With wolves and whales,
Lions and trolls,
Witches and wizards,
With big warty moles,
Deer and Eagles
A white elephant that loves art,
There is bound to be a character
Who captures a child’s heart.

Each inamojo™ class has a story at its core. Our stories are unique, magical and highly engaging for the children, and at the heart of each one is a lesson about one of the seven key life issues connected to each of the human energy apps.

We chose stories as one of our key ingredients, not only as they are a wonderful way to explore a theme, but also because of the teachings of Carl Jung on the topic of fairytales. The pioneer of Analytical Psychology, Jung believed that fairytales are stories representative of the collective unconscious, as they are developed around archetypal themes. He believed that their original purpose was not for entertainment, but as a way of talking about, and experiencing, deeper unconscious energies. Jung stated that archetypal behavior could be studied in two ways, either by psychoanalysis of an individual, or by way of fairytales. We chose fairytales!

We have drawn on Jung’s fairytale theory by creating our own unique stories, each based on a specific archetypal theme. Each story has specific characters, landscapes, key messages, lessons and resolutions, which help the children to understand, and make sense of, a life lesson. We believe these stories are key components in helping children with the life-tools and life-skills for life-long wellbeing!

In inamojo™ classes, the children softly close their eyes, or just relax comfortably, as they listen to the stories. We deliberately don’t provide them with pictures or images that define the characters. Instead we encourage them to engage their own imaginations and make a feeling connection with each story. In many ways, they are living the story within themselves and exploring their own inner worlds.

Benefits of being read a story… (make this green like the other titles)

As well as encouraging imaginations to thrive, and learning through feeling the story, the developmental and educational benefits of hearing a story include:

• Develops communication skills
• Show children that they are valued (busy society, etc.)
• Develops listening skills – attention spans increase
• Develops language and literacy skills
• Increases confidence for self-expression, both verbally and in writing
• Encourages confidence to explore feelings by empathizing with characters
• Improves meta-cognition
• Develops sequencing skills
• Stimulates creativity and imagination.

Inamojo™ Music

The next key ingredient in inamojo™ is the music. We have spent many years working with our own inamojo™ composer/musician to create magical, unique, and highly specific music for each class. Inamojo™ music is in a sound stratosphere of its own – as you will hear for yourself as you journey through The Quest!

Each story has been brought to musical life in such a way as not only to reflect the story’s theme, but also to be in resonance with the energies of the chakras.

Musical vibrations can be tuned to the seven chakras, each of which has a different vibrational frequency. For instance, the first chakra resonates with the frequency of the color red, and therefore holds the lowest tone. Each chakra above vibrates up through the rainbow spectrum of colors, to the highest tone at the crown chakra with the color violet.

Throughout the entire inamojo™ series, the children will, week by week, experience a full rainbow spectrum of tones and sounds. They will hear the wild sounds of the jungle, the gentle dance of magical ocean creatures, the twinkling of silvery stars and much, much more!

As well as creating music to accompany the stories, we have composed specific music for the different sections of the classes: beginning of class, art time, close of class. This recurring music provides the children with a sense of familiarity, structure and safety. It acts as a gentle ‘holding space’ in each class.

Benefits of music … 

Scientific researchers and music therapy professionals across the globe are continuing to discover how music positively affects physical, cognitive and emotional health, and promotes social wellbeing. The benefits of music include:

• Decreases anxiety
• Boosts the immune system
• Helps calm the nervous system
• Stimulates brain function, related to reading, math and emotional development
• Improves memory
• Builds social awareness, particularly in group settings
• Fosters creativity
• Helps children connect to their emotions

Inamojo™ Movement

The third key ingredient in inamojo™ is the movement. After the children have listened to the stories, they physically experience all aspects of the story by dancing the different characters, and moving through the different landscapes. Imagine dancing through a magical fairytale with the sounds twinkling and swooshing all around you. It’s like feeling the story with your whole body. It’s like being in the story.

Movement is a key ingredient in inamojo™ as it helps the children to ‘embody’ the lessons of the stories. They are no longer just ideas, but tangible realities they can feel and experience in their own bodies. By connecting with the lessons physically, they can more easily reconnect with this embodied knowledge long after the class has finished. Our movement component includes some gentle guided movements, as well as time for freedom of expression and play.

Benefits of movement and dance … (make this green like other titles)

Movement and dance are powerful learning tools that support physical and cognitive development, emotional maturity, social awareness and spiritual growth. Some of the developmental benefits include:

• Develops fine motor skills / spatial awareness and coordination
• Builds self-confidence and self-esteem
• Increases muscular strength and fitness
• Improves mental functioning
• Stimulates internal organs and body systems, e.g. respiratory
• Introduces valuable tools for social interaction
• Embraces and nurtures self-expression and creativity

Inamojo™ Art

The final key ingredient in the inamojo™ melting pot is our art component.

