Talya’s compassion project

Three years ago, when Talya Sharon-Alexandrowicz from Tel Aviv studied in the second grade, she took part in the Avatar® course – a unique awareness-raising course that has been held all over the world for over thirty years, developed by Harry Palmer. Talya’s mother Miri Sharon, 43, has been active in self-development as a master in the Avatar technique for over 16 years. After Talya (then 8) asked her mom to join the course, she decided to take her and her sister Ma’ayan (then .5.5) to a course in the Netherlands

Compassion Exercise

On the second day of the course, as part of the so-called “Resurfacing®” workshop, after going over various points that help us see how we think, and how we behave according to what we believe, there is a very important part that deals with our relationships with other people. Talya says that she did that exercise on her grandfather, who died when she was very young. How did you feel after that? “I felt much closer to him, even though he was no longer with us.”

“After she did the exercise, she made an important decision,” says Sharon, “to do the masters’ course and deliver the course to others.” Talya says she wanted to help others feel better about themselves and about the people around them.

The youngest master in Israel

Talya did her masters’ course two weeks after that course – this time in Orlando, together with dozens of other children from around the world. Already in the course I knew that the first thing I would do when I returned to Israel would be to do the compassion exercise in my class and I already arranged with the teacher to give a presentation to the children. Boys and girls in the class were interested in Talya’s experiences. Miri recalls that the teacher at the time told her that “the children cooperated charmingly and told her at the end of the exercise that they asked Talya to continue because they did not want the exercise to end.”

A surprising letter from the Prime Minister

For Talya this was not the end of the story, and she decided to send the exercise to none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and offered to send him compassion exercise cards – as her personal idea to speed up peace.

In her letter to the prime minister, Talya wrote: “Honorable Prime Minister, please accept and share our appreciation, and this gift, of the compassion exercises. The expected result of doing this exercise is a personal sense of peace. It’s simple and easy to do, anywhere, anytime.

An experience that repeats in doing the exercise is that it easily dissolves anger and stress. We cannot think of anything more important at this time than encouraging our leaders to act with less anger and stress, and with more compassion. This gift is courtesy of the Earth Compassion Team – a project developed to support compassionate leadership around the world. For more information about the project, see Link

. Wishing you a wonderful day, Talya Sharon-Alexandrovich – 3rd grader, Yehuda Maccabee School”

few months later, when Talya almost forgot all about the letter, she suddenly received a letter from the Prime Minister shortly before the summer vacation: “It was very exciting”, she says. “Finding out he received my letter and read the exercise! After all it is our prime minister and he wrote really nice things to an ordinary girl like me.”

Compassion Project

Last February, due to problems between kids in Talya’s 5th grade class, Talya suggested to her teacher Meital Vitonsky, to do the exercise again with the class.”Talia is very special, sensitive and very very very kind, and is very understanding of children who have less normative communications, she is less judgmental towards children who have emotional difficulties and is very pleasant and accepting and empathetic. I accepted her offer without any special expectations. ” And what happened? “She showed the presentation on the board and the entire class was very calm and cooperative, I did the exercise myself and experienced a sense of purity afterwards. When the exercise ended, the children told her that she had a very calming voice and wanted her to continue. “

In light of the responses in the class. the teacher she invited Talya to come back and guide the exercise again every month so they children can integrate it. But she did not settle for this and before the parents’ day that was scheduled in the school, she gave Talya’s name to the principal of the School, Adar Arad who invited Talya for a talk. Talya says that in the conversation he asked her if she knew why he had asked her to come – when she replied NO, he told her that he had invited her to come because she was an excellent student, but he did not necessarily mean success in school, but how she behaved to friends and teachers and even to him – always kind and ready to help everyone without them having to ask.

On Friday, Talya’s class will mark the birthdays of children born in April – this time there are four girls, and Talya is one of them. When the girls sat down to decide what they would do at various stations as part of the activity planned, it was clear to all of them that Talya will do the compassion exercise!

You are invited to try the exercise yourself:

Avatar® and Resurfacing® are registered trademarks of Star’s Edge International Inc. All rights reserved. The Avatar course was developed by Harry Palmer in 1987. For more information see https://www.avatarepc.com/ and Hebrew information https: //www.avatar9.co.il//