Active Balance Repatterning Method First Began
Discover how Dennis Bartram turned decades of movement experience into a method for helping the body find better choices.
Why The Active Balance Repatterning Method Matters
Understanding where the method began helps you see why Active Balance looks beyond the painful area.
How Active Balance Repatterning Connected The Whole Body
You can begin to recognise how movement, reflexes and balance influence one another.
What The Active Balance Repatterning Method Revealed
The body may not be broken; it may simply be relying upon an old protective pattern.
How The Active Balance Repatterning Method First Began
This page explains how Dennis Bartram combined martial arts movement, muscle testing, and reflex kinesiology into the Active Balance Repatterning Method, a practical approach to help the body reorganise itself for better function.
A certificate may seem insignificant. Yet this diploma marks a turning point in Dennis Bartram’s work. Titled Reciprocal Reflex Repatterning Diploma, it covers four interconnected subjects: body movement, muscle testing, reflex kinesiology, and reflex repatterning.
These subjects represent more than credentials. They show Dennis integrating movement, reflexes, assessment, and retraining. This bridged his earlier Tai Jutsu teaching and the broader Active Balance method for movement, rehab, learning, performance, and self-maintenance.
The Active Balance Repatterning Method Reveals Its Origins
You can begin to see, through the steps described below, how one idea slowly became a complete system.
Dennis did not begin with a collection of isolated techniques. His understanding developed through decades of observing real bodies in motion. Martial arts taught him that movement could not be separated into individual muscles, as every action depended upon timing, balance, awareness, and whole-body coordination.
A person may appear strong yet lose strength when balance shifts, or know the right movement but struggle to perform it smoothly. These patterns suggest that the nervous system can override conscious intention.
That insight became central to the development of the future Active Balance Repatterning Method. Instead of only asking which muscle was weak or which joint was painful, Dennis began examining how the whole body responded to movement. The problem was not just effort: the body might have learned an automatic, protective, or inefficient response.
Martial Movement Shaped Active Balance Repatterning Method
Imagine movement becoming easier as the whole body starts to cooperate.
Tai Jutsu gave Dennis a live laboratory to study natural movement. Balance, direction, posture, and reflexes had direct effects. When movement was organised, action became effortless; when it wasn’t, even strong muscles seemed awkward or weak.
This taught Dennis that power came from cooperation among the body’s parts at the right moment. Feet, legs, pelvis, spine, shoulders, eyes, and balance systems had to share information. Movement became efficient when the body responded as a coordinated unit.
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The same principle applies beyond martial arts. Everyday tasks, such as standing, reaching and walking, require coordination. They may seem simple, but the nervous system must automatically control balance, weight shifts, muscle tone, and awareness.
Dennis saw these principles could help not just martial artists but those recovering from pain, facing movement challenges, or learning difficulties. The setting changes, but the need for better organisation remains.
Body Movement Guided The Active Balance Repatterning Method
You may feel the difference when movement is observed rather than forced.
Body movement tops the diploma for a reason. Movement wasn’t tacked on after assessment; it was information. How someone stood, turned, reached, breathed, or shifted weight revealed cooperation or compensation.
Compensation is not necessarily a mistake. It is often the body’s best available solution at that moment. When the nervous system senses uncertainty, restriction or threat, it may tighten one area, avoid another or redirect movement elsewhere. The person then experiences stiffness, weakness, imbalance or discomfort without understanding why.
Traditional methods often target the pain directly. Dennis learned to look past the symptom. A shoulder issue could involve ribs, pelvis, feet, or reflexes. Restricted hips might affect rotation. Poor foot input could influence head and eye control.
Therefore, the developing Active Balance Repatterning Method sought relationships rather than isolated faults, shifting the focus from fighting the body to understanding its organisation.
Muscle Testing Supported Active Balance Repatterning Method
Notice how the body can communicate before words explain the problem.
Muscle testing, second on the diploma, isn’t just about strength. Used well, it explores how the nervous system reacts when posture, movement, senses, or position shift. It offers another way to listen to the body.
