Integrated TRADITIONAL Medicines
Peace Education for Better Health
Towards an integrated world health system, on the physical, mental and spiritual levels

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Maria Cristina Quintili - Italy

Born in Macerata (Italy), she moved to Holland in 1998. Back in Italy since 1999, lives in Premeno (Province of Verbania). Ms. Quintili has been an elementary school teacher for over twenty years; her work also includes teaching adults, senior citizens, students with specific educational needs and foreign students.
She participated in many didactical-educational projects, among which are:

• EU Socrates-Comenius project, didactic circles of Macerata and Verbania (Italy);
• an expression-linguistic project on literary geners for children’s literature (comics, fairy tales, legends, stories and novels);
• the ‘Libriamoci’ project, generating ideas for and building a book for children, within the ‘La Scuola Adotta un Monumento’ (The School Adopts a Monument) project for the conservation of Italian artistic and cultural patrimony – both projects done for the Macerata school district authority.

Ms. Quintili writes poetry and has also written ‘Un Dono da Scoprire’ (A Gift to Discover) a short story about inter-religious matters for young children. She attended many professional updating courses and formation courses for teachers offered by the several Italian and foreign educational institutions – mainly concerning the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Furthermore, she is dedicated to inter-cultural and diversity education, religious and spiritual education, peace education and non-formal education. She is also interested in art, philosophy and Oriental religions and cultures and takes part in various initiatives for the actualization of the “Spiritual Forum” and about integration of traditional and alternative medicines. Recently she has been working in two educational-didactical projects: “A peaceful future” last year and “Searching for peace” this year, both inspired by Lama Gangchen’s principles for better living, in order to create a Peace Culture, which may bring hope to future generations, and by his teachings about non violent medicine and inner peace, which is the most solid foundation for world peace.

Didactical Education Project: “Searching for Peace” 2º year - “Peace Education” - “Non-Formal Education for Better Living” - “Health Education” - “World Education through active integration with one’s own environment”

Premise

It has been proposed by means of a meaningful “teaching-learning” process and the whole of knowledge’s integration, to awaken and arise consciousness in the young learners about diversity, inter-culture, pluri-linguistics, seen as efficient instruments towards a gradual knowledge and building of a Peace Culture.

Principles

Non-violence is the true key to free us from using inner and outer violence.
Inner Peace is the best foundation for world peace.
My health is the well being and health of everyone.
The satisfaction of my own needs must be in harmony with the needs of others, of the collective and of the global environment.

Educational Objectives

Learning to use non-violent recreational and communication means (see “the Verbania Declaration-IAEWP World Congress 2003).
Becoming aware of the fact that when people stop or do not take care of themselves and their environment, they lose their wisdom and perhaps also their own future potential.
Learning to recognize one’s own state of health and assuming responsibility for it and taking care of it in an appropriate and harmonious manner.
Aspiring to gradually become active agents of transformation in the world.
Offering a deeper means of understanding other cultures through studying and confronting other languages, which can serve as a basis for building better mutual respect between individuals, communities, nations and especially minority groups, those marginalized and the weak.

Didactic Objectives

Create the habit of trying to recognise, control and transfrom negative thoughts and attitudes, into more positive and healthy attitudes.
Learning new subjects, or somehow known, in a foreign language (environmental, social problems, etc.) according to the “Clil” model: use the L2 to steer the teaching to other subjects.
Communicate experiences lived with other languages and different efficient modalities.
Take part in initiatives in favor of local and international childhood. (European programmes of Socrates Comenius, etc).
Reinforce the formation of such values as solidarity, responsibility, creativity, the ability to cooperate and to solve conflicts, with non-violent means.
Favor the common values of all religions: the research and the keeping of peace, with the motivation to benefit others and with the intention not to damage them.

Some didactic activities

“Peace thoughts by famous people” – I selected a collection of carefully chosen phrases, speeches, poetry, prayers, popular saying and songs, in several languages, taking great care to use an approach that is broad in the human sense, as well as non-sectarian as far as politics, religions and social backgrounds are concerned.

“The essence of all religions is peace” - Since it is well known and a view shared by many, the concept that, the essence of religions is the search and the maintaining of peace, inside and out, it was almost inevitable that we should chose their words as a testimony to different spiritual beliefs, from an inter-religious, trans-spiritual and lay perspective.

“Violent and non-violent games” – Classification of the two categories. Learning the cooperative game where we can only win if the other’s needs are taken into consideration. Working in couples or in groups. Discussions about the values to be reaffirmed, but also about negative stereotypes to correct or remove.
Emphasis on group discoveries, in a non excessive and symmetrical relationship.

“Your actions are your own responsibility” – Observation of the surrounding environment, from close and from far. Collective investigations on the causes of our aggressive and mistaken behaviors, which are all the result of violent thought. Discussions to express our own contribution, to become conscious agents for new solutions to our individual and collective problems.

“Peace is ... a clean world” – Check how the counterpart of each of our actions produce an effect in our inner and outer environment; become aware that there is a close interdependent relationship between our own well being and environmental balance. We came up with simple but efficient intervention strategies to save our immediate environment and to avoid energy wastes and the waste of environmental and human resources.

“My health is the health and well being of everyone” – To become conscious of the responsibility of all individual and social actions around us. To recognize the true friends and enemies of our health. To understand how beneficial it is to avoid useless words, gestures, thoughts, emotions, useless fears and their resulting behaviors. Learning to respect our own body and our own mind, and to identify the close relationship between them. Active listening to the other with a problem-solving attitude.

“The aims and functions of the United Nations” – Controlled use of the internet to navigate on sites of the UN and UNICEF, dedicated to young people, through interactive games and cartoon programmes, to discover these organisations without boundaries, and to use different means of non-violent communication, instruction and diversion.

Conclusions

The students developed some understanding of the interdependence between their own well being and environmental balance; from their familiar world and venturing towards more global and often incomprehensible dimensions, to find out about the crude realities of a world that starves its poor, destroys the weak and gets richer by producing child sized armaments, without however losing sight of our human condition.

To find happiness through inner peace - which should become our primary morality - we will have to learn to take care of one another, by always asking ourselves: “What can I do to help those who live around me?” Constantly and gradually widen our healing circle. Moreover, to affirm that the essence of human nature, which we all too often forget, is innately made of love and compassion, even in those who say to be atheists, and which is also evident in all animals.

Our essential humanness is obscured, suffocated, weakened; we must recognize it and cultivate it once more, both inside and outside of ourselves.

In order to avoid future shocks, such as the news of the 2nd world war then, and the certain and by now irreversible process of self-destruction of the planet at the hands of man, let us learn about and spread Peace Culture in order to preserve the environment and to raise our consciousness to become conscious agents of change of the new world. “Only love can transform en enemy into a friend” Martin Luther King; Man’s problems can only be solved with non-violence” Gandhi; and to remember Mother Teresa of Calcutta, let us learn and teach to humbly give the best of us, without any expectations, so as to become more genuine human beings for the benefit of all living beings. Encourage the increase of self-esteem and the will to learn, as a necessity to reach a higher level of social integration and as a service to the community.

What is the real meaning of Self-Healing? To affirm that: I, whose name is …, assume the responsibility to heal myself, to heal this world and its beings, with correct, noble and heroic behavior, in order to pacify myself, my community and the environment in which I live and interact. Just as Mother Teresa’s motto was: “take his hand and never let go of it”, referring to God, so too can we hold the hand of our dearest spiritual friends and walk together in trust, accompanied by the echo of “When the saints go marching in”, without ever forgetting those who still have to join us.