EMPOWERMENT+SCIENCE=RESILIENCE
POWER OF NOW…
“Snakes and Ladders”-Resilience Guide
When working with the children they would often be intensifying about something that happened to them in the past or dreading something in the future and time and time again I would repeat the same words...
“please stop focusing on the past or future but focus on the now, right here right now and lets workout what we can do now, not back there or into a future we haven’t go to yet.”
Every time I visited the airport I would go and have a good look in the bookshops to see what latest self-development books had been recently published. I had often found books with really great cutting edge ideas on those book shelves.
On one of my many trips over to the east coast of Australia to visit my daughters I found the perfect book; “The Power of NOW” by Eckhart Tolle on one of those airport bookshelves.
What I read in the first half of that book was profound on many levels for me and all the adult population but how was I going to translate those concepts into child bite pieces?
AHHHH the power of asking a question.
Just by asking that question was enough and over the months to come the way to reduce and simplify those main concepts gleaned from the book The Power of Now slowly emerged into child size bits.
Getting the children to close their eyes to go into their inside world and ask their own brain what it wanted to think about as they watched it was easy. Every child loved the process and when they were asked to come back into the outside world and share what their brain wanted to think about they all would share happily.
After the children had opened their eyes and returned to the outside world I would then ask them “Who are you; the thinking brain or the watcher brain? I could see each child stop and think deeply before answering me.
Most of the time the children would reply that they were the “thinking brain” and I would then explain that they were actually the “watcher brain”.
That was easy, very easy but then I had to come up with a metaphor, some form of symbol the child’s brain could grasp onto to understand why and what this all meant for them as a child.
What grew out of that fertile creative moment was the need to explain to the child that the “thinking brain” was like a beautiful horse and the “watcher brain” was a smart and very wise rider.
Now the children could follow where ever their imaginations could take this story, this metaphor. The power of storytelling won out again and all I had to do from now on was follow where each child wanted to go with the story line/metaphor and how they could apply it in their daily lives.
Asking each child to first describe what kind of horse they were and getting them to personalise their own horse “thinking brain” as something beautiful and magical and then asking them what would happen if I brought a horse into the library or classroom?
A horse running free in their school or their own house would cause chaos in one way or another and that’s what their “thinking brain” without a rider was doing when they were fighting or having a rage attack or swearing.
The children now could make sense of why they behaved the way they were without being shamed, blamed, made to feel hopelessness and could own their own actions without fear.
As each individual child was grasping their “thinking brain” horse reality I could then gently describe the role of their rider “watcher brain”.
The “watcher brains” roles and what each unique individual child’s rider brain needed to learn to be able to develop and embrace their own higher potentials could be slowly shared over the weeks to come every time their horse would be running free and causing chaos.
Their own unique inner nobility could finally find a way to start to shine and strengthen.
EMPOWERMENT+SCIENCE=RESILIENCE
POWER OF NOW…
“Snakes and Ladders”-Resilience Guide
When working with the children they would often be intensifying about something that happened to them in the past or dreading something in the future and time and time again I would repeat the same words...
“please stop focusing on the past or future but focus on the now, right here right now and lets workout what we can do now, not back there or into a future we haven’t go to yet.”
Every time I visited the airport I would go and have a good look in the bookshops to see what latest self-development books had been recently published. I had often found books with really great cutting edge ideas on those book shelves.
On one of my many trips over to the east coast of Australia to visit my daughters I found the perfect book; “The Power of NOW” by Eckhart Tolle on one of those airport bookshelves.
What I read in the first half of that book was profound on many levels for me and all the adult population but how was I going to translate those concepts into child bite pieces?
AHHHH the power of asking a question.
Just by asking that question was enough and over the months to come the way to reduce and simplify those main concepts gleaned from the book The Power of Now slowly emerged into child size bits.
Getting the children to close their eyes to go into their inside world and ask their own brain what it wanted to think about as they watched it was easy. Every child loved the process and when they were asked to come back into the outside world and share what their brain wanted to think about they all would share happily.
After the children had opened their eyes and returned to the outside world I would then ask them “Who are you; the thinking brain or the watcher brain? I could see each child stop and think deeply before answering me.
Most of the time the children would reply that they were the “thinking brain” and I would then explain that they were actually the “watcher brain”.
That was easy, very easy but then I had to come up with a metaphor, some form of symbol the child’s brain could grasp onto to understand why and what this all meant for them as a child.
What grew out of that fertile creative moment was the need to explain to the child that the “thinking brain” was like a beautiful horse and the “watcher brain” was a smart and very wise rider.
Now the children could follow where ever their imaginations could take this story, this metaphor. The power of storytelling won out again and all I had to do from now on was follow where each child wanted to go with the story line/metaphor and how they could apply it in their daily lives.
Asking each child to first describe what kind of horse they were and getting them to personalise their own horse “thinking brain” as something beautiful and magical and then asking them what would happen if I brought a horse into the library or classroom?
A horse running free in their school or their own house would cause chaos in one way or another and that’s what their “thinking brain” without a rider was doing when they were fighting or having a rage attack or swearing.
The children now could make sense of why they behaved the way they were without being shamed, blamed, made to feel hopelessness and could own their own actions without fear.
As each individual child was grasping their “thinking brain” horse reality I could then gently describe the role of their rider “watcher brain”.
The “watcher brains” roles and what each unique individual child’s rider brain needed to learn to be able to develop and embrace their own higher potentials could be slowly shared over the weeks to come every time their horse would be running free and causing chaos.
Their own unique inner nobility could finally find a way to start to shine and strengthen.