After the children have listened to the story and expressed themselves through movement, they are guided back to a comfortable position on the floor to create their art piece.

This exercise is based on an ancient form of creative expression called mandala art. The Sanskrit word mandala means ‘magic circle’ and as art forms, they symbolize expressions of our inner being.

The children are given their own space, a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it, and a small bag of crayons or pastels. We play the art music, and each child expresses his or her feelings, favorite characters, or simply a color or shape in the circle. Their art doesn’t have to look a certain way. It is their own unique creative expression of the story and all they have danced and experienced. This provides another opportunity for the children to express their feelings and experiences in a nonverbal way. It’s also a way of anchoring their experiences back into their outer reality.

When the children reflect back on their magic circle art, they are more easily able to tap back into the lessons they learned in each class, which once again helps them take experiences from the classroom out into their lives.

Benefits of creative art making…

• Supports small and large muscle development
• Hand & eye co-ordination, and spatial awareness
• Fine motor control that assists with writing later on
• Social interaction with others
• Sharing
• Responsibility and care for materials – social learning
• Observational skills
• Active Imagination
• Builds self-confidence and self-esteem
• Embraces and nurtures self-expression and creativity
• Improves mental functioning

In each class we do an exercise called What’s Up? One by one we go around the circle and children are encouraged to share whatever is up for them in the very moment.

Whatever is up can be shared in one or a few words and there is always the emphasis that nothing needs to be made up and there’s no wrong way to be feeling at any time.

Why are we doing this?

We’re doing it because it can be really helpful to NOTICE what we’re feeling, not just to FEEL what we’re feeling! It helps us to recognize that our feelings change. They are not who we are, they are just how we’re feeling at that particular moment. You are not your anger, you are not your boredom, and you aren’t even your overly excited or happy feelings.

Feelings come and go like waves. Sometimes they can build up and up and crash to the shore and others just roll through. Waves keep forming and rolling, just like our feelings but it doesn’t make the ocean or water a wave, it’s always water. Like you. Your feelings and emotions don’t make you who you are.

What’s Up enables children to vocalize what they are feeling, offering the ability to build emotional intelligence, a sense of community and a deeper respect for self and others.

Mojo Breaths

Breath awareness (in children and adults) is one of our most powerful and natural tools to connect to our authentic inner selves and can help us to find harmony between our physical bodies, our emotions, and our conscious and subconscious minds.

Using effective breathing techniques moves our focus from our outer world to our inner world and provides a space to check how we are really feeling.

During our classes we encourage children to check in with how they are feeling as we practice mindful breathing.

We teach a safe, simple and effective belly breath technique that we have called ‘mojo breaths’. This is a useful tool for children to learn, as it teaches them to bring calm and relaxation into the mind and body. Teachers who have experienced our classes often say that it has also reminded them to breathe and check in with how they are feeling themselves!

Belly Breathing Benefits (say that 3 times!) … (make this green like the other titles)

The benefits of belly breathing are enormous! Overall, belly breathing improves mind/body connection, alleviates anxiety, stress, anger and depression; and promotes an overall sense of wellbeing.

Unless you’re a corpse, why wouldn’t you belly breathe?

Take a moment to read the following benefits and imagine if this was used as a common practice throughout the day for children in schools, early learning centers, hospitals, etc.

Immune System 

• Decreases stress response, regulating the nervous system.

Respiratory System 

• Assists with the relief of asthma, bronchitis, upper respiratory infections.
• Strengthens and opens up the chest to make breathing easier and fuller, providing more energy in the body and a calmer mind.

Circulatory System 

• Improves blood circulation throughout the body and organs, and relieves congestion.
• Increases flow of oxygen to eyes and brain.

Nervous System 

• Calms the fight or flight response.
• Reduces fatigue, releases anxiety and stress.
• Balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Digestive and Urinary Systems

• Stimulates the processes of digestion, absorption, and elimination.
• Assists parasympathetic nervous system to rest and calm.

Muscular and Skeletal System

• Correct breathing enhances upper body stability.
• Releases muscle tension, headaches.
• Enhanced oxygenation enables us to exercise and be active.
• Increases mobility in our joints and improves co-ordination

Meditation

We use meditation at the beginning and end offevery class. The opening meditation provides the space for children to slow down, connect with their inner worlds and become aware of their feelings. This time of mindfulness helps to prepare them for the story that follows.

