Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and stored in the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. As not only a hormone but a neurotransmitter, it’s released by electric signals from parts of our body back and forth to our brain. As one of the few hormones that function off a positive feedback loop, the release of oxytocin stimulates even more to be released from the pituitary gland. Oxytocin has an important physical function in the labor process, as the baby’s downward pressure initiates oxytocin-induced contractions that aid in childbirth. The hormone is also responsible for lactation, signaling the release of milk when an infant begins to suck.
 

The “love hormone” is commonly associated with positive emotions, supporting healthy social interactions in a number of ways. Oxytocin in released with physical touch like hugging and cuddling, which in turn triggers feelings of attraction and attachment. When a parent offers a newborn skin to skin contact, the release of oxytocin triggers powerful feelings of attachment and that bond tell the infant she is safe. Oxytocin has an important behavioral role, helping us build trust through recognition and contributing to our ability to make safe, healthy connections with others. 
 

When we think of our friend Roxy the Sloth and the cling stage of the Moro reflex, we’re reminded that oxytocin helps balance the stress-induced hormone cortisol with calming regulation. It is released as part of relaxation response mechanisms from the parasympathetic nervous system. The feeling of stability and support associated with this oxytocin may also play a role in lowering anxiety and other social and emotional challenges. 

The words seem stuck somewhere in the back of her throat, stammering and stuttering as she tries to express herself. His pen cap is crushed, the result of constant absent-minded chewing in the classroom. She soothes herself to sleep with her thumb in her mouth. Overeating patterns, smoking or vaping addictions and other oral fixations are the sign of immature reflexes. Both stimulation seeking and sensitivity in the mouth region is closely associated with grasping reflexes present immediate at birth.

Grasping reflexes originate in utero but peak at birth and play a role in the integration of the second stage of Moro. Infants begin to explore their world with their mouths and hands, responding to stimuli with curling or grasping movements, or with their mouths turning and sucking.

Our Root reflex is present as newborns seek nourishment in an unfamiliar environment. The mother’s breastmilk is a smell that is familiar and grounding to an infant, guiding their movement. When the corner of an infant’s mouth is stimulated, her head turns to the source as her mouth opens. This reflex plays an important role in locating food and is most active in those critical moments after birth. The complimentary reflex, Suck, works in conjunction with the Rooting reflex to obtain that nourishment. When the middle of the top lip is stimulated, the infant seeks to attach to a nipple, pushing her tongue upwards and sucking while breath and swallowing simultaneously.

We frequently speak about the importance of immediate bonding with the mother following delivery and those critical moments when breastfeeding releases the feeling of safety for an infant in a new environment. By feeding and embrace, we’re moving successfully through the stages of Moro from high alert fling to comfort, cling and grasping to the mother’s chest and nipple.

Retained Root/Suck reflexes may contribute to long-term speech and articulation difficulties as well as more complex challenges with connections to others. An active rooting reflex may result in hypersensitivity to touch on the face, while an active suck reflex may result in close talkers and the failure to maintain boundaries in terms of personal space.

Retained Root/Suck reflexes may contribute to long-term speech and articulation difficulties as well as more complex challenges with connections to others. An active rooting reflex may result in hypersensitivity to touch on the face, while an active suck reflex may result in close talkers and the failure to maintain boundaries in terms of personal space.

Imagine hearing the inescapable tick of a clock, or voices from the next table so distracting you cannot focus on your meal. Your senses are on high alert. Loud noises and bright lights are exhausting and changes in a routine may feel unbearable. Without relief, an overstimulated system is poised for action at all times, with anxiety and stress manifesting in sudden uncontrollable outbursts or difficulty falling and staying asleep. The body struggles to downshift and relax, which can even lead to physical ailments from digestive issues to infections and motion sickness. 

When Moro is not fully integrated, the body is unable to filter and process sensory information. This may include stimuli coming from one or multiple sensory systems: vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive, visual, auditory and interoceptive.

As an essential defensive reflex, the development of Moro contributes to our ability to safely explore our world independently, identifying true danger. Imagine an infant lying alone in a basinet, waking suddenly to a loud sound. Without its swaddle, the baby cries out, reaching his arms and legs upwards out into the air seeking safety. 

