Listening to one’s body Close your eyes and observe your body: how does it feel (tense, tired, nervous)? Become aware of your position. Adopt a comfortable and upright position. How do you feel now? Scan your body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes and observe with kindness the different sensations that you feel. Is there a body part that you feel more strongly? Do you feel a pulsation, a tension, a heaviness, a tickling? If this is the case, take three breaths at the location of the sensation. Are there body parts that you do not feel? If your body could express its needs, what would it ask for? Does your body need anything? If we wish to devote more time to it, it is possible to continue like this: focus your attention on your head, feel your forehead and eyes, how does your jaw feel? Is it relaxed or tense? Relax it. Sense your neck and shoulders; relax your shoulders. Feel the air that inflates and deflates your chest, try to feel your heart beating. Concentrate now on your belly; how does it feel? Is it knotted, is it empty, does it make noises? Now concentrate on the pelvic area, then on your back. How are your legs? Calm or restless? Feel your ankles, the soles of your feet, and then move your toes, stretch gently. It is also possible, when there is a body sensation, to simply remain present with this sensation, to observe its evolution as well as the emotions, thoughts and images that arise during the exercise.

Settle down in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for a few minutes. Sit in a comfortable and upright position to explore these audio tracks.

Emotional intelligence refers to “the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others”.   We can see that the world is evolving rapidly; emotional maturity and personal development are becoming a priority for many, because which changes (social, ecological, political or economic) can profoundly improve the human condition if there is no prior transformation of the individual? Even at the professional level, it appears in many surveys that more than three-quarters of recruiters favor emotionally intelligent candidates rather than those with many diplomas. Emotional intelligence is now considered to be just as important as intelligence quotient (IQ).

A prerequisite for progress is self-knowledge: becoming aware of our emotions, thoughts, reactions, strengths and weaknesses, but also of this presence that moves us – our profound essence. This awareness is progressive; the adult, to encourage it in the child, can simply give him a mirror, get him used to taking his “inner weather”, observing himself, turning his gaze inwards. The child will be lead to discover the warning signs of a storm, the causes or circumstances that provoke it, its effects on his body, behavior, thoughts and emotions.

Sit comfortably and take a few moments to observe your inner weather: how do you feel physically (tension, relaxation, etc.), emotionally (sad, agitated, etc.) and mentally (many or few thoughts, etc.)? Simply take note of these feelings. Now, breathing through the nose if possible, feel your diaphragm come down and swell the abdomen while inhaling; while exhaling, the air exits through the nostrils and the diaphragm rises. For this breathing to be even deeper, you can feel the region from your lower abdomen up to the pubis also rise and fall to the rhythm of your breathing. Now return to your inner weather and observe physical, emotional and mental changes.

What is your definition of this strength? Make a list of the situations or circumstances (with whom, when) in which it is present. Does it bring you anything? How do you feel when it is present (physically, emotionally, in your head)?

Think of seven new ways to use one of your strengths (in the daily, professional, social, and sentimental aspects of your life; to make classes more interesting in school, with regard to the relationship with your parents, brother or sister, and friends, during your free time or when doing sports). Example of curiosity: deepen my knowledge of a theme that I am passionate about by reading books, specialized journals, doing research on the Internet, watching a documentary; observe the architecture of buildings on the way to school; try to understand my brother’s character; observe fluctuations in my mood during the day; take courses on a subject I do not know; regularly spend time with people from a different culture to discover their culture’s richness; explore the fauna and flora of the forest at least one hour a week.

Think of a recent and somewhat difficult situation. Review each of your 5 principal core strengths and explore how they can help you deal with the situation better; find one or more strategies. For example, if one of my strengths is humor and I have tensions with someone, I can break the ice with humor to relax the atmosphere and establish some complicity. If it always takes ten minutes to make teams during recess, I can use my quality of leadership to speed it up. You will find many other exercises to cultivate the strengths of character in the book.

From the point of view of scientific studies, the University of Newcastle in Australia has studied the impact of teaching fundamental human values in more than twenty schools. Numerous beneficial effects have been observed: the students are more applied, honest and respectful; they take responsibility for their studies and cooperate better; they are kinder and integrate isolated children more easily. In these schools, teachers offer more choices to the students, listen to them more attentively, encourage them to manage their own conflicts; thus, students feel that they are treated more fairly and, on their side, are more respectful and courteous towards the teachers; a better atmosphere prevails in these schools, and relations between teachers and students are better; this all results in an improved well-being for all, and parents feel more engaged.

