Learning Styles, Differences and Temperaments
Each child is a unique human being and it is very helpful to consider how they learn, how they are different from common conceptions about learning and how their temperament is also an important factor in life and in school.
The Health Benefits of Sleep
Sleep plays a greater role in health and vitality than the modern culture appreciates. In this talk we take a look at different elements of sleep and how to cultivate a healthy sleep culture in your home.
Immunity, Health and Immunizations
The Waldorf Philosophy embraces a much different paradigm regarding health and immunity than the modern mainstream. When one begins to understand this it becomes apparent why it is reasonable to question whether immunizations are helpful or not. This is an important factor when attempting to help your child be healthy.
The Twelve Senses and Creating a Healthy Home LIfe
In modern life we think of 6 senses, but Rudolf Steiner spoke clearly about 12 senses and others that would develop as humans evolve. This talk helps you understand your child and how to set up a home that is healthy for them and for you. There are practical suggestions about how and why to do this. We learn that the senses help to form the organs and thus the health of the human being.
Festivals: The Inbreathe and Outbreathe of the Cosmos
This talk speaks about the life of Mother Earth and how we humans can synchronize and honor this yearly rhythm through Festivals and their unique celebration in our home lives, thus bringing health to our homes and relationships.
How to Nurture A Healthy and Thriving Family In Times of Chaos
This talk focuses on the Soul and Spirit Life of the parent, so that one can become centered in the sacred task of parenting in a way that provides stability, safety and security. There are simple suggestions for actions to take and how to nurture yourself and your child.
In Stargarden, my Waldorf Early Childhood Parenting Program, the morning begins with the group of adults and children singing together:
“Give Thanks to the Mother Earth, Give Thanks to the Father Sun, Give Thanks to the beautiful garden, Where the Mother and the Father are One,
Give Thanks, give thanks, give thanks that we are One, Give thanks, give thanks, To the Mother and the Father Sun”
The greeting is accompanied by gestures of gratitude to our Mother, the Earth, and Father, the Sun, reconnecting with a feeling of humility to the Nature Spirits, the Elementals, and the Higher Beings who have sacrificed themselves to manifest material reality for the sake of our Spiritual Development here.
In creating a garden, even small flowerpots on the window sill, one nurtures in children a deep appreciation of these invisible brothers and sisters. The feeling of gratitude and appreciation for the plants, which are manifestations of the elemental beings, nurtures these Beings in a way that frees them from material bondage. The relationship that we cultivate with the Divine Mother Earth through tending and caring for our garden keeps alive the child’s inherent experience of their spiritual home and creates an aura of blessed sanctuary so that the beneficial elementals, and we with them, find peace. Through the seasons, careful attentiveness to the needs of the elementals in the garden helps to imbue the children and adults with health-giving vitality so that they have an experience of the sensible and supersensible in nature and the physical world and can find the peace and harmony accessible to all.
One aspect of tending the garden involves use of biodynamic sprays with which we aid the cultivation of sanctuary for humans, for plants, for animals, and the supersensible realms. Each sanctuary becomes an island of light with its boundaries extending to the farthest reaches of the cosmos and to the deepest realms, where Higher Beings who guide the earth reside. The home becomes the chapel for the Holy Family to worship in the daily rhythms of waking and sleeping, eating and cleaning, working and playing. Our work becomes our prayer, and our prayer becomes our work, as we celebrate the spark of divinity, the gift of co-creator, within each individual. It is a very full, rich and beautiful tapestry of life that we weave together.
It was Rudolf Steiner’s vision that these islands of light be cultivated far and wide. Here in the Rocky Mountain region and throughout Waldorf communities and other communities which appreciate the Mother Earth and Father Sun, we can shine brightly by creating such sanctuary.