I am working hard on keeping up myself! My conference The Juggling Act of Life – wellness in a complex world seems to be increasingly adequate in this ever intensifying epoch.
Fortunately our fast changing times also open the sky (the one that used to be the limit…) to some never dreamed-off opportunities to improve the planet at large, starting with the only place to start; each one of our own personal lives.
Recently I discovered two inter-related organisations that have me jump up & down from excitement: the Institute of HeartMath
Then on top of that they are working on – for me still mind blowing – scientific apparatus that can measure the collective state of a whole group, even of large groups.
You will find lots of info about the spectacular equipment they have developed and their wonder-full projects on their web sites. Their mission statement is to inspire people to create first individually “coherent states” – will tell you in a sec how they do this - in order to create “social coherence” in groups and ultimately “global coherence”. Yes, for the whole planet…
This is how I ended my last 11-11-11 blog (Take 3C: World Day of Interconnectedness & Worldshift Movement):
We never had the chance to tap into the full potentials of our individual Webs, our specific group Webs and the WEB OF LIFE of our planet at large.
And now we do. Now is the time to first recognize that everything in Life is interconnected and then to USE the enormous ALCHEMISTIC FORCE this phenomenon of Interdependency offers us, individually, collectively and globally.
The GCI members put themselves - and they have already inspired many people in all parts of the world to do the same - in an optimal state of being they call PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL COHERENCE. They do this through meditation activities that focus on the heart. They sustain a strong positive emotional state for a period of time and by doing so all other bodily systems - cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, respiratory, nervous, etc. - start to synchronise with this peaceful heart pulse. They have scientifically proven that our heart radiance, our feeling gòòòd, is INTERDEPENDENT with all our other bodily systems!
The model we use in Quantum Physical Education to represent this interdependency is the WEB, as you can see in the illustration in the top right corner of this page. We focus primarily on five interdependent aspects we function with and use the model BODY for these aspects; if you nourish them well they become healthy, if you don’t they become weak or even sick.
This FIVE BODY WEB approach (5BW) is a vulgarization of a seven Body Web approach from an old Japanese philosophical school. We’ll look at all this in later blogs. As you can see in the subtitle of my approach, I focus on “the ABC of INTERDEPENDENCY”. The rest of the alphabet comes later. Every true learning process starts with our own unique first steps initiating our own unique step-by-step never-ending development.
You know why I am jumping up & down since I first heard about the IHM & GCI? I am so excited, because this state of PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL COHERENCE they describe is EXACTLY the same state of being I have been talking about in all these blogs. It is the well functioning 5 Body Web I have studied (and still try to experience more & more) for the last 30 years. It is that state the top-of-the-top athletes are in when they create their magical plays. It is that optimal state of being I have inspired my students and players to discover in sports & arts in the last 20 years. It has been called being in The Zone, experiencing Flow, at the Université de Quebec à Montréal I called it; l’expérience somagique and now in QPE; playing with 5 bodies at the same time...!
The IHM & GCI use the EMOTIONAL BODY as the “entrance point” for establishing a fully functioning 5BW. Their basic workshops are aimed at emotionally mature people who are familiar with meditation practises. Furthermore they have developed programs, based on the same heart meditation experiences combined with sophisticated feedback technology, people can use in a variety of domains.
QPE’s approach is COMPLEMENTARY to the one of the IHM & GCI. We don’t use meditation, but a wide variety of PLAY activities, but our objective is exactly the same; creating states of psycho-physiological coherence. We use our BALL (or whatever other object we use in our sport or form of art) as source of feedback for our state of being. We inspire our players and students to create a solid 5BW and sustain that state of being when practising increasingly harder tricks.
The development of this 5BW approach and its ongoing fine-tuning comes from two decades of giving workshops in settings where there was often little openness to PLAY (see my last blog). That is why in group practise we offer “alternative entrance points” to start reinforcing everybody’s Inner Web. Often we first have to help our students or players to get rid of NEGATIVE PEER PRESSURE and of FEAR OF FAILURE. When those obstacles are gone, sooner or later INTRINSIC MOTIVATION kicks in and our students or players start to FEEL GÒÒÒD. At that point, if we would start measuring our heart activities and related brain waves it would show the same diagrams on the emWave screens of the IHM & the GCI as those during their heart focused meditations!!!
I make this as practical as possible for large groups of young people by using posters on the walls of the workshops. Here is an example of one of those posters, plus a brief history on how I have integrated various domains in my sports practise in order to experience PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL COHERENCE more & more:
In the clip you heard me describe some of the domains I have integrated in my sports practise, like dance, martial arts, the psycho-corporal approaches…. You can do that too! Quantum Physical Education is about discovering your Inner Teacher or Inner Coach, even when you are in school or member of a sports club or involved in any other organisation. It just takes a healthy CREATIVE BODY to apply your own unique experiences acquired in other domains in anything new you are learning, even when you are following a “fixed” program of a teacher or coach.
For the posters I use in both the Social Circus as the GOLDENBALL workshops I have chosen only a couple of the ingredients that help nourish each of our bodies. The poster is truly practical... your ball gives you feedback about how each aspect of each body influences our ball handling directly!
What is so great about the scientific projects of the Institute of HeartMath and the Global Coherence Initiative is that there is NO MORE DENYING about the fact that:
*every human being functions through various interdependent dimensions
*to use this interdependency in beneficial ways we first have to get “out of our head”
*we are an interdependent part of our social environment.
Quantum Physical Education is also based on these facts and so are other integral approaches. However it looks like the traditional schools systems (and the sports world) need to get confronted with PROOF… scientific proof… yes, the same science our educational systems are based on.
As you have seen in my former blogs, I have been sending links to Ken Robinson’s work around. However I have noticed that even a great Voice as Sir Ken does not have much impact on public education “as a whole”. So let’s now send the web sites of the Institute of HeartMath and the Global Coherence Initiative to all people around us, especially our parents, teachers, coaches….
Why?
Because the “adult world” (especially the decision makers; the politicians and administrators) needs SCIENTIFIC PROOF that the “old world” is in dire need to be transformed. Proof that comes from the same scientific approaches education is based on.
Our planet is in turmoil. We all need to realize that THE MAIN PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE ON OUR ENDANGERED PLANET ARE THE NEW GENERATIONS.
Here we are in May 2012; let’s carefully listen to them:
