12 Principles of Intervention for Sensory Integration
The application of Ayres Sensory Integration® is based on evidence from carefully designed studies that adhere to intended principles, as well as from related neurobiological, psychological, and therapeutic research.  Occupational therapy experts from around the United States defined and identified the following 12 principles as core to sensory integration intervention:

  1. Qualified professional OT, PT, or SLP.
  2. Family-centered intervention plans, based on complete assessments and interpretation of the patterns of sensory integrative dysfunction; collaboration with significant people in the individual’s life; adherence to ethical and professional standards of practice.
  3. Safe environment that includes equipment that will provide tactile, vestibular (a system of the body that is responsible for maintaining balance, posture, and the body’s orientation in space), and proprioceptive (for sensing the motion and position of the body) sensations as well as opportunities for praxis.
  4. Activities rich in sensation, especially those that provide vestibular, tactile, and proprioceptive sensations and opportunities for integrating that information with other sensations such as visual and auditory.
  5. Activities that promote regulation of affect and alertness and provide the basis for attending to salient learning opportunities.
  6. Activities that promote optimal postural, oral-motor, and ocular motor control, including holding against gravity and maintaining control while moving through space.
  7. Activities that promote praxis, including organization of activities and self in time and space.
  8. Intervention strategies that provide the “just-right challenge.”
  9. Opportunities for the client to make adaptive responses to changing and increasingly complex environmental demands. Highlighted in Ayres Sensory Integration® intervention principles is the “somato-motor adaptive response,” which means that the individual is adaptive with the whole body, moving and interacting with people and things in three-dimentional space.
  10. Intrinsic motivation and drive to interact through pleasurable activities, in another word: play.
  11. Atmosphere of trust and respect engineered by the therapist through contingent interactions with the client (i.e. activities are negotiated, not pre-planned, and the therapist is responsive to altering the task, interaction, and environment based on the client’s responses).
  12. Intrinsic reward of the activities and the therapist’s ensuring the child’s success in whatever activities are attempted by altering them to meet the child’s abilities.
KidPower therapists treat a range of diagnoses, including:
  • sensory processing disorders
  • developmental dyspraxia
  • developmental delays
  • speech and language delays
  • articulation disorders
  • autism spectrum disorder
  • torticolis
  • neurological disorders
  • traumatic brain injury
  • trauma backgrounds
  • congenital disorders and syndromes
  • ongoing developmental monitoring of premature or medically at risk infants and children

The Premiere Sensory Integration

Clinic in New Mexico

What is Sensory Integration?
KidPower systematically applies Ayres Sensory Integration®, which is a theory developed by Jean Ayres, the occupational therapist and developmental psychologist who pioneered assessment and intervention for sensory integration dysfunction.  Ayres Sensory Integration® includes specific intervention concepts, principles and techniques as well as assessment of sensory integration dysfunction, patterns of sensory integration and praxis (the process of getting the idea, initiating, and completing new motor tasks) dysfunction.