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Introduction - What are the Blobs? A feelosophy The Blobs are simple. They deal with deep issues using the primary languages we learn from infancy – feelings and body language. This is why they are used with children as young as 4, all the way through to the elderly. The Blobs are neither male nor female, young nor old, European, Asian, American nor African, ancient nor modern. They are outside of culture. Blobs are the best of us and the worst of us. They don’t tell us what we ought to do, or what we mustn’t do…they merely show us how a variety of people feel. Without words, the Blobs can be interpreted in a hundred different ways. There is no right and wrong about the Blobs, which is very important. A leader who uses them in a ‘one way of reading them only way’ will find that the rest of their group become very frustrated in discussions. Each picture is a means to a conversation, rather than a problem to be solved or a message to be agreed upon. If the people you are working with read the characters in totally opposing ways, that’s fine. We each see the world through our own eyes. Allowing others to share their feelings enables group members to understand and appreciate one another. When we are children our feelings say one thing, sometimes more purely than when we are adults. School is beginning to encourage children to understand their feelings and to master them. For each of us, emotional literacy is a journey of self-understanding. We hope the Blobs will contribute a useful tool to that journey, for all ages. Questions…without answers Some questions are designed to produce one or two answers. Many of these are ‘closed questions’. We may ask them knowing the answer, but wondering if the person who is with us knows the same answer. An example might be in a maths lesson. The teacher asks, “What is 7 times 4?” There is only one answer in schools - 28. Most times such closed questions are essential ways to find out information when we don’t know an answer – such as, “When is the next train due to arrive?” Some questions are asked to explore an idea, but within defined parameters. We know that the boundaries are limited and that the type of answers will be ones we may well agree with. One scientist may ask the question, “How did rocks form over millions of years?” This excludes answers which fall outside of their belief system on the age of the Earth. Blob  YMCA  Training  Manual           You  are  a  beautiful  human  person