Sehr

We welcome you to join us tomorrow for this session at 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM..

Details of Easeful Parenting with Nandita Ma...Starting April 30th 2021..

Join us in this New Adventure.. Easeful Parenting with Nandita Ma..

Join us in the new adventure of Easeful Parenting with Nandita ma...

Conscious unparenting is an opening of the spirit within to an unhurried, contemplative gentle spirit of inquiry. There is no effort to gloss over the confusions or inertia that inform our daily living. The cluelessness of being a parent is often accompanied by a sincere wish to be a good one. But if we can be totally transparent and authentic, it can lead to a level of dialogue which is not pre-meditated, and therefore every time, it is full of adventure and vulnerability.

Conscious unparenting is a look at everything – the fields of life and engagement that life on earth everyday is bringing us to.

The cluelessness of a parent is a great starting point It goes hand in hand with the subconscious conditioning of wanting to direct, oversee and supervise everything. And here, we are dealing with the past. Coming to unparenting with the conditioned culture and template of generations of parenting. We receive it with humility and gratitude to our forefathers and open it up for enthusiastic deliberation within ourselves.

In this, we are also familiar with two kind of resources that one has as a parent – books on parenting or "what to expect " books and the other integral process of the parent being a facilitator and observer of the child’s growth.

In unparenting, we bring emotional intelligence at play, checking in with how we are feeling around situations -- and bring to it --- what is arising now globally – a need to loosen the observer and to go into unobserved immersive spaces in what J. Krishnamurti calls ‘ choiceless awareness’.

This brings us to the immersive nature of play. And so, you’re alternating between witnessing and not witnessing but not in a way that you want to control it or direct it or supervise it in a pre-planned mentally thought out manner.

So a big game is our dealings with TIME.

Sandpit outdoor play comes to mind.

Teachers around the sandpit may not have experienced the sandpit themselves as children

For example, I never played in a sandpit. But in a preschool setting, we will possibly always start with sandpit play or end. Wherever we locate it – like we used to locate it at the beginning of the day alternatively giving them open ended play to start with, and the next day they would have a structured physical activity. So when they had played in the sandpit from 9:00 to 10:15, and that’s almost an hour and 15 minutes, we rang the bell but children would not want to get up for tiffin.

So what I am suggesting is that whether hunger is something that we can really put a clock time to? And I am suggesting here that possibly the sandpit feeds the spirit of the child. And the spirit needs that succour before a certain kind of bell rings within the body for gross food.

I don’t feel children are inside their bodies in the manner that we inhabit our bodies. .Their spirit is at one with the immediate and intangible, at once.

Play itself has a momentum. The Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram exhorts us to pay heed to "movements," that we may be able to see the movements within the play, within ourselves. So, when play arises, it unfolds and it has its own rhythms of rising and enlarging and dwindling and morphing and is not time driven



Take another instance of a child who is climbing up and down the stairs or running about all the time or jumping two flights of stairs, and here we said that if we understand the science of early childhood, then we can marvel at the complexity of her body, her intelligence, and how human body has been wired into muscular, the neural, the emotional – how it is being wired through that act of jumping.

I have felt children’s movement in my own body. There is this obliteration of even the physical separate body. Then you can feel their impulse within your body. We spoke about running being such a physical movement of abandon. And it was not just a physical activity but an emotional, physical, subtle – the entire being is engaged in that abandon. So the child who is running around, or is not coming to food, it's not that she’s not listening or has ADHD or is uncooperative, but she is merely answering to the movements that are arising within her brain, her consciousness

Also, when you go away from the separation of the witness consciousness, you can feel this oneness with the child. There is this remarkable availability of a glimpse into how the human specimen is being put together. Since we were not witness to our own growth, – how does thought arise, how does bone density come about, neural, muscular growth and it is a fascinating opportunity to have some insights and check them against research thatnis being carried out in genetics and epigenetics today.

Unparenting is also the awareness of the conditioned part of ourselves and surrendering it to that greater field of adventure within us. And when that conditioning arises, to experience it, to own it. So our dialogue said that relaxation of that drive to be a good parent or a perfect parent goes down. No longer are we focusing on perfection. That we are able to be totally present with whatever is arising. So Ashima spoke about the need to be more and more authentic and the need for perfection going down in all aspects of her life, and to be fully okay with discomfort, pain, anger – to be authentic, and again you can witness that authenticity. So, there is freedom even from the inevitabilty of a repetitive personality structure. So unparenting is a portal to surprises and beyond.

At Sehr, through unparenting we open ourselves to a wider and greater possibility of looking at this spectrum of movements that are coming into play – the fields within ourselves. So, whoever you’re with – whether a child or an adult, you have always the choice of a direct path to relationship and these movements, like waves play out ---- you can choose from between a range of formulations ---- thought, speech , action --- from those fields within you, playfully, gently, joyfully and with all your being.