“Subtle Touch in Children“ – by Maria Amelia Pereira

Maria Amelia Pereira is a psychopedagogue, who works as an educator for preschool children, ages 2 ½ to 7 years, in Carapicuiba (a small village in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo), Brazil. Peo, as she is known by the children, has studied Subtle Touch with Dr. Pethö Sándor and has been using Dr. Sandor’s method with children for 21 years. She has documented it extensively, both in video and written work. Peo has presented her work in Canada, Australia and Japan, and is an ambassador for UNICEF in Brazil. 

“When we understand and treat the body as a subtle musical instrument, with multiple chords, the body will be able to exist within a much superior range of experiences, which are far above those reported so far.”
Ancient Teachings

Observing the impact of our work on the children at Casa Redonda (Round House Preschool) for fourteen years (1997) has encouraged us to document the results of it through the gestures and comments made by the children. This documented material is a source of reference to our work and has contributed to a new approach to understand “being a child”, and has led to a revision of our current educational and therapeutic practice and goals. 

In our daily routine with a group of children, ages two to seven, who spend their mornings in our school in contact with nature, we observe the existence of an “inner curriculum”, which emerges spontaneously out of these children’s natural developmental needs. Those children are given the opportunity to express themselves in their own rhythm, time and space, reaffirming and validating childhood as their time to feel free to “be a child”, as opposed to being trained as “little adults.” Therefore, they spontaneously brought up those games and play activities that were instrumental to their development. 

Because of our understanding of the connection between the body and development, we offered the application of the Subtle Touch method of Dr. Pethö Sándor, learned in the post-graduate specialization course ‘Psychological Kinesiology’, at the Institute Sedes Sapientiae in São Paulo. 

Within a playful atmosphere, the bodywork emerged naturally, and to our surprise, each day it occupied a more significant time within our daily activities at the pre-school. The fast and contagious way in which the children assimilated the bodywork approach confirmed to us the necessity and receptivity of this method. The hunger for delicate physical contact manifested very concretely when many children came to us asking to be “the next one” as they saw a child being worked with Subtle Touch. They used to say: “Now me!”, “I am next”, “I want more”, “Again”, etc., and remained silently waiting for their turn. 

A mat on the grass, a tree shade, the quietude of nature or the sound of birds singing joined us – the child and the facilitator – in the surrendering to the serenity and depth of the moment of bodywork. 
Thus, in the midst of the playful activities and games, the bodywork gained its space and time, naturally. Boy or girl, little or big, took turns requesting “massage”, as they called it, including it in their repertoire of possible play. 

When I had a line of three or four children waiting for their turn for bodywork, I requested that one of them help me treat the other children. I was surprised by their readiness to engage in bodywork, always done appropriately and respectfully (documented in pictures and video).

The fact that they themselves had already experienced the bodywork, and had developed a patient attitude of observing another child being touched while waiting for their turn, seemed to be an especial preparation for the ‘job’. Their hands had the expertise to reproduce the right touch and sequences, under the staff’s supervision and surprise. 

This process extended itself to the families of these children, as many mothers approached the preschool staff to request that they be taught the techniques. The school has offered Subtle Touch experiential classes to parents for the past six years (1997), broadening the benefits of the work to the community. 

At each child experienced Subtle Touch, delivered as Dr. Sándor had instructed, as if it were a new “play”, the immediate psychophysical reconditioning had become apparent. This was evidenced by physical signs such as, an expansion of the breathing, a calming of the respiratory rhythm, muscular relaxation, reported well-being, etc. Those physical reactions and reorganization were conducive to deep contemplation, which usually brought up a spontaneous metaphorical or philosophical mind in the children. 

The positive results and meaning of this work with the children are shown in many ways, and has been fully documented. We chose three stories, which reveal the positive impact of the bodywork on these children. 

A touch story

Lying on a mat, a four-year old boy was awaiting me. We started the bodywork with rotations of the small joints of his toes, done within his breathing rhythm. He would turn his head from side to side, scratch his eyes, at times stretching out his legs and crouching them until slowly he started to yawn. His eyes became distant. His muscles were so relaxed that his body seemed stuck to the floor. 
Silence surrounded us. 

He finally said, “You know I’m going to be bigger than my dad? I’m going to be as big as that tree.” He was pointing to an enormous pine tree behind me. 

“Good heavens! You are going to be that big?” I said.

“Yes”, he answered. “I am going to be that huge.” 

More silence. I continued with the touch on his feet. He started to talk again. 

“You know, I’m not going to be as tall as the top of the tree. I’m going to grow up to there.” He was pointing to a level about half the height of the pine tree.

We were silent again. After a while, almost towards the end of the touch session, he started to speak again. 

“Did you know that everybody thinks that God is bigger than everything? But he isn’t,” he affirmed.
Intrigued, I asked, “Who is bigger than God?”

“Life! Life is bigger than God. Life is everything. Everything is life. I think life is God.”

