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As you often say to me, “You took the words right out of my mouth”!Sitting, standing or kneeling on plinths is a pet subject of mine too. One which until now I have not really discussed with anyone.I have done all of these today, the standing, the kneeling and the sitting on plinths. Not because of my age, although I do now belong to the older generation of conductors, but because of what you described as “health and safety” regulations. It was the only way to do my work so I could stay in one piece. The only way to do my work so the client felt safe too.The broader issue here however is giving consideration to the private space which is our client’s. Whether they are on a plinth or on a chair, standing or walking, they have a space around them which we need to respect. We must respect the fact that although we enter that space to help clients achieve their goals we must be careful not to encroach on their personal space unnecessarily.There is a very fine balance between keeping our own bodies healthy while giving the help needed for our clients to achieve their aims and at the same time keeping our distance. This is what we learn through experience.Yes, we had a rigid training at the Petö Institute. We were told not to sit on plinths. We were told lots of other things too which took us a long time to understand and interpret in our own individual ways.Years of experience allow us to become flexible. The experiences give us confidence in our movements and behaviour in the presence of our clients. Through experience and observation we learn when we can enter that personal space and when we can not, and we also learn how best to do it.If I need to sit on a plinth to do my work properly I will do it, respectfully keeping my distance.If I want to sit down because I am tired, or because I want to talk to my clients at the same level, the plinth isn’t the place for me. I can pull up a ladder back chair for these purposes, there are always plenty of them about.Thanks for this posting Laci, it gave me lots to think about at work this week and opened up some interesting discussions with my clients. I expect I will report on them at a later date on my own blog.Susie
22 June 2009

To sit or not to sit that is the question...

This little ‘sitting’ thing has grown into a big dilemma in my mind throughout many years of CE experiences working in different places and countries. Now I have decided what it is I believe and I have decided that I will stick to my own ideas whatever the absolute truth is.
The question is: to sit or not to sit on the plinth during CE delivery. Well, I will answer it first as I learnt it and then, think about it twice. This little problem has different angles from which to approach it. During my training at the Peto Institute, Hungary, I was taught not to sit on the plinth in any circumstances because the plinth belonged to the client’s personal territory and it was his/her personal education tool and this we highly appropriated in the conductive education system. Parallel to this I worked as a teacher at the State Institute of the Motor Disabled, Budapest, where there was a CE department and where I met great, enthusiastic, passionate older generations of conductors who learnt from Andras Peto himself. I learnt a lot from these conductors and it was here that I feel I was “made” into a conductor.
Some of these conductors were, interestingly, occasionally sitting on the plinth during lying programs or when clients were also sitting on it in order to facilitate them. When I asked them why they were doing so they would tell me I would learn why after 20 years of service. Their answers were, of course, indications of their own state of health.
Since I am graduated from Peto Institute, I worked in different CE environments in Hungary, Germany, Singapore, USA and in the UK. I met many different points of views. At the majority of places it was taken for granted that to sit on the plinth was OK in any circumstances and there was just no need to open up a discussion about it. In my opinion the worse has happened here in the UK when one of my former colleagues sat on the plinth when it was being used as a table with children sitting around it.
So after many years of experience, I decided to put this little thing in its rightful place. On the one hand, I highly appropriate the philosophy of CE and I try most of the time not to sit on the plinth, however, as the older conductors led me to imagine, there are some very questionable parts of this philosophy from the point of few of a conductors’ health.
Just imagine how unhealthy it is to lean forward and maintain this position for longer periods of time while facilitating, when the client is on a low plinth or when the client is very heavy and you actually propose to lift parts of his body in this position. The health and safety based manual handling book says that you must avoid such movements. Unfortunately, I know of many conductors of my age, or older, who have been sentenced to follow a career other than CE because of terrible spine or other CE related health conditions.
A couple of years ago I did a short search to find out what has been written in our training books or what can be read about it on the Net.

