Eurythmics This brief text is different from the others given in this Part as it is not centred around some great sportsman or performer. But it offers a glimpse of a different sort of excellence that is achieved by a thoughtful teacher in a small Japanese school, who wanted very much his pupils to experience harmony between their minds and bodies and, with this aim, developed a creative and joyful educational experiment. After summer vacation was over, the second semester began, for in Japan the school year starts in April. In addition to the children in her own class, Totto-chan had made friends with all the older boys and girls, thanks to the various gath

May 1978: Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler on the first oxygenless ascent of the Everest The Crystal Horizon To begin with, it was just a beautiful illusion, a fantasy, to imagine climbing the highest mountain in the world without technical assistance. But out of this illusion a concept grew and finally, a philosophy: can Man, solely by his own efforts, reach the summit of Everest? Is the world so constructed that Man can climb to its highest point without mechanical aids? I don't climb mountains simply to vanquish their summits. What would be the point of that? I place myself voluntarily into dangerous situations to learn to face my own fe

Magic of grapes as nutrition There is magic in the world — and there are miracles! Or so I believed after the remarkable cure which came to me about ten years ago — after nearly forty years of chronic illness. I was condemned to die for the want of a miracle — the only thing which could keep life in my miserable body whose throb was at its very lowest ebb. My mind was frustrated and hope was the furthest thing within the reach of my despairing spirit. My one and only kidney harboured a nephritis — an infection which would not respond to the treatment of any of the modern wonder drugs. Loneliness and worry added its fuel to an already

Sleep We all sleep: infants and children more than adolescents, adolescents more than adults, and some adults more than others. But a periodic alternation of sleep with wakefulness is universal, and suggests that sleep fulfils a basic biological need of the organism. On average, human beings spend one third of their lives in sleep. What happens in sleep is that our consciousness withdraws from the field of its waking experience; it is supposed to be resting, suspended or in abeyance, but that is a superficial view of the matter. What is in abeyance is the waking activities, what is at rest is the surface mind and the normal conscious action of the

Frontal section of the pelvis showing both hip-joints Healing by visualization and concentration The trouble in my hips had been evident for a long while. It was during a complete medical check-up just before I left the Royal Navy in 1965 that the orthopaedic specialist first told me there were signs of arthritis developing in my right hip, and to a somewhat lesser extent in the left one. I asked him if there was anything I could do about it and he said that certain exercises could help to delay the deterioration of the condition, and that shortwave therapy could alleviate the symptoms for a time.... Then q

Preface A question that has assumed in our times a great importance in pedagogy is: in what does our true fulfilment consist? And, in .that context, what is the nature and content of that knowledge which all human beings should pursue and possess? It is, indeed, possible to ask whether the human search can ever truly be fulfilled and whether it is not wise to limit ourselves to some immediate utilitarian or pragmatic goals. As a matter of fact, a large number of pedagogical programmes have been designed in the context of what is pragmatically useful to individuals and to society. This pragmatic approach has its own justification; but it seems that the time

The Mother Physical Education Of all the domains of human consciousness, the physical is the one most completely governed by method, order, discipline, procedure. The lack of plasticity and receptivity in matter has to be replaced there by an organization of details, at once precise and comprehensive. In this organization one must not forget, however, that all the domains of the being are interdependent and interpenetrating. Yet, even if a mental or vital impulsion is to be expressed physically it must submit to an exact and precise procedure. That is why all education of the body, if it is to be effective, must be rigorous and detailed, fores

Part IV Physical Education and Excellence of the Human Body Physical Education and Excellence of the Human Body Introduction There are three great miracles in regard to the human body. Intricacy, complexity and automatic coordination in the body under the guiding power of the brain is the first miracle. That human body automatically tends towards health is the second miracle. It is this miracle that has provided a vast field of exploration of the means and methods by which the natural and automatic processes of healing can be aided and accelerated. That the human body can be ed

Painting : Shakti, Auroville Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea In 1980, American-born Steven Callahan, age twenty-nine, sold everything he had to design and build a small cruising ship that would, he hoped, take him across the Atlantic Ocean to England. Steven had been sailing since the age of twelve. "I fell in love with sailing instantly," he writes, "everything about it felt right." Steven named his twenty-one foot long boat Napoleon Solo. Not many boats this size had made the crossing, but there had been a few as small as 12 feet. "I was not interested in setting a record," he says. "For me the crossing was more o

Interview with Narottam Puri (Narottam Puri is a well known sport journalist and commentator in India) About common attitudes in India We, Indians, have a tendency to copy the West. To take an example, Hatha Yoga was almost a forgotten art here in India till the West took it up. As a medical man, I consider the basis of yoga to be sound in termsof health; for instance, the importance given to breathing. But Yoga has also a spiritual meaning, which may be the reason why it practically disappeared from the average man's life, as it was too deep. In India , we made the mistake of not pursuing th