Mantles of Care

Experience | Create | Apply | Practice

Supporting the inscription of health-giving forms into the life of families and class groups to help children to receive nourishment in daily life.

Mantles of Care workshops and training lead adults through experiences with colour and natural fibres from the plant and animal kingdoms in ways that bring life to daily care practices.

The way that we instruct children and work with our colleagues is empty unless we bring with it what lives in us that is not transitory. To pass to others living substance as nourishment, and not just outer forms we must first live with the being of the substance and work it through our life processes. For a spirit-led community to be possible, what lives in us must also belong in and be united with the spirit.

Rhythms in a child’s day such as falling asleep and rising from waking, toileting, bathing, and eating, become healthy and nourishing when the adults imbue care with what is true, beautiful and good.

Workshops

For parents – Short experiential workshops provide parents with foundations towards practices that provide healthy rhythms and wellness.

For faculties – We join faculty meetings and/or introduce various aspects of care over a professional development day.

Mantles of Care Training

Sets of 4-day trainings support communities who choose to establish regular mantles of care practice in the daily and/or weekly curriculum. The first 4-day training provides the foundations of “Enfolding and Warming” which includes working with rhythms of sleep and waking.

ESTABLISHING Caring for Self and Others in the Curriculum

The first step is that we converse with staff and observe class groups to understand the needs of the community.

Start a conversation

Working alongside educators, we offer mantles of care to groups of children from early childhood through to high school. All begin with warming and enfolding and then across the years the children and adolescents participate in practices that support:

– healthy sleep and waking into the day
– dressing in clothing to support health across the season
– bathing that supports the health of the skin
– wound care
– and more..

As a consequence the senses are supported towards harmony which results in greater self-regulation and the ability to focus. Students, and adults in the training, are offered ways to participate in such a way that they care for others as well as themselves which supports healthy relationships.

Throughout our visit to the school community we meet with class teachers and assistants to reflect on ourself, the children and the offering to the children through the lens of the foundations to pillars that will support a spirit-led life: Wonder, Positive Social Connections and Virtues. The background reading is an EduCareDo lesson from Spirit-led Education for a Spirit-led Life.

Maintaining & Growing Mantles of Care in the Community

With staff/ nominated training participants
Usually the staff member responsible for wellbeing and a class guardian/teacher help to maintain mantles of care in the curriculum. We also suggest that these training participants facilitate a practice session for all who have participated in the training.

Regular meetings (on-line or in-person) with these staff members review how the care is being offered and received, whether any individualised student support could be helpful and when the community is ready to expand from warming and enfolding towards specifics for each grade. It is very helpful for the handwork teacher to participate in the workshop and continue to meet so that students and parents participate in creating items that are a part of mantles of care.

These meetings continue to be self-reflective and for the purpose of offering education to support a spirit-led life.

With all training participants
We try to have a mantles of practice a few days after the 4-day training as well as an online meeting a few weeks later for questions and clarification.

With anyone in the community
Anyone from the community and beyond is welcome to join a set of 1 hour online study meetings in which together we read the book Spirit-led Community by Lisa Romero. The book has 3 chapters and we meet on each for 4 weeks then break. A total of 12 meetings.

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Mantles of Care Facilitators

Lyn Clifton

Community health Social Worker

Lyn is a Community Health Social Worker who combines her anthroposophic wholistic healthcare training to bring home healthcare simply and practically to the daily life of children, parents, carers and teachers.

In the 1980’s Lyn worked with communities and schools across Greater Sydney to provide a range of early childhood formal childcare and support services to families of diverse backgrounds. Lyn was President of the NSW Occasional Child Care Association and an advocate, representative and educator for children’s services policy development and quality Australia wide.

Alongside her own growing family (more than 20 years ago), Lyn took up studies in early childhood at Parsifal College (Sydney Rudolf Steiner College). From this work grew home-based child / parent groups to support young families, and was recognised as complementary to Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School in Sydney. Lyn also studied EduCareDo’s Foundation Year in Anthroposophy and the complementary Towards Health and Healing workshop series with Lisa Romero, which fortified her individual development and directed her towards Inner Work Path. Lyn’s home healthcare practices were refined through studies with the nurses at Taruna College New Zealand’s course Certificate of Holistic Healthcare, and additional training to qualify in practicing Rhythmical Einreibung.

Over these past two to three decades Lyn has been a founding member of numerous initiatives including Anthroposophic Care for the Young Child Association in Sydney, Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner Preschool and Developing the Self Developing the World.

Lyn now specialises in what she names the Mantle of Care, to bring home health care to individuals, families and class groups.

Louise Stewart

Based in AUstralia

Louise has been a complementary health practitioner since 1993 and began working from anthroposophy in 2004 primarily by studying the Foundations of Anthroposophy with EduCareDo’s Towards Health and Healing course and receiving apprenticeship-style training from Lisa Romero.

Louise graduated as a remedial massage therapist in 1993 and over 20 years practiced massage in nursing homes, disability services, osteopathic clinics and her private practice. Since 2013 Louise has been a registered homeopath using anthroposophical remedies and in 2019 has offered oil dispersion baths since studying with the International Association of Oil Dispersion Bath Therapists after Werner Junge.

Louise works with all ages for developmental, acute and chronic conditions and regularly visits the school environment to provide observational feedback and workshops that can help parents and teachers with their understanding of health and healing according to anthroposophy.