Spiritual Work with Children

Published in January 2008
by New Atlanteans

ISBN: 978-1-8975-1016-2

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This book is composed of articles by several authors, who worked in the scientific-spiritual School of Vladimir Antonov. The main methodological advantage of this School is the development of its students as spiritual hearts, which allows them to walk the Straight Path — to realization of God’s Precepts, to spiritual Perfection. The methods of the School are presented as a sequence of steps: starting from most simple, basic — to more complex, advanced.

In this book the authors give methodological recommendations and modifications of the basic methods adapted to children and adolescents. The main priorities of this program are the following: laying the foundation of spiritual attitude (that is based on love) toward other people and all living beings, developing the skills necessary for a healthy lifestyle, expanding the horizons and learning the basic ideas about the meaning of our lives on the Earth.

This book is intended for teachers working with children of different ages. It can be useful to parents as well.

Preface — V.V.Antonov

Russian reality is characterized by the absence of understanding by people of the meaning of their lives. Neither the atheism, which prevailed in our country for several decades, nor distorted religious beliefs can reasonably explain — from the philosophical standpoint — why we are here and what we are here to do. This is why non-spiritual people including children get irrevocably engaged into alcoholism and other kinds of drug addiction, into crime, which become a habitual way of life for them. The experience proves that appeals to lead “a healthy way of life” cannot become a stable alternative for the masses if there is no answer to the main philosophical question — the question of the meaning of our lives on the Earth.

We have discussed this already in many publications [3-12 and others], but to children, of course, it has to be presented in a simplified form using a language that corresponds to their level of understanding. It has to be done unobtrusively, without coercion^*, as simply informing them — so that having grown up, they could remember and use it as a basis of their world view and of understanding of their place and role in the vast expanses of the multidimensional Absolute and among other people on the Earth.

Those who read this book may either directly apply the techniques described here or create their own modifications on this basis, but they must include in teaching the main theme — the theme of spiritual Love: Reverence to God and to everything Sacred, the theme of Goodness, Compassion, service to everybody in everything good, care for all creatures including people, animals, and plants. After all, we ourselves are consciousnesses incarnated in physical bodies; we abide in the endless universal Ocean of All-seeing and All-hearing Consciousness of God, Who is Love, Who will accept us forever in His Abodes if we become Love as He is. The stories about Teachers of God and about achievements of the true holy adepts will also remain forever in the children’s memory to be used as examples to follow.

Why Children Are Different? — V.V.Antonov

Once I was invited to a party. There were many people, including families with children: some kind of celebration was going to take place.

I was sitting on a sofa. A baby climbed onto the sofa, crawled up to me and kissed me on my cheek — so sincerely, strongly! He poured his love all over me! He kissed me with such a cordial love! If I had not been familiar with his biography, I would have thought that he was a student of our School, because I had never seen such children outside of our School!

And I knew another child. I met him several times in the streets of Saint Petersburg. He was probably five years old. His eyes had a look of hatred — eerie, piercing look of hatred for everything and everybody. Moreover, this look and this demonic state were inherent in him.

I met him for the first time when he was stealing a hat from one of his peers. Our eyes met; he flooded me with his hatred — and ran away.

Second time I saw him scratching someone's car with his knife. Again our eyes met, and again it was the same hatred — and again he ran away.

I heard an idea that all children are little angels, that we must become like children and so on. Like what children? When Jesus said “become like children”, He meant the very specific quality of the best children — “openness of the soul” (this is clear both from the context and from the Apocrypha). He called His listeners “to open”, “to undress” themselves as souls before each other and before God — in emotional love!

Jesus meant good, gentle, sincere children. Some children, however, are malicious, rude, extremely egoistic, deceitful, looking at other people as caged wild animals look.

Materialistic science has been studying this problem for decades. Different scientists, depending on the profile of their work, emphasize different factors that influence the psychic development of children.

Geneticists talk about the role of genes, that the character traits are allegedly transmitted by genes in the same way as the color of the eyes and hair, or other body characteristics.

Embryologists, obstetricians, and perinatologists look for the cause in how the formation of the brain structures of the fetus was influenced by hormones, mother's stress, hypoxia, birth traumas, various intoxications.

Psychologists and psychiatrists address various social factors, primarily the character of the child’s contact with the mother at certain “critical” stages of its development. In particular, it has been clearly demonstrated in the studies of children as well as in experiments on animals that a lack of harmony in the relationships with the mother at a certain age leads to excessive aggressiveness in the later years. Also, the social disorders may be caused by a lack of adequate contact with peers during childhood. [6]

Commenting on this, I want to note that all these factors indeed play a certain role.

Genetic influences may take place — through genetically determined features of the development and functioning of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-adrenal system. If this system can produce and release into the blood more of adrenaline and noradrenaline, such organisms turn out to be more active in regular and extreme conditions. It may also create a certain predisposition (not predetermination) to excessively aggressive character’s traits.

And, of course, different factors causing damage to the fetus can lead to distortions in the development of different areas of the brain and endocrine glands, thus affecting in different ways one’s emotional characteristics in adult life. Different brain structures, responsible for different functions, are formed during embryogenesis at different times, and every one of them is most vulnerable to damaging factors during this critical time of their formation. Therefore the same damaging factor applied to the fetus at different times of its development leads to formation of different distortions, which sometimes get manifested only in adult age. [9,13]

The social factor also has a great importance in younger ages. For instance, if the child suffers negative emotional stresses due to separation from the mother or from the person who substitutes for her at the age from 6-7 months to 3 years — then in adulthood such a person manifests psychopathic traits, including excessive aggressiveness. Significant emotional and behavioral problems occur also because of the absence of adequate (that is, natural) contact with peers in childhood. [6]

Yet the most important reason explaining the difference between children is not known in the modern materialistic science. It consists in the fact that not only bodies are different but the embodied souls as well. After all, souls incarnated in children’s bodies have been “adults” before; the majority of them — many times. They come with character traits and other characteristics developed in their past history.

This applies not only to human beings but also to animals. And this explains why in experiments on animals as well as in human studies the same damaging influence does not lead to the same result for different species.

Imagine, for example, two persons. One of them in the past life was already holy, and the other one was diabolic. The same high level of adrenal hormones in present bodies will have the opposite effect on them. The first person will more intensely devote himself or herself to spiritual service; the other one with the same vigor will commit robbery and murder.

Besides that, we should remember that incarnation into bodies of different physical qualities is determined by God. Therefore, there is no “bad luck”, since God plans and carries out everything in such a way that the embodied soul is given the best opportunities for its further improvement.

One may ask: can maimed and ugly bodies help someone in self-development? The answer is yes. For example, if someone who in the past life reveled in power, was cruel toward others and maimed their bodies — it will be appropriate that such a person suffer himself or herself in order to realize what pain and suffering are, and through this learn compassion for others.

What concerns incarnations of wicked people — villains are needed for ensuring the diversity of the life situations, so that we may better understand the psychology of each other. Their fate is further degradation to the very bottom, until some of them change and there, on the bottom, in their suffering, begin to search the way out to the Light.

Now let us consider another factor affecting the development of children — their upbringing. It is the most relevant factor to analyze in spiritual schools working with children.

I remember one day I observed the following scene: a father — well dressed, arrogantly self-confident man of athletic build, of about 50 years old — was giving “life lessons” to his daughter of 10 years old. They stood in a park, and the father, pointing to the passing people, “explained” to the daughter about every one of them: this one is a scoundrel, that one is a bastard. The poor girl listened to him attentively and probably for many years learned father's “lessons” of hatred. Only at the age of 20 many people (not everybody) manifest the ability to re-evaluate seriously everything that adults taught them earlier.

Dedicated education can be either very harmful or very helpful to children. They can be taught, for example, contemptuous disdain and hatred for everything or, on the contrary, they can be taught to love everything living, taught that love and harmony are good and that God wants us to become like this, etc.

The correct education of children is the most important factor of the spiritual help to people, the most worthy and interesting kind of spiritual service.

This is also a way of self-development in active Love and intellectual creativity.

Let's look once again at the main principles of spiritual education of children.

The first principle is active cultivation of the ideas of Love (for this is the main thing that God wants from us!) followed by the principle of broadening children's horizons. We must introduce into children's memory different programs of in what ways they can live having grown up. We have to show them that there are chess, temples of different religions, nature which we can and must love, there are methods of tempering the body, the possibility of expressing oneself through painting, music, dance, photography, different kinds of sports, and very interesting and different ways of getting education, and that all of this can be used for serving other people, as a way of giving them our love.

Education also can be given by an example of deeds of adults, when children in the relaxed atmosphere witness the events in the spiritual school where their parents study. Alternatively, it can be done by arranging special classes and sections for children of different ages.

At the same time, it is necessary to remember that there are problems inaccessible to children's thinking. For example, the information about the existence of unembodied forms of life should be presented to them in such a form and in that volume which do not lead to formation of mystic fear. Mystic fear can become a basis for development of serious psychopathologies, which prevent a child’s development.

Also one must not teach children profound meditative techniques, otherwise they may “get lost”, lose adequate contact with the material plane. We need to remember that everyone must develop themselves first in the material world, and only then they will be able to walk the serious religious Path successfully and safely.

It is also necessary to protect children in every possible way against attempts of different ignorant mystics to involve them into contacts with the beings of the astral plane under the guise of spiritualism, into a dialog with “extraterrestrials” and so on, as well as against attempts to engage children in magical and occult experiments. Participation of both children and adults in such actions is a direct way to development of serious mental pathologies in them.

Also it is very important to teach children to think, provoking them to do it, for example, in such situations as solving the problem of crossing a forest brook, building a fire so that it does not cause much harm to living creatures, etc.

Or one can ask children questions like “Why?” — so that they learn to find answers themselves rather than receive them from adults, and so on.

During communication of children between themselves in the group, the instructor should benevolently but firmly stop all manifestations of vicious tendencies, such as aggressiveness, propensity to take someone else's things, even the most trifling. Children can remember well, for example, such formulas as: “Jesus Christ taught, that you shouldn’t do to anyone what you don’t want be done to yourself”, or “The one who takes without permission anything that belongs to someone else is a thief. And a thief is a very bad person!”, or “In the very good book called The New Testament it is written: love each other tenderly with brotherly love! And what you have done — does it look like tenderness?”

