Creating a Healthy Home Environment
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Vicki Kirsch – Stargarden Talk – 3-30-09 Creating a Healthy Home Environment
By: Vicki Kirsch
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Your Biography and Your Child
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Vicki Kirsch – Stargarden Talk – 2-22-09 – Your Biography and Your Child
Health and Well Being for You and Your Child
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Vicki Kirsch – Stargarden Talk – 1-17-09 Health and Well Being for You and Your Child
Stargarden Parent Perspective #1
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Today was my first day as a parent at Stargarden’s Parent Child Class with Miss Vicki. Although we arrived late, due to my daughter’s morning nap, we still made it in time for morning circle, snack, story and free play outside with the other little friends and their parents. My first observations of the program include:
The Environment
When you walk into the yard at Stargarden, you first cross through an arbor, a very clear threshold which says to you and your child, welcome–you are here now. And then, when you walk back out at the end of class, you feel a closure. Thresholds are important, for children and adults!
In addition to the lovely play spaces, covered in the shade of a beautiful canopy of trees, there are the chickens, gardens and other animals living in a happy, natural sort of way. Nothing at Stargarden feels overly manicured, which is a big piece of the magic you feel when you are there. A long-haired goat wanders up to the fence, and so you give him an apple that has fallen from a tree nearby, and he munches contentedly. Then, from inside the animals’ yard, you watch as a chicken walks over to the goat and begins scratching at the ground for treats. Meanwhile, in the children’s play yard, a myriad collection of trikes, little scooters, carts and wagons is bustling with activity as the children move with purpose, and the parents move with them. Small conversations spring up here and there between parents, and some children eat a little snack. It’s a very natural feeling place.
Singing
At Stargarden, songs are used at every transition, to mark coming together as a group, to signal the children to participate in a certain activity (ex: washing hands, sitting at the table), and just for fun too. We sang a lot of songs about friends, the natural world, animals, and children. One song asked the question, what kind of world would we live in, if all the children lived in peace with each other? (And the grown-up children too!)
Storytelling
Miss Vicki is a wonderful storyteller and her little puppets and small felt creatures made for very satisfying props. All the children were enchanted, even the ones who had been here last year, and probably heard the same story, and sang all the same songs before. One child who had attended last year, waited with such eager anticipation, it was clear that the repetition only heightened the interest and magic of the experience.
A Gem
In a brief conversation with Miss Vicki at the end of the morning, she mentioned that next week at that time, we would be doing a craft together. She said that children prefer when the adults around them are engaged in industrious activity, and that chattering adults make children feel anxious, which is why they are always trying to interrupt us when there is too much “chatter”. She said children feel much more at peace when the adults’ hands are busy. This made me feel better about the many moments I am with my daughter and also needing to do housework of some kind. I sometimes feel like I should just be paying attention to her, playing with her, etc… Miss Vicki said, no, on the contrary, children are trying to learn how to be human, how to eventually behave like an adult, and tasks like mundane housework are important for children to see us doing. This reminds me of a book I’m reading, called _The Soul of Discipline_ by Kim John Payne (author of _Simplicity Parenting_), which says that there is no such thing as a disobedient child, only a disoriented one. Children seek to be oriented, and my sense is that witnessing parents and other adults in their environment as stable, industrious and present, creates a very orienting effect.
I look forward to continued mornings at Stargarden, learning alongside my daughter.
Elizabeth Uhrich, Director
The Living Arts School
A Folk School for Traditional
Living Skills, Crafts and Music
720.383.4406
“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” -Susan Sontag
Sleeping: How to Promote good Sleep
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To Promote Good Sound Sleep for Your Child:
- Eat mainly organic/biodynamic foods and a balanced diet. Avoid processed foods and pharmaceutical drugs. Eat healthy fats, such as coconut, olive oil and butter from grass fed animals.
- Provide a beautiful environment, natural materials and simplicity.
- Avoid electronics when you can and too many modern devices. Turn out the lights.
