About Dehashakti Sports in , Vanur

Dehashakti School of Physical Education , Auroville
We are pleased to share with you our program for children aged 7 to 18 years for a
balanced growth - a development that will benefit her/him for a lifetime. Students in
Auroville should have a strong & well balanced body and mind, which is our aim for an
Integral Education program.

Philosophy / Raison d’être
We try to cater to an integral, methodical, and harmonious development by offering children a

weekly schedule that provides for all her/his fitness needs, nurturing a joyful and balanced growth.
Team & Individual Games, Athletics, Swimming and Gymnastics provide for ample variety.
In physical education, the main concern is not to win or lose but how far an activity or game
provides educative experiences to the students.
In her message for the athletics competition of 1962, the Mother wrote:
…Replace the ambition to be first by the will to do the best possible.

Replace the desire for success by the yearning for progress.
Replace the eagerness for fame by the aspiration for perfection.
Physical education is meant to bring into the body, consciousness and control,
discipline and mastery, all things necessary for a higher and better life.
Keep all that in mind, practise sincerely and you will become a good athlete;
this is the first step on the way to be a true man. (12:275-76)

Programme
Children are exposed to a wide variety of activities through a student - centered approach and we

make it a point that she/he is given full freedom to grow at her/his own pace. In a student - centered

physical educational approach, sports activities are not the end but only the means to achieve an all-
round development.

The programme in Dehashakti goes along the contemporary research work done in the field of

fitness through cross training. Fitness has five elements – speed, skill, suppleness, stamina, and
strength. Cross training means – crossing all elements of fitness to acquire a balanced growth. Your
child gets to work variously on each fitness element with exercises that are intense and yet joyful.
This approach also helps to avoid the imbalances that single-sports
participants show in their physical development, which can lead to chronic injury.

For Whom:
We welcome all students from the Auroville schools to participate with the required commitment &

discipline. At present students from 5 schools of Auroville – Deepanam School, Transition School,

Future School, Last School and New Era School – participate in this program.

This is what makes it a unique program as it brings students from different schools together for an

all-round educative development - through systematic training and planned activities. We hope

that this experience will inspire them to strive for an integral awareness— i.e. of their mental and

vital beings as much as of their physical — while working together for a conscious control over their

growing bodies and realising the gender and cultural mix and to move towards unity and peace in groups / teams.