Some simple meditative exercises can be of great educational value. For example, all children imagine a little sun in the chest and then run around and shine at each other with visualized sunlight.

When it happens that children who have little appetite and do not want to eat, parents try to persuade them in various ways.

… As a joke I can offer you a formula to tell to children with little appetite. Tell them first that God is very big! He is bigger than all the Earth and than the whole sky which we can see from the Earth. We must try to become that big as well. He ordered us so. And how did He become so big? He ate much…

The Basic Principles of Teaching Psychic Self-Regulation to Children and Adolescents — V.V.Antonov

Our experience accumulated in various forms of teaching psychic self-regulation to children and teenagers allows formulating the following recommendations:

1. Dedicated ethical work, which every instructor must do on the background of teaching psychic self-regulation, must lay the foundation of morality in students.

2. Groups of students can be formed either of children only or can include adults as well. In the latter case, the program is created for children, but parents willingly participate in such classes. One of the advantages of the second option is that it creates common interests in such families and helps to overcome separation between the parents and children.

3. One should not teach children and adolescents the exercises of work with the reflexogenic zones of the emotional-volitional sphere^* (some basic exercises with anahata can be an exception) if there are no special medical indications for this. The reason for that is that these exercises are not compatible with alcohol consumption during or after the course. One cannot be sure that children and teenagers will observe this rule in the future.

4. The emphasis in this work has to be put not on achievement of high results, but mainly on broadening the students’ horizons, on informing the students in order to help them to choose their way of life when they grow up.

One can supplement them with choreography, music, photography, paintings, tourism, ecology, literature, philosophy — depending on the competence of the instructor.

One can also enrich the classes of different profiles with the elements of psychic self-regulation.

5. One should not teach shavasana to children younger than 12 years, because some children have difficulties coming out of deep relaxation. (Exceptions from this rule are allowed only in case of medical indications. Such sessions must be conducted by a certified physician.)

6. There can be exercises of work with the reflexogenic zones of the emotional-volitional sphere and other similar methods used by trained physicians to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders in children. It is especially effective for correcting social disorders.

7. Most easily children and teenagers master exercises with mental images. Mastering the concentration is usually more difficult for them. However, training them in concentration is especially important for their progress in the school. Very helpful in this respect is to exclude “killed” food (i.e. made of bodies of killed animals) from children’s diet, and at the same time to increase the amounts of proteins found in milk and eggs. The same recommendation is useful in every respect for all people without exception.

8. An interesting positive effect can be achieved if children are present (but do not participate on equal rights) on out-of-town classes of groups where their parents study. If there is no obtrusive attitude toward them, children turn on the important mechanism of training — imitation. They learn careful attitude toward nature, as well as to any manifestation of life; they master skills of life in a tent, building a fire and preparation of food on it, learn discipline (waking up early in the morning, morning exercises, morning bathing, etc.), learn to see the beauty of nature and attune to it, easily master exercises for tempering the body, for example, they insist on participation in winter swimming together with adults [12].

Regarding the practice of winter swimming for children, let me note the following: this method helps to increase the range of temperatures comfortable for the body for the whole life; it “tempers” the body. Yet it must be used under the following conditions:

a) fully voluntary attitude of the child, with no persuasion from adults: the children themselves know best when they are ready to it;

c) making no attempts to treat with winter swimming (as well as with showers of cold water) children who are weakened by prolonged illnesses. Winter swimming as a medical procedure is effective for treatment of some local disease processes in those children who are generally in good health. The healing mechanism in this case is bioenergetic stress in response to “cold impact”. But if the body is weakened by a prolonged illness, then it has no energy which can turn on the needed process. In such cases, the opposite is effective — for example, hot bathes, saunas.

Basic Hygiene Tips — V.V.Antonov

From the most general hygienic recommendations we can suggest (for all ages!) the following:

1. To wash, whenever possible, the entire body daily with soap, best of all in the morning.

3. To avoid wearing clothes of synthetic fabric that have immediate contact with the skin.

4. It is very good to irradiate the skin of the entire body with sunlight: it gives us health. In winter one can sunbathe regularly under the light of a quartz lamp, especially in the case of indispositions, in particular, colds.

5. To use "killed" food as little as possible or to exclude it at all [12]: this can improve the health significantly and provide a higher sensitivity to subtle manifestations of the world around, and in the eyes of the God, Who gave us the precept “you shall not kill!”. However, no coercion can be used in this issue toward children: any coercion in such matters leads only to the opposite effect. The best way of educating children is to do it by our own example.

Introductory Meditation — V.V.Antonov

It is good to start each practice session with emotional attunement and purification of the energy of the surrounding space. For this purpose there is an excellent method, which we call introductory meditation. It is performed in this way:

We accept the so-called student posture: we sit down on the heels holding the spine straight, the toes looking backwards, the palms resting upon the thighs. We start sending waves of benevolence and love from the thorax — forward into space with the following formula:

“May all beings have peace! May all beings be calm! May all beings feel bliss!”

We create each of these three states first within ourselves in the thorax and then radiate it forward. Then we repeat it to the right, backwards, to the left, upwards, and downwards. This is a powerful method of harmonization of oneself and of the energy of the surrounding space with all beings living in it; it also lays the foundation for the development of the spiritual heart.

Basic Relaxation Exercises — V.V.Antonov

Mastering relaxation (peace of the body and the mind) is necessary for having quick rest, for the control over the emotions (it allows one to get rid of negative emotions and stresses easily), and in general one can do everything much more successfully in the state of inner peace!

Recall the famous saying of the Chinese sage Lao Tse: “Calm is the most important thing in movement”. [7,11]

We sit on the heels with the toes looking backwards and move the knees apart. Put the forehead and the extended arms on the floor with palms pressed against each other. Relax the body and mind completely. Watch the stomach sag more and more as the relaxation becomes deeper. This is a wonderful exercise that allows one to get rid of physical and mental tiredness. It should be performed for about ten minutes.

The second asana is called crocodile posture. There are two ways of performing it.

We lie on the belly, protruding the elbows forward as far as possible, the chin resting on the palms.

The second option — we put the elbows forward and place one forearm upon the other on the floor, holding the head and the upper part of the body up by tensing the muscles of the back.

In both cases we feel ourselves happy little crocodiles, which crawled out on a sandy beach to have a sunbath! The sun warms our backs — and we dissolve in pleasure under its tender warmth, which permeates our bodies.

Psychophysical Exercises — V.V.Antonov

Psychophysical exercises are called so because their psychic component is combined with simultaneously performing physical movements, with the latter contributing to the mastering of the former. The idea of development of such exercises was laid down in the beginning of 20-th century by Peter Dânov; their development was continued by Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov and then by us.

The first exercise of this series is called Awakening. We awaken from a long sleep of self-isolation from harmony, beauty, and love of the world. (While standing, we raise the hands up and stretch ourselves as if after a sleep). We let all the purity, light, and the vitality from outside into us. Feel a waterfall of astonishingly pure, transparent, light, and subtle feelings and morning freshness flowing from above. We fill ourselves with this morning freshness, with these fresh waves, overfilling ourselves with them! (Hands move down to the shoulders, assisting this process, then move up again; we repeat these movements several times). We try to reach as high and subtle emotional state as possible.

The second exercise is called Giving Away. We hold the hands against the chest and then make a wide gesture moving them forward and apart: what we received we must give away to other people — our level of spiritual advancement is measured by our ability to give. Also, so that a vessel may get filled with fresh water it needs to be emptied first. He who does not empty himself by giving away what he has, does not get renewed, does not grow. We repeat this exercise again and again, pouring out, giving away all the good that we have accumulated — generously, without the desire to receive a reward. Send subtlest and intense waves of streaming fresh and pure love far forward. Feel how the chest gets inflated by the energy of love that comes swelling from behind. A flower, exhaling a tender fragrance, starts to blossom out in the middle of the chest. Send these subtle vibrations forward. This is the fragrance of love itself!

The third exercise is Reconciliation. Raise the right hand above the head and concentrate on the palm and the space that immediately surrounds it. Then slowly bring the hand down drawing with it a sinusoid with a half-period of about thirty centimeters. The edge of the palm should be facing the direction of the hand’s movement. While doing this, try to feel the space, in which the hand moves, as some energy field, to which we assign a new characteristic: peace, harmony, and calm. One may “extend” the hand. (One may imagine various ways of performing dancing movements: jerky and quick versus gentle, smooth, and elegant. Each of these ways disposes both the performer and the audience to corresponding emotional states). And this simple but powerful gesture, which symbolizes harmony, will be helping everyone in every situation as they master this exercise (one should feel it deeply through!), even if performed without being accompanied with movements of the body.

The fourth exercise is called Climbing Up. We raise the hands up with the palms facing sideward and then bring them down laterally, making sweeps. Repeat this movement several times, with each sweep we hatch out of another coarse envelope, as it were, and become lighter, purer; we raise to the source of the light above — to the sun… It becomes very close to us; a few more swings and we reach it… Flow into space of the purest and subtlest light, and enjoy being in it… Then slowly get down to the earth feeling the sun in the chest. Stand on the ground and shine at people and all other living beings with sunlight coming from the chest!

These exercises can be performed exactly as they are described here, and will bring much benefit, including the purification of the bioenergy structures of the body and getting rid of diseases.

We can add a religious component to these exercises, and then very soon they will help us to understand that the Light which we work with in these exercises is the Light of the Holy Spirit. All worthy students begin to perceive Him in the process of their ethical and bioenergetic purification. Thus we cognize God in one of His Manifestations — and then He becomes our constant Companion and Living Teacher for the whole life.

For some people, these elementary exercises can become a starting point for deep and serious religious life.

This is just the basis of the beginning. In practical classes, one can use different modifications of these methods — depending on the individual qualities of the children and instructors.