A muscle might test strongly in one position and appear less organised in another. The change could suggest that the issue was not the muscle tissue alone. Balance information, joint position, reflex activity or another part of the movement chain might be influencing the response.
People often report one symptom but can’t describe its cause. Their leg feels weak, a shoulder gives way, or balance falters. Standard-strength exercises may not help; the body already generates force under certain conditions.
The real question becomes: Why is that force not available when the person needs it?
Muscle testing became part of a broader conversation in the method. It helped Dennis see if movement was organised or interrupted by another pattern.
Reflex Kinesiology Expanded The Repatterning Method
You can picture hidden movement patterns gradually becoming visible.
Reflex kinesiology, the third on the diploma, involves unconscious reflexes that guide posture, balance, and movement. These systems go unnoticed until they misfire.
When reflexes become overprotective, delayed, or poorly integrated, the body feels unpredictable. You can command yourself to relax or move well, but automatic reactions persist. Instruction alone rarely shifts a deep movement habit.
Dennis knew you can’t simply instruct away every pattern. The body needs safe, organised, repeatable experiences. Reflex kinesiology explored automatic responses and suggested better options.
This marked a major step for the Active Balance Repatterning Method. The focus shifted from correcting posture to improving the underlying organisation, enabling posture and movement to change naturally.
Active Balance Repatterning Creates New Options
Feel the possibility of movement becoming calmer, lighter and more dependable.
The last subject is reflex repatterning, which unites earlier steps. Body movement revealed issues. Muscle testing gauged response. Reflex kinesiology showed automatic patterns. Repatterning offered the body new options.
The word “repatterning” is crucial because it does not suggest that the body is broken. A pattern may once have been useful. It may have developed after injury, stress, fear, repetitive work or years of compensation. The problem begins when that same pattern continues long after the original need has passed.
Repatterning doesn’t force change. It offers the nervous system a clearer option. With the right movement, sensory input, and guidance, the body recognises it can choose a new strategy.
Dennis’s Active Balance teaching followed this idea: don’t fight the body, offer it better choices.
The certificate records more than just course completion; it captures the moment when Dennis’s ideas became a structured method that others could study and apply. It marks the foundation of a system built on movement, assessment, reflexes, and whole-body reorganisation.
And that framework would eventually grow into something much larger.
Discover What Active Balance Repatterning Can Mean For You
The next step is not to force your body harder, but to help it rediscover better movement choices.
The history behind the Active Balance Repatterning Method matters because the same principles still apply to people today. Many adults live with stiffness, poor balance, restricted movement or recurring discomfort and assume the only answer is to push harder. Yet effort alone does not always change the pattern beneath the problem.
Your body may have spent years adapting to old injuries, demanding work, stress, fear of pain or reduced movement. Those adaptations may have helped you cope at the time. However, they can gradually become the automatic way you stand, walk, turn, reach and protect yourself.
Active Balance begins by respecting those protective patterns rather than attacking them. Gentle movement, improved awareness and clearer sensory information can help the nervous system recognise that another option is available. When the body feels safer and more organised, movement often feels lighter, calmer and more natural.
Dennis Bartram’s work has always focused on helping people understand the whole-body relationships behind their movement. Instead of treating one painful area as an isolated failure, the Active Balance Repatterning Method looks at how the feet, pelvis, spine, eyes, balance systems and reflex responses cooperate.
That wider view can be especially valuable after fifty, when many people are told to accept declining mobility as an unavoidable part of ageing. Age may influence recovery, but repeated patterns also shape how the body feels and performs each day. Better patterns can still be practised, reinforced and remembered.
The purpose is not perfection. It is to restore choices.
A body with more choices can adapt more easily. It can move without relying upon the same old compensation every time. That is where confidence begins to return, not through forcing change, but through experiencing movement that feels possible again.
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Dennis Bartram is the Director of the Active Balance Home or on the Go System Dennis’ journey began in 1969 when he qualified in Swedish remedial massage and in 1974, he began his practice in remedial sports massage and manipulative