The closing meditation provides children with the opportunity to quietly process their experiences. It also helps to reintegrate them from their inner world back to their outer world.

Benefits of meditation … 

There are many wonderful benefits from practicing relaxation and meditation:

• Reduces stress
• Strengthens the immune system
• Decreases anxiety
• Decreases aggression
• Promotes positive thinking and mental wellbeing
• Improves behavior and attitude
• Improves focus, memory, and concentration

Our initial program is for primary school children (6-9 years old).

We are currently developing an additional program for pre-school and kindergarten children (3-5 years old), and Tweens (10-12 years old).

What actually happens in a class?

In an inamojo class, children have fascinating stories read to them (stories with important life-lessons subtly woven through them); they get to ’embody’ the characters in the story in a music-and-movement session; and they create an artwork to express their personal feelings about the story.

This combination of auditory, somatic and creative experiences leads to much deeper, more engaged and long-lasting learning.

At the beginning and end of each class, the children are taught (and get to practice) various techniques such as breath-awareness, mindfulness, and belly-breathing, to help with emotional self-regulation and relaxation.

Can adults do these classes too?

No, these classes are for children only.

But the good news is, there is an adult equivalent to Inamojo. It’s called Chakradance, and you can learn more about it here.

How long do classes run for?

Inamojo classes are designed to be run over 30-40 minutes each, with optional one-hour versions for use when required.

Is there a religious dimension to Inamojo™?

No. Inamojo is deliberately designed to be inclusive and non-denominational.

Inamojo does have a strong moral code at its heart.

We believe that we are all somehow connected to a universal divinity that finds expression in all of us.

But we don’t care if your name for that divinity is God, or Allah, Jehovah or YahWeh, The Lord, The Light, the Universal Spirit, or whatever term your religion prefers (or you prefer yourself, if you don’t profess any particular religion).
All of the world’s major religions proclaim the virtues of empathy, compassion, kindness… the idea that we should treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves. We agree, and the stories in Inamojo classes reflect and reinforce those values.

But there is no specific religious content in Inamojo classes.

What happens after the series has finished?

We highly recommend that children experience the same series a number of times.

Repetition enables children to garner a deeper learning and understanding of the concepts and wellbeing tools they are taught in these classes.

With wolves and whales,
Lions and trolls,
Witches and wizards,
With big warty moles,
Deer and Eagles
A white elephant that loves art,
There is bound to be a character
Who captures a child’s heart.

Each inamojo™ class has a story at its core. Our stories are unique, magical and highly engaging for the children, and at the heart of each one is a lesson about one of the seven key life issues connected to each of the human energy apps.

We chose stories as one of our key ingredients, not only as they are a wonderful way to explore a theme, but also because of the teachings of Carl Jung on the topic of fairytales. The pioneer of Analytical Psychology, Jung believed that fairytales are stories representative of the collective unconscious, as they are developed around archetypal themes. He believed that their original purpose was not for entertainment, but as a way of talking about, and experiencing, deeper unconscious energies. Jung stated that archetypal behavior could be studied in two ways, either by psychoanalysis of an individual, or by way of fairytales. We chose fairytales!

We have drawn on Jung’s fairytale theory by creating our own unique stories, each based on a specific archetypal theme. Each story has specific characters, landscapes, key messages, lessons and resolutions, which help the children to understand, and make sense of, a life lesson. We believe these stories are key components in helping children with the life-tools and life-skills for life-long wellbeing!

In inamojo™ classes, the children softly close their eyes, or just relax comfortably, as they listen to the stories. We deliberately don’t provide them with pictures or images that define the characters. Instead we encourage them to engage their own imaginations and make a feeling connection with each story. In many ways, they are living the story within themselves and exploring their own inner worlds.

Benefits of being read a story… (make this green like the other titles)

As well as encouraging imaginations to thrive, and learning through feeling the story, the developmental and educational benefits of hearing a story include:

• Develops communication skills
• Show children that they are valued (busy society, etc.)
• Develops listening skills – attention spans increase
• Develops language and literacy skills
• Increases confidence for self-expression, both verbally and in writing
• Encourages confidence to explore feelings by empathizing with characters
• Improves meta-cognition
• Develops sequencing skills
• Stimulates creativity and imagination.

Inamojo™ Music

The next key ingredient in inamojo™ is the music. We have spent many years working with our own inamojo™ composer/musician to create magical, unique, and highly specific music for each class. Inamojo™ music is in a sound stratosphere of its own – as you will hear for yourself as you journey through The Quest!