Experience of Work with Psychic Self-Regulation in Groups of Children and Parents in the City of Brno (Czechoslovakia) — T.Matyatkova

The original material used for developing the program for our classes was the earlier publications by Dr Vladimir Antonov. We also relied on our experience of teaching based on the system of psychic self-regulation developed by Dr Antonov, on our experience of teaching in the preschool, and on our love for dance and poetry. We also used the books listed in the bibliography of this book.

The course of classes outlined below is intended for three months of work. The group is composed of children of 5-10 years old (12-15 people), of their mothers and young grandmothers, as well as of “assistants” — girls of 12-15 years old. Classes are held once a week in the school gym. Each class lasts at least 2 hours.

The main goal of the classes is to develop in children love for parents, friends, nature, for everything living. Conversations with parents are also aimed at this purpose.

Introductory meditation. This is an exercise when children wish joy and love to everything living. They visualize a sun inside the chest and begin to caress everything with its rays-hands. We have enriched it with another exercise called “pouring out of the pot”. It is performed as follows: everybody sits on their heels, slowly bows the head to the floor and “pours out” from it everything that is not supposed to be there (including, in case of adults, thoughts about work and home). Both children and adults like this analogy — their heads as beautifully painted pots with handles, which they need to empty of dirty water in order to fill them with fresh and pure one.

This introduction harmonizes the group. Some children and adults began to use it at home for positive emotional attunement.

It has become a tradition in our classes — to send rays of sunny love to the absent members of the group.

The main part of the program includes frequent alternation of motion and rest. It is most suitable for children’s form of work. It includes brief relaxations, during which all participants “breath with their tummies” like kittens who curled up into purring balls or like rabbits trying to catch their breath after running. Usually almost all children and adults actively participate in this game, getting accustomed to the roles of animals. If some hyper-active children try to run away to gymnastics apparatuses (which attract them very much), then we solve this problem by charging these children with leading roles in games.

During relaxations we never force children to stay in static postures or with closed eyes for a long time. It is important to note that during such exercises, the majority of the children sit together with the mother, grandmother or with a girl-assistant, which facilitates the performance of the exercises significantly. Contact with a close senior person is an important emotional factor for children, which they lack in many cases.

If we want to console children in case of falling, bruise or collision, we embrace and stroke them. This exercise becomes one of the most favorite ones. It develops in children kindness, compassion, tenderness, caring attitude toward each other. It is an excellent means of ethical and emotional development as well as one of the means of socialization.

Warm-up. To warm up, we use motion and meditative games, running, dynamic exercises of hatha yoga.

Psychophysical exercises. They consist in combination of physical movements with self-suggestion. For the purpose of our work with children, they were modified, for example, by adding the following texts:

“Seed sprouts, young plant grows, flower bud opens, flower grows to the sun…”

Or: “Hatchling breaks free from its shell, stretches its little wings, and finds itself in the sunlight!…”

Or: “We are flowers; we bathe in the sunlight and become filled with it so that later we may give it as fragrance, nectar — to bees and butterflies.”

Spontaneous dance. Psychophysical exercises can transform quite naturally into spontaneous dance — free and harmonious (or even playful in case of children) movements of the body defined by music or visualization. Spontaneous dance helps to improve one’s emotional and physical states, eliminates isolation, removes fatigue from children and adults. Most of all children like to use for this dance the following meditations: to feel themselves as butterflies fluttering over meadows, as gentle clouds, balloons, flowers emitting fragrance, “dancing” seaweeds, bright autumn leaves or snowflakes dancing in the air, and so on.

Meditative games. They develop, first of all, the ability to think figuratively. With their help, the ethical and aesthetic upbringing is carried out naturally, without violence, in the form of a game. Children imagine themselves in any role (usually an animal, a flower, etc.), get accustomed to it, and freely express their emotions via motion.

Themes for meditative games can be derived from the everyday life of children, from fairy tales, or can be invented according to children's age. They can be, for example, living meadows with flowers or toys in children's room. Themes for meditative games may be like these: “How the sun was rising” [32], “How a girl walked in the forest, collected berries and met different animals”, “How I planted a seed, take care of the plant, and it grew into a flower”, “How a puppy grew, what he learned, what he knows and what can do”. “What happened to monkeys which ran away from the zoo into the forest”, and so on.

Hatha yoga asanas are included in the program as a component of warm-ups, meditative and outdoor games, mostly in their dynamic variant — that is when children stay in postures for a short period of time. Static postures are difficult for little children.

Motion games. They mean active cooperation of all participants when everyone plays one’s own role. Unlike meditative games, they are focused on active motion, training of children’s reaction, attention and speed, development of the coordination of movements. They may include games of tag and others. Children love games that include running.

These are some of such games: Airplane (start, rise, fly quickly in the clouds, land), a similar game called Train (the train departs, speeds up, goes through a tunnel, come to a station, etc.) [15,36,46]. These are some running games: the wind comes over and drives us, rain starts; horses run — either free or with a carriage, with obstacles; carousel — create a circle, holding onto a thick rope, rotate the “carousel” slow or faster, stop, change direction. Children like motion games and running very much. They need them as a means of relaxation, in particular.

Another favorite game of children is to imitate poses and movements of animals [25,32], such as a cat, a dog, a tiger, a lion (stretch the paws, arch the back, or, for example, “cat drinks milk", “cat looks at its tail”, “cat watches a fly”, etc.).

It may also include walking with bent knees (imitation of a walking duck or goose).

Or: a jumping sparrow, the proud gait of a rooster, or a stork walking slowly, with dignity, etc.

Or: a little worm, snake, crocodile — we crawl on the floor, lift the head, and turn it from side to side. Motion games can be combined with breathing exercises. For instance: “We are a breeze, a wind, a whirlwind” — and blow loudly as the wind, or pump up a ball. Or: after running, in relaxation — inhale loudly the air with the tummy, like whelps trying to catch their breath in the burrow of their mother. Or: loud imitation of the voices of animals: mewing, barking, the roar of a tiger, mooing, bleating, purring, croaking, cooing, hissing, humming, quacking and the like. Or “I am a flute” — press on the keys (different parts of the body) and produce different sounds: tummy — haaa, heart — yaaa, throat — baa, forehead — eee, and so forth. First children are afraid to pronounce sounds loudly, but later they master it and play with great pleasure; they especially like the “heart sound”.

Relaxation of the body and mind. We use relaxation to rest after dynamic exercises and for training the children’s ability to relax. In case of small children, it is best to train relaxation in pairs [47]. One child represents, for example, a rag doll, and another one lifts and lowers doll’s arms and legs, moves doll’s head. Another variation is Carriage Game: one child lies on the back on the clean floor, and another one moves him or her by the legs around the hall. Children can do also “relaxation of a tiger” [25], “rest of a crocodile”, etc.

During the final relaxation, we use elements of autogenous training of Dr Schultz (“heavy, warm legs…”, etc.). However, it fits better to senior students. In most cases, final relaxation is accompanied by music or visualization of pictures of nature by children. One can use also poetry and relaxing fairy tales (Cat’s Tales, or How Doll Fell Asleep; see [32]).

Fairy tales with an ethical orientation are read by the instructor or by an assisting girl while the instructor talks to the parents.

Painting. Subject matters for painting can be scenes from fairy tales, free expression of impressions from the class, etc. Children also can paint together a common picture on one big sheet of paper. For example, they can paint small fishes around a big fish-mom.

Feast. On holidays we arrange a feast at the end of the class. We arrange "a magic table” with various dishes of the ovo-lacto vegetarian diet: nuts, dried and fresh fruit, etc. In the beginning, everyone expresses gratitude to those who grew these fruits and cooked the dishes. Only then we start the meal.

Our experience shows that first time children pounce on the food and only after a reminder will they offer it to mothers and others. It shows that it is very necessary to develop in children a careful, unselfish attitude toward people around, in particular, during such feasts.

Role play games help to form the child’s individuality properly; children develop correct social relations — by learning social roles through a game. In our specific case of working with children, these social connections include a child’s relationship with peers, as well as with adults, including parents.

One of the favorite games of our children is Guiding the Blind: the game is played in pairs, one child is blindfolded and guided by another. Several pairs play this game at the same time. They move, bypassing obstacles and trying to not collide. This game develops mutual trust, sympathy, responsibility, the ability to understand each other.

For development of altruism and keenness of observation, we use the game Catch Falling Leaves. For this purpose, we make "leaves" of paper and throw them up in the air. Children have to catch them on the fly. In this game, children in the beginning exhibit much egoism: they seldom want to give their "leaves" to others who caught less.

One of the most favorite games is the preschool game Ouzel. In this game, children in pairs say simple text and touch each other; at the end, they embrace. “I am ouzel, you are ouzel, I have a nose, you have a nose (everyone points first to their own nose, and then to the nose of the partner), mine are smooth, yours are smooth (they point to the cheeks), mine are sweet, yours are sweet (lips), I am your friend, you are my friend. We love each other!” When saying words “we love each other”, they embrace. Then children repeat it in different pairs.

Conversations with parents are also an important part of the program. While we converse with parents, girls-assistants divide children into small groups, read to them fairy tales, draw pictures, perform exercises on gymnastic apparatuses, play with a ball, look at pictures.

In these conversations with mothers and grandmothers, we acquaint them with the teachings of the spiritual School of Dr Vladimir Antonov — we talk about the Path to God through Love, Wisdom, and Power. One can also talk about the principles of yama and niyama [12], about children development with the help of motion, singing, about educating them on parents’ example; we also have conversations about killing-free nutrition — as a part of morality and the basis for one’s physical and spiritual development. In these conversations we receive a lot of feedback from parents.

Children and their mothers usually do not like to leave right after the class, so classes become longer and longer.

From parents’ feedback we learned, in particular, the following: children willingly go to the classes, the some of them even try to “impart their experience” to other members of family. Children remind their mothers and grandmothers about cooking only killing-free food at home.

It is undesirable, when in such groups where almost all children have “their own” adults, some of them remain without a mother or a close senior person. They take such situations very hard. Some of them even have difficulties contacting with the rest of the group.

As a result of attending the classes, relationships in the family become better.

