Dance with me in the Heart is every baby's invitation to the big people in their lives. When you are invited, please say yes.

I attended the first training in the English language at the Emmi Pikler Institute in Budapest, Hungary in 2004. I knew - while still in Budapest - that the genius of Dr Pikler needed to be made available to all parents and teachers who want to grow peaceful partnerships with their children, so in 2005 I designed the course I now call Dance with me in the Heart • Level One to pass on the information and skills that underpin building a partnership based on mutual affection and mutual respect.

In the interim, and after more learning at the Emmi Pikler Institute in 2006, 2010, 2013 and 2014 I have developed a series of Dance with Me in the Heart courses. Dance with me in the Heart • Level One lays the foundation. The principles experienced in Level One are the basis for the four courses, and they constitute the Culture of Kindness. These principles hold true throughout the whole of the human life-span: from birth, to eldership, and in dying itself. Beside the general principles, the age specific content of Dance with me in the Heart • Level One is from birth to one year old - roughly, the period of extero-gestation.

Dance with me in the Heart • Level Two uses the foundation of the Culture of Kindness as the foundation to explore the age specific content of growth and development through toddlerhood until six years of age.

Heart Dancing for Facilitators are two trainings for people who want to take the Culture of Kindness to the parents in 'their village' in the form of Parent-Infant Classes and Parent-Toddler Classes. The curriculum for these classes comes out of Levels One and Two.

The Partnership Dance
Babies are born to dance the    Partnership Dance but they can't dance it with us when we have forgotten how the steps go.

Dance with me in the Heart • Level One 
A residential course in two four-day modules

This course shares learning inspired by the work of Joseph Chilton Pearce and Dr Emmi Pikler. It is for people who live and work with infants, toddlers and children up to school age, and it is a prerequisite for people who want to run Dance with me in the Heart Parent-Infant Classes.

Module One          
The Sacred Partnership Dance
At the end of this module participants will have explored

• learning theory and how it applies to them so they can get the most from the course 
• how these learning theory principles apply to infants and children, and the adults who care for them
• the cultural view for the child in New Zealand, and the beginnings of seeking other options
• the guiding and underlying principle of respect, and what that looks like in practise
• the potential coded into the infant, and the critical part modelling plays in its unfolding
• the role of love and nurturing in the physical development in the infant's brain structure
• the power dynamic of partnership in the infant-adult relationship
• how to establish a partnership of equals
• the practice of full attention and its benefits to the relationship and to the 'physical organism' called child
• the importance of the care moments (routines) in establishing relationship
• the skill of observation.

Module Two
Moving and Development in the Dance of Life
At the end of this module participants will have explored

• the relationship of the new infant to and with gravity
• motor development as the development of balance in relationship to gravity
• the order of unfolding of the physical encodings for motor development in the child's body
• the pivotal role of play in the development of the human child
• providing appropriately for self chosen play
• the benefits of support for the child's development, rather help or interference
• Pikler designed equipment for gross motor development
• setting up appropriate environments to suit each stage of development - from infancy to toddlerhood
• ways in which to support unfolding autonomy, exploration, innovation and peaceful conflict resolution with infants and toddlers.

The Details

• The venue is the Tauhara Retreat Centre in Taupo
• The fee is $2,155. It is for both modules and includes shared accommodation, all meals from Monday - Thursday, course materials and the course fee.
• Accommodation is available at no extra cost for those who arrive in Sunday in the late afternoon/evening for the Monday 9.00am starts.
• Each module ends on the Thursday at 3.00pm.

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In 2006 Kimberley Crisp and I attended the first Level Two training in the English language at the Emmi Pikler Institute in Budapest, and Dance With Me in the Heart • Level 2 is based on that course. Kimberley has gathered around her a team and set up an exemplary private kindergarten for children 3 - 6 called The Nest at Clive. This is the first centre in New Zealand specifically set up with the Pikler Approach underpinning all of its philosophy and practice. 

Dance with me in the Heart • Level Two
co-facilitated by Kimberley Crisp & Pennie Brownlee
A four day residential course at Taupo
Course prerequisite is completion of Dance with me in the Heart • Level One

This course follows on from exploring the unassisted motor development in Dance with me in the Heart • Level One, to exploring children's unassisted, natural development and unfolding of play. The relationship for the child who has reached autonomy in eating, toileting and dressing is held and maintained in the ritual. The relationship is grown within the ritual. There the adult sees sets it up to provide the emotional safety critical to the success of a programme featuring uninterrupted, child-chosen play. 

In this course participants will explore

• the adult's role in providing for children's unfolding through self chosen play
• identifying and providing for patterns of play encoded into mammals and humans
• setting up environments designed to support children's innate play patterns
• an exploration of appropriate and inappropriate 'educational' play equipment
• the critical role of imagination in the child's intellectual, creative and spiritual unfolding
• the critical role of imaginative play in a child's acquisition of 'people literacy'
• the differences between teaching and learning
• make a critical exploration of interventions commonly considered to be 'teaching' a child something

The details

• Dates to be decided after the cancellation in March 2022
• The venue is the Tauhara Retreat Centre in Taupo
• The fee is $1,155 and includes accommodation, all meals from Monday - Thursday, course materials and the course fee.
• Accommodation is available at no extra cost for those who arrive in Sunday in the late afternoon/evening for the Monday 9.00am start.
• The course ends on the Thursday at 3.00pm.

