Edmond Schoorel - Warmth: Nurturing Childrens Health and Wellbeing

Warmth is a unique phenomenon. It permeates everything, it creates us, and it is the reason that the earth exists at all. Warmth is different to heat, the scorching blaze of the fire. If warmth no longer exists, cold remains. Then everything becomes quiet, life stops, there is no fun any more.

When we think of warmth, we might think of gathering round the fire at an inn after a beautiful, cold family walk at Christmas. A pleasant smokiness to the room, and a quiet, contented hush. The warmth of the fire makes us lazy, and hot chocolate with whipped cream makes us content and happy. Attention turns inward, and conversation slows to murmurs of agreement.

Or we might imagine feeling the suns rays for the first time after a long winter. We close our eyes and sense its delightful warmth, the light of spring glowing through our eyelids. New life announces itself all around us, and it wont be long until the trees, plants and shrubs blossom. All thanks to the sun.

We also might think of warmth as a warm bath after a busy day. The smell of lavender intensifies our feeling of contentment, of fullness. We can finally relax, careful not to fall asleep in the bath. Anything planned this evening? I dont think so. Wonderful.

Or we might picture a walk on the dunes on a rare summer day. The sand reflects the heat of the sun so that it feels as if the warmth is coming from everywhere. The fragrance of pine expands our thoughts, which have been made fuzzy by the sun. As our body works hard to lose its warmth, we perspire and taste salt on our lips. How wonderful when we finally reach the sea and the waves break over our toes. There is a breeze along the water and we notice the difference in temperature between the dry sand and the wet sea, cooling us down.

We all have our own unique ideas about warmth. I recommend that you try visualising your own, incorporating as many senses as you can into the details. In particular, smells can help us open the gates to a favourite memory, and funnily enough, it is warmth that helps to release those scents into the air. As you learn to visualise these different kinds of warmth, you may find they help you understand the explanations of warmth that follow in this book.

Just as these images have different moods, warmth has many different meanings. We may use the word literally (a warm bed) as well as metaphorically (a warm glance). In the next part of this book I will organise the different meanings of warmth into four categories. For this I will use the anthroposophical concept of fourfoldness. Dont worry if youre not familiar with the idea you dont have to know anything about fourfoldness to understand my discussion. Those who would like to know more about fourfoldness can refer to the recommended reading at the end of the book.

I am using fourfoldness as a structure for understanding how warmth affects different levels of childrens development. When children are growing up, they must first connect with their bodies before they can enter the world without fear or hesitation. First enter your body, then the world. We must then see warmth develop at every level the physical, the life forces, the soul and the I before children become adults who can pass their warmth on.

As I said in the Foreword, there is only one bridge that leads children to their path in life, the path on which they fulfil their purpose on earth. That bridge is warmth and it is so easy!