Meet Carla Oswald Reed

Some people know from an early age, exactly what they want to be when they grow up. Carla Oswald Reed was one of those people.

She developed a passion for working with children with brain injuries in the eighth grade after reading the bestselling book Karen written by Marie Killelea (who later started the United Cerebral Palsy organization.)

The book tells the true story of Killelea’s daughter Karen, who developed Cerebral Palsy in 1940 after being born three months premature at a time when few infants survived such an early birth. To pursue her goal of working with children with brain injuries, Carla attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Allied Medical Professions in Philadelphia, PA, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree and a Certificate of Proficiency in Physical Therapy in 1969.

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Carla always held an innate certainty that all children with special needs possess a higher potential for learning, growing, and improving personal performance than they usually manifest growing up in an average environment. After obtaining her license to practice Physical Therapy, she began to look for more ways to tap that potential than she was taught in her degree program.

Carla moved to Arizona in 1970, and in 1972, she began training in the Bobath Neurodevelopmental Treatment (NDT) for Cerebral Palsy, one of the first methods to approach treatment neurologically rather than mechanically. She received her NDT certification, but after using the approach for eight years, her instincts told her there were even more effective options out there. She renewed her search for techniques that would tap into that elusive potential she felt existed in every child.

 

Carla's practice is informed by training with the following innovators in neuroscience and child development

 

The Feldenkrais Method®

And then it happened. Carla attended a workshop in Los Angeles in April 1980 where she saw Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc. demonstrate his transformative approach to human movement and learning with a young child. During his 30 minute demonstration, Carla saw changes in posture and function in the child that she could not have achieved in months of treatment she had been using. She immediately applied to his 4-year professional training program in Amherst, MA. That training took her away from her home in Arizona and her husband and two small children for nine weeks at a time for each of the next four summers.

The Feldenkrais Method® is based on established scientific principles from the fields of physics, neurology, psychology, physiology, and child development and what has emerged as neuroscience. He found ways to create the exact conditions under which the nervous system learns most optimally. Finally, Carla found an approach that accesses the amazing power of the human brain to dramatically enhance physical, cognitive, emotional, and creative function - confirming Carla’s long-held belief that there was a key for accelerating the learning of a damaged or differently structured brain!

Magda Gerber: Resources for Infant Educarers

During her Feldenkrais Training years, a couple of her classmates introduced Carla to the work of Magda Gerber and her center called Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE). Carla was drawn to their description of how the RIE approach taught respect for infants before they “walked and talked and acted like big people.”

Since Carla’s clients often were very delayed or limited in “walking and talking and acting like big people,” Carla thought she may have a lot to learn from Magda Gerber to apply to children with special needs.

In the fall of 1987, Carla attended an intensive at RIE taught directly by Magda Gerber.

Carla extrapolated key elements from Magda’s teaching and has applied them ever since.

  • Telling a child what you are going to do before you do it
  • Giving time for a child to transition by saying something like, “When I’ve counted to 3, I’m going to pick you up.”
  • Avoiding power struggles and empowering children with closed choices, i.e. instead of asking “Are you ready to go to bed?” saying, “Would you like to go to bed now or in 5 minutes?” OR instead of asking “Are you ready to put your shoes on?” saying “Would you like to put your shoes on before or after you put on your jacket?”
  • Spotting children when they are initiating a new skill like walking or climbing the ladder to a slide instead of holding their hands or supporting them under their bottom.
  • Avoiding putting a child in a position they have not previously put themselves in unless you guide them through the transitional movements necessary to get there, e.g. NOT putting them on the top of the slide at the playground until they can climb the ladder up and down.
  • Responding to a child who asks for help by saying “I’ll help YOU find a way to do it.”
  • Avoiding giving a child a limiting self-identification by labeling a child as “Good at…” or “not good at…” or nonverbal or nonambulatory. Instead describing a child as “He’s still learning how to… (use his voice) or (get on his feet).
  • Expecting a child to participate in his care and the family tasks, e.g. by waiting for a child to reach for the shoe instead of giving it to him.
  • Presuming the child’s growing competence and independence by languaging that expectation by saying "I'll help you put your shoe on." or “I’ll help you find a way to put your shoe on.” instead of asking the child to “Help me put your shoe on,” which indicates that you’re the doer and the child is dependent and incompetent.
  • Asking indirect questions that trigger problem solving instead of giving directions, e.g. “How are you going to get your arm through your sleeve?” instead of “Push your arm into the sleeve.” OR ”Where is Mommy?” instead of “Lift your head.”