The first stage of Moro emerges in utero but peaks at birth when the infant inhales its first breath in an entirely unknown environment. Most likely, its limbs are flailing as it lets out a cry for help. This stage is the instantaneous activation of the baby’s survival system and a release of cortisol and noradrenaline signals what we refer to as the ‘fight or flight response’. 

In response to stimuli, the reflex begins with an initial movement away from the midline, hands reaching outward. With the second stage, a clinging movement initiates, where the body pulls inward to the center, hands grasp closed and the baby exhales. An infant is naturally seeking a caretaker’s touch, to be hugged, rocked and soothed. With cling comes the downshifting of those fight or flight reactions, a steadying of the heart rate and a relaxing of breath as well as the digestive system. The two stages of Moro might be viewed as complimentary reflexes, like breathing in (first stage) and out (second stage).

Collectively, the Moro reflex integrates between 2 and 4 months of age. If Moro stays active in its first stage, the more mature development of the adult ‘startle’ reflex, known as the ‘Strauss reflex,’ cannot establish itself and the body will continue to struggle with effectively defining real from perceived danger. Through integration, the body is able to process and respond with a higher awareness rather than simply reacting. 

Moro as a reflex is often referred to as the gateway reflex, enabling the effective integration of several other key developmental reflexes. Practicing the cling, or calming movements of early infancy may help the body to react and regulate against stressors in the environment.

Elizabeth Hickman, a lifelong resident of Elmhurst and owner of Thrive Therapy, believes deeply in the critical developmental period that takes place in life’s earliest moments. With a mindfulness rooted in her own journey, she’s delivering innovation to pediatric therapy, changing the course of behavior and treating her clients with compassion and connection. 

Growing up, she struggled in an academic setting. Despite her high IQ, she often felt overwhelmed and recalled the pressure to complete course work standards in grade school. With determination and persistence, she attended Indiana University, majoring in kinesiology, minoring in nutrition and French followed by completion of a Master in Physical Therapy through a rigorous program at Northwestern University.  

As a graduate, she started her career in outpatient orthopedics, returning to her hometown. She worked with clients whose rehabilitation journey was as much an emotional as a physical one. Ever mindful of fate, Elizabeth considered her next professional move when the local school system reached out with an opportunity she hadn’t considered.  

By 2002, Elizabeth was working in the schools as a PT, to ensure children with physical limitations of all kinds received an appropriate education. She traveled between district schools throughout the week, supporting students confined to wheelchairs and diagnosed with diseases like cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. Increasingly, she was called upon to assist students struggling with activities like sitting still, throwing balls and remaining attentive in the classroom.  

“The kids that really pulled on my heart strings were the ones that were being misunderstood by the system,” she says. “They didn’t have a medical diagnosis at all, but they were having a hard time carrying out everyday functions within the school environment. They were deemed behavioral children.” 

At the same time, Elizabeth became a new mom and brought her son home from the hospital after time in the NICU. Early on, he struggled to self-soothe and ultimately refused to sleep. As her son got older, lack of sleep turned into night terrors, and she began to recognize signs of an overactive sympathetic nervous system, which is triggered by the Moro (or startle) reflex early in development. The brain refuses to calm and remains in a state of ‘fight or flight,’ which can translate into more primitive outbursts and, in her son’s case, a lack of restful sleep. 

Soon, as her personal and professional observations merged, Elizabeth started to identify patterns in the children she worked with in school. In 2008, her world changed with a single workshop by Australian therapist Moira Dempsey. The content addressed foundations for learning and development in the nervous system, through a practice called reflex integration.  

“The more we do different movements and create a stimulus to the brain in certain directions, it’s going to strengthen that connection and build a stronger foundation,” she says, whose therapy work began to take on a new meaning. “Reflex integration is a rhythmic, movement-based practice that simulates what a baby does in the first year of their life and in-utero. You’re rewinding people back to stages that they either never went through or didn’t go through enough to help create connections to various parts of the brain.” 

As she tested the practice first on her son then her students, Elizabeth struck a balance that yielded powerful results. Within the classroom, she found the children naturally gravitated to the movement exercises. 

“They were asking for exactly what their body needed. Importantly, they were leading the charge,” she says, working within classroom spaces and ultimately with families in their homes as interest grew. “We innately know where we want or need to grow. Our nervous system wants that growth.” 

In her practice, Elizabeth is ever mindful of the impact these exercises can have on the nervous system. She intuitively recognized signs of burnout and overstimulation, guiding the exercises while promoting the journey to self-awareness and ultimately self-regulation, no matter the age. 

