Psychomotor Practice

PSYCHOMOTOR PRACTICE

ASEFOP

Our History

ASEFOP´s story is strongly linked to Bernard Aucouturier whose presence, encouragement and teaching caused its creation.

Professor Aucouturier developed his professional activity from the 70s in Tours (France) in its municipal sports hall. It is there with his daily work with children of all ages and characteristics where a new methodology was born, this methodology is nowadays known as Aucouturier Psychomotor Practice.

Statutes

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The film “Bruno”, which was edited by M. Dubray in 1972 and was theoretically delved by Bernard Aucouturier and André Lapierre in the book “Bruno Delachaux et Niestlé, (1977). This book made public the beginnings of the Practice; this Practice was culminated in 2004 with the book “The Shadows of the action and Psychomotor Practice”. Between these two books the are some other important works like The Contrasts trilogy, The Symbology of the movement, The body and the subconscious or The Psychomotor Practice Re-Education and Therapy. All of them written collaborating with other authors like Lapierre, Darrault or Empinet. More recently some other books have been written like “Why do children move so much?” “Fear to nothing, fear to everything” collaborating with Mendel which has made of Bernard Aucouturier a reference in the Psychomotor area.

Bernard Aucouturier had a gift, a special capability to connect with children. During his whole career he showed a great sagacity to observe the infant behaviour, and an outstanding feeling to the kid who suffers and show his discomfort expecting for someone to understand him. This gift took him to investigate the deepest meaning of the infant psychomotor expressivity whose origin is in the oldest stages of the life.

The innovation of this methodology is to use the action, the pleasure and the relationship the central idea for the kid´s evolution and maturing. Bernard Aucouturier has been the only one to translate into conduct principles several concepts from Piaget, Freud and specially Winnicott. These concepts explain the body roots of the psychological birth and the intelligence and they are the main addition to the therapy and the psychomotor education field. Professor Aucouturier was a pioneer as his intuition transformed into practical a concept that neurosciences are discovering now.

The Aucouturier Psychomotor Practice was born from the experience, it is something fresh and dynamics and it has been built from a very strong theoretical-practical basis. Psychomotor classes around the world are full of malleable and coloured foam rubber modules, other great addition of the professor Aucouturier.

From its establishment the ASEFOP was the selected space by Bernard Acouturier to spread his method through the training, which is taught in its schools. During more than 25 years the Professor Aucouturier has shown his knowledge, his experience and his researches in the ASEFOP´s schools in which courses he has been participating regularly. Through his seminars it has been possible to learn his philosophy, his respect the kid as individual ethic, his point of view and his Psychomotor Practice, which transform to whoever knows it.

ASEFOP`s formers are the unique Aucouturier´s direct pupils. They have followed the Professor and they have founded training schools where they have rigorously and faithfully spread the Psychomotor Practice over 30 years.

In 2009, when he became 75 years old, Bernard Aucouturier retired from the institutional life, although the ASEFOP keeps alive his spirit.

The stages are still the awaited moment where the formers meet, share their experiences, update their information and standardize the criteria to confront the new educational and formational challenges of the current society.

The schools keep on forming with enthusiasm and the formers renew everyday their commitment with the childhood, through that “looking” to the kid. The way we look at the kid means the Aucouturier´s method´s signature in every one who has been formed by the ASEFOP.

La Formación de ASEFOP

ASEFOP´S main aim is to train specialist on the psychomotor practice as much its educational and preventative aspect as its therapeutic help.

“We don´t form people but we help them to form themselves actively.”

This simple principle holds very important values considering that it responds to a professional ethic of respect to the forming adult, based on a philosophy, which believes on the human being chances to transform himself.

Because of this principle ASEFOP has developed an original methodology, which places in the middle of the formative procedure to the adult person, who becomes agent of his own training since:

Develop an own educational procedure

Assimilate actively the Psychomotor Practice theory

Integrate these procedures in their own performance of psychomotor practice

ASEFOP´s schools organize some courses of different level and length according to the goals and the reality of each country but all of them have the same contents and method.

La Prácticas Psicomotriz

The Psychomotor Practice created by Bernard Aucouturier is a methodology whose goal is the psychological maturing of the kid through the psychomotor development.

What do we understand for psychological maturing? It´s the procedure from the pleasure of the movement play and connect to the pleasure of think. The procedure through the kid develops his own mental representations, conscious and subconscious from the actions, feelings and emotions. It´s the procedure through the kid transforms his impetus to go into a symbolic world to guide them and express them. Definitely the procedure through the human baby becomes in an individual subject with his own identity, able to think and wish.

The psychomotor practice boosts the harmonious development of the person because it goes with the growing procedures and identity development; it uses the spontaneous game, the movement, the action and the performance since through the pleasure of the action the boy and the girl discover and conquer the world, express their emotions, their deep affective life and their fantasy world.

To achieve these aims the Psychomotor Practice proposes a method based in space and time pedagogy to let the kid make this procedure in a concrete setting that is the Psychomotor classroom.

“The kid does not pay to learn, but he learns because he plays” and this happens in a very special place: The Psychomotor classroom. A rich, varied and full of colour space, where an attentive adult embraces and keeps the children productions, their difficulties, their fears, their discoveries, their wishes, their pleasures and their feelings. This adult goes with them while their maturing procedure.

The specialist in Psychomotor Practice prepares himself during the whole formation procedure to observe, to embrace and to make sense of the psychomotor expressivity of the kid to give appropriate replies to the kid´s deepest necessities.

These principles govern the two main orientations:

Psychomotor Practice: Educational and preventative:

It finds its implementation field in the school environment between the 0 and the 7 years. It helps to create solid mature bases so the children develop the procedure from the pleasure of the action to the pleasure of the thinking.

Psychomotor Therapy

It is a therapy, which acts through the body action, the game and the movement to re-establish or to set up the integration of the impetus and feelings into the psychic system. It is orientated to work with children with very every kind of difficulties, psychomotor alterations, attention deficit, emotional difficulties, learning difficulties autism, disability, and cerebral palsy…

7 schools spread across 5 regions

ASEFOP

With an increasingly strong presence in different regions of Europe, ASEFOP promotes quality training in psychomotor skills, thus promoting the comprehensive development of children, adolescents and adults.