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are teaching intellectual matters making those children stretch and breathe, that the authorities are taken aback by such a process. We have to convince them with all our might and capacities, that it is possible not to lose time while doing such things.
As I was speaking about yoga in the confines of my school and writing a few articles in certain specialized magazines, it came to the ears of a person who was working in the cabinet of the Minister of Education, that a sort of innovation was taking place in the high school. He took note of it and instead of being overwhelmed by this wild experience, he thought it might be interesting. He had in mind to collect all such innovations in the field of education all over France, and that was in 1983. He summoned me and other people who were doing striking work of this sort and were not yet recognized, and we had a big convention, in Chamarande.
In fact, Chamarande is well known to some of the peop here, because Paramahamsaji had also given lectures and courses there. We had an official conference there and at that time I introduced the R.Y.E. techniques. The people there liked it very much and thought it was interesting. It was very funny to see those big men and women, who were delegates, ready to lie down and do a short session of yoga nidra and then to sit up again and imagine they were in the classroom and being given a lesson of English or mathematics and judge for themse! es, whether or not they understood it better than before. But they really liked it, and since then we have been «sked to train teachers in yogic methods. I would not say that it is common to all the regional boards of education in France, but we are very active in many of them, for example, in Toulouse, Dijon. I am not going to enumerate all the places, but we can say that R.Y.E. has many branches in France, as well as in other parts of the world.
So, one point should be stressed, that this is happening in a context which is non-confessional. The French system is a completely lay system, where no spiritual education is permitted because of the French tradition and also because, nowadays, there are so many multi-racial and confused problems arising in the French society and, of course, in the schools. So, we had to be very attentive to the fact that those exercises should not refer to any spiritual practices which hurt the creeds and the beliefs of the children and the parents
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