In the years fifty, in Czechoslovakia, Vaclàv Vojta, a neurologist concerned by the motor rehabilitation, began the long way from the first empirical attempts to the current therapeutic concept. This evolution has continued in Germany where V. Vojta had emigrated in1968. From Munich, an international system of collaboration and formation has gradually developed in Europe and in the whole world. The research committed by the Professor V. Vojta has always comprised two simultaneous ways. The neurological investigation, led to the elaboration of an evaluation methodology of the child development, of its dynamics, and its main disorders. V. Vojta has always considered the nervous system as an open system, endowed with a basic, phylogenetic organization, but also with a receptivity to various stimulations able to affect its functioning and even to have an effect on its anatomical maturation. The ” reflex locomotion” gives physically shape to the conjugation of these two complementary aspects, it constitutes the axis major of an original therapeutic protocol that has first intended to the children with Cerebral palsy ( CP). In the course of years, the constant refinement of the observation and the theoretical reasoning, based on the practical experience of an increasing and dynamic team, operating in multiple sectors of activity, has contributed to a considerable widening of the indication field : peripheral or central neurological disorders of the child from the neonatal stage up to the adult, and a majority of disorders concerning the loco-motor anatomical system.
The “Vojta Method” is for the physician a precious clinic tool for the evaluation of the child development from birth, and a reliable element of diagnosis. It is for the physiotherapist an efficient global therapy which can be used from the first days of life, in a preventive or curative intention. The treatment based on the reflex locomotion contributes to:
Modify the reflex activity of the young child and to orient the neuro-motor development in a more physiological direction, by the induction of a different central neurological activity that supplies to the patient a new corporal perception. The muscular “proprioception” plays here a very important part.
Modify the spinal automatisms in lesions of the spinal cord .
Control the breathing in order to increase the vital capacity.
Control the neuro-vegetative reactions , and promote an harmonious growth of the loco-motor anatomical system .
Prevent the orthopedic degradation, frequent in severe pathological situations.
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