Post 2012 - A New Beginning

Jayátu Traveling Tales & Online Community Coming Soon!

Jayátu Traveling Tales

After Jayátu's recent travels to China and Costa Rica it was decided that it was time to launch an online community network where Friends of Jayátu could meet each other online to share stories, post photos, and engage in lively storytelling with ongoing blog posts/discussion forums as well as launch the 'Jayátu Traveling Tales' multi-media storytelling series.  

This week is John Muir's Birthday and Earth Day and the team at SeThInk Media has been working on launching this new network and publishing this series sometime in May.  

Sign up for the 'Friends of Jayátu' newsletter to stay posted on the launch date and other special events planned for May!

Happy Spring!

Halfway to Spring!

Now that we are halfway to spring equinox the Jayátu team is working full steam ahead on planning the next online storytelling event which will happen around Earth Day and John Muir's birthday (April 21st is John Muir's birthday).   We plan on doing a live storytelling event that will be video taped and then shared via webcast to the Friends of Jayátu community! The team is also working hard on editing the next collection of children stories that will be available by April.  

But amidst all this activity the movements of nature during this sunny spell that has been happening in California has given the Jayátu team a bit of spring fever.  Although winter is far from over and storms are on the horizon at the time of this post, the Jayátu team lives on land where thousands of frogs are singing their 'wake up the trees' songs and little tiny wildflowers are beginning to canvas the meadows.  

Jayátu is actually on a journey south at this time to not just visit friends, but to begin writing/recording the 'Jayátu Traveling Tales" series that will be published on the main site as a series of tales that visitors can enjoy, share, and hopefully inspire them to tell their own traveling stories. 

Storytelling as a part of Education Curriculums

What is the role and value of oral storytelling in education?

Storytelling is felt by some to be one of the arts that are diminishing in importance in our culture. Yet Waldorf education curriculum places strong emphasis on this experience for children. Storytelling imbues the imagination and fantasy, and is a loving way of communicating values, principles, and challenges, among others. Oral stories may be curative (Dancy, 1989, pg 184) where a made-up story may be told to a child or group of children who are exhibiting a particular problem or behavior that you hope will change.

While stories can reflect life’s challenges, the oral storytelling provides a strong basis for the development of “picture consciousness” (Meyer 1981), or our imaginations. Dancy (1989, pg 168) notes the “role of imagination or the ability to think in images is recognized as an important component in creative thinking. Albert Einstein said he discovered the theory of relativity by picturing himself riding on a ray of light.” Meyerkort, who heads the Waldorf early-childhood teacher training program in Great Britain, notes that imagination is essential for many reasons: initiative (to see potential, rather than static existence), compassion (imagine and empathize with another’s predicament), love (imagine a person’s potential, possibilities for growth).

Images that are envisioned from something a child hears in a story are based on their imagination, are not static, and can transform over time in one’s “mind’s eye”. On the contrary, images from television or movies, or even books with detailed pictures, take the imagination away from the child and provide it to them in a static way that “sticks”. Thus oral storytelling embraces the inner fantasy and creativity in all of us.

One of the goals the Jayátu team is to help bring oral storytelling educational resources for parents, teachers, and home school families/groups and create a vibrant online school where 'children of ALL ages' can enroll to receive official certificates of completion that can be used for credit.   We are in the beginning stages of discussions with an education institute about partnering with them to develop an easy curriculum that can be integrated into their school.  We will keep you posted through the Friends of Jayátu newsletter!


 

Taking Flight 'Beyond Words'

This past week Jayátu gathered people from 16 countries under his story wings as they viewed “The Big Jump” special holiday video which went live December 21st.  Taking flight is always such a thrill and tonight a broadcast was sent to all the folks who signed up for the online event reminding them that the video would be 'live' until January 6th.  

Jayátu's mission is to help young folks of all ages awaken and grow the joy of life in themselves through storytelling.  Masterful storytelling gives flight to both the stories and the listeners.  Jayátu hopes to inspire the storyteller in each of us through not just the telling of stories but through encouraging and educating folks about the art of storytelling.  

The following is an excerpt from an upcoming soon to be published article by Jayátu called 'Beyond Words':  

"We think of the storyteller’s craft as a speaking art. But of course words are only a reflection, an indication, the proverbial tip of the iceberg visible above the surface. The body and weight of the storyteller’s art is that which lies beneath the words, the floating, luminous sensations, meanings, and presences from which words are born. This is a somewhat nebulous world, the land of perceptions and feelings. Memories dwell here and the subtler senses of wonder, humor, beauty, soul and spirit, as well as the intangible qualities of character and place. Storytellers are explorers of this realm. They navigate between it and the sharper dimension of expression and language. They coalesce the soft glow of impressions and perceptions into the clearer rays of word and phrase, they crystallize the hurly-burly of life happenings into spoken shapes of valuable meaning. We might call this process listening and reporting. The storyteller’s work is deep listening and feeling, followed by clear and artful expression."

We are encouraging folks to sign up for the 'Friends of Jayátu' newsletter who are interested in learning more about the art of storytelling from Jayátu.

Launching a Golden Eagle

Getting things off the ground can require a great deal of aerodynamic planning but when that something happens to be a creature with wings then it is more a matter of hanging on for the ride.  Jayátu has taken flight this week and has set a course to inspire and encourage the spreading of your own wings to soar into magic realms where the child and the child within can experience the knowledge of life's wonders.

Storytelling was the way we learned about ourselves and the world we live in prior to the written word.  What gets conveyed and shared is more than just the story...it is the heart and soul of the storyteller. Jayátu is a human storyteller who is living what is now the myth of the storytellers in a world where the typed word has almost completely replaced spoken word.

Jayátu's mission is to help young folks of all ages awaken and grow the joy of life in themselves.  Connecting to nature's wonders and power, celebrating the beauty of friendship, building the gift of community, growing courage to face life with love, finding and living one's true calling - all these are grown and nourished by powerful stories. Then, masterful storytelling gives flight to both stories and listeners.