Mothers and grandmothers with time merge completely with the work of group and enjoy playing in all games. Two of them, teachers in a preschool institution, started to use some forms of our exercises in their work.

The girls who assisted us (all of them came to this group voluntary; one of them was my daughter), also received much help from these classes: they developed the proper emotional attitude toward little children, which is so important for future mothers. Besides that, they acquired experience of group management and developed creativity while working in the class.

I also want to note that classes with children are conducted most successful only when the instructors fully give themselves to games and meditations, when they themselves experience everything that they give to children. If the instructor “withdraws” even a little, children feel it immediately and the class “collapses”; children cease to react to instructor’s words.

I personally received much from this work. It expanded the limits of my love, taught me to feel people better, to sympathize with them, to feel joy together with them. I felt myself both a child and a conductor of the Light of Divine Love. This Love helped me to work on myself; it opened for me the Path of development.

Classes of Psychical Self-Regulation and Painting with Children — M.K.Khaschanskaya

This article describes practical experience of work with children of 5-11 years of age. The work was aimed at smoothing inner disharmonies — which are inherent to most of children — with the help of development of their creative abilities, with the help of ethical and ecological education, and development in them the capability for concentration and relaxation. For this purpose one can successfully use the methods of psychic self-regulation and recommendations described in the book [12]. The methods described in this chapter can supplement this information.

Classes with a senior group (10-11 years of age) took place in the gym and in nature. Classes for children of 5-7 years of age were conducted only in the gym.

The duration of the classes depended only on the children age. Children of 10-11 years of age worked for three hours without feeling tired. Children of 5-7 years of age could work successfully for an hour and a half. In the middle of the class, we usually made a short break.

There is one point to take into account when selecting children for classes. No doubt that classes are useful to all children; however, one has to decide what is more important: to “average” all children and thus to develop them slowly — or to make a group of most capable children, who can advance more quickly and successfully. The experience of work with schoolchildren of different ages proves that the choice of “averaging” them prevents good progress of gifted children. And the progress of less capable children achieved in such classes is almost negligible as compared to their negative manifestations. Of course, this does not mean that one should not work with the latter. But one has to make groups taking this factor into account and use different methods of work in different groups.

Groups should not be large. The best number of children for classes is from 5 to 16, because it is very important to have individual approach to them.

Introductory meditation is very important; it has a strong effect on the formation of ethics and on the development of emotional love for all manifestations of life; it also helps to develop the skills of concentration of the attention. Besides that, it creates a positive emotional background for doing other exercises.

For children of 10-11 years of age, the introductory meditation is performed in the form similar to that of adult groups. All children like the posture for making this meditation — so-called student posture. In this posture, they quickly calm down, and this helps them to receive information from the instructor.

For children of 5-7 years of age, one can give the introductory meditation in the form of the exercise The Sun. Children form a circle, as if they stand around a lake. They imagine themselves to be trees, grass, flowers which stretch their arms-branches toward the sun; they take the sun into the hands, bring it closer, embrace this giant, warm, shining ball — and the sun enters the chest and kindles our hearts with love. Every one of us turns into the sun; our arms turn into its rays. Children turn from side to side, whirl to soft music, make wavelike movements with their arms, shine with light. They shine with the sun from the chest — at each other, at animals and birds, at fish in the water, at trees and grass. Children themselves suggest to whom else they want to send their light-love.

It is very important to feel when it is time to end this exercise. It is important that the children enjoy the light emanating from them, but on the other hand, their subtle state may turn into excessive agitation, and children become hard to control.

Then one can perform warm-up or give to children psychophysical exercises. One should not follow the program too strictly — it is more important to feel in the process of conducting the class what is needed at the current moment. During the first classes, psychophysical exercises that follow the introductory meditation are difficult for children to perform, because children need to change activity after the concentration. However, after one or two months of work, they easily switch from introductory meditation to psychophysical exercises.

During the warm-up, one can alternate dynamic exercises — with hatha yoga asanas and pranayamas. It is better to give physical exercises in the form of a game or together with visualization. This makes the warm-up interesting to children. The instructor should give asanas to children gradually, without overloading them.

We perform warm-up to soft music, ask children to do the exercises gently, harmoniously, without haste — so that their movements follow the rhythm of the music. One can also suggest to them the game Mirror (see the article by E.B.Ragimova) when the instructor makes movements and children imitate them.

1. We raise the hands and “inhale” sunlight through the palms, then bend down and “exhale” everything dark, coarse, unpleasant, so that inside the body there remains only goldish light of the sun. We repeat this exercise 3-6 times.

2. We stand with the feet at shoulder width, the hands are slightly moved backward, the palms are turned forward. With inhale, rise on tiptoes, the hands move forward and upward as if raising a wave; with exhale, the hands move down, the feet stand on the floor. Repeat this exercise six times.

3. We do mountain pose (tadasana), focusing the attention on the arms moving gently upward as if by themselves — without effort from our side, we just watch how the arms move. Later when children begin to paint, the instructor may remind them about this feeling by drawing an analogy between the spontaneous movement of the arms in tadasana and the movement of the hand holding the brush.

4. Then children can do tree pose: its variation when the left hand holds the forepart of the left foot bent back; the right hand is relaxed and raised up slightly above the forehead with its palm turned forward. The instructor suggests that children feel the right leg as the trunk of a tree with its roots going deeply into the ground; the right hand is a branch; its palm and fingers are leaves of the tree. Then children do the symmetrical variation of this pose. In this asana, children may stay from a half of a minute to two minutes.

6. Then one can do several exercises from Mian Chuan (“slow water”) or Tai Chi Chuan. For example, “to raise one’s leg using a non-existing thread”, or “to raise one’s knee using a non-existing thread”, or “to catch and to raise a falling wall which does not exist”, etc. Many of these exercises are described in [38].

7. On the first classes, exercises from the beginning of the course on psychic self-regulation described in [12] can be very useful.

Children do with pleasure exercises which resemble a game and are supplemented with visualization.

8. The exercise Butterfly (for stretching the muscles of the legs; based on bhadrasana pose) is one of the most favorite for children. We sit down on the floor in an upright position, the legs are bent and stretched outwards, the soles are pressed against each other, the hands clasp the toes and the forepart of the feet. The bent legs make rhythmic, springy movements downward, stretching thus the muscles. When doing this exercise, children can imagine themselves butterflies fluttering over flowers. The butterfly has chosen a flower, descended on it, and stopped moving. Then it folded its wings (children move the knees upward), sipped sweet nectar, thanked the flower, and flew to other flowers.

10. Children of 10-11 years of age do well the following series of asanas: half-candle pose (viparita karani) — candle pose (sarvangasana) — plow pose (halasana) — rabbit pose (sasangasana) — half-candle pose — candle pose — half-candle pose.

11. All children do with pleasure the following exercise: the feet stand wider than shoulder width, make inhale and bend backward, make exhale and bend forward, press the palms on the floor. “Walk” on the hands forward a bit, the feet do not move, the body sags down. Turn the head and look first at the right foot, then — at the left foot. Then return to the original position.

12. In the end children may jump for some time. Children like to imagine themselves a rag doll and jump gently, relaxing in the final position. They can imitate jumps with a skipping-rope, make jumps with clapping the hands, or with slapping the buttocks with the hands, or with turning from side to side, etc.

To include all these exercises in the warm-up of every class is not necessary. The lower the age of the child is, the less must be the load on them: the instructor has to increase the load very gradually — from class to class. One has to keep in mind that children always want something new. Therefore, the instructor has to change the forms of the exercises often. It is especially important for children of small age.

To help children to do psychophysical exercises successfully, the instructor may suggest images to them. For example, children can imagine themselves as fishes, seaweeds, trees, clouds, birds, waves, wind, balloons, snowflakes, specks of dust, sail boats, etc. After children have identified themselves with the image — they can easily fill this image with light.

With time children do psychophysical exercises more easily and with more interest. They all will feel the Light that fills their bodies and the space around — they feel it as real.

Spontaneous dance in case of children has to be supplemented with visualization and introduced during the first classes. Children easily move, dance; they do not feel shy before each other, never worry about how they look from the outside.

It is very interesting to do the exercise Lotus — as the first psychophysical exercise. Children sit on the floor in a circle; their legs are stretched forward; their feet are in the center of the circle. The children form together a lotus flower; each child represents a petal of this flower. They can take each other by the hand and bend forward to close the flower bud, then unbend, release hands, and lie on the back on the floor and imbue themselves with sunlight flowing from above. Then they sit up. One of the children stands up and begins to whirl in the center, then the next child joins this whirling, and the next… Children form inner circle and whirl smoothly. There can be other variations of this exercise

Relaxation is a very important exercise. Everyone knows that for modern people it is very hard to relax. Those unable to relax accumulate much tiredness by the age of twenty.

In relaxation it is very important and convenient to give ethical directions to children, to develop the emotion of love in them, to refine their perception of nature, to give them ecological education. Usual conversations with them do not have such an effect. The instructor suggests images to children during the entire relaxation. The instructor’s voice guides the child’s consciousness and does not allow it to go to the state of relaxation too deeply [2]. For example, the instructor may tell a fairy tale, which corresponds to the subject of the class. Relaxation can be performed in the half-tortoise pose, in the crocodile pose, on the back, on the side. Usually the instructor suggests to children some particular pose; if some children prefer another pose, the instructor should not prevent them from assuming it.

The way of giving relaxation to children is different for different ages. Children of 10-11 years of age can enter the state of deep relaxation to soft, gentle music and to the voice of the instructor, which suggests images to them. For children of 5-7 years of age, one can successfully use the methods described in the book [20].

Painting can be done also in different ways depending on the age of the children. One can use any materials for making pictures; in our classes we prefer dyes. Children use watercolors, watercolors with whitewash, gouache. For children of school age, it is better to give gouache; watercolors are more efficient for higher ages. The brushes should be wide and flat; for painting fine details, there must be also thin brushes. And one needs a piece of cloth for cleaning the brushes.

First one has to teach children to mix dyes and to make subtle and pure hues of different colors. This is done with large color spots.

All tools have to be prepared beforehand, before the class. As children exit the state of relaxation, they themselves take everything necessary and begin to paint.