Once more, silence amongst us, this time as immense as his words. I finished the movements on his feet. He calmly rose and made his way toward another play with his peers.

Another Touch, Another Story

“I am next,” said the six-year-old girl, coming closer to where I was initiating a sequence of bodywork on another child.

She sat close to our mat, calmly waiting for her turn. 
Her peers called her to play with them and she answered: “Not now, later,” and waited silently, observing what I was doing. 

Something very important was happening there, because her patience to wait for her turn was out of ordinary. The time she remained observing my hands working on another child certainly worked on her as a preparation, receptivity, and openness to the bodywork she would receive afterward. 

As soon as the other child left, she lay on the mat and closed her eyes – a behavior not common in children her age. There were moments I thought she had fallen asleep, such was her quietude.

I finished the sequence of touches she always liked and she requested, the “blow on the spine” and the “blow around her belly button”, she opened her eyes slowly as if she were coming from far away. She smiled mysteriously and stretched her body, just like a little baby waking up in peace. 

“Are you sleepy?” I asked. She used to always answer that question by saying: “No. Now I’ll play.” 

However, this time, her body seemed to refuse to leave the mat. She turned and tossed, until she finally sat and looked at me. She then said, “Did you know I had a big fear?”

“What fear?” I asked.

“When I was in my mom’s tummy I thought I was going to die inside it.” 

“How did you feel it?” 

“There was a thing tightening me, crushing me, like I was drying up. I was going to dry up and die.” 

I was silent. She came to my lap. 

“Good thing I was born soon and did not die. It was my mom who died.” 

I hugged her. 

“How nice that you are alive, girl! And that big fear, where did it go?”

“Now I am not scared. I only had it in my mom’s tummy. I did not want to die inside my mom’s tummy. It would be bad. I think my mom knew I did not want to die with her. I wanted to live. Now, I have two moms, one who lives in heaven and one who lives on earth.” 

She stood up from my lap and called the other children to play “dead/alive”, a game she had been playing daily for the past two weeks. 

(This child was born prematurely through C-section due to her biological mother’s terminal illness during pregnancy. Her mother died shortly after the child’s birth.)

One More Touch, Another Story

One morning, a four-year-old girl approached me and said:

“Can you massage me? I wanna take out a cockroach that is inside here”, she pointed at her heart.

Since this child arrived that morning, she was restless, constantly arguing with other children. Every activity she started, she abandoned in the middle, which was not her habitual behavior. 

Coincidentally, that day completed one week since her parents had traveled, and she had been home with her brothers, under the responsibility of a trusted couple of servants. 

I heard her request and found it surprising that she attributed that capacity to the massage. I asked her, “Why do you want the massage now?”

“I wanna take a cockroach out of me.” 

I told her to get a mat, find a shade to lie down, and wait for me, as she usually did when we did relaxation. 

I finished up a clay artwork with another child and went to look for her. I thought she would have forgotten about the massage and would be involved in play with other children. 

I was surprised to find her resting on her mat under a shade, waiting for me. I sat by her feet and initiated a massage on them. I asked her, “The cockroach is still inside you?”

“It is right here inside me”, she said convincingly, pointing at her heart. 

“What is it doing there?” 

“It is tickling me in a bad way, I don’t like it. And everybody is fighting with me today.” 

“Then, lets do it”, I said, “lets help the cockroach come out of there.” 

She said, “Do it here,” pointing at her belly.

I made the first touch, sliding my hand softly in small clockwise rotations around her bellybutton, amplifying the circle and increasing the pressure in the superior region of the abdomen, close to the diaphragm. 

When I finished the touch, she turned her belly down and said, “Now on my back.” I started to blow her spine, going up slowly vertebrae by vertebrae. When I reached the seventh vertebrae, she said, “Enough, the cockroach is gone.” 

She stood up straight, light as a bird and went to play with her friends, spending the rest of the time peacefully. 

For one more week, during her parents’ absence, she requested a massage upon arriving at school in the morning. 

This child demonstrated that her body achieved a sense of balance and stability through the touches. The request for a massage came spontaneously as a resource to “cleanse” a physical discomfort caused by her feelings of insecurity and anxiety due to her parents’ absence. She felt the discomfort as the “strange presence of a cockroach” in her heart. 

I could go on for pages, telling stories like those reported above substantiating evidence that Subtle Touch and Calatonia could be used in several settings, such as nurseries, daycare, hospitals, and mostly within the daily routine of families, as long as the appropriate training is given, and the proper ethical attitude of respect and acknowledgment of the child’s need is developed. 

The pictures taken during the bodywork with children suggest the essence and meaning of the touch. Those pictures belong to our collection of pictures about “Being a Child”, and we are thankful to all children for affirming their enthusiasm for life, teaching us each day about new and beautiful possibilities of human expression and manifestation. 

CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND STUDIES AT CASA REDONDA (ROUND HOUSE) – (1983 – 2004)