- Spend time outdoors, enjoying Nature.
- Practice positive values, thankfulness, reverence, awe and wonder.
- Cultivate your Spiritual life with prayers, blessings, contemplation, arts and meditation. Acting as a Role Model is the best teacher for young children.
- Provide protection. Choose outings in the world carefully.
- Keep your child warm with natural fibers.
- Touch and hug a great deal.
- Rock, sing and soothe on a regular basis.
- Give images of angels who guide and protect, soothe and nurture.
- Discover the essentials and discard/ avoid the rest.
- Review the day, simply forwards or backwards. Tell meaningful stories.
- Create a ritual which honors sleep as a holy activity spent in our Spiritual homeland receiving rejuvenation and inspiration.
- Value the threshold times of sleeping and waking as holy times when you can deeply connect with your child.
- Create an inner picture of the next day for your child every evening. Angels will then give you input in your sleep.
- Cultivate quiet listening.
- Allow your child to imitate what you want them to do rather than give them instructions. This is called non- verbal education. Take care not to overintellectualize with your child.
- Observe your child, reflect on this and ask the Angels for guidance.
- Establish a rhythmic daily practice of sleeping, eating and daily. This supports the organs and the production of hormones and melatonin which promotes sleep and health.
Things Which Act Against Good Sound Sleep:
- Poor quality of food. It does not support the Life Force and Sense of Life necessary for sleep.
- Media such as television, movies, computers, pads, etc. creates doubt, worry and fear through characterizations which are untruthful, ugly and fabrications. The quality of the tones are not life enhancing.
- Movement deprivation has a damaging effect on the nervous system.
- Pollution negatively impacts the body and sensory experience.
- Negative thoughts alienate the self from the Spiritual World.
- Overintellectualization overstimulates the nervous system in a negative way.
- Hardened overly materialistic thoughts incarnates the human being too deeply into the body.
- An arrhythmic life does not guide the organs into a healthy function.
- Overstimulation locks the self into the physical body and does not promote the soul and spirit entering the spiritual realities of the night.
- An overly electric and technological environment overstimulates the nerves which interferes with sleep.
Taiwan Blog June 2015
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My Connection to Taiwan and Maui (Hawaii)
This summer, June, 2015 I spent two weeks in Yilan County, Taiwan at the CiXin Waldorf Kindergarten. I have fallen in love with the people. In my spiritual inquiry into how it is that I am connected to the people of Taiwan, which I feel at the deepest levels in my mind and body, I have discovered interesting connections.
As many of you know I have been spending a month for the last nine years in Maui with my son and his family. I learned in my continual spiritual quest that Hawaii is a remnant of Lemuria, an ancient pre recorded historical civilization which Edgar Cayce, Rudolf Steiner and others mention in their teachings.
Lemuria was a continent in the Pacific area with an advanced civilization which lived in harmony with Nature. The Lemurians lived simply with little need for technology. They were well connected to the Elemental Beings, Nature Spirits and Higher Beings. They had mastered the wisdom of healing. When their practices degenerated the Life Energy misqualified to be discordant, inharmonious and negative created an energy field which attracted the healing forces to the continent of Lemuria so that the continent was submerged underneath the Pacific Ocean where it is being purified by the Nature and Water Spirits.
The inhabitants of that continent who were involved with the degenerate and discordant practices were taken to the Higher Octaves where the Angels and Higher Beings work with humans to cleanse the soul. Each life time on Earth we are given a body as the temple for the soul and Spirit to inhabit. Depending on our karmic issues and gifts from past lives and on our Destiny to be fulfilled in the current life, our body is filled with Light. Daily we receive Pure and Vital Life Forces to fulfill our tasks. In freedom we are allowed to choose how we shall use and qualify that energy freely and lovingly given to us. If we choose to use it in positive and constructive ways then the Light expands around the cells of our body. If instead, we choose a discordant and inharmonious way the Light is diminished around the cells of our body attracting disease until the body no longer serves our soul and Spirit intentions. When the body is filled with the darkness of discordant beliefs, thoughts, and feelings and it no longer serves the needs of our Higher Purpose, we are called to shed our physicality and purify our soul. Today, as in Lemuria, our Higher Presence determines when and if it is necessary to be removed to the Higher Spheres so that the soul and Spirit is given another opportunity to meet it’s Destiny with a fresh and vital body temple.