The result was strange. There was no such rule written down anywhere. Nothing to say that you are not allowed to sit next to your client. So, I decided the following that I wish to declare state now:
I totally believe in the philosophy of CE. However, we need to enjoy it responsibly. If the plinth functions as a bed or a tool on which people sit or work I would consider sitting on if it is easier for me to facilitate in this way. This is not supposed to mean that I am looking for the first opportunity to sit on the plinth ‘because I am tired’ and also not supposed to mean that I put my shoes into the client’s face, etc., but it means that I have to be confidentially responsible for my own health as well as that of my client.
Why am I posting this now? Things have changed in my professional life and turned full circle so that I am now working with freshly graduated conductors. They now tell not to sit on the plinth. Why? For all the same reasons I was told before. It feels like I am looking into a mirror. I see myself a decade ago when I was also 'fighting' for all of those things I was taught. They are great people and I assume great professionals too. Still, I think they do not yet have the kind of independence or the confidence that one acquires through years of experience. This confidence often brings with it flexibility and the ability to move beyond different boundaries. I strongly sense the rigid training effects behind the issue. We all know that. It is really so sweet to discuss such things.
Similar situations have occurred on official university research registration documents. I called clients patients. I had to do this for several different reasons. The freshly graduated conductors started to tell me that the clients were not patients but participants. :)

Between Satisfaction and Pleasure

Passion lives somewhere between two very positive emotions – satisfaction and pleasure. We often do not distinguish between these two similar emotions. A massage or a bottle of red wine produces the positive emotions of pleasure, however, satisfaction points to something much deeper. Buddha suggested that the things that seen to lead to real satisfaction have something of investment quality to them, such as building a house, creating a child, or writing a book. Some people experience this feeling of satisfaction and passion they produce. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi a psychologist who interviewed thousands of people of all ages and asked them to describe their highest moments of satisfaction. According to Csikszentmihalyi, when people experience their highest moments of satisfactions and are experiencing ‘flow’, they describe the psychological components as: ‘The task is challenging and requires skill’, ‘We concentrate’, ‘There are clear goals’, ‘We get immediate feedback’, ‘We have deep, effortless involvement’, ‘There is a sense of control’, Time stops’.
Interestingly, none of these components are about the experience of pleasure per se. Rather, when we are absorbed in flow, it is about total engagement and a loss of self-consciousness. In other words, when we are wrapped up in flow we are investing in building emotional capital that we can draw on to sustain our passion and therefore our energy. In contrast, to seeking the immediate rewards of pleasurable experience, to build your emotional capital you need to pay attention to the elements of the flow experience that fuel your passion and produce your most rewording satisfactions. People whose motivations are intrinsic exhibited more interest, excitement, and confidence, as well as greater persistence, creativity, and performance than those who motivated largely by external demands and rewards. Passionate people are productive, persistent, high performers. These people look for creative challenges. They also display a constant energy for discovering how things can be done better. One thing is sure, if you have passion for what you do, then what you do is powerful. I saw conductors to have that power, passion when I enrolled Peto Institute in the early nineties. They absorbed me into ‘flow’ several times and that was an extraordinary experience. Then, later, I missed them for long. It felt like; they would have died out. I worked at different work places where individuals were strongly fighting for their individual aims and somehow they lost energy, concentration, effort, but most importantly self control on human strength. It made me really happy to meet someone again, in last November, who was young, powerful and passionate - somwhere between satisfaction and pleasure. Even more happy now, I have been working with some of those....

