Fall Chrysalis Groups ~ Series 2

Join a Chrysalis Group ... and go deeper on a topic that matters to you!
Series Two, Oct 29- Dec 7 via Zoom

A Chrysalis Group is a place for focused learning, growth and connection- a place to shed old ways of thinking and adopt enlivened thoughts and spirit-filled questions. This fall, we are pleased to offer six different Chrysalis groups in our second series, ranging on topics from preparing for the great unknowns, to phenomenological and creative transformations, to navigating anthroposophy in the world today!

Each Chrysalis group meets four times weekly and is guided by one or two lead learners who invite people to come together around a focused theme for study, conversation and artistic activities. This format allows us to integrate content from the presentations, expand our understanding of ourselves, and work through the bigger questions in life.

See below for all Chrysalis Group offerings for Series Two! If you register for the whole series you will be able to choose as many groups as your schedule and interest allows! If you do not want to sign up for the whole package, you also have the option to sign up for a singular Chrysalis Group that piques your interest- a la carte! Just scroll down and click on a group below to register for that course directly.

What: Fall Chrysalis Groups Series Two. Choose from six different groups, all meeting over the course of four weekly sessions. 
Updated information about all fall offerings, including Series Two can be found HERE.

When: Each group meets once a week for 75 minutes via Zoom. 
See dates and times for each individual group listed below!

The meetings are recorded and made available each week, so even if you cannot attend live, you can still participate in the work. However, we strongly encourage live attendance and to sign up for only those you can commit to a majority of the sessions. 

Contribution

Chrysalis Groups Series Two : $250
This contribution amount grants you access to as many of the six courses as your schedule and interest allows. 

Single Chrysalis Group: $60*
Series Two Groups are listed below- Click "Learn More Here" on each group to register for that course individually! 
* With options to contribute more or less depending on your situation 

REGISTER HERE

And now the caterpillar, which has become a chrysalis, has woven around itself, out of its own substance, the rays of the Sun, which it has incorporated in itself. 
~Rudolf Steiner, Man as Symphony of the Creative World

Series Two Chrysalis Groups 
Course Descriptions and Schedules

In Memoriam: Honoring a loved one who crossed the Threshold
Sundays, 3pm ET/12 pm PT for 75 min 
with Jolie Hanna Luba
Oct 29, Nov 5, 12 and 26
Come discover your own way to honor a deceased loved one. Each meeting will be guided by a focus point based on a threefold perspective on death - spirit, soul and matter. The main goal is to allow participants to find what resonates in their own hearts so that by the end of the third meeting, each one is ready to create something concrete that speaks to how each one relates to death. Over the course of four sessions, we will process, share and honor our dear ones who have passed. 
Learn more & register here

The Readiness is All
Mondays at 1 pm ET/10 am PT for 75 min
with The Hummingbird Principle
October 30, November 6, 13, 27
At every moment we stand at the uncomfortable threshold of unknowing, and many times we may exaggerate our knowing to reduce this discomfort. But what potential can be found at this threshold? In this workshop we embrace the idea of working with the unknown. We will work with the concept of the future, connect with the yet-unknown themes that are waiting for us there, and explore the qualities that help us to welcome what comes. Bring your past, be present, and we will see what happens!
Learn more & Register here

From Transformation to Metamorphosis
Mondays at 4 pm ET/ 1 pm PT for 75 min
with The Nature Institute
October 30, November 6, 13, 27
Rudolf Steiner pointed out that his writings on Goethe’s natural scientific work are “the point of departure” for his spiritual scientific teachings, for anthroposophy. What is Goethean Science? In this course we want to approach the question by engaging in Goethean practice, through observations that we can carry out at home and through additional demonstrations during our zoom meetings. 
Learn more & register here

AstroGaiaSophia
Mondays at 6 pm ET/3 pm PT for 75 min 
with Brian Gray
October 30, November 6, 13, 27
 We will briefly outline stages of the creation of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and present Earth as traced by Rudolf Steiner. We will explore the working realms of the Spiritual Hierarchies within the Zodiac, Sun, planets and Earth. And we shall discover how the geography of our living Earth bears the direct imprint of the starry constellations.
Learn more & register here

Wisdom Working: Alchemical Transformation, Empathy and the After-Image
Thursdays at 10 am ET/7 am PT for 75 min
with Jordan Walker
November 2, 9, 16, 30
At our first meeting (November 2nd) Orland Bishop will offer an invocation for All Soul's Day.  Then in the following 3 meetings, Jordan will guide us through a series of artistic exercises using the alchemical stages of  transformation.  Working with the seed thoughts from Orland’s presentation, together we will strive to transform head-knowledge into heart-forces. Come with your journal, drawing paper, colored pencils and anticipation of group creativity!
Learn more & register here

