relaxation

2	FROM NECK TO HIP

In this session, touch targets the arms and the torso (respiratory and digestive organs). The upper part of the body is particularly active in a growing child and will greatly benefit from relaxation.

1. Tell your child to imagine their neck is a bridge that links the mountain to the plain. Put your fingers on the abrupt valley of the chin, and slowly move downward to reach the large bridge. This is essential, for it links the mountain (the head) with the plain (the body) by allowing communication from the head to the rest of the body.

2. Turn to reach the shoulders, which have been instrumental in moving the arms all day. Continue onto the arms, these two long cliffs above an unknown sea, coming out of the continent and stretching all the way to the tip of the fingers.

3. Slowly move back up the arms to the shoulders and the large plain of the torso: moving, living, throbbing plain under which the heart of the earth—and of the body—is pulsating.

4. Feel the breathing, the heart beating while slowly traveling onto the torso with your fingers. The trip continues toward the rest of the plain that, just like the surface of the planet Earth, moves up and down, experiencing tremors with every breath. And under this plain, there is a factory that brings life to the whole body.

5. Travel onto your child’s belly while explaining that the food is digested to fuel the body.

6. Move left or right to reach one of the hips, each of which links half of the body weight to the leg.