The inhabitants of Lemuria that used the Light bearing healing practices remained in relationship to their Higher Presence and followed the guidance to move to areas of safety.
Lemurians went to other areas of the Earth and the Hawaiian Islands and Taiwan are part of what remains of the continent. Some people of these islands remain in contact with Elemental Beings, Nature Spirits and Higher Beings. The traditional Hawaian values include a heightened awareness of the environment and the teaching and daily practice of Oneness and Self greatness known as the Aloha Spirit. They embrace the idea that the departed ancestors have changed their address when they have left the physical dimension to reside in Spirit wholeness where they might be called to serve as spiritual guides for those on Earth. They experience the Mana which is the power or energy of any living thing, in the land, rocks, gods, plants, in gods and goddesses. The traditional hula tells the stories with the hands of the sacredness of life, the power of deities, and respect for all living things.
The islands between the coasts of Japan and Taiwan, including Okinawa have many similar ideas, rituals, spirituality and gods and goddesses as Hawaii. Off the coast of Ryuka Island, the island closest to Taiwan, there are underwater ruins which are believed to come from the time of Lemuria. The nearby island of Kudaka is said to be the most sacred of all islands. The three hundred people who live there practice the rituals in the traditional fashion and believe there are deities for every single thing in existence. There is a belief that the people of these islands are Mu people, meaning Lemuria. They speak of Lemuria.
In Taiwan the three major religions are Bhuddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Taoism is entwined with the Chinese traditional folk religion. The ethnic religious and spiritual experiences, disciplines, beliefs, and practices primarily are expressed in the worship and celebration of the consciousness, the gods, spirits, and archetypes of the energies that generate all things and make them thrive. These can be nature deities, city, group or national deities, and deities of kin, heroes and ancestors. There are more than 5000 temples in Taiwan. It is my belief that the spiritual beliefs of the traditional Hawaiians and more traditionally inclined Taiwanese are very similar. Also the teachings of Rudolf Steiner on the elementals and on the Spiritual Hierarchies are very similar.
There is a Taoist shrine for the land across the street from the Cixin Waldorf Kindergarten. The statue of the deity looked like a gnome to me. You can well imagine I was in seventh heaven. I have for years imagined living close to a sanctuary, church or temple. For two delightful weeks there it was. When I could I would visit it in the morning, pray, decree and light the incense. One could feel the great blessing that this temple bestowed upon the kindergarten and surrounding rice paddies and gardens. Generally, these sacred sites are located on the powerful ley lines of Mother Earth. Such an auspicious site for a Waldorf kindergarten!
My deep connection to Taiwan is rooted in another aspect of spirituality, namely the threefold principles of Liberty, Equality and Justice. For years I have gone to two sites in Maui honoring Sun Yat-Sen, who is known both as the Sun of Maui and the Founding Father of the Republic of China which is currently Taiwan. On the islands of Hawaii he discovered other forms of government than the Imperial government of China. As a doctor, he believed that the only way to overcome the disease and suffering of the peasants which he believed was rooted in poverty was to change the form of government. For many years Dr. SunYat-Sen led the revolt to liberate China from the last emperor of the Qing (also known as the Manchu) Dynasty. In the challenging quest to do that at one point his only place of refuge was at his brother’s ranch in Upcountry Maui near Kula Chinatown, also in the region of the Haleakala Waldorf School. Near here is the SunYat-Sen Memorial Park.
