MEND Season 2 - Episode 38

Experiential Thread with Amy & Anne

Welcome back to another micro-episode.

This week, we sit down to unpack some of the ideas we unearthed with Waldorf Educator, Jeff Lough.  Things like - How do we drop into a richer experience of this Life?  What enlivens the day-to-day?  How can we take the teachings and applications of this philosophy and apply to them to our own lives? 

Along the way, we talk Experiential vs. Intellectual Knowing, bring in some of our favorite books & resources once more & also send out the call for this coming June 1st - where we start our own little version of the Minimalist Game! (Which you can read more about here.)  

For our version - starting June 1st - we want to encourage each of you to start getting rid of at least one item a day.  For 30 days.  (If you've got more to release, by all means!  Please do!) Ultimately, though, this is not about living with less but rather, living with More.  Living with richer experiences, richer relationships, richer bodies, minds, lives, bank accounts, even.  What happens when we make the emphasis less about acquiring & maintaining our things & shift our focus to upgrading, enjoying & truly dropping into the felt experience of this Life?  

We can't wait to see.  

To find out more about the challenge, plus to contribute your ideas for a pithy hashtag for this game, drop on over and follow us on Instagram.  

MEND Season 2 - Episode 37

Experiential Capital with Waldorf Educator, Jeff Lough

"Train up a child the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  

~Proverbs 22:6

These were the words often bandied about in my (Amy's) childhood.  Used in that moment to speak to a certain type of religious education.  But what if we took this idea into a larger framework?  Expanded the context and the meaning?

What does it mean to educate a child as an evolutionary and still-incarnating being?

What does it look like to take the long-haul aproach - to not rush into books or standardized tests or memorized facts and figures - but to first prioritize the development of the soul - of an inherent sense of reverence, play & wonder - to build a spirited “F-you” into the curriculum of a budding adolescent because we VALUE their want and need to revolt - and have built it into the way we educate them?

And more - what would it look like to translate these ideas - beyond the classroom, beyond the realm of the scholastic, the world of childhood - and to work to educate, emancipate and elucidate humanity as a whole?

Join us as we take this hour to speak to local School Psychologist, Educator, Advisor, Administrator & ardent Advocate - Jeff Lough - about the undergirding philosophies surrounding Waldorf Education, a method devised by Rudolf Steiner in Europe during the late 1800's.  

When we first embarked upon this conversation with Jeff, we expected to find ourselves engaging in a talk around Intellectual Capital, but soon found ourselves knee-deep in the...

Experiential.

Spiritual.

Anthroposophical (don’t worry - you’ll hear that one again)

Material

And so much more.

And while we geek out a bit, admittedly, on this particular methodology and philosophy - 

I want to urge you to keep a broad and open perspective.

To listen for ways that these ideas filter into your own experience.

Your own Philosophy of Life.

And into what it means to empower and educate oursleves - at every step of the way.

What experience do we wish to have inside this Life?

And how do the ideas, methodologies, principles and patterns we subscribe to - help us to step up and claim the fullness available to us?

And what are we actively doing - to step into the world we wish to inhabit?

May the questions put forth here - help shed some light - as you move down your own path.

May they re-orient you back toward your own true north.  And help us all, collectively - reclaim a better way.