Each story has been brought to musical life in such a way as not only to reflect the story’s theme, but also to be in resonance with the energies of the chakras.

Musical vibrations can be tuned to the seven chakras, each of which has a different vibrational frequency. For instance, the first chakra resonates with the frequency of the color red, and therefore holds the lowest tone. Each chakra above vibrates up through the rainbow spectrum of colors, to the highest tone at the crown chakra with the color violet.

Throughout the entire inamojo™ series, the children will, week by week, experience a full rainbow spectrum of tones and sounds. They will hear the wild sounds of the jungle, the gentle dance of magical ocean creatures, the twinkling of silvery stars and much, much more!

As well as creating music to accompany the stories, we have composed specific music for the different sections of the classes: beginning of class, art time, close of class. This recurring music provides the children with a sense of familiarity, structure and safety. It acts as a gentle ‘holding space’ in each class.

Benefits of music … 

Scientific researchers and music therapy professionals across the globe are continuing to discover how music positively affects physical, cognitive and emotional health, and promotes social wellbeing. The benefits of music include:

• Decreases anxiety
• Boosts the immune system
• Helps calm the nervous system
• Stimulates brain function, related to reading, math and emotional development
• Improves memory
• Builds social awareness, particularly in group settings
• Fosters creativity
• Helps children connect to their emotions

Inamojo™ Movement

The third key ingredient in inamojo™ is the movement. After the children have listened to the stories, they physically experience all aspects of the story by dancing the different characters, and moving through the different landscapes. Imagine dancing through a magical fairytale with the sounds twinkling and swooshing all around you. It’s like feeling the story with your whole body. It’s like being in the story.

Movement is a key ingredient in inamojo™ as it helps the children to ‘embody’ the lessons of the stories. They are no longer just ideas, but tangible realities they can feel and experience in their own bodies. By connecting with the lessons physically, they can more easily reconnect with this embodied knowledge long after the class has finished. Our movement component includes some gentle guided movements, as well as time for freedom of expression and play.

Benefits of movement and dance … (make this green like other titles)

Movement and dance are powerful learning tools that support physical and cognitive development, emotional maturity, social awareness and spiritual growth. Some of the developmental benefits include:

• Develops fine motor skills / spatial awareness and coordination
• Builds self-confidence and self-esteem
• Increases muscular strength and fitness
• Improves mental functioning
• Stimulates internal organs and body systems, e.g. respiratory
• Introduces valuable tools for social interaction
• Embraces and nurtures self-expression and creativity

Inamojo™ Art

The final key ingredient in the inamojo™ melting pot is our art component.

After the children have listened to the story and expressed themselves through movement, they are guided back to a comfortable position on the floor to create their art piece.

This exercise is based on an ancient form of creative expression called mandala art. The Sanskrit word mandala means ‘magic circle’ and as art forms, they symbolize expressions of our inner being.

The children are given their own space, a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it, and a small bag of crayons or pastels. We play the art music, and each child expresses his or her feelings, favorite characters, or simply a color or shape in the circle. Their art doesn’t have to look a certain way. It is their own unique creative expression of the story and all they have danced and experienced. This provides another opportunity for the children to express their feelings and experiences in a nonverbal way. It’s also a way of anchoring their experiences back into their outer reality.

When the children reflect back on their magic circle art, they are more easily able to tap back into the lessons they learned in each class, which once again helps them take experiences from the classroom out into their lives.

Benefits of creative art making…

• Supports small and large muscle development
• Hand & eye co-ordination, and spatial awareness
• Fine motor control that assists with writing later on
• Social interaction with others
• Sharing
• Responsibility and care for materials – social learning
• Observational skills
• Active Imagination
• Builds self-confidence and self-esteem
• Embraces and nurtures self-expression and creativity
• Improves mental functioning

In each class we do an exercise called What’s Up? One by one we go around the circle and children are encouraged to share whatever is up for them in the very moment.

Whatever is up can be shared in one or a few words and there is always the emphasis that nothing needs to be made up and there’s no wrong way to be feeling at any time.

Why are we doing this?

We’re doing it because it can be really helpful to NOTICE what we’re feeling, not just to FEEL what we’re feeling! It helps us to recognize that our feelings change. They are not who we are, they are just how we’re feeling at that particular moment. You are not your anger, you are not your boredom, and you aren’t even your overly excited or happy feelings.

Feelings come and go like waves. Sometimes they can build up and up and crash to the shore and others just roll through. Waves keep forming and rolling, just like our feelings but it doesn’t make the ocean or water a wave, it’s always water. Like you. Your feelings and emotions don’t make you who you are.