Facing Contradictions: Navigating Issues of Race & Diversity in Rudolf Steiner’s work
Thursdays at 1 pm ET/10 am PT for 75 min
 with Cory Eichman
November 9, 16, 30, and December 7
As we move further into the Spiritual Soul Age, there’s a widening awareness of the impact of 500 years of colonialism, how habits of thought have crept into our view of the world.  Rudolf Steiner made invaluable contributions towards a spiritual science.  Wrestling with his struggles to understand human evolution, neither defending nor condemning, can lead to a future, deeper sense of our connection to the Earth, a window into the work of our spiritual helpers, and profound insights into our relationship to each other.
Learn more & register here

Meet Your Presenters

In Memoriam: Honoring a loved one who crossed the Threshold
Jolie Hanna Luba was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Brazil where she finished her Waldorf Teacher Training and received her degree as a Psychologist. She has been a Waldorf educator for over 20 years including 14 years at the Waldorf School of Atlanta where she currently works as an Early Childhood Teacher. In her work with adults, she has given lectures, facilitated study groups and workshops, and held individual sessions. Her different events are usually around Waldorf Education and life transitions, creating safe spaces for people to shed light into dark corners of the soul. She believes in the human capacity for change and self-reflection, and enjoys weaving colors and artistic activities into her consultations.Deepening her studies in Anthroposophy and Biography Work, she found answers to some of her questions around death and dying as well as life and living, and since 2018 has been facilitating a local monthly meeting called Death Care Community. She lives in Decatur, GA, with her husband, and their son is a UGA College student in Athens, GA.
Learn more about Jolie’s work HERE

The Readiness is All
The Hummingbird Principle: Chris Burke and Anne de Wild
Chris Burke is an associate professor of psychology at Lehigh University, where his research has focused on social relationships, grief, and coping with stress. He has been actively working with anthroposophy since 2012 and is certified as a Biography and Social Art facilitator. He sees biography work as a natural bridge between anthroposophy and psychology, with biography work offering a unique window into the archetype of the human being via the unique path of each individual. He has brought a biographical approach to his classes and other on-campus programs, and he has led and co-led biography and social art workshops both in the United States and internationally. He and Anne de Wild have developed a new project called The Hummingbird Principle, which is aimed at connecting individuals to the role that is theirs to play in facing the challenges of the modern world. He serves on the board of the Center for Biography and Social Art and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and three children. 

Anne de Wild is a Naturopath whose work is based on Traditional European Natural Medicine (TEN) and kinesiology. After studying Anthroposophy at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, in 2015-16, she completed her thesis on the concept of the Five Temperaments and has been bringing her ideas out into the world since then. She began studying biography and social art in 2016. She brings biography work into her clinical practice, and she finds that it supports her clients’ personal development and encourages them to enter more confidently into their social relationships. She sees biography and social art as a step toward inner and outer peace. She lives and works in Basel, Switzerland, where she offers monthly lectures on biography and social art. A lover of travel, she can often be found in other parts of Europe and in North America speaking, teaching, and connecting. She has four grown-up children.

From Transformation to Metamorphosis

Henrike Holdrege is co-founder and senior researcher at The Nature Institute in Harlemville, NY. Trained as a biologist, mathematician and science teacher, she strives to work with people in a way that lets them experience deeper dimensions of the world — both in nature and the inner life of the human being. Having felt the stark lack of deeper meaning in her own university studies in the way academics were taught, she makes every effort to ground her teaching in human experience and to break through abstractions to what can truly touch us in the world through careful, perceptive, and thoughtful inquiry.

Henrike has taught in the Nature Institute’s adult education programs since 2002, and also gives courses and workshops locally, nationally and internationally. She has two main areas of focus: phenomenological studies of nature, and mathematics as a training of inner awareness and wakeful dynamic thinking.

In her workshops and courses on phenomenological science she strives to help participants deepen their qualitative experience of nature. For developing a growing openness to sense experience, it is necessary to become aware of and overcome habits of thought within modern natural science, theories and models that are preconceptions. We often place them between us and a richer meeting with the world. They can blind us to the spiritual essence of the natural world we are part of. Goethe’s approach to science and its expansion through Rudolf Steiner inspire and inform her efforts. She currently researches and teaches in the areas of optics and color, astronomy, and the phenomenology of solids, fluids, gases, and warmth (the “four elements”). Henrike is the mother of three adult children. In her spare time she gardens and paints.

Click HERE to learn more about The Nature Institute

Jon McAlice began teaching in 1976 at East Hill Farm School in southern Vermont. He brought to this work skills in boatbuilding and carpentry and a love of exploratory inquiry that stood him in good stead for his work with adolescents in the classroom, in the workshop, and on the school’s organic farm. During this time, he was involved in various forms of social activism, especially with the Catholic Worker Movement and the Movement for a New Community working with the homeless and with street children on Manhattan’s lower east side. The death of a close friend living at the Camphill community in Copake, NY, brought him to a decisive encounter with the work of Rudolf Steiner.

