Well-being ceremony- tea drinkingHong Kong 2010
Another day with AP
Last week I made a tram journey accompanied by thoughts of AP too
I always have something with me to read where ever I am and one morning last week I found the latest copy of the MS Newsletter neatly folded in my pocket. I had put it there on leaving work the evening before but had met a friend to sit beside on the tram and bus so I had done no reading. This made a pleasant change.
Riding the tram and not the bike does have its advantages although I begin to feel, just as I did at this same time last year, that I need my bike and the fresh air and probably also the mental exercise of keeping my postings in my head till I get home.
For now the bike is in the cellar as it is still so freezing cold and the pencil and note book are with me in the tram, unless of course I meet a friend.
Macht Mit!
The MS newsletter Mach Mit! ('Join in') is a quarterly that I receive because of my close contacts with the staff at the National Association’s Nürnberg branch of the German Multiple Sclerosis Association. It was the chairmen of this group in Nürnberg and in Würzburg who has invited me on several occasions since the late 1990s to give talks on my conductive work. It is also this same association that encouraged the formation of my first conductive group for people with MS, also offering financial support to its members if they attended.
I always read this newsletter on the way to or from work. It is small enough to put in my pocket and it usually full of lots of food-for-thought. I especially enjoy the words of social pedagogue Martina Dismond that set the theme for the small newspaper.
This time she writes from various sources, Kafka, Zen even Duden (the German dictionary) in her attempt to describe how life can change but we can build roads and bridges to change our direction. She writes that doing this is not easy but perhaps the way that we follow will be satisfying and original. She says that, if we are no longer able to use roads or bridges to move forwards or upwards in our spiralling life, then we can try digging a tunnel to bring us to a new source of light. Whichever way we choose on our journey through life, we will always meet new people, we will get to know more about ourselves and others, we will find new experiences and find an expanding world to live in.
This newspaper is there to help the people living in Nürnberg and the surrounding country to widen their horizons in what they probably feel because of their illness is becoming a narrowing existence.
Just like we do in our conductive groups where we show a path that these clients can follow to widen their horizons, to live their lives to the full, this newspaper is full of suggestions and invitation to do the same.
As well as the advertisement for our conductive groups MS sufferers can read about a range of other resources, activities, meetings, seminars that could give them a lift to a new level, widen, expand the world that they live in a little bit.
Back to AP
Now, just as at the Sanatorium in the Bavarian Woods last week
I was thinking about AP and his life before the Petö Institute. Or should I say Petö Sanatorium?
The MS newsletter reads like pages from Unfug too, just like the brochure for the clinic that I visited. It always does and what is nice about it is that, just as in Unfug, there in the middle are of it all are a few lines about conductive upbringing groups and when the next one takes place.
What was there on offer this time to build pathways to widen the world?
There was a list of presentations to be given by a vicar:
“ The mind, self-awareness and reality -
The mind is an enormous Kosmos that contains our self, or that is what the new scientist are enlightening us about. They say that quantum and mirror neurones are bouncing around in there but what really is our self-awareness? Can we follow the tracks of what really is a more mystical reality here?”
“Now! Awareness, taking notice of the moment -
The present is the only place in which we exist. But because of hectic days we too often miss the moment in which we live. The mystical and the eastern religions have a timeless quality. We wish to get in the tracks of the here and now, the moment in which we live.”
“A meaningful understanding of guilt-
The vicar and pastoral psychologist can use his tremendous experience from work abroad and as a Klinikseelsorger (caregiver for the soul in clinics/ sanatoriums), to explore the theme of guilt. It has always been a theme to cause discussion in Christian religions and here we will speak about how we deal with guilt, sins and forgiveness”
There is plenty more to attract the readers to get out of the house and take part in talks, or activities with invitation to various workshops and trips:
“New medicine on the horizon – pain therapy and MS”
“Cognitive disorders with MS, diagnosis and therapies”
“Overcoming stress with observation and awareness”
“Visualisation and MS”
“Yoga seminar, conquering fear”
“ Relaxation, well-being, creating new energy, gaining courage by learning a new rhythmical experience of breathing”
“Mind-jogging, concentration and memory training”
“Climbing course and walkers/ramblers group”
The list goes on. There is so much crammed in to this sixteen pages. It ends with a full-page invitation to take part in the annual MS Symposium that takes place in Rummelsberg, one of the local clinics that specialises in MS, on 21st May.
The programme begins at 10.00am with the welcome given by Martina Dismond, and Dr Winterholler from the Rummelsberg Clinic
Then follow three presentations from more doctors from Rummelsberg, with a coffee-break of course at 11.45:
“MS the often long path to diagnosis”
“New options for treatment in tablet form. Who for and what are the risks?”
“Sport and MS –what is available? – the effects – suggestions and advice.”
Now as then
I reiterate here, things do not change much. What was on offer for the continued well-being of folk, both physically and seelisch (for the soul) in AP’s time, and what we see on offer here, are very much the same, and conductive living sneaks in there too this time.
Conductive groups also gets a look in these days at some of Germany’s sanatoriums, I actually worked in one myself way back in February 1997. It was a clinic in Franconia where conductive groups come as part and parcel of a well-being package for some of the clients. Not all the clients only those who requested it or were recommended to try it by their clinic doctors.
Strangely enough these sanatoriums and their conduction do not get a lot of publicity whereas conduction in educational settings does.
I wonder why.
Notes
Susie Mallett -
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