What’s Up enables children to vocalize what they are feeling, offering the ability to build emotional intelligence, a sense of community and a deeper respect for self and others.

Mojo Breaths

Breath awareness (in children and adults) is one of our most powerful and natural tools to connect to our authentic inner selves and can help us to find harmony between our physical bodies, our emotions, and our conscious and subconscious minds.

Using effective breathing techniques moves our focus from our outer world to our inner world and provides a space to check how we are really feeling.

During our classes we encourage children to check in with how they are feeling as we practice mindful breathing.

We teach a safe, simple and effective belly breath technique that we have called ‘mojo breaths’. This is a useful tool for children to learn, as it teaches them to bring calm and relaxation into the mind and body. Teachers who have experienced our classes often say that it has also reminded them to breathe and check in with how they are feeling themselves!

Belly Breathing Benefits (say that 3 times!) … (make this green like the other titles)

The benefits of belly breathing are enormous! Overall, belly breathing improves mind/body connection, alleviates anxiety, stress, anger and depression; and promotes an overall sense of wellbeing.

Unless you’re a corpse, why wouldn’t you belly breathe?

Take a moment to read the following benefits and imagine if this was used as a common practice throughout the day for children in schools, early learning centers, hospitals, etc.

Immune System 

• Decreases stress response, regulating the nervous system.

Respiratory System 

• Assists with the relief of asthma, bronchitis, upper respiratory infections.
• Strengthens and opens up the chest to make breathing easier and fuller, providing more energy in the body and a calmer mind.

Circulatory System 

• Improves blood circulation throughout the body and organs, and relieves congestion.
• Increases flow of oxygen to eyes and brain.

Nervous System 

• Calms the fight or flight response.
• Reduces fatigue, releases anxiety and stress.
• Balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

Digestive and Urinary Systems

• Stimulates the processes of digestion, absorption, and elimination.
• Assists parasympathetic nervous system to rest and calm.

Muscular and Skeletal System

• Correct breathing enhances upper body stability.
• Releases muscle tension, headaches.
• Enhanced oxygenation enables us to exercise and be active.
• Increases mobility in our joints and improves co-ordination

Meditation

We use meditation at the beginning and end offevery class. The opening meditation provides the space for children to slow down, connect with their inner worlds and become aware of their feelings. This time of mindfulness helps to prepare them for the story that follows.

The closing meditation provides children with the opportunity to quietly process their experiences. It also helps to reintegrate them from their inner world back to their outer world.

Benefits of meditation … 

There are many wonderful benefits from practicing relaxation and meditation:

• Reduces stress
• Strengthens the immune system
• Decreases anxiety
• Decreases aggression
• Promotes positive thinking and mental wellbeing
• Improves behavior and attitude
• Improves focus, memory, and concentration

Our initial program is for primary school children (6-9 years old).

We are currently developing an additional program for pre-school and kindergarten children (3-5 years old), and Tweens (10-12 years old).

What actually happens in a class?

In an inamojo class, children have fascinating stories read to them (stories with important life-lessons subtly woven through them); they get to ’embody’ the characters in the story in a music-and-movement session; and they create an artwork to express their personal feelings about the story.

This combination of auditory, somatic and creative experiences leads to much deeper, more engaged and long-lasting learning.

At the beginning and end of each class, the children are taught (and get to practice) various techniques such as breath-awareness, mindfulness, and belly-breathing, to help with emotional self-regulation and relaxation.

Can adults do these classes too?

No, these classes are for children only.

But the good news is, there is an adult equivalent to Inamojo. It’s called Chakradance, and you can learn more about it here.

How long do classes run for?

Inamojo classes are designed to be run over 30-40 minutes each, with optional one-hour versions for use when required.

Is there a religious dimension to Inamojo™?

No. Inamojo is deliberately designed to be inclusive and non-denominational.

Inamojo does have a strong moral code at its heart.

We believe that we are all somehow connected to a universal divinity that finds expression in all of us.

But we don’t care if your name for that divinity is God, or Allah, Jehovah or YahWeh, The Lord, The Light, the Universal Spirit, or whatever term your religion prefers (or you prefer yourself, if you don’t profess any particular religion).
All of the world’s major religions proclaim the virtues of empathy, compassion, kindness… the idea that we should treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves. We agree, and the stories in Inamojo classes reflect and reinforce those values.

But there is no specific religious content in Inamojo classes.

What happens after the series has finished?

We highly recommend that children experience the same series a number of times.

Repetition enables children to garner a deeper learning and understanding of the concepts and wellbeing tools they are taught in these classes.