“Those physiological signs and symptoms don’t lie. We as people try to override these all the time as we try to please other people. We think, I’m not tired. I can do this,” she says. “As a therapist, I really have to read that in a person, and also help them to understand their own physiology and cue into that.”  

By 2011, Elizabeth became a consultant on reflex integration and to this day, remains the only practitioner certified in reflex integration in the state. In 2015, she opened Thrive Therapy in Elmhurst as a safe space for her to meet with families and devoted her time fully to the practice.  

A formal educator of the practice since 2016, she now hosts seven distinct workshops, guiding parents and professionals from speech pathologists and occupational therapists to dental hygienists and chiropractors in reflex integration. Elizabeth recognizes that she’s not providing a single solution, but rather unlocking an individualized path toward therapy-driven change, awareness and ultimately, empowerment. 

“I really believe that every human being wants to do what’s right, but do they have the ability to do what’s right all the time?” she says. “Rather, do they have the support system, the neurological foundation, to do those things.”

For Keri Teague, an early career memory was working with Compass Community Services in downtown San Francisco. The center provided services to homeless and transitioning families, many of them immigrants and many with young children. Working within the center’s preschool, she employed her knowledge of sensory processing and the impact on children’s behavior. The center had just built a gym, filled with swings and crash pads, climbing walls and suspended equipment. 

“It was a place for kids to go and just move their bodies,” she recalls of the power of physical play and its impact on developmental milestones. “It was wonderful.”

Keri was born in California and studied psychology at Sonoma State University before moving to the UK for her Masters in childhood development with a focus on somatic complaints and emotional intelligence. She volunteered in special education classroom abroad, which prepared her for the return to the states and her work as a preschool teacher at that San Francisco-based center.  It was in the preschool setting that she started to partner with a mental health consultant on therapeutic work. 

“The kids who were really dysregulated, I found, had all these sensory issues too. We’d incorporate therapeutic movements while working with them,” says Keri, who eventually chose to attend USC for graduate school in OT, based on their emphasis on sensory integration. She wanted to continue her work in the schools. 

Throughout her grad school and early teaching years, Keri routinely visited medical clinics run by non-government organizations in Guatemala. She was inspired by and helped establish a field school focused on studying the intersection of anthropology, OT and the culture of disabilities. While there, she was invited to take part in their pediatric program. 

“As an OT, we look at those underlying issues that are impacting a child’s participation in daily life,” says Keri of the important role that therapists have in supporting developmental activities for children, both inside and out of the classroom. 

An OT now herself, Keri began her career at a sensory integration clinic in California that also contracted out to a local school district.  

“What was great was that I could see the kids in the school and I could see them in the clinic. I got to work with the parents and the teachers, the natural setting of the classroom and in a more specialized therapeutic setting. It was the best of both worlds,” she adds.

She continued working in the schools when she moved to North Carolina. Here, she joined the district’s preschool evaluation team. Her family’s travels took her to Texas briefly, where Keri worked in a pediatric rehabilitation hospital supporting traumatic injuries, pulmonary difficulties and feeding issues.

When Keri moved with her family to Western Springs, she found a home within the LaGrange Area Department of Special Education. A huge proponent of early intervention, she was able to work with several of the local school district’s youngest students. Keri excels at setting scalable goals to mark functional milestones, intended to propel a child while managing their limits and frustrations. 

Keri continued to lean into her sensory work and she came across a course on rhythmic movement therapy. The approach to working with primitive reflexes already felt familiar, having explored the crossover between that and sensory integration in her OT work. As luck would have it, Elizabeth Hickman is one of the only practitioners offering RMTi training in the United States and was right in Keri’s backyard. 

As the learning clicked, Keri also noticed applications for her own daughter, whose challenges with balance and coordination were greatly improved with therapy sessions at Thrive. Keri saw firsthand how the work brought new calm and self-regulation for her daughter.  As a teacher, a parent, and newly, as an added resource working with clients at Thrive, Keri has been able to help her clients unlock the tools to understand and manage behavioral outcomes proactively. 

“I think we all have these little tendencies or difficulties and that’s what makes us unique,” she says. “When it impacts our success in what we want to do or need to do in life to be happy, healthy human beings, that’s when I think therapy is necessary.”