The Journey for Kids: Liberating your Child’s Shining Potential

2 The Journey in Schools

All of us come into this world as this same vast potential, yet so often life can seem to conspire to cover that natural radiance, obscure our genius, shut down our joy, block out the love. Still we sense that just beneath the surface there lies true greatness – if only we could get access to it. The Journey gives us the tools – simple step-by-step processes – for finally liberating that shining potential, so it can be fully expressed, wholesomely and joyously, in our lives.

In South Africa, at the school where I gave the assembly programme for 800 beaming school kids, I spoke of this very phenomenon in a general metaphor that I felt both kids and adults could relate to. I said that we all come into this world as a big bright shining diamond, completely whole, radiant and pure. We come in as a vast presence of love and joy, as a huge open potential that is capable of creating anything. And then, through the traumas of life, this diamond can seem to get covered over with layer upon layer of limiting patterns – the time we failed our exam at school; the time our brother or sister made fun of us in front of our playmates; the time we got shy and said all the wrong things to our first crush and they were off-hand with us. As we got older it could be the time we were interviewed for our first job and were so awkward and silly that we blew it, and later still it could be the time when we were at work and made a bad mistake then tried to pretend it didn’t happen or, even worse, let someone else take the blame … Layer upon layer upon layer our shining radiance gets covered over, until sometimes, as adults, we forget that there ever was a brilliant diamond inside. Instead, we identify with all the mess, the layers that cover it.

I told the kids that this was, in fact, exactly what had happened to me. As an adult, I completely forgot that there was a beautiful diamond inside. Instead, I identified with all the layers that covered it … until one day I got very sick. And part of the great blessing of my healing journey was that it carried me deep inside, where I uncovered a shining radiance that I realized had been there all along. I fell so in love with this light that I didn’t want anything to cover it anymore and so I began a process of clearing out all the layers that had previously hidden it. In that process, not only did my body heal, but I felt as though the real me had finally been set free. I’d finally taken the lampshade off my light.

I then asked, ‘How many of you are already aware of this light shining deep within you?’ Eight hundred hands shot up all at once – some kids practically stood up, their hands went up so fast. Then I asked, ‘Would you like to go on a magical Journey right into the core of this light – right into your very own diamond?’

‘YES, MA’AM!’ resounded 800 bell-like voices in a huge cacophony of sound so loud it felt like it shook the rafters. It was so loud that everyone burst into laughter. I then asked, ‘So are you ready to start?’

‘YES, MA’AM!’ followed by more laughter so loud that one kid actually fell off his seat, which of course produced even more laughter.

After it all died down, conspiratorially I said, ‘Well, I need your help, though. In order to go on this inner adventure, you will really need to pay full attention and go for it – otherwise the headmistress may get mad at me!’ I winked in her direction. ‘Do you all promise to pay extra close attention and go for it, so I won’t get in trouble?’

‘YES, MA’AM!’ came the enthusiastic reply, as some of the kids glanced in the headmistress’s direction, just to see if she approved.

Once we’d all settled down we began with the first ever simultaneous live Journey process with 800 joyous and enthusiastic souls aged five to eleven. And what a magical time we had. The little ones sometimes had a bit of trouble keeping their eyes closed, and kept peeking to see if everyone else was doing it right, but on the whole, I could tell it was all going very well. Even though their eyes were closed, their faces were so animated, they clearly were following the directions with gusto. Some of the kids were gesticulating with their hands, as if they were holding real balloons, while others were mouthing their conversations at the ‘campfire’. Children are so natural and open. They’re already aware of their own inner light, and processing with them is always a joy. By the end, they were all smiling, and everyone seemed to complete successfully.

Ten minutes after we’d begun, everyone opened their eyes and they were just beaming! They looked so beautiful and shiny that spontaneously I said, ‘Why don’t you look straight into the eyes of the person next to you and say, “You are such a beautiful person. I love the light I see in your eyes!”’ Many of them giggled when they spoke the words, but they all did so.

By now the room was full of laughter, but as I watched I realized that for many of these kids this was the very first time anyone had actually uttered those words to them, and many were quietly and secretly moved as they deeply drank in the words.

