life span niches. Parents learn mutual interaction skills with infants. Teachers learn to support that learning in the first school years and youth learn to extend these social skills into adulthood work performance. This becomes a foundation for growing old well. This physical/manual learning has a dramatic effect on the health and learning of individuals and their families, on the wellbeing of teachers and care workers, on the costs of community health services and on the effectiveness of learning at all levels and settings. The system is low Tech, low cost and self-sustaining. It addresses the positive side of health care and education by teaching persons of all ages how to find and use a broader spectrum of movement resources that affect performance of every life function. Health treatment and education in advanced cultures has become almost entirely cognitive or chemical. Little attention is paid to the corporal performance that determines wellbeing and physical ease. Neither modern nor older cultures based on physical and emotional traditions benefit from the break-through concepts of feed-back control and cybernetic learning theories. Our approach to health and learning teaches simple concepts that affect movement skills and awareness to cope better with every life situation, encluding physiological functions, locomotion, hygiene, work, communication, creative problem solving, social interaction, growth and aging. The LSWI learning network is carried out as a private initiative where trainers are self employed. Each acquires participants for courses they are qualified to teach, then passes them on to colleagues with other qualifications. This results in a push/pull dynamic, where everyone in the process grows and contributes to the work and growth of each other.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

The Life Span Wellness Initiative(LSWI) has been evolving since 1976 throughout German speaking Europe with Kinaesthetics courses taught in a Drug Rehab setting as well as to nurses and physical therapists in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and northern Italy. The life stage specific programs have grown and proliferated to the point that more than a thousand Kinaesthetics trainers currently provide physical competence development courses in birthing, infant handling, preschool education, kindergarten through 4th grade instruction, couple relations, family interactions, professional nursing, family care, physical therapy, gymnastics training, work skills for older workers as well as movement skills for the elderly. Additionally, there are courses for health administrators, office workers, and general creativity development. See, www.kinaesthetics.com
More than 300,000 professionals have participated in Kinaesthetics trainings since 1985. Every year approximately 35,000 of them take courses throughout Europe and Japan. Countless patients, adults and children have benefited from the application of the principles learned in these courses. The courses are mature and well tested to provide the skills and insights for which they are designed. Trainers are supported with frequent upgrade training and advancement to new course levels and new courses. New courses are constantly in development as the skills of trainers evolve. For example, there are pilot programs to advance movement competence for seniors at home and in care facilities, a program for firemen and emergency responders as well as planning in rural Mexico, Quintana Roo with young mothers who will be trained to support family members and go on to support other village families. The next three years will be devoted to training teachers of these new courses.
If prize money is awarded to this project it will be applied to improve course materials and to promote new programs.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

The LSWI is comprehensive in that it aims to improve life span human competence for everyone. The LSWI anticipates onset of the retirement of the world wide “Boomer” generation. It prepares younger generations to cope with the burden of caring for their longer lived elders. It enhances performance in the workplace. It gives newborn and children improved foundations for coping with an ever more complex world. Eco impact is neutral as no specialized equipment or special venues are needed. Feasibility has been demonstrated throughout Europe for 30 years and in rural settings as diverse as Indian Pueblos in New Mexico and southern Mexico. It is successful in large hospitals, university classrooms, nursing schools, grade schools, homes for the elderly and individual homes. Kinaesthetics instruction is required in most German nursing schools. It can be replicated quickly and reliably as seen in Europe, Japan, and currently in Central America.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

Drs. Hatch and Maietta hold PhDs in behavioral cybernetics at U of Wisconsin, Madison and Fielding Institute, Santa Barbara, respectively. Both have followed Bucky Fuller’s life and works since their adolescence. They seek comprehensive solutions to social and cultural problems caused by ineffectual interactions by and between individuals at all levels- cellular, organic, systemic, corporal, interpersonal, social and cultural. Kinaesthetics, which they created, applies cybernetic principles to learning and health development.
Carmen Steinmetz-Ehrt has worked with Hatch and Maietta for over 20 years as trainer and administrator of Kinaesthetics programs in all of Europe.
Andrea Eicher has worked with the Kinaesthetics Infant/child programs for over 10 years.
Ulrike Resch-Kroell is a Kinaesthetics trainer and the director of Austrian Kinaesthetics.
Kinaesthetics has received numerous National prizes from state and insurance organizations. Many hospitals have been certified by the authorized Kinaesthetics National Institutes-Stuttgart StaedtischeKliniken, StaedtischesKrankenhaus Hamburg-Harburg and the KAGes in Steiermark, Austria are examples. The World Health Organization, committee on quality management has designated Kinaesthetics as a best practice method for injury prevention to nurses.