At the Heritage Park in the Chinese Garden near Iao Valley, the SunYat-Sen Foundation for Peace and Education has established a memorial in his honor. The following are samples of the inscriptions which give you insight into Dr. SunYat-Sen and the founding of the Republic of China, the first modern republic in Asia. The principles which he taught and practiced were:
* Cultivate Personal Virtue
*Faithfulness
*Justice
*Harmony
*Peace
*Search Into the Nature of Things
*Loyalty
*Extend the Boundaries of Knowledge
*Filial Devotion
*Make the Purpose Sincere
*Kindness
He worked to establish a democratically elected republic which would embody the essence of Abraham Lincoln’s quote “of the people, for the people, by the people” and also of the French Revolution and ideals of the Founding Fathers in the American Constitution embodied in “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”
He envisioned and proposed harmonious cohabitation of the five ethnic races of China, the Han, Manchus, Mongolians, Muslims, and Tibetans. He studied and enscribed the teachings of Confucius on the “Discourse on the Age of Harmony,” which stated the following:
*All people, including the aged, the sick, disabled and widowed would be cared for by the community.
*We have a world community to be shared by all.
*The worthy and able would serve as leaders.
*There would be employment for all.
*Money would be used by individuals for the benefit of all.
*Children would treat all adults with respect as though they were their
parents and parents would care for all children as though they were their
own child.
*With these ideals established there would be no need for locked doors,
nor for robbers, thieves, or the lawless.
*The “Great Harmony” would be realized.
Dr. SunYat-Sen was truly an inspiring visionary for all of us. I believe the Waldorf movement in Taiwan can and is making a great contribution toward this vision. His vision is expressed in many ways by Rudolf Steiner and definitely expresses my ideals.
In my next blog I hope to share more with you about my visit to the CiXin Waldorf School of Yilan County, which we have declared a sister school to Stargarden. Isn’t that amusing, the world’s largest Waldorf School and Stargarden such close sisters!
Vicki Kirsch
Attracting Healthy Elementals: Creating A Healthy Home Environment and Sacred Space
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Elementals are the Beings that play the role of participating in the actual manifestation of material reality under the direction, guidance and inspiration of Higher Beings. They sacrifice themselves to this challenging role for the sake of the human being that we may have a stage upon which to grow and evolve. Their nature is such that they imitate the qualities, thinking and especially feelings of the humans that are in their environment. For this reason, we can affect the environments we live in and that we create, including our homes, yards, towns, states, countries, and world. The following are positive actions that we can take to create a positive and healthy environment and sacred space.
- Be cheerfully industrious.
- Become balanced with an evenness between cheer and seriousness. Practice deliberate cheerfulness.
- Observe the seasons with reverence and veneration. Create Festivals that reflect these qualities and spiritual devotion.
- Cultivate love, awe, wonder, gratitude and idealism.
- Form the habit of blessing your home, your yard, your life, people, etc. with the qualities and virtues you value, such as love, peace, generosity, kindness, and truth. This can be done with blessings, ceremonies, prayers, etc.
- When serving and preparing food charge it with the qualities of the Light of Higher Beings. Ask that it bring perfect health and vitality to your family. Request and command that there be plentiful food for your self, your family, loved ones, your country, and the world. Carry the inner attitude that every meal is a banquet of thanksgiving. Express gratitude to God and The Higher Beings, the Elementals for all that you receive.
- Bless and give thanks to and for your clothing. Charge it with love, Cleanliness, strength and beauty for all your family.
- Bless and be thankful for your home as a Temple of Light and Happiness, of Peace, great silence, security, sanctuary and as an altar of gratitude.
- Bless and picture those entering your home to be filled with Light, Love and Peace.
- Charge and picture your beds as places of forgiveness, of rest, healing, of restoration and rejuvenation where there is perfect peace and a connection to the Higher Self, the I Am That I Am.
- Charge and picture every chair and seat with the energy of harmonization, purity, health Illumination, love and goodness.
- Visualize your home to be a Holy Cup filled with the liquid Light of protection, perfect beauty, and purity.
- Express love and gratitude to the Elementals for their loving sacrifice and ask that they be freed from the negativity that humans express in thought, feeling and action.