The following questions can serve as a guideline to help the child deepen his knowledge about one of the twelve basic human qualities mentioned above:

• What is your definition of this quality?
• When did you use it for the last time?
• How do you feel when this quality is present within you? Do you perceive differences in your posture or in your facial expressions? What body sensations can you perceive? What thoughts present themselves when you feel that quality?
• How important is this quality to you, and why? What are the benefits and advantages of this quality?
• Is this quality within you right now? If so, when and how does it manifest itself?
• What strategies could you develop to use it more?
• Under what circumstances in your life would it be especially judicious to use this quality?
• Could this quality have helped you on some occasions? If so, list the opportunities and the way you could have used it.
• What would be the advantage of having this quality present all the time or of being able to use it at will? What impact could this have on your life, both in the short and long term? What difference would it make on your entourage and on your action in the world?

Beauty illuminates everything it touches, it has crept everywhere: in the charm of the creek springing through the undergrowth, the freshness of a dew-beaded flower, the cheerful laughter of a child, the aerial splendor of Mozart’s symphonies, the gentleness of a tender gesture, the felted patter of a bird’s flight.

Wherever beauty slips in, whether in art or nature, in emotions, thoughts or actions, from the butterfly to the distant galaxies, everything lights up in its wake. The sensitive soul sees it everywhere; it basks in this beauty and thus fills its whole being with a secret splendor.

Beauty nourishes – and doesn’t nourishing oneself with beauty fill us with beauty too? It inspires, heals, illuminates, makes happiness flow into our lives like a nurturing river. Great humans have befriended beauty; and don’t the wounded, who have taken refuge in its arms, heal faster? It is not a mere ornament or decoration, it is indispensable to our well-being; it adds a dimension to everything it touches; it ennobles everything: our actions, emotions, thoughts, places of life. 

Neuroscientists of seven American universities have shown that participating in artistic activities (dance, music, theater, visual art) is connected to:

• Improved cognitive abilities: strengthening of memory, reading and writing skills, creative thinking.
• Increased involvement of students in their education as well as in the community and in pro-social activities
• It also has a positive impact on social parameters, including increased involvement of students in their general education as well as in the community and in pro-social activities.

Finally, an analysis of more than two hundred high schools shows that those placing more emphasis on art have higher graduation rates :

more art = higher graduation rates

A man who has a developed aesthetic sense lives, works and loves better; he who has made beauty his companion has more luminous ideas. It raises awareness and turns us away from ugliness. Is it not more difficult to wallow in the primitive mud when one has experienced beauty’s luminous splendors? The adult, while developing this ability in himself, will stimulate the children to discover and express beauty and excellence; beauty in nature: sounds, shapes, colors, scents; beauty in music, architecture, painting, sculpture, poetry; and in all the human activities through which excellence can be expressed too. This will breathe beauty and perfection into their movements, emotions and thoughts.

Take thirty seconds to carefully and peacefully observe the place in which you are: study the play of shadow and light, the different shapes, materials, guess the textures; examine an object for a few seconds then see how it occupies space; look around you with curiosity and attention. Which details or new things have you noticed? Doesn’t everything become beautiful? If you have a work of art, does it come alive? How would your life be if this experience were constant?

Moral rules are intended to indicate how human beings must behave, act and be, among themselves and about what/who surrounds them; Napoleon said that they are the natural complement to laws.

The ethical sense comes from within; it obeys an inner ideal, not an external norm. The action of the ethical man is motived by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an absolute standard; it is the quest for Good, an effort of the being to grow and transform into the perfect nature.

According to recent research, it seems that the ethical sense is innate and that it can already be observed in children from the age of three. Some children will know and say that an action is wrong, even if adults around say the opposite. According to the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, ethical sense stems mainly from innate intuitions (“I just know that it’s wrong”), to which is later added a deliberate reasoning resulting from conscious processes. This research shows that the most favorable attitude towards the development of an ethical maturity is to cultivate in the parent-child interaction “a cooperative relationship and a positive mutual link”.