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In 2005 three workers from CAPS Hauraki did Dance with me in the Heart • Level One and they have been taking parent-infant classes for parents and their babies since then. These classes introduce parents Dr Pikler's peaceful, respectful approach and the results for families in our district have been stunning. With all that expertise built up over seven years, hand in hand we designed a ten week programme for facilitators, so that this way of being can spread around our communities.

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community – a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living.
This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Heart Dancing for Parent-Infant Class Facilitators
A weekend training for would be parent-infant class facilitators

Dance with me in the Heart • Level One is the prerequisite for acceptance onto this course. It is limited to ten participants.

Programme Outline
In this course we look at the little picture and the big picture, both parts of the same picture. Parenting course facilitators are more effective as agents of change if they understand where the curriculum fits into the big and the little pictures.

Power dynamics

• the societal shift that is underway, from the dominance paradigm to the partnership paradigm
• the pivotal role that parent-infant classes have in that shift
• the role of the facilitator as a model of that shift

Teaching dynamics

• how to set up a sacred space
• the skills to create learning partnerships
• the skills of brain-compatible teaching and learning

The ten session curriculum

• looking at the curriculum
• learning how to facilitate the practical exercises that require sensory awareness for their success 

The Facilitator's Handbook

• Each participant receives a full-colour  Dance with me in the Heart Facilitator's Handbook, this contains a ten week curriculum for Dance with me in the Heart Parent-Infant Classes. The handbook includes a first section containing facilitation and organisational information and guidelines, and a second section containing each of the ten session-guidelines.

The Parent Handbook

• Each participant receives a full-colour hard copy of the Dance with me in the Heart Parent Handbook. The parent handbook is also available as a digital file, and this can be branded to the participant's logo if suitable files are supplied. The file enables the handbook to be printed as and when the facilitator needs. The cost of the digital file is extra to the course fee.
• Every parent enrolling in Dance with me in the Heart Parent-Infant Classes receives a handbook. It has readings and ponderings to support each of the class sessions.

The details

• Fee $550: includes both handbooks, course materials, lunches, dinners and course fee. Does not include accommodation.
• Digital copy of the Parent Handbook $200. The participant is the only one with the right to copy. I would recommend you wait until you have seen the handbook, because the other option is I can get them printed for you at the printers I use and send them to you at cost plus postage.
  
• The package includes Skype or email mentoring.
• The course starts at 6.00pm Friday and finishing 2.00pm Sunday.
  

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Above all we need, particularly as children, the reassuring presence of a visible community, an intimate group that enfolds us with understanding and love, and that becomes an object of our spontaneous loyalty, as a criterion and point of reference for the rest of the human race.

Lewis Mumford

Heart Dancing for Parent-Toddler Class Facilitators
A weekend training for would-be facilitators of parent-toddler classes

Dance with me in the Heart • Level One, Dance with me in the Heart • Level Two and Heart Dancing for Facilitators of Parent-Infant Classes are the prerequisites for acceptance onto this course.
It is limited to ten participants.

Programme Outline
In this course we focus on the changing we have to do, and the new skills we will need for a child who is growing into their autonomy.  

Play

• the patterns of play coded into each child and how to support those patterns
• the role that play has in unfolding each child's intelligences

Conflict

• how to manage ourselves as adults when there is conflict with a child, and between children
• how to manage ourselves when we are conflicted around children's behaviour

The skills of partnership

• The partnership skills practiced with for infants need to be upgraded to meet the needs of a toddler

The ten session curriculum

• looking at the curriculum
• learning how to facilitate the practical exercises that require sensory awareness for their success 

The Facilitator's Handbook

• Each participant receives a full-colour  Dance with me in the Heart Facilitator's Handbook, this contains a ten week curriculum for Dance with me in the Heart Parent-Toddler Classes. The handbook includes guidelines for each of the ten sessions.

The Parent Handbook

• Each participant receives a full-colour hard copy of the Dance with me in the Heart Parent Handbook. The parent handbook is also available as a digital file, and this can be branded to the participant's logo if suitable files are supplied. The file enables the handbook to be printed as and when the facilitator needs. The cost of the digital file is extra to the course fee. I would recommend you wait until you have seen the handbook, because the other option is I can get them printed for you at the printers I use and send them to you at cost plus postage.
• Every parent enrolling in Dance with me in the Heart Parent-Toddler Classes receives a handbook. It has readings and ponderings to support each of the class sessions.

The details

• Fee $450: includes both handbooks, course materials, lunches, dinners and course fee. Does not include accommodation.
• Digital copy of the Parent Handbook $200. The participant is the only one with the right to copy.
• The package includes Skype or email mentoring.

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