Therapies & Programs

Programs

Our case study research is showing the Davis™ Approach is gentle, respectful and powerful. It sits within our philosophy of embracing and celebrating Autism and neurodiversity, respecting every individual’s unique journey and building on strengths to overcome challenges.

We provide the Davis Approach to people who identify as Autistic and Neurodivergent or who seek assistance because they feel ‘stuck’ in life due to problems on repeat. Building Davis abstract life concepts in 3D is helping to improve the self-concept and interpersonal boundaries of our research participants. It is also helping to shift anxiety, social anxiety, perfectionism, over-thinking, time management, procrastination, problems with sequencing daily life, and school ‘I can’t’.

The Davis™ Autism Approach - Nurturing the Seeds of Genius: a non-invasive, gentle approach, created by an American Autist Ron Davis, that aims to empower people with Autism, and their families, to better navigate their way through life and draw out the potential within. This method may be particularly appealing for people with Autism who generally function very highly but are experiencing high levels of stress, anxiety, social avoidance and sensory overload. There are three main parts (in order) to this program: helping the person with Autism to individuate by building a stronger sense of self; secondly, by helping them to develop their identity in the world by exploring life's lessons and, thirdly, enhancing the person's ability to integrate socially by looking at different types of relationships and how they operate.

The Davis Concepts for Life Program: a ground breaking new program for people (who do NOT have Autism) who want to create meaningful change in the way that they function in daily life. This program was developed from feedback from parents and carers of Autists and also Davis Autism Facilitators who had noticed that, in helping their Autistic clients, their own lives were considerably better after doing the clay work.

This program aims to help people to consolidate their personal identity, to:

• Enhance their sense of Self

• Be more flexible Manage their stress and anxiety effectively Increase their focus

• Be more organised

• Create more order in their life Improve their relationships

• Make better decisions Take more/less appropriate responsibility  

How does it work?
The developers of the Davis Autism Approach (DAA) believe their program is effective because it provides people who identify as having Autism or Autistic traits (or attentional concerns) with the foundational tools to create change in their own lives. The DAA aims to 'plant the seeds' that will enable change, but the resulting growth that comes for each participant is natural and nurtured by their unique capacity and inclinations.

They argue that Autism is not an impairment of intellect or cognition, but a problem with 'integration'. The person has not been able to integrate new information and experiences into their life in the same way as non-Autists. 'As the Autist grows and develops, she creates barriers because she cannot develop a set of thoughts and behaviors that the non-Autistic world just takes for granted. The Davis Program provides the missing elements in a simple and direct way that is natural to the person's innate learning style - and these elements lay a path to full integration of knowledge, wisdom and understanding to successfully navigate life' (Marshall and Davis, Autism and the Seeds of Change, 2012) 3 They also believe these Davis Life Concepts are universally applicable - thus they are likely to smooth the developmental pathway (the hiccups) of people who do not identify as Autistic but who are noticing troublesome stresses and anxieties in managing daily life.

What actually happens in the two programs?
Some of the content, delivery and timing of the programs differs, but the approach, as it is a developmental method that applies to all people, is similar. It is a guided journey through a series of almost 50 Life Concepts (such as Me, Change, Consequence, Cause and Effect, Intention, Motivation, Order and Disorder, Responsibility) that are introduced by the facilitator, modelled in clay by the facilitator and then modelled by the participant, 'mastered' in sessions and then explored as they exist in real life. The programs have been delivered at the pace and the frequency to suit the needs and capacities of each of our study participants (this is particularly important for people with Autistic traits undertaking the DAA who are required to have a support person, who undertake all activities with direct support from the facilitator and may require modifications in order to complete the program successfully). Many highly able participants, those who undertake the Davis Life Concepts Program, enjoy working independently throughout the program and often choose to do additional exploration in their own way outside of sessions.

So who is Ron Davis?
Ron is an American engineer who was born 'deeply autistic' and did not speak in childhood. Highly visual but profoundly confused by the world around him, he modelled the behaviors of others by building tiny 'clay' models with red dirt and water. Around age 9, and against the odds, he started to come out of his 'autistic void' and began to speak. Later, aged 17, his IQ was measured at 137 (exceptional intelligence, in the top two percent of the population). At this time, speech therapy made it possible for him to speak coherently but he was unable to read due to severe dyslexia. He was functionally illiterate until age 38 and even though he achieved success as an engineer and businessman, he was hiding from others that he could not read or write.

Determined to try to help himself, Ron performed an experiment on his own perceptions that profoundly changed the way he experienced reality. The breakthrough enabled him to correct and control the involuntary perceptual distortions, which were at the root of his dyslexia. For the first time in his life, he was able to read a book, cover to cover, without struggling. You may have heard of the Davis Dyslexia Program, an internationally available intervention teaching dyslexic students how to recognize and control the mental state that leads to distorted and confused perceptions of letters, words and numerals.

From there, Ron began working on his Autism, and this is his explanation of his process (in his words): "Somehow, around the age of nine, I began to individuate and develop out of the state of oblivion—out of the void. In hindsight, I can see there was about an 4 eleven-year delay in my early development. Also, in hindsight, I can see there were three phases that I had to go through to become a human being. First, I had to individuate, I had to stop being everything and nothing and become just one thing, my body.

Second, I had to develop an identity for the thing I had become. And third, I had to adapt to the world of being human and become socially integrated. So there are three phases our “seed” must go through in the process of becoming human— individuation—identity development—and social integration. I think all “normal” humans, in the first few years of life, go through this same sequence naturally. Although identity development and social integration are never totally completed, there has to be enough to allow the individual to exist as a human being. I also think that some individuals either fail to start or sufficiently complete one or more of these three phases, and therein we can find autism".