Dear Reader
Let me formally introduce myself, my name is Given Malebe, Post Graduate in Electrical Engineering B-Tech in the University of Johannesburg. I live in Alexandra township Johannesburg South Africa. My Township has a population of 500 000-700 000 people living in poverty. Success rate out of 100 is 10%. I’m surrounded by negativity, envy, peer pressure, crime, alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, drugs and failure to pass Matric or School dropouts.
In 2011 when I was doing my Grade 12, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Marianne Felix, MBBCH, DOH, PHD and a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher. She was teaching Yoga in Alexandra Township high Schools. I was one of the first student who were attending her classes. Yoga helped me to deal with stress, anxiety, depression, worry, concentration, etc, and it helped me to get higher marks to be accepted to study at University of Johannesburg. In 2013 She started a non-profit organisation “Yoga4Alex” that helped me with my studies and it also helped many young adults to progress in life.
In 2020 I had a privilege to work for Yoga4Alex to give back to my Community. Yoga4Alex gave me an opportunity to attend a two days course of Introduction to Transactional Analysis (TA 101) Hosted By Ms Karen Pratt. Transactional Analysis 101 opened a new world of psychology to me. I started to understand human behaviour and why people act in certain ways.
I started to understand why so many were negative, envious, and abusing alcohol. According to TA, Eric Berne described certain hungers, which are experienced by all of us. He called the need for mental and physical stimulation, stimulus hunger, the need for recognition by others, recognition hunger. Normal psychological development is impossible without some satisfaction of this hungers, therefore failing to get this hungers it created Negativity, envy and abuse of Alcohol. The other factors was the environment and past ego states, Berne noticed that people would often connect with past ego states and when they did this they behaved as if these archaic ego states were part of their current reality.
After finishing the two day course, I had to give back the information I have gathered to my community. Yoga4Alex is working with young students from Alexandra who just matriculated in 2019, therefore we had to share the information with them. We called our workshop constructive communication.
We did a 8 days workshop with our students and this is what we taught them:
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS
Day 1: Relation with self and others, personality and Human behaviour.
Day 2: Ego States and OK OK Communication Model
Day 3: Scripts
Day 4: Drama Triangle and Winner Triangle
Day 5: Discounting and Steps to Success
Day 6: Drivers
Day 7: Cycle of Development
Day 8: Conclusion of the workshop
Feedback from some of the participants:
What was the most significant thing you learned?
- I learned that it is important to understand yourself.
- I learned that it is important to have effective communication with other people.
- I learned that there are different types of ego states and communication styles.
- The most significant thing I learned was to build a relationship with yourself before building one with others.
What are the first steps towards the change you want?
- I have to allow myself to learn so that I can be open to teach others.
- I want to change the way I communicate with my learners – I tend to talk to them like a Parent. I must make sure that I make a safe space for them and build a friendship with them.
- Be the change you want to see, then put it into practice!
- Knowing and wanting to change is first. Then work step by step towards the change.