About fifteen associations and unions have written to the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, to alert him to “mindfulness meditation” workshops carried out according to them in several colleges.
They denounce practices "potentially risky on the psychological development of children".
The signatories of this open letter sent to AFP on Tuesday indicate that a project to experiment with this meditation technique "proposed by an esoteric lobby" was abandoned following protests issued in June 2021. In an interview with Liberation , the president of the League of Human Rights Malik Salemkour denounced attacks on secularism and also pointed to possible abuses such as “panic attacks, depression or dissociation in a quarter of individuals who practice it”.
But “we have been seized by its reappearance in a made-up way since September in several colleges with the multiplication of relaxation workshops, breathing exercises, meditation”, write these organizations.
Among them are the Human Rights League, the Education League, the FSU, CGT and Unsa unions, the FCPE parents' federation and the association for the fight against sectarian aberrations Unadfi.
Twenty-two requests for information from Miviludes
Mindfulness meditation (MPM), which has its origins in Buddhism, is based on focusing on your sensations, your breathing, a point on your body, etc.
It was the subject of 22 requests for information between 2018 and 2020 from the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Aberrations (Miviludes).
At the same time, 12 reports concerning minors and relating to the various meditation practices were received by Miviludes, according to its latest report.
For the signatories of the letter to the Minister of National Education, “the practice on minor children of a method which can lead to a conditioning with loss of critical spirit and subjugation of the individual generates (…) significant risks which cannot be neglected.
"We renew our deepest concerns about these experiments, and ask you to intervene to put an end to them without delay" in order to refuse in national education "a technique, the MPC, with uncertain and potentially risky consequences on the psychic development of children,” they write.