CE research

A konduktiv pedagogia tudomanyos vizsgalatara keszulve, osszeszedve gondolataimat, el kellett dontenem, hogy mibe is kezdjek. Nehany dolog a kezdetektol fogva vilagosan, komoly teret nyerve elmemben, eloretolakodva arra "kenyszeritett", hogy ne hagyjam ki oket, vagy bele se fogjak "holmi" kutatasba. Megis, szamtalan dolog befolyasolja ilyen helyzetekben dontesunket. A tajekozottsag, olvasottsag jol jon(ne) ilyenkor, de azzal kerulunk legkevesbe kozelsegbe, amit nem ismerunk:), tehat sokszor tenyleg a tanulasban es kutatasban is a szerencse legalabb akkora szerepet jatszik - meglatasom szerint- mint barmely biologiai jellegu kiserleti kutatasban. Azzal tobbe, kevesbe tisztaban vagyok, hogy amiota a konduktiv pedagogia rendszerevel talalkoztam (1991), egyre tagulo holisztikus felfogasban elek. Azzal viszont kevesbe szembesultem, hogy masok egeszen tavol lehetnek ettol a nezoponttol. Egyszeru megfogalmazasban barki lehet holisztikus, ellentetben a professzionalis valosaggal: kevesen akadnak, akik tokelyre kepesek ezt a napi viszonylatra is munkassagukban 'redukalni'. Minden, mindennel osszefuggesben all. Igen. Ezt azonban nagyon nehez a dolgok melyere hatolva, a dolgok osszesegere alkalmazni a hetkoznapi valosagban. A komplexitast meg lehet ismerni, akademikusan tanulni, megis; semmi egyeb nem vezet a totalis megerteshez jobban, mint a tapasztalati praxison keresztuli megismeres. Ennek a nezetnek es eletfelfogasnak kialakulasahoz jelentosen jarult hozza a Peto Intezeti kepzesem, az akkori kepzesi modell ( elmelet es praxis egyensulya szamomra), valamint akkori eletformam: szaktanari tanitas a Mozgasserukltek Allami Intezeteben, sok es mindenfele onszorgalombol vegzett gyakorlat a Peto Intezet szamtalan csoportjaban + termeszetesen a kotelezo kepzesi gyaklorlatok es tanorak. Itt mindefelekeppen megjegyzendo nehany kollega emberfeletti, vagy inkabb abszolut sallangmentes, nyiltszivu emberi szolgalata; a tudas feltekenyseg nelkuli, emberbarati atszarmaztatasa. Ha neveket kezdenek el sorolni, akkor ez az oldal mara nem fejezodne be, s ha valakit veletlenul kihagynek a sorbol, akkor nagyon nehezen esedezhetnek bocsanatert. Tobben ugy lenditettek at valoszinutlen, nem aposztrofalt krizis, vagy tanulohelyzeteken, hogy eszre sem vettek (vehettek) dialogusuk nagyszeruseget. Megis engedtessek meg kulonos tekintettel arra nezve, hogy nelkuluk aligha valhattam volna konduktorra, hogy Makkai Erzsebet es Horvath Jantje nevet es faradhatatlan munkassagukat emlithessem az elsok kozott...

A holisztikus, komplex eletfelfogas, a kulonbozo elethelyzetek ismerete, iskolak, rehabilitacios intezetek mindennapi praxisa, nehany elottem es ismeretemben vegzett kutatas es azok eredmenyei, ugymond predesztinaltak arra, hogy valasszak. Ez szamomra fekete-feher uggye nott. Valasszak kutatas egy uj iranyban, vagy nem kuatas kozott... folyt. kov.

I met with this just recently

Sorry, I have never found who wrote this bit but I felt to share it because I feel it is so truth.

“…when Freire talked of love, he suggested it was an energy that extended to a love for all humanity, an energy that fuelled the determination to sustain action for social justice: ‘Love is an act of courage, not fear …a commitment to others …[and] to the cause of liberation’ (1972:78). His belief was that the process of dialogue, so central to the transformative project, could not exist ‘in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people’ (1993:70).”

We need our risks

They want us to avoid risks, however, WE NEED our risks at CE: because this is the only way to learn orthofunction...

Ethical Implications

I am dealing with an ethical application form recently and some thoughts have grown in my mind.

Although there is a strong tendency to focus on doing no harm to CE participants, the long term consequences are not always easy to calculate. Summer (2006) writes of the rights to privacy, informed consent and confidentiality in social research as being some of the most difficult assurances to give to any participant. Conductive Education is particularly one of those development ideas which might cause some (if not more) harm. Ethical dilemmas are endemic in all methods, and we must show as CE professionals some concerns, too. Of course, numerous guidelines have been published and are available for professionals. However, guidelines are just that: they are not obligatory and are difficult to police, bearing in mind that they are open to individual interpretation and application. CE is a complex development system and it meets complex possibilities of causing harms.

Though, it is luck that ethical values themselves are not absolutes, and one can understand the problems of translating abstract and disputable principles into a set of practical and relevant guidelines to suit a variety of settings. It could be argued if we should ethical implication at all. I am afraid, however, we must. In conjunction with participants, parents, colleagues, make some moral judgements about the balance between the benefits of CE and the rights of others.