Sensations, Sensibility, Senses …

This weekend we had an amazing speaker, Monsieur Phillipe Perennès.  Among all the other things that he was besides being a teacher, like all of our past speakers that are like renaissance men that were wise in many subjects, he has been and agriculture, clown and teacher.  Yes the one that impress me the most clown, of course in France where he is from clown has many more special characteristics than the typical slap comedy we are used to here.  He knew how to juggle things and was able to speak with whole body, giving an extra meaning to what he wanted to show us, and this was very important because the topic of the conferences was … The Senses.  Yes little did I know that when I learned the senses back when I was little was that I was taught only some of the senses.  Yes you read right in reality we have twelve senses and not five (or six to the women, since we have a six sense) like we were told.  I was amused how this was possible, something I haven’t heard before, this was very exiting, and of course got my entire attention. 

Basically we have exterior senses and interior ones, which work together like a team, in a rhythm like breathing.  We have corporeal senses or interior, middle senses but they are a medium a way to the sensing experience and the superior or social senses.  Basically we have senses that help us to relate with ourselves, senses that help us to relate to the nature and the world that surround us and senses that help us to relate with the rest of humanity. 

I will give a brief description of them, to give you some insight of it.  The senses that help us to relates to ourselves.  We start with our largest organ in the body, our skin, and that takes us to the first sense, the sense of touch (one of the original ones).  The sense of touch is not only in our hands we can feel with our whole body, toes, legs, belly, arms and even with our hair since our skin is also covered with tiny little hairs, in some cases not so little but you get the idea.  That is why is so important how we approach this sense since it is so exposed to everything that is outside of our body, and we also have to protected it.  The first thing that we ever experience in our body was by the sense of touch by our skin, which is why is so important the handling of the infant and how we touch it.  The skin is the exterior guardian of our body.  Now its counterpart sense number two, the sense of vitality, is the guardian of our interior body, is the sense of living.  Is the guardian of our internal organs, keeps them working properly and synchronized.  Is a sense that has to be protected in order to comprehend and have compassion for life itself.  The third sense, the sense of movement of oneself, with this sense I can only perceive my movement and not the one of the others.  All the movements that we do with our body are visual manifestations of our will.  To finish in this area, the sense of balance or equilibrium.  Its organ is located in our ear and is the smallest bone in our body, how can something so tiny help us to be balance and in equilibrium, it helps us to be standing up and preventing us from falling, its able to measure the three dimension of the space, up and down, left and right and front and behind.  All of these senses are also related with the will. 

Then the senses that help us to relate to the nature and the world that surrounds us.  Here we have three of the traditional ones, the sense of sight, smell and taste, and a new one the thermal sense.  With this senses we perceive the nature that surrounds us, we can see the light and its colours.  We can smell the scents in nature.  We can taste its flavours.  We can perceive the warmth or cold.  This are senses that we must cultivate appropriately in order to be in perfect rhythm with nature and the world.  All of our emotions are expressed with these senses.

Last but no least the senses that help us to relate to one another, the senses related to the act of thought.  The sense of hearing, with it we can hear the sounds made by others.  The sense of the others language or word, that delivers to us the message, the words, ideas etc.  The sense of the others thought where this messages, words, ideas etc, are conceived.  The sense of others self (being, I); which allows us to recognize that other human being uniqueness and individuality.  With these senses we relate with others, we surrender our self, we quiet our self, and perceive completely that other human being, acknowledge, understand it, and through this senses we are able to relate in a healthy way with others.  These last senses are the hardest to understand, but are very important to cultivate and more in this times, when we put all of our energy in our self instead of into others, are times of individuality.  We need to recognize the “I” in others in order to be able to discover the “I” within us.  This senses that are the higher senses must be develop to the same level as the lower senses, in order to have a better relation to the rest of the beings that surround us.  If we relate better with ourselves, the nature and the other human beings we will be able to make this a better world and society.

To finish he summarizes everything he taught us with a painting, The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.  In which he says that contains everything we need to know, here is portrayed everything, even the twelve senses.  Is really magical what happens when your horizons are broaden, how many possible perspectives.

