INTRODUCING WILLOW

Willow has proven to be an inspirational source of materials which has influenced many of the approaches within HET.

Inspired by a living Willow tree in my therapy centre in the West Midlands, many successful materials were developed to help parents and carers in their understanding behind the reasons for some of their children's behaviours. Also what these challenging behaviours brought back to them from their own childhood experiences. Finally these materials have proven invaluable time and again in reaching children who are stuck in situations with their own behaviour where they do not feel happy or understand that  there are choices or how to move out of those behavioural patterns.

Many of these materials have been developed and used in different ways by parents and professionals and have even provided the basis for an 'Alternative curriculum' for home educators or children who are not able to work within their school's framework. It is because of the success that working with these approaches brings as part of the HET programme, that I want to share them with you now.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD OUR FREE HET WILLOW MATERIALS FROM THIS PAGE

I am happy to share ideas with you on how to further develop these materials with your child in our online forum - in the meantime:

HAVE FUN WITH WILLOW

The Willow Concept:

"We all have barbed wire in our hearts - it is that which shapes to be the strong beautiful beings we become."

MEETING WILLOW

Download your FREE HET materials here

WILLOW  is a real tree in a real centre garden. 

He has helped many people, children and adult children too!

To download your FREE copy of Willow and His Helpers:

Right click the link and then click 'save target as'  here's the link - willows helpers

A special story and then a  theatre production was made about Willow and one of his friends called Tommy. 

It toured a lot of schools and helped a lot of people to understand about behaviour, 

what are the reasons for behaviour and how HET can help make better choices.

If you would like to download a FREE copy of this original story by children's writer Michael Smith and some family fun  based materials  then right click the link and then click 'save target as' here is the link for the Willow story

When you have done some of the fun diary activities, why don't you set up your own webpage  to celebrate?

 The whole Willow production is now available for you FREE

Click here to see Willow on Youtube 

I have written a whole programme of  interactive materials to help you work through some of the issues introduced in the Willow's Production

To download a FREE copy of these materials: 

right click the link and then click 'save target as', here is the link Right Click here

In the play and in the materials that go with this,

WILLOW has some special music to help you solve problems as well!

It works a little bit like 'The Mozart Effect' in that each track is designed to take the brain through its different functions in the five sages of problem resolution

To listen to some of his music...

right click here o listen to some of the music which helps understand where our held onto  hurts come form in the past.

Willow Music  

Willow's full music CD ( and downloadable file) and the problem solving approach is now available below

It is important the music is listened to in the following order:

MUSIC FOR WILLOW

Written and produced by Mikey Porter and Michelle Townsend.

 To listen to a sample of this music - CLICK here for Step 4 : WILLOW's theme

TOMMY’S RUNNING 

Tommy has just arrived at the healing Centre and runs into the garden. He is angry, frustrated and kicking off.. throwing things around the garden. He has a problem and won’t own it, he doesn’t know how to go about solving it. At this stage the left and right hand hemispheres of the brain are out of synchronisation and listening to this track helps to put things into a perspective, balance the situation and bring us to a point of owning and taking responsibility for the problem.

RELIEF

Tommy is in the garden ...suddenly it all starts to make sense to him and he starts to get his head together. He calms down and ways are being defined to put support in place and improve the situation. Tommy becomes aware of the fact that things can be better and is prepared to do something about it, with the help of his HET therapist and the school and his Mom, who is also out of her depth.

ESCAPE

Tommy returns to his project in the garden and this becomes a safe place in his life to sort things out. Step by step ( like taking ‘baby steps’) he works through the programme. He escapes from his perceived ‘REALITY’, which is really an illusion. He is encouraged to see that he has choices in his behaviour and by changing his perception, he can change the outcome.

WILLOW

This is Willow’s theme and embraces a central theme to WILLOW’s gentle philosophy “That we all have barbed wire around our heart. It is that which shapes us to become the strong beautiful beings we become.” We revisit scenes from Tommy’s life that are so painful, he has no strategy to deal with them., they are the only patterns of behaviour he has been shown and learned. All the times in his life when he has been bullied and witnessed bullying are brought to bear in his relationships with his friends and those around him. He projects his pain onto them in the mistaken perception that it will make his pain less. Of course it only makes matters worse and by revisiting times in his life when he has experienced this pain he learns how to transmute and change it into a positive outcome.

There is a point in the garden when he meets his Mom at the well and they realise together that the experiences they have shared can be transmuted into positive outcomes and there is nothing so bad that it cannot be helped.

FREEDOM

This  is when Tommy’s life has moved forward 10 years and he is working on the narrow boat taking children to the animal sanctuary and sharing his spiritual lessons. It is the point where we realise that there is a happy ending that we can envisage in our life what it can be like living outside of the problematic situation. We can see what we want and go for it and make it happen in our life. That the pain on the way, were just stepping stones in a journey to getting us to where we want to be.

These key developmental themes in the play are available through the CD tracks and relate to the short story and a technique for working through problems in five stages with people.

Here is the exercise from the CD:

This music has been specially 'WILLOW'  inspired to help with Problem Solving. We know that the Mozart Effect works in a particular way to entrain brainwaves. Well, so does this music. Each track working with a particular frequency of brainwaves that have a different function in the way we go about things.

There are five stages to problem solving:

To recognise and own the problem; To want to do something about it; To put  a strategy together to deal with it; To understand how it came about in the first place; To resolve it.

Each track on this album can be used in the same way. By focusing on each track of the music:

1) What's the problem? Define it

2) What are the different ways this could be solved?

3) Step by step, what can be done about it?

4) When did you last feel  like this? Trace it back .

5) What will you be like when the problem is solved?

Sometimes just listening to the CD  / playing it in the background is sufficient to effect change. You may prefer to use it as a more focused exercise and give the young person an opportunity to write down their thoughts and feelings on each stage at a time whilst listening to the corresponding track. Go back over this and use it as a basis for developing a personal self help strategy.

Please post your comments or a brief evaluation of this material on the teachers or parents forum on  www.HETwebsite.com

Suggested points are made throughout the guide to using WILLOW materials whereby this exercise might be undertaken. These correspond to the stages of Tommy’s personal development.

 NOW CLICK HERE FOR MORE FREE DOWNLOADS ABOUT THE GARDEN EXERCISE -  PAT'S GARDEN

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