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to keep them in hand. Teachers often become depressed because they cannot handle that type of anarchic energy. Due to those outbursts of what could be termed abnormal agitation, the quality of learning itself is somehow diminished.
We live in a time when children must learn a lot of things at school. I am sure that what we experience in France is the same in many western countries, in India and in other countries all over the world too. The fact is that children have to learn a lot of mathematics, biology and languages, as well as art, music, physical training etc., so their schedule is very full and, of course, they suffer from fatigue and nervousness. School is the mirror of society. It is very porous to all outside influences. Since these influences are sometimes deleterious, we might also expect that some excellent influences could be made to enter the school system as well.
One of these wonderful influences is yoga, no doubt because yoga has such wonderful effects on the body, emotions, intellect and psychological make up of each person. It can also open up channels of creativity which we absolutely need in order to see the emergence of new values. It is a fact that a lot can be obtained through yoga with very small effort. For instance a few breathing exercises at the beginning of a class helps the children recover their balance very quickly. Of course, a short yoga nidra session, meaning that it should not last more than six to seven minutes, at most, will help them become receptive.
There is a funny story by an old sage, Nasruddin. Nasruddin can be a very comic character, but his pranks are done in order to teach. One day Nasruddin is sitting at the fountain of the village and he is holding a pot which is cracked so badly that the water is leaking out and the people around him are laughing. "Nasruddin, are you expecting to fill up your pot when it is leaking so much and you see it?" And he says, "I am not concerned with the leaking, I am just concerned with having the water poured into it." That is exactly the situation of teachers who are pouring tons of knowledge into pots which are leaking. So what yoga exercise could do would be to stop that leaking from the children's brains and make their brains more receptive to what we have to teach them.
Children like yoga very much. But it is so new, so astonishing to have teachers like me and my colleagues who
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