Get In Control, Non-Speaker!
12 months private mentorship program for non-speakers and their parents to gain feeling and control
Hey there, Non-Speaker!
In many spaces on and off of the internet there are a lot of resources directed at parents and professionals supporting you, non-speakers. And even in places that presume competence and have understanding of the sensory-motor paradigm of autism, still, a lot of the times you are not addressed directly and supported through another person.
This is not our approach.
Get in Control, Non-Speaker! is first and foremost a program for you, the non-speaker, along with resources for parents, so that the parents can support your effort in the best way possible.
Dear parents,
Trust that even if your non-speaker is not yet an open communicator and is unable to give you direct feedback, your child is capable of this work and will know exactly what to do.
Most of this page is written directly by Rafael, so take the time to read through it, understand the process and make the best decision possible together. - Daria
Get In Control, Non-Speaker!
A program for non speakers and their parents to gain feeling and control of their body.
When I was little, I didn’t know how to feel my body.
The best I can describe, it is like you have an open vessel that needs filling. I just floated in it, and no one around me understood. The body moves on its own and it seemed like there was nothing one can do.
But now I know it is not true.
You can fill the vessel with your mind.
Literally.
How can one describe the feeling when you go from not feeling their lungs to having feeling? It’s magical. What is even more magical is that my mind did it.
Again and again striking the wall of nothing, feeling nothing, until there is something.
A faint whisper that becomes louder and louder every time.
I don’t think it is at a hundred percent yet.
But every step forward is a new feeling in the body that I didn’t have before. It is like my body is waking up from a very long sleep.
It is not for the faint of heart.
It requires even more patience than you think you have, and practice multiple times a day.
For me, it took about a month of daily work to start feeling my lungs.
Can you commit to that to change your life?
Just doing it once is not going to change anything, but overtime of consistent effort you will be amazed at what your mind is capable of.
Once you are able to feel your body especially insides, the movement becomes easier to start.
I want to emphasize the internal feeling and not just the parts of the body.
I’ve started to feel my hands and legs for some time now but it didn’t help moving independently. Lungs and breathing is when everything shifted.
Feeling my body’s breathing and heart beat let me move my body finally on my own.
So the role of ANS (autonomic nervous system) in purposeful movement is undeniable.
Hey, I’m Rafael!
A non-speaker destined to flip the script about what non speakers are able to do in this world.
My mission is to help you do what I’ve been able to do for myself that has completely changed my life and gave me hope for the future: moving my body on my own without relying on someone’s prompt or being dragged by random stimuli I have no business taking.
It is far from perfect and I know I have a long road ahead mastering this.
But the difference when you can’t control without help at all vs being able to do something, is the difference between losing hope and knowing you have a chance.
How can you live fully when you can’t control your body? You can’t.
It is the biggest breakthrough to be able to figure this out and I didn’t do this alone.
My mom, Daria Kotenko, is the lead scientist and my biggest support.
Together we went through articles and learned scientific principles that allowed me to get to this point.
Everything we teach is grounded in science and mechanics of the human body.
How you feel your body determines how you move.
The more I feel my body the more I can control how I move.
The less I control, the more my movements are chaotic and sometimes destructive, I realize and recognize that.
This simply means that the more you can support your body’s feeling - both internally and externally - the more you are able to control how you move and that movement is not being destructive to those around us.
Dear parents, I get that having a non speaker can be challenging.
And it's not just the mental component of it, but plain simple managing the body and the destruction it brings sometimes.
And that it’s easy to have them out of the house in a bunch of therapies so that you can have a peace of mind.
But understand that every time we are outside the house, this creates a stress on our nervous system.
And the more the nervous system is stressed, the less we feel.
The less we feel, the less we can make progress on control, so it’s a vicious cycle we need to break.
Yes, managing the body in home can take a lot of effort and we will have tools to support you with that.
But staying put as much as possible is an integral part of the process and is what allowed me to gain so much feeling and control.
There is simply no way I could do the same being dragged to therapies 40 hours per week.
Start slow, see what you can manage, implement one change at a time and see how far you can go.
The more peace the better - the more peace, the more feeling we will have.
The more feeling we have and for longer periods of time, the more that becomes solidified in the body.
The more it is solidified in the body, the more you can then start to go out and do things a little at a time without losing control.
I am now slowly able to go out and it’s so refreshing to not lose feelings in your legs or mouth just because you are in a new circumstance.
You have no idea how stressful it is every single time when I used to lose feeling.
It's a complete shock.
Even though it has happened hundreds and thousands of times by now, it is a complete shock every single time.
I am so happy it doesn’t happen nearly as much and now mom knows how to bring it back easily.
You will too.
Trust the process, trust your non speaker and know this is a new chapter for everyone’s lives.
I don’t know how far I can go or how far any of you can take this.
All I know is that every day l am able to do things I could only dream about just a few months ago.
It gives me so much hope.
And that is what I want for every non-speaker out there.
Rafael