The feeling of color harmony is inherent in many people from birth. However, they often do not know about their abilities, and therefore they need to be helped with this. If this help is provided in the childhood, the child begins to develop more harmoniously.

For children of 5-7 years old, it is necessary to suggest the subject of painting and demonstrate to them the methods of work, since they lack basic painting skills. It would be good if the subject has a certain state even in its title, as is customary in China and Japan. Children paint brooks flowing over the melting snow, clouds changing their shape under the wind, branches of trees on the background of pure sky or rising sun, the underwater world, meadows with flowers and butterflies, the sun, the sea, etc. They can paint animals, birds, trees, flowers — this develops in them love for all creatures.

In the process of painting, children learn to see the world. In this way, one can teach children to see and to feel the world from most interesting points.

In the work with children of 10-11 years of age, the emphasis is put on spontaneity. In this age, it is enough to encourage them a bit and direct them — and they begin to express their states and mood using the methods of work familiar to them. Children learn and apply new techniques very easily.

In the process of painting, the instructor must not be an outsider but paint together with children — to establish the correct mood and to help them. Also it is necessary to prevent children from chatting during painting, because this causes them to leave subtle states. It is not so easy with children of 5-7 years old, because they experience everything what they paint and say it aloud. Yet the instructor has to pay attention to this matter and prevent excessive chatting.

Tea-drinking is also an important component of the class. Before the meal, the instructor gives meditation which attunes children to the feeling of gratitude to the Earth and to people who feed them. It may be the first time that children begin to think of this matter. Under the guidance of the instructor, children learn to share food with each other, learn careful attitude toward the food.

If in the process of tea-drinking, children may start talking on vain subjects; the instructor has to try to direct their talks to spiritual matters by changing the subject gently. Sometimes children themselves make such remarks to each other.

An important pedagogical form of work with children is going to the country. One has to take children to nature in order to give to them examples of the correct and careful attitude toward it, which is very important for their future spiritual life.

In such trips, it turns out that many children can talk to plants, insects, animals, and birds — and understand them well.

But other children are surprised with the attitude to plants and insects as to living beings capable of feeling pain and of loving. First, these children even laugh, because they do not understand it. But with time, they accept the same perception of the objects of nature — as living beings; in particular, because they learn it in meditations in the classes.

The pantheistic attitude to nature is close to children; they easily accept it and begin to perceive the nature as a Temple of Life.

In forest trips, children learn also to build a fire without causing harm to living beings, to be not afraid of bad weather, to distinguish edible and inedible plants, to distinguish calls of different birds and to enjoy their singing.

It is also useful to show to children slides with states of nature. Yet, one should not show too many slides, because children get tired very quickly.

When the group is well prepared, it may begin to work with the exercise Surya Namaskar — Sun Salutation [41]. Children of 10-11 years of age do this series of asanas with pleasure. It is very good to do it in nature.

Sometimes there occur conversations on religious subjects; it happens most often in the forest, when the group sits around a fire. It is interesting that all children of 10-11 years of age, who have been attending the classes for five months, believe that there is God. Most of them imagine Him as Light or as All-Pervasive Spirit, though we have not told them such ideas in the classes. Such perception most likely results from their personal experience acquired during psychophysical and other exercises.

Our practice of conducting such classes shows that in the beginning there are a very few harmonious children that the instructor can work with easily and with pleasure. However their number grows as the classes go on. At the end of the five-month course, there are about 40% of children in the group who value the classes very much. To work with them is a great pleasure and reward to their instructor.

Psychic Self-Regulation for Children of 11-13 Years of Age — S.V.Zavyalov

At the age of 11-13 years, children actively accumulate basic knowledge about the world around them. Some of them begin to master harmony; this is related to formation of the emotionogenic structures of the organism and child’s search for harmony in relationships with other people and with the world.

Taking this into account, the instructor has to provide children with information on all questions important to them, help to develop their creative abilities, form in them a benevolent attitude toward the world. It is important that students learn about their possibilities in life and receive an opportunity to “try themselves” in different kinds of activity.

The adolescent age is the stage when intensive physical and psychic development of the child takes place.

Especially significant are anatomo-physiological changes related to puberty (this is a complex series of anatomic, physiological, and psychological changes). The puberty process and quick growth of the body increase in adolescents their psychical vulnerability and excitability. In the social environment, the requirements to children, when they reach adolescent age, become higher. It can present difficulties for them due to their lack of life experience. In such a case, they may exhibit unstable emotions and behavior.

The instructor has to take all these problems into account when creating the program for classes.

For creating our program of work, we used the course of psychic self-regulation for adults (its first part, prior to work with the chakras) and the experience of work with children accumulated in the School of Dr Vladimir Antonov.

Our classes included also some methods of hatha yoga and wrestling, ethical conversations, etc.

The psycho-energetical part of the class is especially important, because it develops the emotional sphere and the visualization ability; it allows children to understand the world around them better and to know new subtle emotional states.

Due to specific character of adolescent perception, the first task of the instructor is to make students interested in exercises. That is, the instructor has to decide how to present information to the students.

“We are going to learn how to become sorcerers: to become them, we have to change ourselves, to learn to be filled with love and goodness. People around us will feel this. If we are filled with goodness — then the entire world around us will change, because we will see it in a different light; only we ourselves can create the world of love and joy, and there are special methods for this task which we can learn.”

One may tell to children a story about a girl who had been blind since her birth but then became sighted. She looked at this wonderful world for the first time and found that it is very beautiful! The girl asked her mother, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” The mother answered, “I told you many times, but you could not understand me!” In a similar way, we are all born spiritually blind; our spiritual eyes are closed, and we do not see the world of the beautiful! However, we can learn the methods that allow us to open the spiritual eyes, and then we will see that around us is… Love! But to reach this goal, we have to make efforts.

After such an introduction, children willingly begin to do introductory meditation, psycho-physical and other exercises.

Mastering of psycho-physical exercises can become easier if children attune to images of nature — a flower, a seaweed, the sun, etc.

For example, when doing the exercise Awakening, children can use the image of a sunflower: it feels the spring, awakens, and stretches toward the sun. It becomes bigger and bigger; its leaves grow; its bud grows larger and opens into a big yellow flower. We stretch the arms-petals to sunlight and fill with it the body-stem!… — and gradually become made of goldish sun rays!

For the exercise Reconciliation, one can use the image of the ocean of tender light; we are on its bottom and caress this ocean was our hands, give to it our tenderness in these touches.

The exercise Giving Away: inside my chest, a large white rose blossoms; the entire chest becomes filled with its subtle fragrance; with my hands I spread this fragrance to my friends.

It is good to perform the meditation Latihan using the image of a joyful goldish rain.

In our classes, we use also the technique of inner smile. It implies that one has to learn to make the outer smile not merely a mask to wear when necessary, but make it born from the inner smile.

Here again, the instructor has to find forms of presenting this exercise to the children. This method consists in visualizing one’s own smiling face, and then moving the energy of this smile into the spiritual heart and distributing it to the entire organism. Then the instructor suggests to the students to feel that smiling lips and eyes radiating joy appear in different parts of the body — and the entire organism begins to shine with a smile! It is very important that the instructor, too, do this exercise with full emotional commitment, so that children can imitate; imitation skills usually are well developed in them.

It is important to teach children concentration, so that their attention do not scatter and be steady. For this purpose one has to find an approach that attracts children. For example, during the introductory meditation, we first imagine that we are standing on the planet Earth surrounded by many living beings. The sun shines above and gives life to us. Let us listen how our hearts beat… Then imagine that instead of the heart there is a bit of tender sun in the chest, and the entire chest becomes filled with its light, and we begin to shine as a floodlight from the chest…

For development of the visualization ability, the following exercises are useful:

The exercise Dragonfly: we are standing on a forest glade on warm summer day; we stand on soft green grass barefooted and feel that grass is very soft… A dragonfly flies close to me; I stretch my hand to it, and dragonfly descends on my hand. The dragonfly basks in the sun… Let us warm the dragonfly with our love flowing from the palm…

There is an exercise with an orange: we peel an imaginary orange fruit, its juice flows on our palms, we bite off a peace and swallow it…

In our classes, we also use some pranayamas. For example, we become magicians. On the palm of everyone, there is a white ball of light. We pull it inside the palm, move it through the arm, through the chest, through another arm — and the ball appears on another palm. First children can do this exercise in pairs: one partner moves his finger along the trajectory of ball movement to help another partner to do the pranayama.

Children quickly get tired of doing concentration, therefore it is important to end the exercise in time, so that children remain in a good emotional state.

In the classes we also use exercises with identification of oneself with some image (a dynamic one, best of all). For example, we enter the image of a flying bird, or become identified with an airplane, or we play a train and each of us becomes a car of this train, we move through different places, different landscapes. Or we join together and form a large snake: it moves forward. Or we turn into a shoal of playful dolphins; the sea is our home; we travel in the underwater world, jump high above the water surface and dive again. These exercises bring much joy to children.

In order to make subtle emotional state stable, to make children healthy and strong — the instructor has to provide them with basic skills of work with the body. One of such methods is hatha yoga asanas.

In the classes we use, among others, the series of asanas Surya Namaskar — Sun Salutation. Then several simple asanas follow: cuckoo pose, frog pose, bow pose. Before doing the asanas, children perform emotional attunement: they say to themselves that they will do asanas well and self-confidently. They also learn that we have to become masters of our bodies, not vice versa.

Wrestling exercises are very useful for harmonious development of adolescents. Children may learn simple methods of martial arts like sambo, aikido. Classes in wresting are conducted as game situations. They develop strength, provide children with the psychological stability in difficult situations, help to develop willpower. Together with hatha yoga, they allow the child to master the body, to feel it better. This contributes to development of courage, gives practical skills.

For emotional relaxation and for making children more interested in the classes, we use all kinds of motion games. They are different variations of tag game, relay-race, etc. Children become very agitated during such games, so it makes sense to teach them to calm down after it in one of the relaxation poses.

