Moyna Talcer Consultant Occupational Therapist

08/12/2025

I am now on leave until the end of January 2026. As I close my clinic doors on 2025, I wanted to say a huge thank you to all the incrediable clients and famalies who I have had the pleasure of supporting this year.

There have been so many brilliant moments, successes and so much progress achieved in therapy, skills have been learnt, autonomy has been achieved and many famalies and clients have developed a deeper sense of knowledge about their needs and the supports that make life more accessiable.

I have been an Occupational Therapist for over 20 years now and I can honestly say that I still, to this very day, consider my job a privilege. I still have a deep passion to ensure each person I meet, can learn about their unique needs and strengths and can live a life in accordance with their own passion and drive.

I have been compleatly spoilt with thank you gifts from my clients and their famalies and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year in 2026.

05/12/2025

04/12/2025

🎶 🎼🎹🎶🎵🎹🎶🎵🎼🪗🥁🪗🎻

As an occupational therapist, I often highlight creative, meaningful activities that support sensory integration, motor coordination, emotional regulation — and overall brain health. Music, and especially playing a keyboard or piano, is one of the most powerful of those activities.

🧠 Music & Sensory Integration

Music is inherently multisensory: you’re listening, possibly reading notation, watching your hands, feeling the keys under your fingers, coordinating movement — all at once. This kind of multisensory engagement can help strengthen the brain’s ability to integrate sensory information from different channels (hearing, touch, vision).

For children (or adults) who experience difficulties with sensory processing — ie sensory “overload” — music can help by providing structured, predictable sensory input in a safe, calming context. Over time this can support sensory system plasticity, boost confidence, and improve communication and social skills.

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Playing piano or keyboard engages many parts of the brain simultaneously — auditory, motor, visual, memory, planning, coordination. This kind of “whole-brain workout” supports neural connectivity and brain plasticity.

Research has shown that learning piano can lead to structural and functional changes in the brain. For example, increased white-matter integrity (improved communication between brain regions), greater grey matter density in regions tied to auditory processing and motor function, and enhanced coordination between the two hemispheres.

Cognitive benefits often include improved working memory, better attention, enhanced executive functions (planning, multitasking, decision-making), and improved audio-visual processing.

Even short-term piano lessons (for example, weekly lessons over a few months) can improve how the brain processes combined audio-visual information — and can have mood-boosting, stress-reducing effects too!

Because playing music activates so many brain systems, it builds what neuroscientists call “cognitive reserve” — meaning a greater capacity for the brain to adapt, compensate, and stay resilient against age-related decline.

This evening, I was treated to an evening of Jazz with the Phil Merrimen Jazz Trio! Here is a little taster for your ears and brain. See if you recognise the piece......

You know you're an Occupational Therapist when you spend a lot of time during the stunning performance being impressed at the drummers perfect postural control and poise and pondering on the sheer volume of specialised neuralpathways the pianists tactile/ somatosensory system must have as a result of all those years of practice.

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04/12/2025

This term we have been working on refinement of fine motor skills relating to scissor use. As you can see, the blue circles were cut out in September and the pink were cut out today, there is an improvement in the smoothness of the cut motion and bilateral hand use has also improved to facilitate this action. Our target was to cut around the hand drawn circle within 3mm of the boundary line. Achieved.

03/12/2025

✨ The Benefits of Having an Autism or Neurodivergent Diagnosis ✨

I get asked a lot, what is the point of a label? Why do they need a diagnosis? Won't it cause stigma?

For many people, receiving a diagnosis isn’t about labels — it’s about language, understanding, and belonging. Diagnosis can be the key that unlocks support, self-acceptance, and a brighter, more aligned future. Neurodivergence is not something to “fix” — it is a difference to be recognised, celebrated and supported.

In fact research has found that a diagnosis can act as a protective factor for mental health when accompanied by acceptance.

Here are some powerful benefits a diagnosis can offer:

🔹 Self-understanding – A diagnosis helps people make sense of their experiences, strengths and challenges. It gives a framework that supports identity and self-awareness.

🔹 Access to support – Many services and provided on a diagnosis only criteria, accommodations, educational support plans, therapies and workplace adjustments.

🔹 Reduces self-blame – Instead of feeling “too fussy”, “too much”, “too sensitive”, “not enough” — a diagnosis reframes behaviours as neurological differences rather than personal failings.

