Work with children in the community and in Sicily
Urusvati School – Community of Living Ethics
Cittá dela Pieve – Italy, July of 2012
It was with great joy that we came to know Urusvati School, which purpose is to work with children and youngsters, having as a base the principles of the New Education.
The group activities, which occurred during summer, aim to promote the integration of personality, nourishing the individual development, the creativity and the guidance towards an ethic perspective on life.
Aligned with this mindset, we presented in July of 2012, to children and teachers at Urusvati in the programme Volare, a work based on Petho Sandor’s method of Physic-psychic Integration – Calatonia and Subtle Touches.
The Subtle Touches enabled an overture to experiences of resilience in the spectrum of consciousness, which are vital to the development and restoration of health. They generate profits in creativity, intuition and adaptive capacity of children and teenagers. Also, they enhance many cognitive functions such as attention, concentration, memory, reasoning, judgment and planning of actions.
The Touches also spawn the expansion of self-perception, sensibility, self-confidence and consciousness of oneself as a being who exists beyond a physical body. This aims to construct a resonant psychic space, which its organizing and repairing effect reverberates in the physical, psychic and ethereal body.
In our work with children we made use of a ludic language, adapted to their capacity of understanding and vocabulary. Concerned with that, we initiated the activities at Urusvati, constructing with the children and teachers a ludic atmosphere, singing together the song “Volare”. Subsequently, in order to sensitize the group, each one was invited to water paint a mandala.
The Analytic Psychology relates the symbology of mandalas to the universal symbology of the circle and the symbolic representation of the psyche and aids one’s consciousness, integrity and creation. Therefore, we conceived a relaxation, which consists in a combination of Dr. Sandor’s Subtle Touches and named it “pizza” relaxation, alluding to a mandala, given its circular shape.
Brought to bear by the painting of the mandalas, children and teachers in pairs could experience the “pizza” relaxation. It is done on the back through a sequence of touches and slidings forming big and small circles with the tip of the fingers and the palm of the hands. The “mandala-pizza” is finalized by drawing the symbol of the infinite with the tip of the fingers through one’s spine.
Reinforcing the group’s ludic atmosphere we concluded our work composing a human mandala by uniting children and teachers by the hand and feet, creating a beautiful star shaped circle. The observations reported by the children and teachers referred to a state of fostering, safety, respect and joy.
CATANIA, Sicily, Italy, July of 2014.
In response to the invitation of Dr. Carmelita Russo, neuro-psychiatrist, and embracing the trigger of Leli Khosravi and Mariuccia Sofia, we held two workshops in Catania in July of 2014: The Physic-psychic Integration – Calatonia and Subtle touch to children and teenagers.
On the first workshop, we worked with a group of 20 teenagers diagnosed with depression and eating disorders, as well as with the psychologists who are responsible for the individual and group care at Catania’s Hospital Psychiatric Ward.
By water painting mandalas, we could mobilize the free expression of creativity and the internal resources, which put into motion the mental energy in their most positive and creative aspects. Aspects which are often paralyzed when in states of depression or great Physic-psychological suffering.
Thenceforth, the group was divided in pairs and experienced a few sequences of subtle touches: sliding and swaying of superior and inferior members; touches of the right side and left side’s polarities; a fractionated decompression of the great articulations and subtle touches of the points of support – the feet and the head.
The reported observations made by the group referred to sensations of bigger relaxation in the body, alterations in the respiratory rhythm and perception of a change when handling with their nerves given the increase in sensibility.
The professionals who assisted the group observed a meaningful alteration in their atmosphere, which in the end, showed to have conquered more spontaneity and capacity to express sensations and emotions.
On the second workshop, dedicated to the psychologist, psychiatrists, neurologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists and educators, the goal was to share our studies and reflections on the contributions of the new researches on neuroscience. To us, those contributions consolidate the importance of Petho Sandor’s Calatonia and Subtle Touches as resources which can promote Physic-psychic Integration, restore patterns of emotional bonds and also stimulate physical, mental, psychic and spiritual development of children and adolescents in their families environments and at school.
We shared the observations about the effects and the physical and psychic repercussions which arose from experiencing a few sequences of the Subtle Touches: vibrations and sliding in the spine, fractioned decompression of the great and small articulations as well as in the extremities of the body – the feet and the head.
The workshops in Urusvati and in Catania greatly contributed to our experience along with the clinic path on the Physic-psychic Integration work of Petho Sandor. Calatonia and Subtle Touches are living symbols of transformation, which support human development.
