We develop research, intervention, and knowledge-transfer projects in collaboration with educational and local communities. Through relational, participatory, and playful methodologies, we seek to bring about more inclusive, healthy, and empathic experiences.
We value the collective construction of knowledge and the dialogue between academic research, educational practices, and other forms of community participation. We understand these collaborative dialogues as a pathway toward generating meaningful and socially engaged transformations.
As spaces of care, socialization, and participation, schools can offer fundamental opportunities for nurturing agency, well-being, and participatory sense-making processes.
Our work is inspired by the enactive perspective, developed by the Chilean neurobiologist Francisco Varela, which emphasizes the importance of embodied and embedded experience, agency, autonomy, affectivity, and empathy, among other aspects. From this approach, health can be understood as an emergent process that cannot be reduced to isolated local rules or mechanisms. Thus, understanding how global and local levels interact may provide new insights on health and social dynamics.
Embodied and Playful Experiences in Primary School Children
We study how participation in enactive, playful interventions that incorporate mindfulness practices, interoceptive and proprioceptive awareness, non-competitive games, and group reflection sessions can influence health, agency, empathy, and social relationships among school-age children. Using network analysis, we assess changes in peer relationships within classroom groups.
Our findings suggest that participation in enactive playful interventions involving body–mind integration practices and participatory sense-making experiences can foster both psychophysical health and social relationships in schools. These experiences may contribute to reducing chronic stress, as reflected in decreased cortisol levels in both hair and saliva, while fostering positive peer social dynamics. Children readily incorporate these embodied practices into their daily lives, particularly when facing emotionally challenging situations. Likewise, they expanded the number of peers with whom they chose to play, configuring a more connected and dynamic network of relationships, while those who were initially more isolated began to participate more actively in the social life of the group.
Structure of peer relationships before and after the intervention. A broader and more integrated network is observed, characterized by a greater number of connections among participants following the intervention.
Reciprocal relationships before and after the intervention. The results show an increase in the number of mutual choices among children following the intervention.