Maureen Murdock - Spinning Inward

If you have a child, deal with children, or simply are interested in doing guided exercises that are pure and simple to the point of being elegant, then please consider this book. It is as much for and about us adults who need to regain our lost childhood as it is about us adults teaching children how to actualize their power. The children are our future. With people like Maureen at the helm, we can all breathe a little easier about what kind of world they will inherit.

Meditation

Maureen Murdock has made a valuable contribution to our growing awareness of the importance of imagery in children, and gives invaluable outlines for the stimulation and development of it. Murdocks work should be fundamental to education, not stuck in the enrichment category. Our brain thinks in imagery; imagery is part and parcel of symbolic-metaphoric thinking, on which all higher intelligence is based. This book will surely be on my recommended list to parents, teachers, and everyone interested in development.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Spinning Inward can be the critical event in childrens lives, as it gives them ways to open to potentials of mind and body that will greatly enhance their capacities for learning and discovery. This is a book to be used again and again in home and school and wherever one wishes to avail oneself of rich and exciting exercises to expand human possibilities.

Jean Houston, Director, Foundation for Mind Research

ABOUT THE BOOK

If you have ever wished you could show children and teenagers how to enrich their lives with meditation and visualization, this book will delight you. It presents simple exercises in guided imagery designed to help young people ages three through eighteen to relax into learning, focus attention and increase concentration, stimulate creativity, and cultivate inner peace and group harmony.

The use of guided imagery has been internationally recognized as an effective method of whole brain learning. The authors approach will have special appeal to parents and teachers who are frustrated by an educational system that seems to reward only those children who excel at verbal, linear learning. With the exercises in this book, young people can discover learning styles that are effective and enjoyable for them. These techniques of guided imagery offer adults as well as children a unique way to tap the wealth of creativity and wisdom within.

MAUREEN MURDOCK is a licensed family therapist in private practice in Venice, California, who also teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers Program. She is the internationally published author of The Heroines Journey Workbook and Fathers Daughters.

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Spinning Inward

USING GUIDED IMAGERY WITH CHILDREN FOR LEARNING, CREATIVITY & RELAXATION

REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION

Maureen Murdock

SHAMBHALA

Boston & London

2013

For Brendan and Heather

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1987 by Maureen Murdock

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murdock, Maureen.

Spinning inward.

Bibliography: p.

1. Imagery (Psychology) in children. 2. Learning, Psychology of. 3. Child development I. Title.

BF723.I47M87 1987 155.413 87-3740

eISBN 978-0-8348-2672-4

ISBN 978-0-87773-422-2 (pbk.)

The title Spinning Inward came to me as I looked at an exhibit of Salish Indian Spindle Whorls at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology. As the Salish weaver spun the wool on the spindle whorl, the whorl became a blur. When it stopped, an image was revealed to the spinner. He would then carve this image into his spindle whorl. The essential act of imaging, like all creative art, is the bringing into being of a vision. The images we spin inwardly become the reality we spin out.

Id like to express my thanks to all the children and teenagers with whom I have worked, and to those big children inside adult bodies who have assisted me in my teaching: Jill Mackay, Donna Wabnig, and Steve Tomasini. Special thanks go to my partners at the Center for Integrative Learning, with whom I spent thousands of hours from 1980 to 1984 imaging, developing new exercises, leading training sessions, waiting in airports, and eating ice cream: Anne Breutsch, Diane Battung, and Beverly-Colleen Galyean. Saul Arbess and Penny Joy were my partners in using guided imagery and video with Native American students in British Columbia; I am indebted to both of them for their flexibility, good humor, and dedication to the education of all children. My heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Paul Cummins, director of Crossroads School, Santa Monica, California, who had the foresight to know the value of imagery and gave me permission and support to explore these techniques in the classroom. Polly McVickar, my mentor at Pacific Oaks College, was a constant source of vision, encouraging me to see beyond immediate results.

Many of the exercises in this book have been inspired by the work of Deborah Rozman of the University of the Trees, my late partner, Beverly-Colleen Galyean, and Jean Houston, director of the Foundation for Mind Research in New York. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Houston for allowing and encouraging me to adapt her work for young people, particularly the Heros Journey. Several exercises that I adapted from her workshops were later published in her book The Possible Human (J. P. Tarcher, 1982).

I have been encouraged in the last four years by the research of Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University, who has proposed a theory of multiple intelligences which include talents in linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and personal skills. He advocates the education of interpersonal as well as intrapersonal intelligence, which is geared to helping the individual know who he or she is. Guided imagery is a well-researched tool for educating intrapersonal intelligence.

I offer deep personal thanks to my meditation partner, Midge Bowman, who has shared with me a vision for the education of the spirit. Other colleagues who have given me great moral support in my work are Flor Fernandez, Marti Glenn, Jeanette Jara, Carolyn Kenny, Shanja Kirstann, Steve Morgan, Betty Rothenberger, Sharyn McDonald, Jane Alexander Stewart, and Robin Van Doren. Kelvin Jones and Meibao Nee photographed my students and me, and Roberta Scotthorne shared pictures of students in British Columbia. Emily Sell and Kendra Crossen, my editors at Shambhala, gave me support and humor.

Special thanks to Siddhartha Olmedo, Drew Schaeffer, Heather Murdock, Laura Braverman, Jenny Belin, Sean Nordquist, Adam Hausmann, Jessica Yellin, Kevin Greenberg, Taro Joy, Jenny Reich, Christie Sanders, Heather Seineger, David Roberts, Alex Marshall, Erinn Berkson, Bekki Misiorowski, Andy Guss, and Matt Nasatir for their artwork and writing.