When the assembly was over, a rush of 800 kids wanting hugs and autographs came flooding. I was swamped from all sides! A huge hugging fest went on for about an hour and a quarter, with all our Journey staff joining in, signing autographs and receiving hugs. Sometimes the individual queues were over 200 children long, all politely waiting their turn. Each one wanted a special message whispered into their ear and then they’d run to the corners of the room to share what had been said with all their classmates. It was a pure celebration of joy.

Eventually the headmistress, who had been more than patient, insisted that everyone go back to their respective classrooms. For a moment it seemed as if we were resting in a soft lull, but then, quietly and secretly, one by one, the teachers came sneaking out of their classrooms, offering their gratitude and giving huge warm hugs. Then the headmistress put her foot down once and for all, and teachers and students alike returned to their classrooms.

Finally I was allowed to meet privately with the class of children who had been using Journeywork regularly over the past year. I was already aware that their teacher, Jayshree Mannie, and two other teachers had done a year of case studies, dividing the kids into three groups: one group received no Journeywork; one group only occasional Journeywork and one group received Journeywork every Friday afternoon. At the end of the year they tallied the results – and the statistics were extraordinary! The students who got no Journeywork averaged a 67 per cent pass rate. Those who received only occasional Journeywork averaged a 76 per cent pass rate. Those who did Journeywork every week averaged a whopping 91 to 93 per cent!

I was curious to find out what had taken place with the children personally, not just academically, so I sat with them and asked what they had discovered inside themselves. One child said that she’d found love inside and that she was nicer to her brothers and sisters, another said he’d found courage and understanding and that his grades had improved. Another said she could actually see the ‘love-light’, as she called it, in other kids. When she said this I asked them all, ‘Now that you’ve uncovered this love, this light inside, will you promise to help the other kids take the lampshades off their lights? Will you help them discover their courage, their understanding, their fun, their wisdom?’ Everyone promised wholeheartedly to become a torch to help light the other kids’ lamps.

I had already received several beautiful letters from the parents of this class about how their children were much more open, loving and socially well-adjusted, and kinder to their siblings; and they were thrilled with the academic results. I also received dozens of letters from the kids, but it was somehow more meaningful to hear it from the kids first hand and to see it shining in their eyes.

Here are a couple of parents’ letters I received, which I thought you might find inspiring:

My son was underachieving at school and was not performing well in his karate class. I had attended a Journey workshop and saw the merits of The Journey and tried this on Winston myself. However, I think that being his mother did not help too much, so I took him to Jayshree for a Journey session which lasted 35 minutes.

Two days later he was fine. He excelled at his karate championship and won a medal! Better still, I received a concerned call from the school and I frantically rushed there. The teachers said that they were baffled by Winston’s results … They had marked and remarked and remarked his scripts because his marks had improved by 65 per cent, and he was now topping the class! Before he was at the bottom end! They could not understand this and neither would I explain! I felt that it was a private issue and preferred not to say any more!

Winston is Head Boy now and we are all proud. I am doing Journeywork privately and can honestly swear by its success!

We had been beset with tragedies in our family, losing six members to cancer. Our daughter Tanya was suffering as we had just lost another favourite aunt. She was doing badly at school, was not sleeping well, had nightmares and was not eating properly. My sister told me about the Journey as she had brought her kids along. I saw the difference in her kids and decided to give it a shot.

One session later and Tanya was changed! Her chronic earache was gone! She was eating and putting on weight nicely and was sleeping well. Her grades were coming along nicely too. She did discuss that her fear of death was so strong that she had decided that it was not safe to enjoy life as we all would die soon anyway. And all this was because of the tragedies. She internalized this fear and literally stopped living!

Thanks to The Journey, she is a normal happy kid again!

Jayshree Mannie is continuing to take Journeywork to children all over South Africa, only now she is reaching into ghettos, working with social programmes like Life Line, molestation groups and abuse centres, and she’s teaching other schoolteachers, so that they can reach out to children to help them all liberate their shining potential.

We are all kids. Our bodies and our beings so want us to heal. When we take but one step towards Grace, it takes a thousand steps towards us.

3 Partnering Your Child

For us to work with children, the work must first start with us. We must see our children as already whole, free, inherently wise and beautiful. Then, when we partner them in their personal and spiritual Journeys, all that we are really doing is helping to lift off the layers of imposed limitations – the lies, the hurt, the emotional blocks that obscure their natural potential. That potential is already here, already free – all that we are doing is liberating it, allowing it to be expressed wholesomely and joyously.

