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Rhythmic work in Emergency Pedagogy: Being able to feel one's own body again

News ,  Ukraine ,  Current news ,  Emergency pedagogy

Minka Görzel-Straube has been working voluntarily as an emergency pedagogue for many years. She has already accompanied and partly led more than 50 interventions. She also led a workshop in Krakow, which took place in March 2022 and was primarily aimed at teachers who are currently looking after people who have fled Ukraine. In the description of one of the participants, it becomes clear how healing the work with rhythms can be, especially after and during extreme stress situations. In a conversation, the emergency pedagogue echoed the Waldorf teacher's experience:

"A participant from a workshop in Krakow, who is a class teacher, told me that she had experienced in our seminar that rhythm is a very important thing in emergency and trauma pedagogy. She experienced that rhythm can bring people back to themselves and that rhythms given from outside can stabilise the rhythm of traumatised people again. What she initially learned in the workshop, rather theoretically, was confirmed immediately after she returned to her school in Warsaw: She immediately started to work more with rhythms with her class. At that time, a Ukrainian child accompanied by his mother also visited the class. The family had just fled Ukraine. After class, the Ukrainian mother came up to her and said that she had never really felt her body before, and lately she had completely lost this already low feeling for her body due to stress. On the day when rhythmic work was done in the class, she could really feel her body again for the first time."

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