For resting at the end of the class and during the class if necessary, we use relaxation in crocodile pose, in half-tortoise pose, or lying on the back. In relaxation, we use visualization of clouds floating in the sky, hovering birds; children may identify themselves with these objects.

One of the most important parts of the program is the final conversation, when the instructor does the intellectual and ethical parts of the work. Conversations with children are based mainly on the material from the New Testament (namely, on parables) together with discussions about the meaning of life, about the ecological aspect of human existence, about how to develop in oneself the ability to love — in particular by observing the world around us, about the principles of evolution in the universe, or about how to live without causing harm to anyone.

We have such a conversation for 10-15 minutes in the form suitable for children. Many children are interested in these problems and begin to ask questions, which is quite important.

Boys show much interest in the question of the ahimsa of kshatriya. Ahimsa is the main ethical principle which reads: “Causing no harm, as possible, to other living beings — in deeds, words, and thoughts” [12]. A kshatriya is a leader, a warrior. The ahimsa of kshatriya reads: “One has to be strong and kind, to use power without getting angry!” Children need to work with this subject practically with the help of the methods of wresting.

It is good if the instructor can conduct several classes in nature, in the forest. Here children can learn careful attitude toward living nature. For example, how to build a fire without causing harm to it? They may also try finding the borders of bioenergetical cocoons of trees; this helps them to understand in practice that all living beings around us are our companions in the process of evolution.

By the end of the classes, one can notice changes which happened to children. They are, first of all, broader knowledge and outlook, positive skills and qualities, active interest in reforming oneself in accordance with the information presented in the classes, lower level of diffidence. Many children begin to study in the school better, become more calm; some of them correct their conduct in accordance with ethical principles which they learned.

Their parents notice that children gained aspiration to creativity (they want to paint, want to go to creative classes), that they developed self-confidence and have higher interest to the classes in ordinary school.

About the Methodology of Teaching Martial Arts to Children — S.E.Zhigulin

It happens quite often that teaching martial arts lead to growth of the most despising qualities in people who already possessed such qualities before. It can also give certain advantage to those who enter on the criminal path. Of course, it depends much on how teaching is done, that is what moral norms are suggested to students by their instructor.

On the other hand, teaching martial arts can become an important part of the work of true spiritual schools, where the ideas of love for God and for everything living including people, plants, animals, become the basis of the world view of the students.

This is especially important in teaching children, because the initial views provided to them in the beginning of life define to a large extent their future destiny.

The true meaning of mastering martial arts in the work of sound spiritual schools consists not in gaining the ability to defeat enemies, but in overcoming one’s own weaknesses and shortcomings. This implies constant development of oneself as an active person, who realizes in life the moral and spiritual principles — such as fortitude, gentle and careful attitude toward the objects of the world, kindness, sincere and tender love combined with readiness for self-sacrifice. Also there is no doubt that such classes, when conducted correctly, can significantly improve the social and psychological stability of the students.

The main form of teaching martial arts is classes conducted for groups of students. This allows the instructor to teach students, in particular, through formation of true spiritual relationships inside the group itself. In the process of training, children learn to communicate with each other and with adults. The instructor possessing certain skills almost always becomes an object of students’ admiration and imitation. This, in turn, requires much responsibility from such a person. The instructor can easily “kindle the hearts” of the students with his own spiritual burning and become for them an example of higher morality not only in the gym but in the usual life as well. Only a person with the opened spiritual heart is able to solve this task. The instructor also has to create the atmosphere of benevolence and sincerity, to release spiritual potentiality of the students, to form in them the correct attitude toward the world.

For a student, the learning begins with the development of the correct attitude toward the gym where the classes are conducted; the gym is the place of student’s development, and therefore it has to be kept clean and tidy. The student has to behave decently in it. During the class, the student must not make much noise, divert the attention of others, or do anything without the command of the instructor. By following these rules, children learn to control their emotions and actions.

The students begin their training in a standing position or sitting in student posture. Since martial arts develop the motoric-and-power sphere of the organism (one of its coordinators is the lower dantyan), it is necessary to do this work on the background of subtle emotions. For this purpose, the instructor suggests that the students concentrate on the image of rising sun, helps them to get rid of emotional and muscle tension, to activate the middle dantyan and enter subtle positive emotional states.

The next part of the class is warm-up. Warm-up consists of movements of Tai Chi kind. We called this series of movements Swaying Reed. By entering the image of reed swaying under the wind, the students can easily do basic movements of warm-up: swaying, bending, sagging. This helps to make the body relaxed and pliable.

The instructor suggests more and more complex exercises, putting the emphasis on achieving plasticity and stretchability. Retaining a pleasant, comfortable inner state is an essential condition for safe increase of the load. Only in this way one can avoid traumas, learn to perform the forms (kata) fluently, and master the entire technique properly. This has a positive effect both on the body (thanks to removing long-standing tensions, restoring and harmonizing all processes in the body) and on the psychic state in general.

Teaching students to assume the correct position of the body is an important element of martial arts. This is the foundation for mastering the basic technique, because it develops stability, which is fundamental for dynamic forms. Though children do not like to stand in the same position for a long time, these exercises are very important for a number of reasons, not only for mastering the technical aspect of the art. They help one to develop, among other things, the correct carriage, which is important for health.

For mastering static positions, we use the image of a tree which stretches its roots into the ground and its leaves — toward the sun. By working with this image, students easily learn to relax and to retain the positive emotional state during the entire exercise.

The dynamic way of mastering technical elements is much more interesting to children, and allows the instructor to include various exercises in the work. For example, running has a positive effect on the circulatory and respiratory systems, acrobatics develops the vestibular apparatus, exercises that involve large amplitudes strengthen the musculoskeletal system. A special part of dynamics, dedicated to basic technical actions, includes movements, blocks, and attacks.

Everyone in young age wants to become strong and confident in themselves. But having begun to learn the dynamic exercises, the students realize very soon how much time and effort one needs to spend for mastering the technique. This develops in them diligence and persistence.

Almost all dynamic forms in traditional oriental martial arts are related to images of totem animals, to which people assign higher virtues. Imitation is peculiar to children. Observing the students, the instructor may see, for example, that one of them, upon entering the image of a tiger, stays calm and makes movements full of gentle power. Another student attunes to the aggressiveness of the tiger — with all consequences of this emotional state; in this case, the instructor has to explain to this student that this is wrong.

It is most safe and correct to work with images of nature: sun, water, wind, etc. This attunes children to pleasant emotions, to the purity and harmony of nature. For example, by attuning to a gentle flow of a brook, students begin to perform movements more fluently, easily, retaining a positive emotional state.

Quite often we combine such meditative methods with pranayamas. This allows one to do effective cleansing of the meridians of the body and to achieve significant improvement of the health of the students.

Students can do forms working alone or in pairs. Working in pairs makes them use all elements learned on the preparatory stage. In this work, the instructor can see strong and weak points of each student. One of their tasks in this work is to learn to perceive the partner not as an enemy but as a friend and assistant. Such relationships develop sincerity and trust in each other, help to overcome fear and lack of self-reliance, and thus to avoid development of aggressiveness. These qualities will be helpful to children not only during the classes but in everyday life as well.

Our experience shows that one can take into groups all children who are healthy enough. We recommend to all students, besides other ethical and hygienic norms of life, switching to killing-free nutrition.

It is natural that some students leave the group sooner or later. But some students continue to work for years. When they reach the age of about 20 years, we give to them the methods of work with the chakras and meridians, and then — the methods of buddhi yoga [12]. Of course, only those students are given these higher methods who accepted fully the main ethical principles and are well developed intellectually.

Teaching martial arts must not be limited to classes in the gym only. We use also other forms of teaching — visits to museums and historically important places, theoretical lessons on the history of martial arts of different nations, camping trips. All this develops the outlook of the children, their respect to cultural heritage of different nations, and cultivates in them careful attitude toward nature. Thus, teaching martial arts can help to solve the tasks of raising children as harmonious, wholly developed individuals, to lay the foundation of morality, health, and spirituality in them.

The New Testament and Spiritual Work with Children — A.V.Kremenets

“A sower went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some fell along the road and was trampled down, and the birds of the sky ate it up, some fell on rock and came up, but withered because there was no moisture; some fell down among thorns, and thorns grew and choked the plants; but other seed fell on good soil, and when it came up, it yielded a hundredfold harvest” (Luke 8:5-8).

Jesus Christ told this parable to His disciples and explained it by revealing the profound meaning of the images of the seed, the sower, and the soil. “The seed is the word of God; the seed which fell along the road is about those people to whom the devil comes afterwards and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not come to believe and be saved; the seed which fell on rock is about those who listen to the word and accept it with joy, but have no root, and believe for a while, but in the time of temptation fall away; the seed which fell among thorns is about those who listen to the word but then go away and get choked by worries, riches, and pleasures of this world, and bring no fruit; and the seed which fell on good soil is about those who, having heard the word, kept it in the kind and pure heart and bear fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:11-15).

What will be the future life of children with whom we have contacts? Will they be able to choose with benefit for themselves the truth in the flow of information and events around them?

If good soil was prepared, if in the childhood one received rich versatile information about the world, if the foundation of morality was laid, then one’s spiritual Path will be less winding. And if the adults are sincerely interested in the happy future life of the children — not in the sense of financial success but in the sense of the surest progress on the spiritual Path predetermined by God — then they have to build relationships with their children according to the Divine rules which were given to humankind through Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Sathya Sai Baba, and other Divine Messengers [7,11].

Work with children in the groups of psychic self-regulation described in the articles of E.B.Ragimova, T.Matyatkova and M.K.Khaschanskaya can be enriched with the themes from the New Testament. This approach conforms also to the principles set forth in the article of Dr V.V.Antonov The Basic Principles of Teaching Psychic Self-Regulation to Children and Adolescents.

In the very life of Jesus Christ, in His deeds, speeches, and parables — there are answers to many questions which may arise in one’s life. Many aspects of man’s relationships with the material world, with other people, and with God are reflected in the Gospels. It is important that the instructor be able to determine what is most needed to the child at the present moment and — taking into account the child’s age and other circumstances — impart the appropriate information in the most suitable form.

