A NOTE FROM TANYA I’d like to share with you how the oldest group in the school starts the day. At a quarter to nine the children are usually out in the grounds, letting out the chooks and ducks, moving the goats and sheep to their day paddock, and catching the ponies and putting on headstalls and lead ropes in order to tether them around the grounds for feeding. Some of them sweep the volley-ball court or parts of the asphalt area. The children then come into their room, take their books and read silently on the couches until they’ve all returned from their jobs. Then as they hear the sound of the Tibetan singing bowl, they close their books, shut their eyes and focus on this sound until it has completely disappeared. Only then do we start our morning meeting, which is chaired and minuted by the children. ‘Mindfulness’ is the current term that educationalists are using to describe a variety of meditative activities, which are being adopted in many mainstream schools as well as the alternative ones and research has proven that it reduces stress and improves work performance. It has also been interesting to observe over the year how the children have gradually become more adept at this. In the early stages some were wary and didn’t really relax or shut their eyes. As the year has progressed this has slowly changed and we can really ‘feel’ the different atmosphere that exists when a group of people share the same focus. Each teacher in our school implements their own version of mindfulness and our recent visitors, the Maharishi school shared with us their use of the yoga exercise ‘Greet to the Sun’ at the start of their morning and afternoon sessions. How do you start your workday? Tanya
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:27:44 +0000
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