Six Basic Exercises: Mindfulness
Since returning to school following the winter break, our faculty and staff have been studying and practicing Rudolf Steiner’s six basic exercises together. Here we explore the first exercise: Control of thoughts, or mindfulness.
How can one really live in the moment and find peace in life? How can I best be of service in this world? What makes someone an enjoyable person to be around?
These are some of the questions that I’ve asked myself over the years that helped lead me to the discovery of Waldorf education.
Rudolf Steiner offered the first group of Waldorf teachers six basic meditative exercises designed to help them develop greater capacities for being positive role models and effective leaders in the world.
The goals of these exercises are still relevant today. They may help me be more aware of how I think, feel, and act in my daily endeavors, which then has led me towards gaining more control over my thoughts, feelings, and actions and develop greater clarity and meaning in my life.
These exercises involve simple tasks that help encourage mindfulness, daily rituals, emotional stability, positivity, and openness towards new things or other’s ideas.
By practicing these meditative exercises, a little each day, over time you can create new habits in your life that will help you strengthen your stamina, your purpose in being, and your connection to community.
Let’s start with mindfulness.
How often do you catch yourself thinking about what you’re thinking about? Do you find yourself mostly on autopilot throughout each day? Or do you feel that there are certain times of the day or particular activities in which you are more aware of — or even in control of — your thoughts?
The first exercise is all about engaging the thinking part of you and gaining control over what you think about. Meditation is one way of developing more self-control in this area, by either quieting the mind or guiding it towards specific thoughts. This simple exercise is all about guiding the mind.
Here is how it works: Take an ordinary object, such as a pencil, and hold it in your hand so you can look at it closely. You might also just hold it in your mind’s eye without the physical pencil at all.
Time yourself for five minutes and invite yourself to think only about the pencil during that period of time. Five minutes can fly by, but the difficulty of this exercise is that your mind will likely want to wander.
Maybe you’re thinking about where the wood of the pencil came from, how the graphite in it was extracted from the earth, who chose to paint it yellow… why yellow? And the next think you know you’re thinking about the grocery list you made with it yesterday and what you’re eating for dinner tonight!
Catch yourself when you drift off topic and gently guide your thoughts back to the pencil itself.
If you take just five minutes out of the day for several weeks trying this simple exercise, you will likely notice that your thinking gets sharper and clearer. Your ability to communicate strengthens, and your perception and sense of objectivity increases.
Natalie Norman completed her BA in Humanistic Studies and Environmental Education at UWGB and then continued to fulfill her dreams of working with both nature and children in various settings, including a botanical garden, community garden and outdoor school program called Trees for Tomorrow. She received her Waldorf teaching certificate from the Micha-el Institute in Portland and is now entering her 14th year at Cedarwood, taking on many roles in leadership and committee work over the years. She has continued to expand her educational training by completing the five-year Spatial Dynamics program, and she also leads classes and offers lectures at AWSNA and NWAIS conferences, as well as the Micha-el Institute. This year, Natalie will be promoting her eighth grade class of 2020.