So often parents come to me and say that they really don’t know how to ‘get through’ to their kids; they seem so emotionally inexpressive. Isn’t it true? When your child comes home from school and you ask, ‘So how was school today?’ what does your child inevitably answer? Usually it’s ‘OK’ or ‘Fine’, nothing more, nothing less. No one gave these kids (or any of us for that matter) the manual ‘How to Feel and Express your Emotions’, and so generally the most common response from kids of all ages is a shrugging of the shoulders and a one-word reply that doesn’t tell us anything. Have you ever found yourself quietly frustrated because you’re not even sure which questions to ask anymore? And have you ever had the sense that something more might be going on, but you can’t quite put your finger on it? I’m sure that every parent out there has experienced this frustration.

My husband Kevin and I had first-hand experience of this a few years ago. Kevin’s son Mark is a beautiful, angelic, highly intelligent 11 year old. He’s always been bright, quick to fall in with his peers, compassionate to younger kids and socially well-adjusted. He’s well-liked by teachers and pupils alike, and always brings home stellar school reports. When he was eight years old, we began to notice that when we brought up the subject of theme parks, his response was always lacklustre. As he was not an overly emotive child, his response wasn’t terribly concerning, but nonetheless, when you suggest going to Disneyland or Universal Studios to kids you can usually expect an excited or effusive response. Mark’s was almost always one of indifference. It seemed odd, but how do you penetrate that kind of malaise? We never knew what was behind his quietness until Mark attended the Junior Journey for the first time and underwent his first Kids’ Journey.

The Junior Journey is a fun-filled empowering programme for children aged eight to eleven. The one-day workshop is jam-packed with confidence- and self-esteem building exercises, and each child receives a private Kids’ Journey with a Journey Accredited Therapist (we have one therapist there for every two kids). They have guided ‘Sleeping Elephant’ meditation, they paint ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of their Journeywork, and they have a real-life bonfire where they throw in all the old unresourceful patterns or behaviour that held them back in the past – and they usually also roast marshmallows. They playact scenes using their resource balloons (something you’ll learn more about later), and they end the day with a self-esteem and confidence-building game – when the ball is thrown to you, you have to go into the middle of the circle and one by one each child shares what they like best about you.

The responses we get from both kids and parents are just phenomenal. Usually kids have massive positive shifts and the parents are just thrilled with the results.

Mark was attending the programme for the first time and usually we suggest that kids get their first few Journeys with someone other than their parents, as it gives the child the same privacy and anonymity that we, as adults, often feel we need. So Mark was to undergo his first Kids’ Journey with one of the Accredited Therapists at the programme.

As expected, Mark threw himself into the day (most kids do, it’s so much fun!) and fell in easily with the other kids. When it came time for his process, Sally, the head therapist, decided that she would work with him in his private session.

During his Journey, Mark went back to a memory of when he was seven years old. We had taken him to Legoland and had encouraged him to go on the little ‘Dragon’ roller-coaster. All of Legoland is pretty much aimed at younger kids, so when Mark seemed reluctant to go on the ‘Dragon’ with us, Kevin softly encouraged him, reassuring him that it would be fun. Mark begrudgingly acquiesced and we all three got on the ride together. Mark seemed to be enjoying himself until we got to the last hill of the ride. We could feel the roller-coaster slowly cranking up the hill and as I looked up at the steepness, even I thought, ‘Hmm, this is a bit high for little kids,’ but as there was nothing we could do, we just laughed and held Mark closer to us. As we went roaring down the other side of the hill, Mark turned white and looked as though he was either going to laugh or cry – we couldn’t tell which. Kevin, cognisant of Mark’s nervousness, tried to encourage him, and as we got off the ride softly reassured him, affirming how brave Mark was and how much fun the ride had been.

What neither of us had realized at the time was that Mark had been terrified, and he was secretly furious that we hadn’t listened to him in the first place.

During his Kids’ Journey, at his ‘campfire’, he finally got to let loose at us, and he released all of the stored-up anger and forgave us for not listening. When he had finished, he spoke to Sally, who then came to us on his behalf to say that Mark really wanted to make his own decisions about roller-coasters and felt that we needed to listen to him more.

