Chapter 9: Summer: Fire and The Golden Flower, from Learning In Nature

Abstract

There is love on these pages, love for nature, the cosmos, the body’s deep knowing and students. Learning in Nature focuses on the lives of 6 drama students who gathered weekly at a community arts center during their childhood and adolescence. Before each play rehearsal the students explored contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, breathing and visualization. After these warm-up sessions the rehearsals were dynamic and highly creative. So, what might happen if these students went out into nature and experimented with the same practices? What would happen, over a year long period, if they stopped the noise of life and just listened, deeply, just looked and inhaled, phenomenologically? Returning the experience of learning to nature, the book tells the story of this group, it tells of their lives and their growing understanding of consciousness, and does so through the complex and rich perspectives of holistic teaching and learning.

HER is grateful to have the permission of IAP – Information Age Publishing Inc to publish this chapter.