The HT department was delighted to welcome back Mrs. Fiona Merrill El Mansour—a Capoeira Mestre with over two decades of dedicated practice—and 15 of her talented students from the Japanese International School (JIS), one of our partner primaries. They led a vibrant Capoeira workshop for our Year 10s, bringing energy, skill, and a sense of cultural heritage into our space.

This session marked the culmination of our Year 10 unit, Technologies for Consciousness, within the broader Human Technologies programme. Here, students explore a diverse array of practices and tools (technologies) that can reliably shift states of awareness and well-being: from the subtle chemistry of caffeine or the rituals of breathwork and mindfulness, to the rhythms of music, the intensity of exercise like yoga or HIIT, and even the more contested terrains of smoking or other more potent substances.

The invitation is simple yet profound—to consider which technologies we might draw upon, sustainably and ethically, to feel more at home in ourselves and help us navigate through our surroundings.

Capoeira, as the closing exploration, offered a powerful lens on this inquiry. Born in the 16th century among enslaved Africans in Brazil, it was forged in conditions of unimaginable dehumanisation. Forbidden from open self-defence, its creators disguised martial technique as dance—a brilliant act of subversion and survival. Blending acrobatics, music, spirituality, and combat, Capoeira became more than a practice: it was resistance encoded in movement, community woven through rhythm, and a reclamation of bodily agency when all else had been stripped away.

Fiona began with a concise tracing of these origins, then the room came alive. Her students and she demonstrated with fluidity, power, and joy both the music and the moves. Our Year 10s joined, experimenting with the ginga- the fluid stance that allows for both evasive motions and attack, within the roda- the circle or space where the engagement occurs accompanied by the berimbau-musical bow and clapping. What emerged was not mere physical activity, but a technology through which we can experience the effects of a living tradition.