Whoa, were we surprised … but also grateful. We had no idea it had affected him so strongly. It seemed like such a harmless thing – a three-minute ride on a kiddie roller-coaster. And yet it was pointing to something much larger: that we really needed to listen more deeply to Mark, to hear his needs and respond to them more respectfully.

Later, when Kevin spoke with Mark privately, he let him know how sorry we were and that neither of us had realized how scared he had been – that his lack of communication prior to the ride had left us in the dark as to what his true feelings were. Kevin asked Mark to promise him that if ever he felt afraid he would let us know. Mark admitted that he was shy and a little scared of telling us, but he promised in future to listen more carefully to himself and his body, and if he felt any fear at all he’d let us know. Kevin promised in return that we would never make him do anything he was too scared to do. He reassured him that we would never take him anywhere where there was real danger, that we love him too much and that if he was frightened we wouldn’t force him into anything he genuinely didn’t want to do. Kevin also agreed he would endeavour to listen more closely, more deeply, and got Mark to agree that communication is a two-way street – though a great deal can be conjectured and surmised, you can’t assume you can mind read just from someone’s body language, you need to verbalize your feelings.

Since that time, it has been ongoing learning. To strengthen Mark, we still like to encourage him to meet his fears and stretch to take action, even when fear is coming up. But he’s never since been made to do something that he really hasn’t chosen to do himself.

Now, whenever we go to Universal Studios or Disney, Mark chooses which rides he wants to take. Last summer at Universal Studios we went on the dread ‘Jurassic Park’ ride, the scariest of all the water-splash roller-coaster rides, and Mark asked to ride it three times! It was his favourite ride in the whole theme park. But more important, we as parents are learning to partner Mark on his journey, rather than foisting our ideas of what’s best for him onto him without his input. We are all learning how to listen and how to express ourselves clearly.

Part of what you will be doing as you work with your child is learning just this: how to partner your child in opening into their own experience, and how to support them in discovering their own truth and their own answers – a lesson that would be good for all of us to learn in all our relationships!

Recently I shared Mark’s story with one of our senior Accredited Therapists, Gaby, who had served as a trainer two years ago at a Junior Journey programme. She remarked that it reminded her of a process she’d had with a child who had seemed quite quiet and shy. Gerald seemed to like keeping himself to himself, which is unusual in the normally social and interactive kids’ programme. His aloneness touched Gaby and she felt in her heart that she would be the right trainer to do his process with him.

Respecting Gerald’s natural quietness, Gaby began the process with a tender sensitivity and lightness. In the Kids’ Journey the child imagines going down a set of ten steps, knowing that every step they take will carry them into a place of safety and relaxation and that on the bottom step they will open into an ocean of light, a vast presence of peace and love. Gerald took to the process easily, loved opening into the peace and love, and when he was on the bottom step described to Gaby that, in his mind’s eye, he was sitting by himself on a warm beach, happy and alone, basking in the sun. Gaby noted that he said he was alone and asked if he felt alright in his aloneness. ‘Oh, yes, I’m very happy. I like to be alone.’ It seemed clear that he was genuinely content, so Gaby continued with the process.

In his mind’s eye Gerald walked through the door, greeted his mentor and together they stepped into an imaginary space shuttle – so magical that it can carry you safely and gracefully into any part of the body. It carries you to the specific place where an emotional issue is stored. Gerald loved ‘cruising’ in the space shuttle and it guided him very easily and naturally to a part of his body where a specific cell memory was stored. Surprisingly, the memory had almost the opposite feeling to the beach scene. Apparently, when he was about three-and-a-half years old his parents had taken him to a firework display on a warm summer’s night. Everyone screamed and ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ as the explosions in the sky blasted one after the other, but Gerald kept telling his parents that he didn’t feel comfortable and he didn’t want to be there. Sitting in the dark, not knowing what was coming next, then the blinding light followed by huge thunderous explosions, the screams of excitement coming from everywhere, from faces he couldn’t even see – it was all too much for him. All he craved was a nice warm quiet place where he could just rest peacefully. He tried to express himself, but the more he spoke up, the more his parents ‘shushed’ him, overriding his discomfort and softly coaxing him not to be a baby – ‘Everyone else is enjoying it.’