A lot of people ask me how did I got interested about Shantala, and I love to tell how I ended up fascinated by it!
On my first year of college, I had a class about Shantala. It was really brief, we learned a little bit of the technique and my professor said that who was interested could practice it in a daycare close to our school. I have to confess that I was more excited about hanging out with a lot of cute babies then to practice the massage, but as soon as I got there, I saw a little baby, the smallest one, laying on her crib. It got my attention how little she was, compared to the other infants. I picked her up and started to get ready to do the massage, but she didn't seem to respond. She had a stationary look and didn't even made any kind o eye contact. My professor approached me and told me to research and try to find out what was going on with that baby, since she was so small and seemed to a have a development delay.
Talking to the workers at the day care, I found out that the baby was neglected by her mother, that kept her in the crib from the moment she got home from daycare, until they come back the next day. She wasn't breastfeeding her, and she avoided touching the baby any way that she could, had no interaction, no stimulation. It was hard for me to understand at first, but the mother was dealing with her own issues and couldn't manage care about the baby at that time.
So I decided to go frequently to the day care and practice Shantala on her regularly. For three months, I was there twice a week to see if I could help her. The end of the semester came, and on my last day, we re-evaluated her, and for my surprise, she was a completely different baby! Her eyes were glowing, and followed me from the moment I got there! She was alert, moving all over the place, smiling and gained a lot of weight - she even had some fat rolls!
In that moment, I realized how powerful Shantala was, and that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was teach families another way to love and care for their little ones! And here I am, living my dream, and hoping to make the difference in many families and babies lives!
Comments