Anat Baniel NeuroMovement Method®

At Feldenkrais training, Carla met Anat Baniel, who was Dr. Feldenkrais' assistant for a decade before his death in 1984.

Carla invited Anat to Phoenix several times to teach public workshops and advanced trainings, and to consult on some of her clients. Carla moved to Sterling, Virginia in 1997 where she opened her Movement to Wholeness, LLC physical therapy practice for children with special needs, bringing her unique background and skills and practice of the Feldenkrais Method to her clients.

Since the passing of Dr. Feldenkrais, Anat had evolved her work based on what she learned from him, and around 2003, branded her work under her own name: Anat Baniel Method of Neuromovement.

Carla saw the best outcomes in children who underwent lessons at Anat’s hands, and practitioners who trained under Anat's tutelage, so after Carla’s own four children were grown, she registered for Anat's Children's Mastery program in 2003.

“I couldn’t tell the difference between the skill level of participants who were experienced Feldenkrais practitioners, and students who had just graduated from Anat’s basic training," said Carla. "I noticed the group movement lessons Anat taught us made me attend to my own sensations in a way I had never experienced with anyone else’s advanced training. I also noticed that my work with my own clients changed for the better after each segment. I knew that meant there was something very different and very right about how Anat was teaching!”

Carla also completed Anat's Vitality and Anti-Aging Mastery and Mastery for High Performers. Carla continued to travel to California four to six times a year to study with Anat and assist at Anat’s Basic Professional Training Program in San Rafael, CA. Carla eventually served as one of the trainers in Anat’s Basic Professional Training Program from 2011 to 2016.

Anat's training is based on what she calls the 9 Essentials, or nine learning-based guidelines on how to communicate with the brain in a way that creates the best possible conditions for the development of human potential.

  • Essential 1: Moving with Attention. When we bring attention to what we feel as we move, the brain immediately starts building billions of new neurological connections that usher in changes, learning and transformation
  • Essential 2: Slow. Slow makes us feel and experience life at a deeper, more profound level.
  • Essential 3: Variation. By introducing variation into everything you do, you awaken all your senses.
  • Essential 4: Subtlety. By reducing the force with which we move and think, we increase our sensitivity
  • Essential 5: Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm helps make the impossible possible.
  • Essential 6: Flexible Goals. Flexible goals will reduce your anxiety and increase your creativity, resulting in greater success, vitality, and joy.
  • Essential 7: The Learning Switch. For the brain to properly do its job, the learning switch needs to be on.
  • Essential 8: Imagination & Dreams. Your imagination and dreams give you the ability to create something that has never been there before.
  • Essential 9: Awareness. When you are aware you are fully alive and present.

Chava Shelhav and ChildSpace

Carla originated the term “ChildSpace” for a dream she had of creating a school for children with special needs that cultivated the learning possibilities for children with special needs in every activity of their day, including simple tasks like removing their jackets, having their diaper changed, eating their snack instead of just getting those things done and out of the way to spend time on academics.

When she attended an advanced training with Chava in 1993 in Mechernich, Germany, Carla told Chava about her dream. A few years later, Chava asked Carla whether she could use the word “ChildSpace” for what she was teaching.

Based on the foundations of what Chava learned from Dr. Feldenkrais, she cultivated a niche of working with babies who were typical, or who had special needs. She branded her work as “ChildSpace.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, Carla decided to take an online training in ChildSpace, in which she has also been asked to make presentations, drawing on her own 51 years of professional experience.