Footbag Kicking - Hacky Sack ^®
Is on the Rise Around the World!

Children need encouragement. Frequently, they try to find it in physic/social activity (sports) which, unfortunately, are not always available to them (most are "cut" from teams or cannot afford sports today) and sports are not always conducive to positive self reinforcement (non-competitive social growth) as they are practiced in most cases. Bloughchi^tm is a natural activity mode for psycho/social development in that it encourages peaceful, cooperative, social behavior while providing an avenue for never-ending growth in self esteem.

Our economic system is predicated on competition, while our schooling, from the earliest grades, trains us not only to triumph over others but to regard them as obstacles to our own success. Our leisure time is filled with highly structured games in which one individual or team must defeat another. Even within the family there is a rivalry - "a muted but often desperate struggle that treats approval as a scarce commodity and turns love into a kind of trophy." (Kohn, p.2) There is also the fact of a real need for physical fitness activity which can last for a lifetime: an activity that is easily accomplished, provides for continual growth of skills, and is inexpensive to outfit. Bloughchi^tm fills these needs, thus making it a truly holistic approach to the concept of fitness on several levels.

The sports world has not yet got onto the bandwagon of holistic approaches for human development because its focus has been winning and competition. Only now, belatedly and still inadequately, have our schools begun to pay attention to the concepts of fitness and lifetime sports. Fitness should be a year-round life-long condition, not just a function of the baseball or skiing seasons. "The emphasis in most school programs has been on team sports, which will hardly be available to most adults for continued participation later in life." (The Parent Book of Physical Fitness, Martin Lorin, p.7)

Bloughchi^tm is different. As a non-conclusional style of footbag, it is one answer for the need for lifelong fitness activities as well as being an avenue for psycho/social development. It creates a situation where one must center on values and not wrath. The child can understand that what he or she is doing is for their own growth and not just a piece of someone else's puzzle because he/she will find merit in his/her own achievements in a continual growth cycle rather than trying '"to do better" than someone else.

"For many children competitive sports operate as a failure factor which not only effectively eliminates the 'bad ones' but also turns off many of the 'good ones'." (The Cooperative Sports & Games Book, Terry Orlich). Many of the children, especially those coming from dysfunctional families, who do not make the sport scene at school are lost to gangs, drugs, and crime. These children get thrust into the back seat of society always thinking they can never be good at anything anyway. Failure at home and failure in school with no positive activities to pursue is a recipe for a youth dropping out of normal society and dropping into other, destructive lifestyles. On the other hand, when a child starts feeling good about him/herself, the future always seems a little brighter and his/her goals are elevated with an expectation for something better than just hanging out in marginal areas with marginal people and subsequently getting into trouble.

Bloughchi^tm starts the child on a bilateral, left and right brain journey. Channels in the brain open up with the eye-foot coordination that were closed before, making the possibility or tapping into more of the child's potential for other learning (it is now known that when a baby crawls, channels in the brain are created which are later used for reading and writing skills, for instance). In the physiological sense, development is immediate. Impulses travel along the neurons at speeds up to 300 miles per hour. "The neuron is also the cell which carries orders from the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) to tell the leg muscles to pump hard, to flex, etc., and the neuron is the basic cell of sight, that orders the eyes to move and to focus on a particular object. (The Miracle of Vision, Arthur Freese)