A Daily Rhythm
I first began learning about Waldorf education when I attended my first session of Waldorf Parent Child Classes. At first, I didn’t know much other than what I had experienced in those classes and I wanted to learn more. I began with books like, Beyond the Rainbow Bridge by Barbara J. Patterson, Pamela Bradley, et al. and Heaven on Earth by Sharifa Oppenheimer. I found that one common and confusing theme was Rhythm. It was described as an ‘in-breath and an out-breath’ an ‘expansion and contraction’, but how could I create it in real life with a toddler?
For years, I tried different rhythms at home with my children; we followed weekly rhythms of vacuuming and dusting, sorting laundry, and baking only on certain days. We tried daily rhythms of mealtime blessings and different breakfasts or snacks for different days. For me, nothing stuck because nothing was sustainable. Life happens. It may not be the day to vacuum but that dry cereal spill all over the carpet and trailing through the house says it needs to happen today. It may be baking day, but that oil change appointment turned into an all day affair and now it’s nap time. The reality was, I just couldn’t quite get it and trying to make it happen was just adding to my parental guilt. So, I accepted that rhythm was one thing I couldn’t offer at home and I moved on.
It’s only been recently, as I have become a Waldorf Early Childhood teacher and held a rhythm for my students, that I realized what I was doing before was scheduling my days, not creating a rhythm. I was checking boxes and not recognizing that rhythm is felt just as much as it is planned. In her article, Some Thoughts on Rhythm, Susan Weber says:
“(Our children) need not be preoccupied with making sure that their own needs are met and can be free to play imaginatively, to explore, to observe...The child who knows, for example, that meals will come on a predictable rhythm, can spend energy on other things.” (2005)
Here lies the key question I forgot to ask: do my children know their needs will be met? Rhythm provides this knowing, this security of what will come because it always comes. Rhythm anticipates a need and meets it when the time is right. Ernst Marti defined rhythm in this way; “Rhythm is something that occurs in time and is connected through movement.” (P 49). How do we meet the daily needs of our children? Do we create enough time for what is needed and do we move to meet it with them? After activity (out-breath) comes a need for rest and connection (in breath), after rest we have gathered the energy for activity again (another out-breath). When we recognize the present moment, this time we are in and with it we move to what is needed, that is the breath of rhythm that holds our days.
Bibliography:
1) Weber, Susan. (2005). Some Thoughts on Rhythm.
2) Marti, Ernst. (2018). The Etheric: Broadening Science through Anthroposophy: Vol. 2:The World of Formative Forces. Temple Lodge Press.