Interacting with Japanese school children

These are early days still. However, I am keen to document what little progress has been made. Everything is well and truly up in the air at the moment and I am keen to bolster my confidence by documenting these small steps. In the event this project does come to fruition it would be great to reflect on the journey.

So what has happened? Conversations mainly. With some very interesting people. The sort who grasp the fundamentals of the breath-awareness programme. Now if I may temporarily digress into hyperbole. I get a sense that these people also appreciate the aspiration that guides the project. 50 Schools in Japan will be a tremendous opportunity to realize my work in a meaningful context – to enable children to become more aware of themselves and to recognize and handle stress and anxiety.

Coming back to the point – what have these conversations been about? A number of different things, from addressing the practical aspects of returning to Japan and convincing 50 schools to participate, to fine-tuning the nature of the workshops so that they adhere to the cultural sensitivities.

A breath-awareness workshop in England differs tremendously from a workshop in Japan. Both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. While working with native english speakers offers much more flexibility, working with the Japanese allows me to use more abstract references when it comes to themes such as reflection and self-awareness. However, I have to be very careful.

Let me explain the configuration in which the previous Japanese workshops took place. Rather than deliver instructions in broken and confused Japanese (not to mention the problem with accents), I worked with a native speaker who translated my instructions in real-time. As the nature of the audience (young children, teenagers, some office workers, teachers) varied, there was a lot of improvisation to adapt these instructions. The only thing I had to be mindful of was to convey the message as simply as possible so that it could be translated quickly in real time. However, conveying abstract references in simple english isn’t the easiest tasks. And often, during the most intense moments of the workshop I came up with gems which elicited the ‘raised eyebrow’ reaction from my translator. To her credit, she never lost her composure and after a split second, came up with an appropriate explanation in Japanese.

Almost everyone I have spoken to so far has generously offered their help and some have already agreed to step in as advisors to guide the programme’s development. This makes me very hopeful. There is a very long way to go but as I said earlier, at this stage these small steps are hopefully seeding momentum for future strides. Over the next few weeks as these relationships take on a more formal hue, I will be happy to introduce these people along with their fascinating professional profiles through this blog.

By regularly posting entries, I hope I am creating a digital footprint that might catch the attention of potential collaborators. To the readers, if you know of someone who might be interested, may I request you to forward this post to them. If you would like to write to me to find out more about the breath-awareness workshops you can contact me at abhay dot adhikari at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Just a quick note about the game, it was developed and evaluated through 2 pilots studies as part of my research at the University of York. The objective now is to develop it as educational ICT for the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) initiative, and as a health & lifestyle product for home use. Given the ubiquity of stress and anxiety in everyday life, I feel that the latter is an important direction for the game’s development.

The sound design for the biofeedback signal is being undertaken by Radoslaw Rudnicki. Since our first discussion in December, he has already sent me some fantastic sketches. Given the nature of the games, it is essential that the sound-design be absolutely spot on. Check out some of Radek’s music on his website.

I am still on the lookout for a graphic/character designer to make the biofeedback games more accessible to the target audience. I have a number of ideas in this context, and am keen to take them further. If you are a graphic designer or know someone who will be interested, please get in touch.

Introducing breath-awareness in mainstream education

Over the past few weeks an idea for a new project has been brewing in my mind and only yesterday did it finally take shape as an abrupt phrase – 50 schools in Japan!

The 200 odd testimonials I collected during my previous trip to Japan were deeply appreciative of the breath-awareness workshops. I was amazed and touched that the participants took time to write very insightful feedback – about what they felt during the workshops and how they would apply the breath-awareness activities in everyday life. So it isn’t much of a surprise that I am very keen to further my work in the Japanese context.

However, that is easier said than done. There are a number of challenges that need to be address and I have been wondering about the best way to move forward. Past experience has shown that I am most motivated when I have a definite goal to work towards, which is why I have been dwelling upon – to use a terrible cliche – the bigger picture. One thing is for sure, I definitely want to work in mainstream education. Despite the constant demands placed on students, they are considered to be ‘healthy’ until they begin to physically manifest the effects of stress, anxiety and tension. This is why I feel it should be a priority for schools to introduce training which empowers students with emotional-control and behavior management skills. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog post, seeding breath-awareness is perhaps the best way to achieve this. And I spent a considerable amount of time and effort whilst pursuing my PhD research to create a pragmatic and secular framework through which this could be done.

Coming back to the issue of furthering my work in Japan. The last time I worked with somewhere between 170-180 children and a small number of school teachers. For the next time, I want the scale of the project to be significantly larger. There are a number of reasons for this and I assure you that a misplaced yearning for grandiosity isn’t one of them.

[more later]

Delivering a breath-awareness workshop in Japan

When I began my research with the intention of creating a ‘unique’ digital instrument, I had little idea that four years later I would end up delivering breath-awareness workshops to children at primary schools in Japan. Perhaps I will delve into the details of this journey in another post, at the moment I would like to draw your attention to a puzzle I am trying to solve – How can I introduce my work to mainstream education practitioners in the UK? There is definitely a context for it, the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) initiative.

Breath-awareness sounds strange, especially when juxtaposed with the relentless demands placed on school teachers to meet an ever increasing number of targets. It seems silly to suggest that they encourage their students to become aware of their breathing and develop effective control over it. But then again, such activities can have a positive impact on students’ behavior, emotional control and academic performance (again, some of the key objectives of SEAL). I am not making this up as I go along, there are a host of scientific studies that have demonstrated these claims and I will be happy to point you in the right direction should you be interested.

So how does one present breath-awareness to mainstream education?

When I decided to focus on breath-awareness in my research, I knew that the most important challenge would be to dissociate it with some of the, lets say… rather esoteric associations. This is because many so called holistic therapies attribute a fantastic array of benefits to breath-control and awareness. They aren’t necessarily rooted in science fiction, its just that these benefits have been extrapolated and exaggerated to such an extent that they alienate most rational, clear-thinking people. Furthermore, many breath-control methods use vague and elaborate instructions, so there is no objective way to gauge the application of their exercises or systematically evaluate their benefits . Clearly, there is no room to introduce breath-awareness in this way within secular educational establishments in this manner.

Although it was a tedious exercise (given the sheer volume of literature available on breath-control) it was relatively easy to separate the rational approaches from the irrational and come up with a list of complimentary therapies which formed the base of my research. Along the way I drew some surprising conclusions. For instance, although the Alexander Technique and Pranayama would appear to be disparate techniques (in their teaching and practice), their fundamental principals are rooted in similar concepts such as self-awareness. No doubt this would deeply trouble F.M. Alexander who strongly denied any links between the two.

To cut a long story short, I identified a series of exercises used in Alexander Technique and Pranayama, and correlated their basic principals with those of Respiratory Physiotherapy Rehabilitation. This created a rational framework for my research. The next step was to bolster this framework by eliminating as many variables as possible.

[end of part 1]