Maryknoll sisters and lay missioners in Brazil lead program to manage anxiety and prevent violence in public schools.
Here in the coastal capital of Brazil, a fifth-grader named Camile lost her mother and grandmother within a week. Camile had always been a strong student. But the 10-year-old’s grades dropped, and she became disruptive in the classroom.
Fortunately, Camile attends one of the 10 public schools where Maryknoll missioners and local partners offer weekly classes for struggling students. After five weeks in the program, the school psychologist said Camile’s attention span and behavior had already improved.
“We support schoolchildren, enabling them to experience a culture of peace among themselves and beyond the classroom,” says Maryknoll Sister Euphrasia “Efu” Nyaki.
The culture of peace effort began three years ago when a local principal, Danielle Ventura, approached the AFYA Holistic Center for Women, cofounded by Sister Nyaki and the late Maryknoll Sister Connie Pospisil. Ventura was seeing increased cases of conflicts, property destruction, self-harm and suicidal ideation. She asked for a pilot project to help students deal with stress and trauma.
Having worked in holistic health for more than 30 years, along with my husband and fellow Maryknoll lay missioner, Flávio José Rocha, I was eager to help. Together with the center staff, we launched AFYA in Action in Public Schools, a project aimed at reducing violence and building a culture of peace in peripheral neighborhoods.
Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, Brazil numbered among countries with the highest rates of anxiety and depression in the world, according to the World Health Organization. Mental health worsened due to the pandemic — especially for young people. Returning to the classroom after isolation, students struggled to regulate their emotions and get along with peers. Some girls resort to cutting, a harmful practice they use to cope with feelings they find unmanageable.
Maryknoll Lay Missioner Flávio José Rocha, the author’s husband, helps boys learn to manage their emotions through dynamics and exercises at Deputado Arnaldo School in João Pessoa, Brazil. (Courtesy of Kathleen Bond/Brazil)
We started with simple exercises to improve concentration and reduce anxiety. “After the AFYA workshops I saw that students were learning to self-regulate in moments of crisis with breathing exercises,” Ventura says. “The number of anxiety episodes in the classes reached by the project decreased significantly.”
Sister Nyaki notes another behavioral problem in addition to anxiety. Both boys and girls frequently get into conflicts with others.
“Violence is often rooted in unresolved trauma,” she says. “If we are truly committed to building a culture of peace, we must first create spaces where life’s wounds can be acknowledged and healed.”
To create those spaces, AFYA in Action in Public Schools serves over 5,000 students and professionals in neighborhoods close to the AFYA center and in metropolitan João Pessoa. Our weekly classes reach approximately 400 students from the third to the ninth grades. Flávio, who has worked for over 20 years with groups using Theater of the Oppressed interactive methods, says, “Helping boys deal with their anger in a positive way is one of the benefits of our workshops.”
An exercise he teaches is called Squeezing the Lemon. “I invite the boys to squeeze their hands for five seconds while thinking about something that made them angry,” he explains, “and then slowly open their hands for 10 seconds.” This practice, he says, “calms the mind and helps the boys better manage their emotions.”
At Joacil Brito School, Maryknoll Lay Missioner Kathleen Bond leads girls in weekly group sessions run by the lay missioners and AFYA staff in 10 public schools. The sessions teach students how to manage anxiety and prevent violence. (Courtesy of Kathleen Bond/Brazil)
Activities connected to nature, such as making animal sounds and movements, are especially popular with the children. The Butterfly Breath, for example, combines slow, alternate hand movements and deep breaths.
“Students in the project have improved their behavior inside and outside the classroom, as well as performing better academically,” says Gerlande Lima, a psychologist at Joacil Brito Elementary School. “One student was constantly getting into fights. After participating in the weekly sessions, he avoids fighting and is more focused on his studies. When he sees conflicts during recess, he often shares with classmates the breathing and meditation techniques he has learned.”
In addition to the weekly classes, the second pillar of our project is monthly formation sessions for 25 to 30 school staff. We teach them the methods we use so that they can become multipliers and use them in their respective schools.
A highlight of the school year — and the third pillar — is the annual school visit. Each of the 10 schools brings a busload of 25 students and accompanying adults to our center to tour the medicinal herb gardens and learn more about care for the earth and holistic healing. “Afya” means “health” in Swahili. One of the things they talk about afterward is AFYA “brownies,” made with oat flour, bananas, collard-pineapple juice and black beans!
During the visits, students and staff share how they apply program techniques. “After I started participating in the workshops, I began to feel better,” says Maria da Silva, a 14-year-old student at Deputado Arnaldo State School. “Doing the techniques to deal with stress and anxiety, I have learned to live in a new way.”
Bruna Ferreira is an AFYA staff member who co-facilitates the workshops at Deputado Arnaldo. “Maria grew so much during the year. She was quiet at the beginning,” she says. “Slowly she opened up — before, she hardly ever smiled, and even this changed.” With the support Maria received, Ferreira says, she found the courage to reveal her suffering as a victim of violence.
Bond, who has served in Brazil for more than three decades, practices Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ commitment to nonviolence as she and her husband teach peace. (Courtesy of Kathleen Bond/Brazil)
The fourth pillar of the program is offered at the center on an individual level to children who have experienced deep trauma.
Trained AFYA therapists give sessions in somatic experiencing, a therapy developed by Dr. Peter Levine to help people learn to regulate their nervous systems. By working with bodily sensations, the method seeks to “complete” responses to past trauma that had been left incomplete or became “fixed.” This enables them to move on from experiences that made them emotionally wounded, angry or fearful.
Sister Nyaki, who gives trauma workshops throughout the world, says, “Working for more than 25 years in trauma healing, I have encountered men, women and children who expressed their unhealed pain through violent reactions toward others. Given the opportunity to heal, their behavior shifted.” She adds, this allows them to “cultivate connection, empathy and peaceful relationships within their communities.”
This summer, as Maryknoll Lay Missioners celebrates 50 years of mission service in Brazil, teaching skills for nonviolence and mental health is a fitting way to head into the future.
Young Maria says she will share these lessons with others. “I am helping my grandma, who takes strong prescription medicine for her nerves, to breathe deeply and do the exercises,” she says. “Thank you for teaching us so many good things for our health.”
Featured image: Maryknoll Lay Missioner Kathleen Bond, Maryknoll Sisters Azucena San Pedro and Euphrasia Nyaki and staff Bruna Ferreira and Mylenna Kerollin host students at AFYA Holistic Health Center. The center was cofounded in 2000 by Sister Nyaki and the late Maryknoll Sister Connie Pospisil. “Afya” means “health” in Swahili, the language of Sister Nyaki’s homeland, Tanzania. (Courtesy of Kathleen Bond/Brazil)
