Kidsyoga Teacher Training in Indonesia
By Rutger Tamminga
At the invitation of the education department of three districts in Bali and in cooperation with AMURT Indonesia, I was given the chance to conduct kidsyoga teacher training to teachers from 120 different kindergartens.
The problem the teachers were facing was that they felt that the children lacked concentration to attend class and that the teachers had difficulty in classroom management. The idea was that yoga and meditation should be introduced as a way to help children balance themselves.
The first training was in Bangli district with forty teachers. Some of them had already introduced some quiet time in their classrooms. Actually, Bali culture is deeply Tantric and each meeting begins and ends with Om Shanti or Om Swasti and a short period of silence. Introducing yoga and quiet time is something very natural to the people there.
In the two-day workshop, I introduced quiet time methods, yoga asanas with songs, yoga games, yoga stories, simple breathing techniques and massage and relaxation. The whole program took eight hours and though these ideas are part of the local culture, the practices were quite new. To encourage them, I asked them to use the Bahasa language for the yoga songs and activities and they created beautiful, elegant and gracious dances and movements.
In Badung the director of education for the district introduced that he had been practicing yoga as a student at university for three years and found he got much benefit from the discipline and lifestyle. For that reason, he encouraged the teachers to be serious about their efforts and take this opportunity for the welfare of their students’ development.
In Karangasem district the teachers expressed that while they are used to the traditions of their culture, the blissful side of kidsyoga and teaching has offered a ‘new feeling in the heart.’ This is one thing I often observe that the devotional feelings that arise through our practices bring a sweetness one often does not experience in the drudgery of daily life. Kidsyoga, and I should say by extension Neohumanist Education bring a sense of joy and innocence that many adults seem to have forgotten, even in idyllic Bali! And it is this innocence and purity that we aim to regenerate in society to give it a new direction.
Amala, who coordinates the education department activities with AMURT emphasized the follow up strategy to ensure that whatever was learned in the workshops gets implemented. AMURT aims to nurture a group of facilitators who can coordinate kidsyoga long term within the school system. We see that this is a beautiful initiative, which was superbly managed by the AMURT Indonesia volunteers, and others. Many thanks to them!
