulates the vestibular system, the equilibrium system.
Carrying all the body weight on the arms and legs, clinging to the wall, jumping from the wall to the mattress and other motor activities around the climbing wall, provide a strong sensory stimulation to the joints, muscles, throughout the body, a strong proprioceptive feeling (deep feeling from the joints and muscles).
To sum it all up, I started by describing my personal experience around the world of climbing. However, as an occupational therapist, throughout the years of treatment, I always felt that the world of climbing is an excellent basis for therapeutic work with many children. And many of my patients, indeed, continued with therapeutic climbing, in parallel with or after the traditional occupational therapy treatment. For some of them climbing became an integral part of their lives, of their daily routine, even at the end of the treatment. Children, who came to occupational therapy following a wide range of difficulties and goals: children with attention and concentration difficulties, motor awkwardness, DCD – Developmental coordination disorder, children with communication difficulties and autism, with emotional difficulties, developmental delays and more. I personally treat children, but I believe that almost at any age, people can benefit, therapeutically, from this activity.
למידע נוסף אודות הקשר בין טיפוס להתפתחות המוטורית של ילדים כנסו לקישור: נולדנו לטפס