But…What’s Extra Lesson?

The holistic wellness world is full of unique, targeted, and sometimes kind of wild ways to help people beyond a diagnosis and prescription.

Many people begin exploring holistic practices through something like chiropractic care, working with a naturopathic doctor or midwife, or maybe seeing an acupuncturist. And then suddenly your algorithm starts showing you things you’ve never heard of before: Rolfing, Myofascial Therapy, Reiki, ionic foot baths, harmonic eggs, bee therapy…

While notably different than your list of basic, medical-grade wellness providers, these practices generally have deep roots in long-standing traditions that view the human being as more than just a set of symptoms. These approaches blend a detailed understanding of the body with energetic, intuitive, and sometimes spiritual perspectives in order to support the whole person, rather than a one-size (or surgery)-fits-all mentality.

In my practice, I primarily blend two holistic modalities in each session: Craniosacral Therapy (CST) and Extra Lesson.

🌿 An Intro Extra Lesson

Craniosacral Therapy is becoming more widely known in wellness circles. Extra Lesson, however, is one of the lesser-known approaches, partly because it has historically lived inside the Waldorf Education world.

Waldorf Education was founded by Rudolf Steiner in 1919 and has since grown into a worldwide educational movement. It approaches childhood development from a holistic perspective, educating children in ways that are artistic, experiential, and deeply attuned to developmental stages.

Extra Lesson was developed later, in the 1970s, by Audrey McAllen. It is a remedial educational approach that grew out of Steiner’s work and was designed to support children who need additional help integrating foundational developmental skills.

While Extra Lesson complements Waldorf education beautifully, a child does not need to attend a Waldorf school to benefit from it.

🌎 It’s Hard to Be a Kid Today

Modern childhood is very different from the environment human bodies were originally designed to grow up in.

Children today are navigating:

✨ High-stimulation environments that wire the brain for entertainment and immediacy
✨ Fast-paced lifestyles that leave little room for the digestion of food or experiences
✨ Homes and playrooms filled with toys that can actually create decision fatigue and shallow play
✨ Screen-based environments that strain the eye muscle system while reducing physical movement
✨ Schedules that leave little time for child-led outdoor play and the regulating effects of nature
✨ Increasing isolation in parenthood, which leaves many parents stressed and unsupported
✨ Cultural pressure toward medical or pharmaceutical solutions that can sometimes disconnect us from the body’s own regulating capacities

None of these things are the fault of parents. They are simply the reality of the world we’re raising children in.

And yet—children are incredibly adaptable.

Their bodies are constantly trying to make sense of their environment and adjust so they can function and thrive within it.

The challenge is that these adaptations often happen below the level of consciousness. When the body has to compensate for stress, overwhelm, or missed developmental experiences, it creates subtle coping patterns.

Sometimes those patterns show up later as learning challenges, attention difficulties, coordination issues, emotional regulation struggles, or simply a sense that something in the child’s development isn’t flowing as easily as it could.

✨ Hello, Extra Lesson

Extra Lesson works with the foundations that learning is built upon. Rather than focusing first on academic skills like reading or writing, we look at the developmental capacities that make those skills possible in the first place.

This means Extra Lesson is not tutoring in the traditional sense. Instead of practicing academics repeatedly, we strengthen the developmental systems that make learning possible.

Things like:

🌀 Balance
🌀 Coordination
🌀 Spatial awareness
🌀 Eye tracking
🌀 Rhythm
🌀 Body awareness
🌀 Integration of early reflexes

When these systems are well integrated, learning can flow much more easily. When they are underdeveloped or working overtime to compensate, children often have to work much harder than their peers just to keep up.

🧠 A Typical Session

Each child’s session looks different, and they are uniquely prepared to meet that individual in their developmental journey.

Extra Lesson Teachers are trained in a variety of exercises that allow the body to integrate new patterns in a natural way. These carefully chosen movement activities, drawing work, sensory experiences, and rhythmical exercises intentionally strengthen developmental foundations. This work is about recreating the brain/body relationship, and it takes time to build the physical strength and neural pathways necessary.

Sessions are often surprisingly simple from the outside.

A child might balance on a board while tossing a beanbag and reciting their times tables. They could practice movement patterns that integrate reflexes. They might do guided drawing or painting exercises, or they might work with activities that support eye movement and spatial orientation like moving copper balls in a specific pattern.

These exercises may look like play, but each one is chosen intentionally to support a specific developmental process.

Painting from a child doing a 6 week hand-eye series that uses specific colors and technique to support left-right movement, eye tracking, and hand-eye coordination.

🌱 Many Children Benefit

Extra Lesson can be supportive for children who experience things like:

📚 Reading or writing challenges including letter/number reversals
💪 Low muscle tone, poor posture, and limited stamina
🧠 Difficulty focusing or sustaining attention, ranging from hyper-awareness to spacey-ness
⚖️ Coordination or balance struggles
✏️ Weak pencil grip or fatigue with writing
🤸 Clumsiness or low body awareness
💛 Frustration or low confidence around schoolwork

Many parents come to me after noticing things like their child reversing letters, difficulty learning to read, struggling to sit at the table, avoiding or frustration around school/schoolwork even though they are clearly bright and capable.

Parents of children all ages reach out for sleep challenges, bedwetting, digestion problems, and explosive meltdowns.

All behavior is communication, and when we look closely enough, we can begin to understand the root causes. When we meet the root cause, rather than treat the symptom, we can heal.

🌿 Holistic Help for Children

In my practice, I combine Extra Lesson with Craniosacral Therapy.

Craniosacral work helps regulate the nervous system and release tension patterns in the body, while Extra Lesson supports the integration of developmental movement and sensory processes. Together, they allow the child’s system to settle, reorganize, and build stronger foundations for learning.

It looks like:

🌊 CST: releasing tension patterns and helping the nervous system settle ➡️ 🌱 Extra Lesson: strengthening developmental movement patterns and learning pathways

Extra Lesson tends to resonate with families who value a developmental approach to childhood and who believe that learning should not be rushed.

Many of the families I work with are inspired by natural learning approaches like Waldorf, Montessori, Forest Schools, or Homeschooling. Or, they are simply looking for a gentler, body-based way to support their child’s growth and help their child feel more successful in their bodies and environment.

If you’re curious whether Extra Lesson might be supportive for your child, I’m always happy to talk more about what that process looks like.