🔹 Celebrates strengths – Many neurodivergent people have incredible creativity, deep focus, unique problem-solving, passion-led learning, empathy and authenticity. Recognition empowers these strengths.

🔹 Community & belonging – Helps individuals and families connect with others who think, feel and experience the world similarly. No longer “the only one”— there’s a tribe. In fact my own research highlighted the importance of finding your tribe for wellbeing.

🔹 Advocacy & rights – Enables people to self-advocate, request reasonable adjustments and navigate systems with confidence. Knowledge is power.

🔹 Validation – The relief of knowing “there’s a reason I am this way.” It affirms identity instead of masking or forcing conformity.

🔹 Supports mental well-being – With understanding comes compassion, reduced anxiety, and the power to support regulation instead of pushing through burnout.

Neurodivergence is not a deficit, but it feels like one when the correct supports, environments and social understanding is missing.

Image by

02/12/2025

Session 2 in the Hyperbaric oxygen chamber at . HBOT benefits include:

✨️Calms an overactive sympathetic nervous system, helping move the body out of “fight or flight” and into a more regulated state.

✨️Supports parasympathetic activation, which promotes rest, digestion, emotional balance, and deep physiological calm.

✨️Reduces neuroinflammation, which is increasingly linked to anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and cognitive overwhelm.

✨️Enhances oxygen delivery to the brain, improving clarity, focus, and cognitive processing—often reducing the fog that accompanies anxiety.

✨️Improves mitochondrial efficiency, stabilising energy levels and reducing the feeling of being overstimulated or depleted.

✨️Promotes autonomic nervous system balance, helping the body become more adaptable to stress.

✨️Increases availability of neurotransmitters involved in calm and mood regulation, including serotonin and GABA (indirect supportive effect).

✨️Supports healing of stress-related damage, including oxidative stress and elevated cortisol levels.

✨️Enhances sleep quality, which is often impaired in those with anxiety and directly influences nervous system resilience.

✨️Boosts neuroplasticity, making the brain more capable of relearning safety, emotional regulation, and new patterns of response.

✨️Provides a controlled sensory environment, which can act as a therapeutic ‘reset’ for individuals with sensory overload or chronic stress.

✨️Improves vagal tone, supporting better emotional regulation, stress recovery, and heart–brain coherence.

✨️Reduces physiological symptoms of anxiety, such as rapid breathing, inflammation, and muscle tension.

✨️Supports trauma-related recovery, helping calm hyperarousal and aiding body–mind integration (often used adjunctively with therapy).

✨ Promotes woumd healing.

Since the initial session, I've been looking at research to support doseage, and between 25 to 30 sessions seems to offer most benefits. I look forward to the ongoing benefits.

I am looking into the benefits of HBOT for neurodivergent people to manage stress and nervous system over response. So far, the reading suggests this may prove very beneficial.

02/12/2025

How neuroaffirming is your work place? The chances are most workplaces will have neurodivergent employees who will benefit from specific accomodations to reduce barriers to them accessing the workplace on par with their peers. Here is a great list of accomodations that often benefit neurodivergent people in the workplace. Which ones do you currently offer?

Image by Lived Experience Educator

01/12/2025

If you wanted to try out Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, my collegue, Shaz is offering a free session at his clinic in Banstead! This is the therapy I am currently trialling and I can honestly say its made a big difference in one session. I felt like I had slept for weeks. Im going again tomorrow and will report back!

01/12/2025

These 2 photos, show the progress in handwriting that is possiable following 8 weeks Sensory Integration Therapy.

The top image shows writing that has little to no spacing, reversal of letters (z) and letter confusion (aag instead of dog), and missing letters (bown instead of brown). The child produced 3 scentances written in 3 minutes. This was taken at time of assessment.

The second image, taken following 8 weeks of therapy, shows improvements in letter and word spacing, improved legiability, correct word copying, increased volume and stamina (5 scentances in 3 minutes), and no reversals.

In school this child is now surprising their teachers in the volume of work they are able to produce within the same time and also in the quality of their work.

This was achieved through a sound underpinning knowledge of the neurological pathways and sensory inputs that were needed in order to improve this skill. Sessions were child led, intrinsically motivating for the child because we used their interests and delivered through sensory integration therapy.