3
OPEN SPACE WORKSHOP
12. International Focusing Conference
Hohenwart, May 10. - 14. 2000
TOPIC
Children (Us!) and
Spirituality
in Relation to Focusing.
Initiator:
Claire Schenk
Partners:
Anna Jean Bradley
Michael Kornwinkler
Report
Unfortunately the first draft of this report was lost due to technical errors!!!!
Please see the chart No. 3 (not available on webpage) for an overview of the basic ideas and senses that came from this topic, and to see how we felt these parts related to each other.
Through the original mini-workshop one thing to emerge was that children are born with an intact connection to Spirit and to an inner sensing mechanism, similar to that of living from the Felt Sense. With the child being "all knowing" of what its needs actually are in all senses of its life.
How can we as parents then, help prevent these integral parts of our children, from disassociating and becoming life long Focusing projects.
Maybe the answer lies in allowing our children to have their basic needs met. For that childhood exuberance to be fully satiated through interaction with the physical world, until the child feels complete and has formed a natural relationship between itself and the Earth. For the child to be able to Play in a way that he/she was always intended to Play, through manipulation of its physical reality, in readiness for more abstract ways of reasoning, that evolve on the foundations of this more concrete type of play.
That children aren't expected to be mini-adults at the age of 7, and to be able to sit for hours absorbing abstract material that is "empty" to the developing brain that is primed for physical manipulation. What does this do to the Self? To our sense of rightness and to a child who is unable to help themselves.
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