Using the example of the life of Jesus Christ, one can realize the principle mentioned in the article of Dr V.V.Antonov: “Dedicated ethical work… must lay the foundation of morality in students”.

One more principle mentioned in the same article: “The emphasis in this work has to be put… on the expansion of students’ horizons, on informing the students in order to help them to choose their way of life when they grow up”.

With the use of the Gospels, the instructor can diversify the information given to children.

The information has to be presented in the form that corresponds to children’s age and, if possible, taking into account the individual peculiarities of each child — for the sake of the most intensive and harmonious development of them on all three main directions: intellectual, ethical, psychoenergetical [5, 12].

In work with children of any age, it is necessary to present the information unobtrusively. If children do not comprehend what was presented to them, then one should try to understand the reason: maybe the information was given in a too complicated form, or the relationships between the children and the instructor do not allow communicating on that level of openness which is needed for imparting this information, etc.

A failure in work with children has to be interpreted as an indication that the instructor has to work more on self-development to bring into harmony its ethical, intellectual, and psychoenergetic aspects.

Let us examine important points noticed by us in work with groups of children of different ages.

Children of 4-6 years of age do not care about where this or that life principle comes from. They just experience the emotional background around them and behave accordingly. If it is love which accepts them as they are, then children “soak up” this love into themselves. This allows the instructor to unfold children’s capabilities most fully and speed up their development. If children do not receive love and, moreover, if negative emotions are directed at them, then they suffer, become reserved, or on the contrary, begin to behave glaringly.

Therefore in work with children of 4-6 years old, one must first of all create the atmosphere of love, the atmosphere of equal and calm attitude toward all students in the group, independent of their good or bad features.

At this age, children easily accept the idea of their unity with the world, perceiving even inanimate objects as living beings, assigning to them characters and habits. Therefore, the basics of the ecological education are perceived by such children as something self-evident: “it is painful to a tree if one breaks its branches”, “a flower does not want to be picked” — all this is very understandable to small children; one needs just to stress this.

The children of 4-6 years of age understand also very well that in every one of us there is Divine Love, which can illumine both our lives and the life of everyone around.

The meaning of Divine Love can be described to children with the help of the image of a living sun, which resides in each of us. Small children can easily imagine that inside their chests there is a sun which gives to all its tender light. Children like very much to shine and to give this light. There can be very different variations of this exercises: to shine from the chest, to pour out this love and light from the eyes with the help of a smile, to shine with hands, fingers, or with the whole being.

When narrating to children fairy tales and stories, one may use various fine metaphors and expressions found in the Gospels, for example, a comparison of good people with trees yielding good fruit.

Children of 7-10 years of age have acquired some life experience already. They have certain relationships with the world established by this age. If children grew in the atmosphere of love, attended such classes, they are open and well disposed to learning ethical principles which can be understood at the age of 7-10.

If, on the other hand, children grew in the atmosphere of negative emotions, by this age they may have built a “protection” against the world which cannot satisfy their natural need of being loved.

Manifestations of this “protection” can be various. They are — apathy, lack of interest in the surroundings, defiant behavior (hypercompensation of the inferiority complex), etc.

Such children often provoke negative emotions in adults. And this proves to the children that they are “bad”, causing them to increase the “protection” from the people around, who do not want to see the child’s inner essence. In this way, constant increase of tension in relationships between children and adults occurs. In some families it is manifested more, in others — less.

In the classes of psychic self-regulation, it is important to break this “chain”: protection — reaction of adults — protection… In every child, we have to find something good, something special, and help to uncover this from under the protective “mask”.

Sometimes it is enough to let children express their opinion, to pay attention to their words — and all “constraints” fall off, and the “mask” is abandoned.

If children feel that they have the possibility to show their worth, that the very fact of their existence is interesting to other people, then they become interested in getting new information from adults. And in order to lay the foundation of morality in children, we can tell them, along with information for broadening their outlook, parables and stories from the Gospels.

The life of an adolescent group goes according to certain laws. Among children conflicts often occur. If instead of smoothing such situations one tries to help children to examine their relationships with the use of stories and parables from the Gospels, then it can change their “scale of values”, make them more ethical, kind, and honest.

At the age of 11-14, adolescents have questions to which they have not found answers yet. They already have a set of ways of behaving; they know various nuances of human relationships; their attitude toward themselves has been already formed; and in them appears the desire to know the principles of this world. They make attempts to solve arising problems on the basis of knowledge they have. Work in classes may help them to sort the accumulated knowledge, to get new information, to distinguish the true from the false.

The use of themes from the New Testament can help them to sort out the incoming information, to learn to control oneself, to withstand difficulties of life, which will inevitably occur.

In classes with adolescents, the communication should be built in the form of a dialogue. It is important to give to each child the opportunity to express his or her opinion. This can help every member of the group to gain self-confidence, to learn respecting other’s opinions. It is very important to teach children that everyone has a right to have their own opinion. And therefore we have to master such qualities as patience and tolerance.

The instructor has to analyze every class after it has been conducted — in order to understand the state and the needs of all members of the group. Then the next portion of information can be given in the most suitable form and have the meaning which is most important at the present moment.

The themes for discussions and meditations can be various. It may be, for example, the theme of love: “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37), “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39).

For instance, one may raise the following questions: “Why do we have to fulfill these commandments?”, “Who is my neighbor?”

It is also useful to narrate the parable of Jesus about a merciful Samaritan: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him half dead. By chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw the injured man he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came up to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling came to where the injured man was, and when he saw him, he felt compassion for him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he gave two silver coins to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever else you spend, I will repay you when I come back this way.” (Luke 10:25-37). So, neighbor is not he who, for example, has the same nationality as you, but is any kind person.

From this, one can conclude that ALL people are brothers and sisters because God loves ALL, and all have the Divine Light inside, — Atman, God’s Spirit, Which dwells in us.

At this point the instructor can suggest doing the meditation of seeking the source of this Divine Light in the chest. The chest, the “home” of this Light, is closed initially, blocked by the “heaps” of insults, by the “stones” of envy, flooded with heavy, sticky, bad mood. Let us try to shovel these “heaps” aside, to cleanse the passage to the “home”, to give way to the Divine Light of love. Let us feel how the windows of this “home” are opening, and fresh air is coming inside; our inner Light is kindling brighter; it is difficult for it to find room in the chest — and it pours out to everything around: to our friends, to the trees, to the flowers, to the birds, into the ambient space, bringing joy and love to everyone.

Let us recall someone who was unpleasant to us until this moment. Let us see that this person has the same Light in the chest, but it is blocked. Feel sorry for him or her and send a ray of our love to him or her. Let us love this person as he or she is, because God gives to everyone the possibility to become better, more pure.

Before this meditation, it is appropriate to recall the question of the apostle Peter to Jesus and the answer of Jesus: “How many times should I forgive my brother who sins against me? Until seven times?” “I do not tell you ‘until seven times’, but until seventy times seven” (Matt 18:21-22).

The instructor can also introduce the Golden Rule into the life of the group. “… Whatever you want others to do to you, you shall also do to them” (Matt 7:12).

One may use, as an illustration, the story about a king and his servant from the Gospel of Matthew. A king, moved to compassion, forgave the debt of his servant, but this servant did not forgive the debt of his fellow-servant and put him into prison, forgetting that he himself was in the same situation.

One may discuss this story and give different examples from real life. One may also note that sometimes it is very difficult to forgive and to understand — it requires efforts and work on reforming oneself, rather than anger, condemnation, and attempts to reform others.

Only through self-analysis, through efforts on changing oneself does the development of souls go. New qualities of the soul can be gained through the work on oneself, which should not be put off, because in the future new tasks will appear that need to be solved as well.

In discussions on spiritual subjects, it is useful to give examples from the life of adolescents. In order to make adolescents interested in telling about their faults, the instructor has to explain that all our problems are lessons for us. Sometimes we cannot realize what is good and what is bad until we face it. And if we share now our faults without the fear of being condemned, then we will benefit from such communication. First, by telling about our bad deeds, we get rid of their “burden” through repentance. Second, the life experience accumulated by us may help our friends to make correct decisions in similar situations.

In order that adolescents do not feel the desire to condemn each other in such discussions and other circumstances, it is useful to discuss first with them the question: “Do we have a right to condemn others?”

All we on our life path fall, stumble, and do wrong deeds. As an illustration of this, one can recall a story from the New Testament. Once people brought a “sinful” woman to Jesus and asked Him to condemn her. But Jesus replied, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first” (John 8:7). The people dispersed, and soon around Jesus and the woman no one remained. No stone was thrown. So, before starting to condemn let us think first about whether we have a right for that? Are we blameless? Let us imagine ourselves in the place of that person whom we want to hit by a word or even by a thought. Would we like the same be done to us? Usually it is difficult to think of this, because in such moments we are angry. From this point, the instructor may turn the discussion to the theme of the essence of anger and its manifestations.

Evil can never be exterminated with evil. Evil only gives birth to more evil. Only Love can purify man from evil. As an example, one can recall the story about how Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, was turned to righteous life.

The tax collector Zacchaeus lived in the town Jericho. He offended people robbing them, taking from them more taxes than the law prescribed. When Jesus came to this town, He did not condemn Zacchaeus but even decided to stay in his house. Such unusual behavior of Jesus changed Zacchaeus instantly. Jesus’ love led Zacchaeus to repentance (Luke 19:1-10).

The instructor may suggest the following meditation: let us recall a situation when we condemned somebody. Let us replay this situation mentally and imagine that God looks at our anger, at our spite and laughs at us being angry — from outside we look as clumsy as that person whom we are angry with. Let us try to understand this person, send him or her rays of our love from our spiritual hearts.

One may also discuss the nature of evil. Usually we do wrong deeds because we perceive outer things incorrectly — we believe that we perform these deeds for the sake of good. One may narrate the story about Saul who was, due to his religious beliefs, the worst enemy of Christians. But having recovered his sight, he understood and accepted the Teachings of Jesus Christ and with the same vigor began to preach Christianity (Acts 7:58, 8:3, 9:1-28).

