Proprioceptive System 101

The proprioceptive system is a vital part of sensory modulation. This sensory system is responsible for providing information of body awareness by providing position, orientation, and location of muscles, joints, and body parts. It is also responsible for giving feedback on how much effort is being used by the muscles. This is the second of the three systems focused on in sensory processing dysfunction treatment.

Dysfunction can appear as difficulty with body awareness, grading of pressure or force needed to complete tasks, crashing or banging into furniture or people, not having good awareness of personal space, needing to get into small spaces, or push against people or surfaces, and the kid that is always on the go.

Simple Activities to Help Strengthen this System:

• Heavy work activities, such as pushing a weighted laundry basket, shopping cart, or box.
• Use of tents or forts to create smaller spaces to increase body awareness and decrease area of play.
• Pillow squishes or rolling a yoga ball on the body while child is lying down
• Jumping on trampoline, bed, couch, or floor
• Climbing on playground equipment, such as jungle gyms, or ramps or hills
• Wheel barrow walking or animal walking or crawling
• Chewing gum, chewy necklaces, crunchy foods, and gummy snacks.
• Bouncing on a yoga ball
• Yoga stretches
• Use compression undershirt, compression vest, weighted blanket, and weighted compression vest, or a weighted vest without compression.