Let us regularly encourage the children:

• To turn their gaze inwards, and to listen and follow their feelings, to trust in the guidance coming from within (sense of discomfort after an action or speech; spontaneous impulse to help one’s neighbor; feeling that something is false or “wrong”; feeling that things are not in their proper place and need to adjust a situation; need to apologize for a word, action or mistake; need to seek redress when a feeling of injustice is felt);
• To become aware of emotions (pride, shyness, fear) that prevent knowledge of what is good and fair to manifest in action, and to transcend these limitations by exploring various strategies;
• To discern between intuitions (regarding what must be done or said) and desires, wishes, fears, reflexes and impulses (which sometimes simulate an intuition); to distinguish between needs and whims.

To learn languages, let us study inspiring texts, sacred texts from various traditions (Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, etc.), human rights, children’s rights; numerous philosophers and religious people also wrote about ethics. Find inspiration within these texts or movies and organize moments of free reflection, individually or in groups.

At school, teaching is traditionally organized into a series of subjects (English, Geography, History, Mathematics, Science, etc.) and most of the time studying these subjects is devoted to memorizing them: learning the places and dates of battles, the names of rivers and mountains, conjugation, multiplication tables, spelling, French and German vocabulary, etc. We use our memorization ability throughout our schooling (a few hours a day for 11 years or more) and this, in general, without having properly learned how to memorize things! In an integral approach, we will first focus on the development of mental faculties:

Starting from the natural curiosity of the children, their interests, we can bring them to perfect the tools that are necessary to acquire knowledge. Throughout the development and refinement of these faculties, we use classical branches of knowledge, but the emphasis is on the development of faculties, not on the amount of information to be learned or the number of subjects addressed. Once these faculties are developed, the child can devote himself to studying all the subjects with formidable efficacy.

Lu Chao recited from memory the number pi to its 67,890th decimal place. Boris Konrad memorized 21 names and birth dates in two minutes; Simon Reinhard memorized random words for five minutes, then had ten minutes to recall them, he holds the world record with 124 words; Dominic O’Brien memorized 2,385 random binary digits in thirty minutes. »

Here are the teachers’ comments about young Dominic O’Brien: “He is very slow, when he raises his hand, if he is not questioned at once, he does not remember his question anymore”, “He will never succeed”, “He dreams when he is doing math, he loses the thread of his thoughts”, “He daydreams too much, does not pay enough attention to details”. How many children have been thus discouraged, convinced by adults that they are useless?

One day, Dominic O’Brien decided to improve his memory, and, out of nowhere, without being forced to do it, he modeled one of the most prodigious memories in the world. He was Memory World Champion eight times!

The first condition is therefore to want to learn. Forcing children to learn is absurd and inefficient. The second condition is to make them discover memorization techniques.

Find here one technique, many more in the book of Fabrice Dini…

The method of loci is one of the most widely used methods of memorization to date. We find the first traces of this technique in Latin writings (Rhetorica ad Herennium) around 85 BC. It helped a speaker quickly memorize a speech. The person first visited a place (church, market, etc.) and followed a predefined route several times, always stopping at the same places. Once the route and stops were memorized, he cut his speech up into parts, each symbolized by a strong image; then, using his imagination, he associated each symbol or image with a stop. Thus, Clemens Mayer – World Memory Champion in 2005 and 2006 – memorized 1,040 numbers in 30 minutes, using a mental pathway with 300 stopping points throughout his home. One can also use public places, a museum or any other building and thus set up several routes. This technique can be used to remember many things: a telephone conversation, the periodic table, a list of things to do, and so on. Create a route in a location you know well with ten steps, for example, when entering your home:

1. Entrance door
2. Garage
3. Utility room
4. Staircase
5. Living room
6. Kitchen
7. Corridor
8. Office
9. Bathroom
10. Bedroom

Here are the things I have to remember: take out the trash, change the cat’s litter, phone my insurance agent, reply to an email regarding a trek on Sunday, etc. An example of visualization:

1. I arrive at the front door (a humongous trash can with a pink tassel is in front of the door and I have to ask the neighbor for help to move it before being able to enter);
2. I go into the garage (the horrible smell of the cat’s litter obliges me to put on a gas mask);
3. After that, I go to the utility room (my insurer jumps out from behind the washing machine to discuss my insurance);
4. I climb the stairs (I see myself with my trekking shoes climbing to the top of a high mountain in a storm); etc. Your turn now: create your own 10-step journey into your home and choose something you’ve always dreamed of learning, or a list that may be useful to know by heart (for your work, your passion), or for example, the six basic human virtues defined by positive psychology: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. Put some humor into it, enjoy it!