One more theme: “It is easy to love people who love you”. The best example of love for all is the behavior of Jesus at the last hours of His life on the Earth. Jesus healed the servant of the high priest, whose ear was cut off by one of the apostles during the arrest of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus loved and pitied people who crucified His body, because they “do not know what they are doing”.

Another aspect of human relationships can be revealed to us in the parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector: “God, I thank you, that I am not like other people, robbers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get”, the Pharisee said. But the tax collector would not even lift up his eyes to the sky, but beat his breast, saying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:10-14). Who of these two people was more honest about their spiritual qualities?

One may discuss also the following subject: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). Talking about this, let us try to answer the questions: “What does ‘humbles himself’ mean?”, “In what he will be exalted?”

If the students are ready to comprehend profound spiritual truths, the instructor may discuss also the following: “What benefit is it to a man if he gains the entire world but does harm to his soul?”

Our bodies can be likened to automobiles in which we perform a travel called “life”. The way we have lived on the Earth predetermines the place for us after the death of the body. Let us recall the parable about a rich man and Lazarus. The rich man had all kinds of material boons in his earthly life and enjoyed them, but did not think about the spiritual. Lazarus, on the other hand, was poor but led a righteous life. When they left their physical bodies, the rich man found himself in hell, but Lazarus was taken to paradise. “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame.” But Abraham said, “Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in like manner, bad things. But now here he is comforted and you are in anguish” (Luke 16:19-31).

From this parable, one can naturally come to discussion about what is hell and what is paradise, about the structure of multidimensional universe, and about the place of God-the-Creator in it.

There is another parable, which is also appropriate to this theme, — the one about a foolish rich man who spent all his time gathering and saving material wealth. Having had gathered material wealth, he anticipated a long life full of pleasures of using these riches, but God said to him, “You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared — whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life doesn't consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses” (Luke 12:15). “Do not lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal” (Matt 6:19). In this statement, Jesus meant that only the results of our spiritual work are really ours, that only these results remain with us forever. Material possessions, in contrast, are temporary. One may have good things, be dressed well, enjoy various material boons — all this is good and necessary for supporting the physical body in good shape, but this must not be the purpose of life, must not become our main goal.

Two nice themes for discussion are found in the story about Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Jesus asked some water from a Samaritan woman, a woman of different nationality. This woman was surprised that Jesus, a Jew, did not disdain to ask her, in contrast to other Jews. Jesus did not demonstrate by His behavior that she is “lower” than He. Having had drunk some water, He said: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14).

First of all, here is a theme about the equality of people before God, about the inadmissibility of arrogance. One can supplement this theme with the story about how apostle Philip converted into Christianity an Ethiopian grandee (Acts 8:26-39).

The second theme, which follows from the story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman, is the Divine knowledge, which we can drink and give to drink to others. And love for people, about which Jesus said, is the precondition for understanding the Divinity.

“Be careful that you do not do your charitable giving before men, to be seen by them, or else you have no reward with your Heavenly Father. The hypocrites… have already received their reward” (Matt 6:1;5), “When you make a dinner or a supper, do not call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; and you will be blessed, because they do not have the resources to repay you.” (Luke 14:12-14).

How should we understand this? Literally? Or as a grotesque emphasize of the meaning which should be attributed to relationships between people? A good deed, which is done for the sake of the praise, is not truly good, since it is caused by expectation of reward. This can be seen very well with small children: some of them refuse to fulfill a request for the promised reward. They feel that love needs not to be rewarded materially. Yet we often teach children to do something for material reward, thus forming a wrong scale of values in them.

Very often one performs deeds which cause regrets afterwards: betrayal, false evidence, violation of a promise. Then comes the pain of remorse, regret about what was done. Sometimes, in such cases you know that you are wrong, but something prevents you from doing right. For example, one says one thing, another insists on something else, and then confidence in our rightfulness is lost in the flow of others’ opinions.

We have to learn to be firm in our decisions — whether small or big. “Herd behavior” often dominates in us. In a company of people, we often do that which we would never do by ourselves. The most striking example of this factor of “herd behavior” was the persecution of Jesus Christ. “Crucify, crucify Him!” — the crowd yelled to Pilate, demanding the blood of Him Who brought to these people His Love, Who healed them…

What can help us to strengthen confidence in ourselves, in our abilities? Here one can use the story about Jesus walking on the sea. Apostle Peter said then to Jesus: “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the waters. He said, ‘Come!’ Peter went down from the boat, and walked on the waters to come to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was strong, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, ‘Lord, save me!’ Immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and took hold of Him, and said to Him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’” (Matt 14:28-31).

One can talk also about the work on perfecting the soul — that this work is hard but worthy of efforts: “Enter in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter in by it. But narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life; few are those who find them.” (Matt 7:13-14).

“All gave out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, gave all that she had to live on.” (Mark 12:44). This story about two small coins of a poor widow may serve as the starting point of conversation about how we regard the deeds of other people. Often near us there are people whose contribution to work or to something else is unnoticeable and not very significant, but it is done with their last bit of strength and with full dedication to work. We have to notice such impulses in people, appreciate them, and regard as precious gifts.

And one more important theme: “There is nothing from outside of the man, that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile him.” (Mark 7:15). None of even the most disgusting acts of other people can verily defile us; only our own bad deeds and emotions defile us.

In conclusion, I want to say the following. This article described the principles of using themes from the New Testament for discussions and meditations in work with children. Everyone who conducts classes for children may select from the New Testament material needed for particular cases and give it in the most suitable form for children.

But it is important to remember that some principles given in the Gospels are understandable only to people of sufficiently high level of spiritual development. And one should not give such complicated principles to children, because it may cause damage to their growth.

For example, “… whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt 5:39). But “turning the other cheek” can be an act following from one’s strength or from one’s weakness; only the first one is correct.^*

What concerns warriors, they have to possess the qualities about which John the Baptist said: “Who has two coats, let him give to him who has none. He who has food, let him do likewise. Demand no more than that which is appointed for you. Extort from no one by violence, neither accuse anyone wrongfully. Be content with your wages.” (Luke 3:11-14).

Or, for instance, the story about Martha and Mary: Mary sat near Jesus’ feet, listening carefully to each His word, and did not help her sister with the preparations. When Martha asked Jesus to send Mary to help her, Jesus answered: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42). But in order to become like Mary, one has to learn first to run a household, to develop in oneself the qualities of a householder. One has to become like Mary not because of laziness and inability, but because one has known the work on the material plane, has ceased to be afraid of any work.

By working with children, acquainting them with the world, broadening their outlook, giving them the fundamentals of morality, we lay the foundations on which they will build their own spiritual temples when they become mature.

We must develop in children various practical skills, teach them to live their lives actively. Then on this well prepared soil, good fruit from the Divine Word will grow.

Development of Creativity in Children (Experience of the Club Harmony) — E.B.Ragimova

The concept of man’s harmony includes a fairly wide range of issues, which are not covered by the volume of knowledge and skills given in the schools. The harmony of personality implies not only coherent development of the physical, intellectual, and emotional spheres. This concept includes also the ethical and spiritual development which allows one to live in harmony with the surrounding world, and gives one the ability to value the beauty and perfection of the world of nature and skillfully interact with it.

One of the main tasks of upbringing is to help children to become creators. Children have to develop the desire to know themselves, their capabilities, and realize them for the good of others. To know oneself and to “create” oneself — this is the most difficult art. Therefore, one has to start solving the tasks of upbringing from early years of child’s life. One has to find and use methods for influencing directly the spiritual and creative potential contained in the emotional-volitional sphere of the child. One has to awaken in the soul the aspiration to Goodness and Love, which may become the source of morality and harmony of the person [8,21-34].

In this article, we describe our experience of work with groups of children and the methods which we used in this work. Our classes included exercises for development of imagination, attention, memory, physical training, methods of tempering the body, conversations on ethico-psychological and aesthetical themes. Development of creative activity was prompted through painting, dance, various games. We used also elements of psychic self-regulation [8] to draw the attention of children to the problems of self-control and self-education, which are necessary for development of harmonious personality.

The work on development of the creative abilities can be successful only if there is positive emotional environment during the class. The techniques of psychic self-regulation of the system mentioned above are very helpful for this purpose, because they create warm, benevolent environment, encourage children to “open” and to share the best with others. They also sharpen the perception, improve the mental activity, allow children to look at the world broader. By teaching the methods of auto-suggestion one can also do psycho-correction of students’ personalities, which is very important.

b) To give them the skill of harmonious communication with others, based on benevolence.

c) To form in them ecological thinking, including careful attitude toward nature.

d) To develop the capability for imagination and concentration of the attention.

f) To do basic physical training, including exercises for development of correct carriage and control of the body, also motion games, running, tempering of the body.

Classes are held twice a week in a gym. The duration of each class is about three hours. In addition, the weekend is used for out-of-town trips or for excursions (for example, to exhibition halls).

The best number of students in the group is about 12-16. The group is composed of childre


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Vladimir Antonov
(editor and co-author)

Spiritual Work with Children

Contents

Preface — V.V.Antonov

Why Children Are Different? — V.V.Antonov

The Basic Principles of Teaching Psychic Self-Regulation to Children and Adolescents — V.V.Antonov

Basic Hygiene Tips — V.V.Antonov

Introductory Meditation — V.V.Antonov

Basic Relaxation Exercises — V.V.Antonov

Psychophysical Exercises — V.V.Antonov

Experience of Work with Psychic Self-Regulation in Groups of Children and Parents in the City of Brno (Czechoslovakia) — T.Matyatkova

Classes of Psychical Self-Regulation and Painting with Children — M.K.Khaschanskaya

Psychic Self-Regulation for Children of 11-13 Years of Age — S.V.Zavyalov

About the Methodology of Teaching Martial Arts to Children — S.E.Zhigulin

The New Testament and Spiritual Work with Children — A.V.Kremenets

Development of Creativity in Children (Experience of the Club Harmony) — E.B.Ragimova

Vladimir Antonov(editor and co-author)

Spiritual Work with Children

Contents

Vladimir Antonov
(editor and co-author)