It's time to take a look at your own reflection in the pond, and make a move to break out of whatever you have been conditioned by others...

"In all ages, in all lands, there have been those who seek truth. This seeking is an individual's search for something more than self, and much more than the confines of this worldly system. It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway." A Watt

Think about it!

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." D James

"Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." Harvey Pekar

"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”
Enrique Jardiel Poncela

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
Toni Morrison

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." Albert Camus

I remembered when I was invited to the home of Professor Alexander Russell in London.

After I put up my previous posting about green roofs I went to our local farm shop to gather some locally grown vegetables for my Sunday lunch and to take a nice walk in the forest.
These walks help me to relax, to ground me, help me to contemplate on my projects and they also give me inspirations. The sky was clear; the forest was glowing with all the beautiful colours of the autumn.
During the walk a gentle thought form entered my heart from the past. I remembered when I was invited to the home of Professor Alexander Russell in London. I was introduced to him at the Hornsey Centre for Conductive Education where he worked closely with Ester Cotton. He took me to his study because he wanted to show me a model of the idea of a building he had planned with others for a children centre to be built in Jerusalem. In the middle of the room there was a huge table with the model of the building. The building looked like a beehive. If I wanted to show you the design it looked similar to Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic dome…these dome shapes were somehow connected to one another. He was so excited about it and he spent a long time explaining to me where each services will be located.
I don’t know whether this project ever came to fruition or not, but he writes about the concept in the book titled The Petö System and its Evolution in Britain.
He wrote the following: “Our holistic priority goes beyond excellence in overcoming or alleviating weakness or defects towards a progressive fostering of strengths or talent of the “ whole” child, whilst optimally integrating him with his normal peers as soon as is practicable. Ultimate realisation of his full potential must remain the ongoing target from the outset. The extensive floor is designed for integrative classes of handicapped with non handicapped infants and toddlers, starting from one and a half years of age, and extending within its opposite wing for ages three and a half to seven….”
Page 353. 6.A comprehensive Integration Floor
If you are contemplating on designing your new centre you might find some inspiration from this posting.


Geodesic Dome











Professor Alexander Russell

"Paediatrician who published the first descriptions of many metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases
Alexander Russell, emeritus professor of paediatrics and childcare Hebrew University of Jerusalem (b Newcastle upon Tyne 1914; q Durham 1936), died from heart failure resulting from ischaemic heart disease on 4 March 2003.

Professor Alex Russell had three outstanding strands to his career and a single one of them could have marked him as a distinguished contributor to the science and practice of medicine. He was house physician to Professor Sir James Spence, from whom he acquired the hallmarks of rigour in scientific research and care of the sick child by supporting the family. During his war service in the Royal Air Force he defined the syndrome of carbon monoxide poisoning in the gun cockpits at the rear of Whitley bombers, where space was confined. He showed that the poisoning accounted for air sickness that had previously been ascribed to "weakness of moral fibre" in veteran gunners. For this discovery and his field research in malaria and hepatitis he was mentioned twice in dispatches and was awarded the OBE.

In 1950 he became assistant to Professor Sir Alan Moncrieff, working at both the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hackney Road, where he founded the UK’s first paediatric endocrine, growth, and metabolic unit in 1951. He was appointed consultant paediatrician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in 1954 and during the next 12 years published first descriptions of many metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. Several of these syndromes are known throughout the world as the Russell syndromes. Alex was the first to describe an inborn enzymatic defect of the urea cycle (hyperammonaemia), which led to descriptions of patients with defects in every step of the cycle. His scientific research did not prevent him from listening to the parents of children with many disabilities and his welcoming smile, gentle voice, and polite manner helped them in their darkest hours.

His appointment to the chair of paediatrics and childcare at the Hadassah-Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave Professor Russell opportunities to continue his previous work as well as influence the provision of heath care to whole populations. He founded and became director of the Jerusalem Community Centre for Child and Family Development and the Children’s Hospital in Ramallah. His extensive clinical experience is reflected in his monumental books The Cerebral Palsy Entities and The Peto System. He continued to write original articles—the last in 2001 on the 4q-syndrome—and to advise colleagues throughout the world long after his official retirement."

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7399/1149/DC1

Early 1980’s
"Dr. Alexander Russell, a pediatrician working in London and Jerusalem brought Spastic Society publications by Ester Cotton to the USA and presented them to the International College of Pediatrics."

http://www.google.com/search?q=www.conductiveedconsulting.com%2F...%2Fconductive_history.doc&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7




Reference:

The Petö System and its Evolution in Britain Book II.
Philosophy, Principles & Practice
Edited by Alexander Russell & Ester Cotton.
1994 Acorn Fundation Publication
ISBN 1-899091 009

Note: Geodesic dome picture from Google images

A bit of inspiration…Green Roofs.

School of Art and Design, Singapore
Photo: Sidonie Carpenter http://greenrooffellowship.blogspot.com/
See more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/green-living/8-incredible-green-roofs/10914





•Hunderwasser’s village model, on display at Kunsthaus in Vienna via ecogeek.



http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/902/








Building in Milano, from Sally in Italia website.






Garden shed roof, from North Carolina Green Technology Building.
http://www.ncgreenbuilding.org/site/ncg/public/show_project.cfm?project_id=238

"He who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Essays, Second Series, 1844


"Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge." - Thomas Edison

"The Wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit." - Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), Today and All Its Yesterdays, 1958.

Wake up call!

It was November 2005 when I gave a presentation at the Rehabilitation International Conference about Conductive Education in Bahrain.
After the conference, I was sitting in my room on my own. All of the delegates left who I travelled with as there were no seats available for me on the plane, they were all over booked after the conference.
I was quietly contemplating about my experience of the conference when the phone rang… I answered and the person on the other end of the line amongst other things kept telling me ‘Wake Up! Wake Up!’ Wake Up!

Maybe this clip will help to wake something up inside you as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W61Q-EZ8R7M

Notes:
Picture of Gulf Hotel entrance in Bahrain where I stayed and where the conference took place.

Wake Up! ♥

An Education

“Change is the only constant” proverb

"Fairness, justice and freedom are more than words they are perspectives." V for Vendetta







Photo from Worth 1000 http://www.worth1000.com/

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:

it goes on.”♥



Robert Frost

'Leadership has it’s own responsibility…use your common sense'

I wanted to share this clip with you. I know that you will understand the message, which is addressed to you each personally, both through your consciences and subconscious mind… and through your heart…
Since I started running training courses in Conductive Education I always talked about the responsibility about ‘creating’ for the seventh generation to come.

Well, he has got a message to deliver… all I am doing is to give it a platform on my blog for the Conductive Community or for any one who reads my postings.

Are we doing things in a way that could benefit the seventh generation to come?

We have been given this great gift of understanding and working with Petö’s philosophy and practice. Are we doing enough to preserve and further his concepts, which provide endless opportunities, hope and possibilities for people with neurological problems?