The moving mind: Why psychomotricity builds more than muscles
To grow is to conquer, step by step physically and mentally, It’s a long and delicate choreography, where every gesture attempted, every movement explored, and every balance achieved helps shape the child. Long before learning to read or count, children discover the world through their bodies through movement, gaze, posture, and hand play. These early motor experiences lay the first building blocks of development, and it’s precisely in this intimate dialogue between body and mind that psychomotricity reveals its full meaning.
Henri Wallon, a pioneer in developmental psychology, famously stated that “movement is the foundation of thought.” Jean Piaget showed that intelligence emerges from action, from a child’s concrete interaction with their surroundings through sensory and motor exploration. Lev Vygotsky emphasized the importance of social and cultural interactions in psychomotor development: every gesture is also a bridge to the other. In short, psychomotricity is not a secondary discipline it is the hidden architecture beneath all emotional, cognitive, and social growth.
Before language: the body speaks first
From a neuromuscular perspective, each motor milestone represents a complex dialogue between the brain and the body. When an infant reaches out to grasp an object, the corticospinal tracts are activated, the cerebellum fine-tunes precision, and proprioceptive receptors send back information about body position in space. What seems like a simple game initiates a cascade of learning: eye-hand coordination, anticipation, planning, and persistence. Neuropsychiatrist Paul Ajuriaguerra, a key figure in psychomotricity, demonstrated how muscle tone and motor maturity are fundamental for the emergence of language and symbolic thought.
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Fine motor skills, often overlooked, are a striking example of this complexity. Holding a pencil, drawing a shape, or cutting paper all require the engagement of intrinsic hand muscles, the sensorimotor pathways of the parietal cortex, and the prefrontal regions involved in attention and planning. Longitudinal studies, including one by Cameron et al. (2012), found that fine motor abilities at age 5 significantly predict academic performance in reading and math at age 8. So, when a child stacks blocks or draws shaky letters, they are already laying the neurological foundation for future learning.
Gross motor skills, on the other hand, shape the child’s relationship to the world. Running, jumping, climbing, or dancing activates the vestibular system located in the inner ear and responsible for balance as well as the cerebellum, the brain’s conductor of movement. These bodily experiences help the child build their body schema and develop spatial and temporal awareness. In the 1930s, pediatrician and psychologist Arnold Gesell charted motor development curves (walking, grasping, balancing) that not only show predictable milestones but also highlight how motor development scaffolds all other domains. A child climbing a tree isn’t just building muscles they’re managing fear, calculating distance, and adapting to the unexpected. These motor skills soon evolve into cognitive and social competencies.
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When movement shapes the brain
Modern neuroscience confirms what early theorists suspected. At birth, the brain contains roughly 100 billion neurons but it’s not the number that matters, it’s the connections. Between birth and age 3, the brain forms up to a million synapses per second (Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, 2016). These connections are shaped by experience: every movement and sensory exploration strengthens certain neural pathways and prunes others. Walking, which typically emerges between 12 and 15 months, is more than a mechanical achievement it gives children access to new environments, broadens their exploration, stimulates language, and enriches social life. Studies show that early walkers tend to develop more expressive verbal and gestural communication, demonstrating how motor and cognitive development progress hand-in-hand.
Lateralization offers another compelling example. Between ages 5 and 7, children stabilize their preference for using one side of the body (hand, foot, eye). This process, linked to cerebral hemispheric specialization, is critical for reading and writing. When laterality is still unsettled, children may confuse left and right, reverse letters, or struggle to follow text lines. Ajuriaguerra emphasized the link between physical and cognitive organization, reminding us that “a child writes with their body as much as with their hand.”
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Writing, in fact, is the most complex example. It requires fine motor skills, posture, muscle tone regulation, visuo-motor coordination, and spatial-temporal structuring. A dysgraphic child is not simply clumsy they exhibit a psychomotor fragility that disrupts the harmony between gesture and thought. Psychomotor therapy aims to restore that unity by working on tone, space, and rhythm, enabling writing to become fluid and meaningful.
Ultimately, psychomotricity reveals a fundamental truth: the body is a child’s first language, first intelligence, and first bridge to others. Supporting psychomotor development means nurturing motor, emotional, and cognitive skills all at once. As Wallon wrote, “thought is the daughter of emotion and movement.” Behind every wobbly step, every messy drawing, every joyful sprint lies a powerful promise the promise of becoming a human capable of thinking, creating, loving, and inhabiting the world fully.
Referenecs
Ajuriaguerra, J. de (1974). La dysgraphie chez l’enfant. Masson.
Cameron, C. E. et al. (2012). Fine Motor Skills and Executive Function Both Contribute to Kindergarten Achievement. Child Development, 83(4), 1229–1244.
Diamond, A. (2000). Close interrelation of motor development and cognitive development and of the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. Child Development, 71(1), 44–56.
Gesell, A. (1945). The Embryology of Behavior: The Beginnings of the Human Mind. Harper & Brothers.
Piaget, J. (1936). La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant. Delachaux et Niestlé.
Vygotski, L. S. (1934/1997). Pensée et langage. La Dispute.
Wallon, H. (1942). L’évolution psychologique de l’enfant. Armand Colin.
Saad Chraibi
Psychomotor Therapist
• A graduate of Mohammed VI University in Casablanca, currently practicing independently in a private clinic based in Casablanca, Morocco.
• Embraces a holistic and integrative approach that addresses the physical, psychological, emotional, and relational dimensions of each individual.
• Former medical student with four years of training, bringing a solid biomedical background and clinical rigor to his psychomotor practice.
• Holds diverse professional experience across associative organizations and private practice, with extensive interdisciplinary collaboration involving speech therapists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, and other healthcare professionals.
• Specializes in tailoring therapeutic interventions to a wide range of profiles, with a strong focus on network-based, collaborative care.
• Deeply committed to developing personalized therapeutic plans grounded in thorough assessments, respecting each patient’s unique history, pace, and potential, across all age groups.
