Revealing the soul, and the magic, will simply have to wait

Simply remain composed!

I have just had a big disappointment.

There is going to be a 'European' CE conference in Finland this October.

Finland is an expensive place to visit but I there was something that I desperately wanted to say there, that 'European' CE has lost the plot. It's lost Andras Peto. And I hoped that there was a chance of some financial help towards going.

I've just found out that the funding that I'd been hoping for has fallen through. Not the biggest financial casualty in the world today, I know, but it means a lot to my own tiny economic system and I've had to write to the nice Finnish people who are organising things and withdraw my submission.

Boo-hoo.

Anyway, here's the abstract of what I intended to say:

András Petö: the heart and soul of conductive pedagogy

András Petö was not “a neurologist” or “a pedagogue” but “a healer” dealing with the body and the mind as one.

Conductive Education today is described mostly in terms of techniques and exercises, so-called “principles”, “motor training” and “motor programmes”, provided for sometimes extraordinarily short periods. Research has little relation to living or to “healing”. Practice, writing and research are nothing to do with what András Petö called “the soul” (die Seele).

András Petö's essence is in danger of being lost in programmes focussing on techniques, in short training courses and in writing that ignore the heart and the soul, although “holistic” is often mentioned. Even so, parents often remark on the “magic in the air” in good conductive practice.

We look forward to the first new degree-level graduates from the Petö Institute to see how this problem is being resolved there. We ought to have our own solutions too.

References

Andras Petö, Unfug der Krankenheit - Triumph der Heilkunst, Hanau/Main, Verlag Karl Schustek, 1965

Mária Hári, The human principle in Conductive Education, Budapest, MPANNI, 1988

I do hope that some written stuff comes out of this conference so that I and other people who cannot afford Finland can get some ideas of what was being discussed there.

Notes

Website for Finnish conference -
http://www.ruskis.fi/english.