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Experiencing Sensory Innovations in Redding…
Entranced, you stand staring down at a table, swarming with colors in motion. Puzzled, your mind knows there’s not a drop of water in this darkened room, but your eyes see a clear pool, and in it, creatures swimming through clumps of seaweed. Intrigued, you notice the swimmers navigating around what look like undersea mountains; your hand reaches out to test for water, for depth.
Surprise! Your fingers thump dry sand.
Yours is exactly the reaction desired by the architects of The Oasis, one of seven named rooms in this unique Redding wellness center. Sensory Innovations draws from an occupational therapy model, serving patients who have difficulty performing activities of daily living. But moving beyond that model, they built a playground for the senses that benefits those folks and higher functioning clients, as well.
Sensory Innovations owner Cassie Breslin says they focus on neurodiversity, an umbrella term that describes how people think, learn and behave differently. Herself a occupational therapist, certified hand therapist and ergonomics assessment specialist, she aims to socialize her caseloads, mixing neuroatypical patients and neurotypical clients to enjoin a diverse, judgment-free community.
“We serve a wide range of clients,” she says. “It could be anybody who just had an accident and has an orthopedic diagnosis. We provide skilled therapy to help them regain function. Then sometimes it’s not the body that’s injured, it’s the brain, so we work on that, as well. Our specialty is sensory integrative work.”
Where her credentials come in is no more evident than what you see at the first demonstrates uses for Geemo magnets, a rubbery Y, each end tipped with a magnet. By snapping the magnets together, she builds a rubbery shape.
The Geemos are plucked from a magnetic white board, sneaking in some eye/hand coordination exercise. “This promotes cross-body movement,” Sargent says, reaching for another piece. “It flexes the body, like for helping with injury.” Breslin adds, “It also helps with neuroplasticity.”
Neuroplasticity can mean your mind is reeling. For if you try to join the wrong magnets, those rubbery stalks will repel on you. There’s that sensory surprise again, therapy for the brain. A hyperactive child, for example, would face the challenge to focus and figure out what’s going on. In every one of the seven named rooms at Sensory Innovations, staff has hidden surprises for the senses.
In The Cove, you stand immersed in moving lights, greens dots sweeping the walls, against a background of shimmering waves of green and purple; your task is to search by blindly reaching into a pit of chopped-up pool noodles. In The Bayou, you can heft a life-sized plushie alligator, oops!, heavier than you thought because it’s weighted.
Sensory Innovations serves two modes of client. For one, a therapist guides a client to the room containing features professionally chosen for most the appropriate treatment. For the other, a client is turned loose in the facility to visit whichever rooms they want. They may enjoy the swing capable of supporting a 1,400-pound female grizzly bear without knowing anything about vestibular input.
Whole families come to Sensory Innovations, seeking not therapy, but a safe place to play together. Something that fascinates both Breslin and Sargent is the way visitors, clients, patients find their way to the room that offers the sensory stimulation they need. And as it turns out, the women who built this place exercised their own sensory inputs on the job. “This place was nothing but empty, white drywall when we moved in. So we did everything from the floors to the walls,” recalls Breslin. “Katlin did a ton of the painting and the creating and the building. Texture is one of her sensory needs, so she built the Oasis, and that is nothing but texture in there. The sand, the door with the sequins – it’s all helping process texture.”
As felt in the river-themed hallway connecting all the rooms, its walls decked with faux leaves and bark, its shores studded with pebbles; barefoot is encouraged here. Breslin’s sensory need is rooted in memories of her brother when she was a girl of but 10. “I was aware that I wanted to be an occupational therapist because my brother has developmental disabilities,” she says. “He’s really been my guiding light through my life. I’m really grateful for him, because I don’t know I would ever have found this calling had it not been for him.”
When her brother was recovering from surgery to correct his misaligned hips, big sister began to learn about the sensory need of movement. “I began helping transfer him. We call it moving, you know, because he can’t just lay there all day. He has to move into different positions and still be in a safe position. And he still has to move and do different daily activities.”
Hence the swings, feisty magnet toys and giant Legos.
For the past two years, Sensory Innovations has offered camps for children, supervised four-hour sessions with clinical staff. They also offer space for events for up to 20 people, who can stage from The Grove Cafe, where they will find sensory input from textures in the form of beverage, taste in snacks and movement in swings dangling as chairs at one peculiar table.
Breslin met Sargent while the two worked together at an occupational therapy clinic. Though she had known the young aide only about six months, she saw the potential Sargent presented. “I was really looking for someone who wasn’t afraid to take chances, and she wasn’t afraid to do the hard work,” she recalls. “What she has contributed is more than I expected from someone who was new in my life.”
Listening to Sargent, it sounds like a fine match. “I love getting to build those relationships with the community and all of the people that get to experience this place. I love working with Cassie,” she says. “It’s probably been one of the best things that I’ve ever done in my life. I see nothing but this place in my future.”•
Sensory Innovations and Breslin Occupational Therapy Services
20 Hilltop Drive, Suite A, Redding
www.sensoryinnovations.org
(530) 780-5559
Hours: Monday-Friday 9 am-5 pm; Saturday-Sunday, 9 am-3 pm
