with James Dyson, M.D.; Kim John Payne, M.Ed.; and Tonya Stoddard, LCSW
Kairos Institute: Center for Anthroposophy
Wilton, New Hampshire: July 6-11, 2025
Training Intensive Residency
In Roots of Education ( Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, 1997), we are reminded that as adults, we carry our breathing, digestion, and circulation within ourselves, less dependent on the outer world. For the young child, these systems are laid open to the world; therefore, they take their inner life from this environment.
In the child all these activities are given up to their environment and are therefore by nature religious. This is the essential feature of the life of the child between birth and the change of teeth; their whole being is permeated with a kind of “natural-religious” element, and even the physical body is in a religious mood. (pp.34-39)
The fragile development we undergo to integrate these great creative forces of our upper and lower systems so that we are no longer dependent upon the environment but can unfold our innate powers is thus the spiritual-religious mood of our consciousness soul age. Much can go wrong between our arrival on earth and this development of the creative capacities of sense-free thinking. We enter an ever-increasingly traumatized world, a traumatized ecosystem, and a world where we, on a soul level, are forced to leave the home of our hearts as early as possible.
Recently, I spoke with a teacher who shared with me that as soon as the children leave their more sleepy states of consciousness, they tend to become embroiled in a tech and social media environment that, within a very short time frame, becomes the emotional source of their newly emerging social life. Some children can withstand this powerful unifier, and others fall more deeply into this captivity of nervous system overload. The continuum that moves from dependency on the environment as spiritual nourishment to the adolescent’s ability to feel safe within themselves can be seen as a great soul-breathing process. Each child and adolescent has their soul landscape to traverse. All behaviors that we perceive are open windows to this landscape.
With all the social pressures, environmental chaos, climate crises, climate changes, and overwhelming traumatic experiences children are exposed to, we see an increasing number of behaviors that reveal the many burdens our children and young people are carrying, often all by themselves. They are bravely transitioning from open devotion to the world to devotion to themselves so they may become carriers of their destinies. This odyssey encounters huge obstacles to the harmonious unfolding of the self.
We experience behaviors, but what if we realize that these are, in essence, soul sorrows and a call for help to traverse impossible impasses? What do parents and teachers struggle to understand, and how do they find the courage to heal the many who suffer anxiety, fear, hysteria, loss of ability to focus, nervousness, fixed ideas, learning challenges, defiance, and later, more suicidal ideation, various expressions of self-harm, or harming others, and vulnerability when it comes to addictions?
Kairos Institute, dedicated to Healing in a World of Need, is inviting you to take action:
We have asked psychologist and doctor James Dyson, social therapist Kim John Payne, and social worker and education support specialist Tonya Stoddard to shed light on the medical and psychological aspects of the behavior of children and adolescents. Participants will listen to daily lectures that offer multidisciplinary perspectives to parents, (special) teachers, school leaders, therapists, and all involved in providing supplementary support educationally, socially, and within family systems. We hope to welcome many experienced teachers as this is an advanced course. Those who have taken teacher training but long to extend their understanding and capacities, will find ways to offer more support. We will meet daily in smaller discussion groups with the faculty and receive instruction in healing aspects of movement for our students and ourselves.
We hope this intensive training will rekindle enthusiasm for the challenges facing …everyone.
For more information and to register, click here
Karine Munk Finser
Director, Kairos Institute
