Our Planet

Text : Midori Tsujimura

The question of ‘What is the connection between the development of fingers and toes and the development of the whole body?’ came up in Urui(0yo-class), leading us to focus on body movements as we made our daily records.
We received some advice from Mikasa Saikaishi, a practitioner of Child’Space Method, about what to look for in children’s movement. From then on, we focused on how each child moves their pelvis while transitioning from lying down to crawling to standing. We also paid attention to how the ability to push the shoulder blade forward impacted the rest of a child’s movements. We’d then record our thoughts regarding whether or not the child’s current crawling movements were causing the pelvis to move (or tilt) or the shoulder blade to engage (when extending their arms), or other topics related to how they were moving around
Every week for about a month, we’d gather images and records regarding Mchan’s daily movement and send them through to Mikasa. During this time. Mchan transitioned from just lying on her stomach and wriggling around to actually crawling, something that helped me realise the connection between individual movements and the movement of the body as a whole. Trying to describe Mei’s movements in writing was difficult and took a lot of time, but it also taught me a lot. As we continued taking these records, the differences between my own observations and Ysan’s caused us to deepen our understanding of Mchan and the way she moved her body. This led me, in turn, to ask myself exactly what the process of ‘growth’ entails. I now think that the entire human experience of being born and growing old, with all the changes that this journey entails, in addition to our experiences mingling with other people, is “growth”, but this is something I want to try and consider even more deeply moving forward. Watching and being with Mchan as her world expanded and as she grew more familiar with her body brought me a lot of joy. There’s one picture we have of Mchan sitting there smiling with a look of utter delight on her face. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how it made me feel to see her looking so happy.