He left America in 1984 and moved to Dornach, Switzerland, to study at the Rudolf Steiner Lehrerseminar. He earned his Waldorf teaching diploma studying nights, while heading up the woodworking shop at the Goetheanum. In 1989, he joined Heinz Zimmermann in the Educational Section of the Goetheanum and spent the next 11 years working for the international Waldorf schools movement. His primary responsibilities included the international aspects of the Section’s work and coordinating research projects on topics such as curriculum development, school governance and the relation between school culture and the evolving nature of work. During this period he founded and edited the Educational Section Journal, a bi-lingual journal for Waldorf educators, co-founded and became one of the first executive co-directors of the International Association for Waldorf Education East, supporting the growth of the Waldorf school movements in the Eastern European countries, and worked closely with the Freunde der Erziehungskunst to further the growth of Waldorf education in developing countries. Meanwhile he continued to teach, organize conferences, lecture and conduct workshops.

In 2000, he returned to the U.S., initially to the Bay area. From 2001 to 2004 he was High School coordinator for the Summerfield Waldorf School, responsible for teacher and program development. He also initiated and led regional high school teachers’ workshops and initiated and co-led Young Teachers Conferences and the Advanced Studies Initiative. In 2008, Jon co-founded the Center for Contextual Studies, a decentralized research collaborative formed to engage in and support action-based research that can lead beyond the current boundaries of conventional knowledge to a quality of understanding that enables human consciousness to participate fully in the spiritual reality of our world and the forces shaping it.

In 2006, Jon and his family returned to the Northeast, settling in Ghent, N.Y., where he continues his work as a designer, researcher, teacher, and consultant. Between 2008 and 2012 he was a core faculty member in The Nature Institute’s summer intensives for science teachers. He helped develop the Institute’s Foundation Course, “Encountering Nature and the Nature of Things,” which began in 2018. Jon joined the staff as Senior Researcher and Educator in 2020.

AstroGaiaSophia
Brian Gray has been a student of Anthroposophy since 1976, and of astrology since 1966. He has been a teacher of subjects related to Anthroposophy and star wisdom at Rudolf Steiner College for 38 years. Brian is also the author of articles on star wisdom (published in the Journal for Star Wisdom) and the presenter of several video courses on WiseCosmos.org.

Wisdom Working: Alchemical Transformation, Empathy and the After-Image
Jordan Walker has been studying the cultural landscape since his childhood, moving throughout the U.S. and spending a year a year in China with his family. He self-designed his undergraduate degree and received a dual Masters of Education (MS. Ed.) through the NYC Teaching Fellows while teaching children with Autism in a Brooklyn public school.

In 2005 Jordan attended the full-time Foundation Year program at Sunbridge College in Spring Valley. He studied and worked in the Threefold Community for 5 years, organizing many conferences and education initiatives and launching a social sculpture experiment entitled the new forms project. In 2011 he received a research grant at the Goetheanum to study new forms of adult education. In 2017 he designed “Wisdom Working”, a directory for the many anthroposophical initiatives in the Hudson River Watershed. He currently lives in Philmont, NY with his two young children.

Orland Bishop combines a deep dedication to human rights advocacy and cultural renewal with an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology, anthroposophy, and indigenous cosmologies. He was a research fellow with the Center for the Study of Violence and Social Change at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and has consulted with many human development organizations. As director of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge.

Orland Bishop's unique leadership draws on both contemporary and ancient practices, particularly that of the South African tradition of Indaba or “deep talk.” Orland is the author of The Seventh Shrine: Meditations on the African Spiritual Journey: From the Middle Passage to the Mountaintop in which he describes his efforts to "...support the recovery of the individual’s capacity to stand in openness for the higher purpose of one’s own life."  To offer space for a community that makes possible "...new covenants within the larger collective sphere of human life."

Facing Contradictions: Navigating issues of race & diversity in Rudolf Steiner’s work
Cory Eichman began his Biodynamic farming career in 1992.  He's been managing the Saugeen River CSA in Ontario, Canada since 1997.  He started teaching courses on Biodynamics in 2005, eventually offering several years in a row "The Individuality of the Farm," and "Digging Deeper: Cosmic and Earthly Evolution for Farmers" courses on-line through the BDA.  He joined the BDA's social justice committee in 2020 and offered an on-line course, "Questions of Diversity and Race in Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science" for the Council of Anthroposophical Organizations.  As these questions continue to evolve in the Anthroposophical movement, courses and conversations are ongoing.