Islands of recreation

The online programme provided by Studies and Professional Development at the Goetheanum offers courses for different tasks in life that value quality in digital encounters.

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Life and work have become more challenging around the interventions put in place to overcome the pandemic. Getting away from simply reacting seems like a good idea: taking some time out and escaping to a recreational island, through meditation for instance.

"It sounds like a contradiction: taking off time for contemplation in a situation that is anyway very stressful," says Edda Nehmiz, Studies coordinator at the Goetheanum. But fostering inner spaces and having conversations, even if they may seem unnecessary, can help to deal with the workload in busy times - an experience already described by Martin Luther. Moving from experiencing time to taking hold of it relies on the trust that by shaping time autonomously one also strengthens one's inner forces.

Short, personal and with examples

The experience of stress is aggravated by the fact that meeting face-to-face in video conferences lacks warmth and is not as inspiring as a spontaneous exchange when one passes each other at work. Edda Nehmiz is convinced that "inspiration does not happen, however, as a result of a particular medium, such as air or digital circuits: it happens through personal interaction. Encounters, whether they are in-person or digital, require us to inwardly turn to the other person."

In the first year of the Coronavirus pandemic, the faculty of the Goetheanum's Studies Department found that nurturing contents and social processes that have the quality of encounters can also be conveyed digitally as long as there are clear and regular processes and presentations are shorter, with more examples, and if possible more personal.

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