Creating spaces where our children can unfold is one of the greatest challenges of modern life. Very little attention or appreciation is given to inwardness or interiority. John o Donohue the renowned poet and philosopher, spoke of our external success driven culture creating an “Evacuation of Interiority”.

Moments of silence and solitude are essential to the inner life. When we draw back within ourselves we find immense resources and wisdom. When all of our focus is external we lose access to the gifts of our interior life. These gifts shape our humanity - presence, intuition, inner knowing, resonance, values, intimacy with ourselves and others, empathy as well as artistic sensibilities.

If we look at education, very little attention is paid to the child’s inner life and being. The aesthetic sensibility and the beauty of creation in all its forms - art, music, the performing arts, poetry - is a pathway to the interior life, yet the arts are often underfunded or under-resourced.

It is vital that we create the space and the opportunity for silence and stillness in education as well as the connection to being. Helping our children and adolescents to connect to their interiority will teach them to trust themselves and to return to this ground of stillness in times of struggle and difficulty.

Best practice social and emotional learning is grounded in interiority, in embodied self awareness and intimate presence. It flows outward from here into authentic value based relationships with others and the wider world.

If you are interested in finding out more about our adolescent and adult community courses and webinars you can visit www.thriving-in-community.com.

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There is a well of beauty within.

The world will make you forget

In the surface currents and waves

But its presence is tenderly held

In a heart’s fathomless depths.

A pristine stillness beneath mind

A hallowed temple of silence.

In the wild depths of aloneness

It’s power echoes like a choir

An unwritten symphony poised

On the verge of creation.

Beauty and god hold their breath

In its vaulted cathedral of quiet.

Helen Lewis