Effects of Dohsa-hou on Posture and Perception of Body Scale: Child With Physical Disabilities

Abstract

― ― The present study examined effects of Dohsa-hou (a Japanese psycho-rehabilitative program that includes mental and physical relaxation) on an individual’s posture, perception of body scale (size relative to the environment), and spatial cognition. The participant, a female fourth-grade student who was not able to stand or kneel unaided as a result of hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy, received 38 sessions of Dohsa-hou during a 15-month period. After those sessions, she could kneel unaided for 21 seconds, her standing posture became more upright, and her consciousness of her body became clearer. However, after Dohsa-hou, contrary to the authors’ expectations, the unit trajectory length measure of posture stability was longer than before, suggesting postural instability. Her perception of her body scale was measured by evaluation of her behavior, such as stepping over or passing under a bar. The boundary point between stepping over and passing under was 23 cm before the Dohsa-hou sessions, and 54 cm after. The standard deviation of the measurements also decreased, indicating that her judgment had become more stable. Her spatial cognition was measured by the block design subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC); after the training, her score increased by 13 raw points (2 scaled points). These results suggest that the Dohsa-hou sessions altered her self-awareness of her body, her movements, and her posture, as a consequence of which her relation to her self-environment system improved, as indicated by the improvement in her perception of her body scale.