We started the day with a silence for the child who has lots to say- but cant or wont! We all know who this child is, was or will be, for some time to come yet. Then, Mr Manimaran introduced the workshop and his colleagues; then Raja Bhattacharya introduced the name round, where everyone had to give their name with a bounce. Then, a silent round, where everyone had to come to the center, stand quiet, looking into their audience’s eye, smile and relax- but say nothing. Next round, everyone had to say something about themselves. About 30 people were there. One young student from IIT Chennai (sachin met him on TJY) also came with his PWS friend.
After lunch, Mani introduced and conducted some practice rounds based on EFT (emotional freedom technique). PWS have to deal with lot of un-productive, useless emotional burden, accumulated over the growing up years. EFT is good to deal with all that baggage.
Then, we divided in couples and conducted “Stammering interviews”, followed by debriefing. People recollected one funny moment associated with stammering. Many of us were able to laugh about, what we considered a painful event, till a few years back. The day concluded with a few videos of women stammering (for a change!) and conveying a message of hope, courage and acceptance.
And yes, Rekha, a researcher, took blood sample from us, for a study focusing on genes responsible for stammering and the related mutation. She explained her project first, the procedure, issues of consent, privacy and ethics..(see the last picture above). We will be sharing more about her study soon.
Shiva Subramaniam, Vishal Dadha, Raja, Francin, Chitti babu and many others were there to assist Mr Manimaran- in, what was essentially a team effort. We dispersed by 6.30 pm or so. There was a TJY get-together in Chennai- Sachin could not attend it physically- but had a nice little chat with Cdr Menon and Usha Pillai!
