The body: a tool for knowledge and relations

Early in the 2025-2026 school year, the Physical Education course for the first year of the Poliziano Comprehensive School in Florence was profoundly intertwined with the Civics course. In an inclusive environment, with the presence of a blind student and two sight-impaired students in the first year, the course involved a complete reassessment of movement, not as a simple motor exercise, but as an overall educational, relational, and civic tool. The result of this assessment was the Pneuma Gym project, based on Acros Gym but reworked in an accessible, cooperative form and specifically designed to develop life skills. Based on the idea of gymnastic recycling, i.e., the design and building of equipment and motor aids from simple, recycled materials were transformed into large-scale tactile instruments. These supports played a key role in the teaching of visually-impaired students, allowing them an active, safe, and aware exploration of space, their body, and relations with others. The course is a perfect complement to the teaching tradition of Augusto Romagnoli, who, in the early 20^th century, emphasized that education of the blind had to include the body, movement, direct experience, and self-reliance, with rejection of all forms of dependence.

In Pneuma Gym, movement never replaces sight, but instead becomes language, perception, listening, trust, and orientation. The body becomes a tool for knowledge and relations for everyone. Activities are based on the group figures of Acros Gym, explained and understood by means of various sensory channels: touch, voice, rhythm, guided physical contact. The students gradually tried freer and freer exercises with the addition of tires. The success of each exercise depended on their ability to cooperate, communicate, and assume shared responsibilities. In this context, relational life skills emerged naturally and powerfully. Cooperation became a real necessity; effective communication an indispensable tool; reciprocal trust a condition for action; handling of emotions a skill to be honed; problem-solving a daily practice. Every figure performed was the result not only of movement, but of a group process in which everyone’s role was essential. In this way, civics became a live, authentic experience. The rules were experienced as protection of the group; safety as care for others; inclusion as shared responsibility. Visual impairment wasn’t a limit, but instead an educational opportunity for the entire class, able to develop empathy, attention, and awareness. The video shows not only the figures performed, but especially the educational process in which movement becomes citizenship and the body a space for human growth.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VEnb6BgmHo1nLaH_7AkvKSnntS39xI87/view?u....

With the Pneuma Gym teaching system, it becomes clear that moving together means learning to live together.

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