Mirrors from within…

In December we talked about the development of the child.  We had an amazing speaker, very warm, active and fun, despite the fact that he’s German and comes from a place that is very cold and kind of sober or distant.  He fit right in with us and got into us with his words, actions, knowledge and wisdom.  It was a long weekend full of information, full of everything.  

All the information and facts that were a lot and way too complicated to explain here can be kind of summarize in this: we are what we reflect, we are mirrors from within and we reflect what we have or had around and inside of us.  That is why is so important that during the growth and development of the children they are surrounded with good things to reflect later on.  The first instrument that children have to learn is with imitation, is extremely important that they are allowed to play and imitate as much as they want this will become a strong base for the Will and from it everything will grow and develop, it is the seed of everything.  The children are full of energy and they want to see everything, experience everything, and that is good since they are like a huge sensorial organ trying to get to know and understand this world that they are living into.  So it is extremely healthy to let them play and jump around as much as they want, let that contained energy out whey they are small in order to later on be able to sit still, learn and focus, if all that energy is not release it will be like a volcano later on and will erupt very hard to contain later on, so let the kid play, jump and run, live lively.  Kids that play will develop a strong sense of Will, Sympathy, Fantasy and Imagination when grown up will be able to acquire Knowledge, Distance, Memory and Concept.  These are reflections of each other all of them necessary to educate child toward freedom and become a freethinker human being.  In the same way that is important to have balanced nutrition so it is to have a balanced education that contains knowledge, movement, creativity, art and music.

We are formed with the elements and the knowledge of the Universe.  Remember and try to always be surrounded by good things to imitate and reflect.  We are mirrors from within … so reflect wisdom and beauty to the Universe.

The art of speaking without words … Eurythmy

When I started to get acquainted with the Waldorf pedagogy one of the things that puzzled me the most was Eurythmy, because it was something really new for me.  The rest of the information that I was reading about this “new” approach to education I could understand quite easily, but with Eurythmy it was kind of a mystery.  Where it comes from? What it does? How to do it? Why it is so important in this system?  All my questions where answered, but it was not an easy one, there was like a natural resistance to it, still questioning why?  Eurythmy can be defined quite easily, as visible language or visible singing by the Waldorf definition or by the dictionary that doesn’t say much but its origin from the Greek language, that it comes from eu = well and rhuthmos = proportion, rhythm.  You can read all you want about it or go to many lectures, but you will never really understand what it is, what it means and why is so important until you do it and experience it in the flesh.

In the beginning we were really exited we where supposed to have a great speaker that weekend, but destiny plays tricks on every one, but as always it is in divine order.  Instead we got Eurythmy to replace our previous speaker.  I have to confess that this is something that you can’t just lecture about; it has to be combined words and movement, since that is what it is about movement with words.  The first day I was a volunteer up in the stage and performed all the movements, I even move along words I didn’t know or understand, the language was German, but the words didn’t matter it was the movement and what you feel what mattered.  The next two days I stayed on my chair and hear and see, I felt a little but it was not the same, I had mixed feeling about it and its importance, because of all the questions, that where in me.

But like everything in life, some of the things that you don’t like at first hand, and that you have to develop and acquire taste for it, are the things that in the long run you will enjoy the most.  That happened to me with Eurythmy as well.  We had later on an in depth seminar but this time was different, it was in a smaller group, it was more intimate and it got into me, and grew inside of me, I felt it, I saw it, it talked to me, my body, spirit and soul.  It is not only words translated into movements, planets, seasons or zodiacal signs.  It is a way for our spirit and emotions, what live in our most inner self, to express what they want to say, it was a conversation among spirits that it can only be seen and understand when your higher senses or supra sensible senses are awake.

When the right people, specialized people in Eurythmy, give classes or therapy to children or even adults.  They can really help to create a balance and harmony between, body, soul and spirit.  It is like exercise for the spirit, soul and emotion to go along with the body that is in constant exercise in our daily lives, and this gives balance to our whole.  With this you create a will within the spirit that last and if it balance you body, soul and spirit, imagine what in can do in a larger scale, it might help to create a balance in our society as well.  Today we need more movement and fewer words, let our spirit and emotions do the talking, perhaps more Eurythmy will help to heal the world we live.

Thank you to all of you that helped me and showed me the way in this difficult matter. 

Olga and Daniel