– practice daily or weekly walks with your classes, and do it, if possible, in Nature!

På Verdenslærerstævnet i Dornach påsken 2023 holdt Michal Ben Shalom foredraget: 
Joy and Confidence in the Physical Body – A Solid Ground for the Future. Her følger 
et utdrag av hennes foredrag til verdens steinerskolelærere. Den fulde artikel med flere eksempler kan læses på steinerbladet.dk/.no. Michal kommer også på det norske lærerstevnet i Tønsberg våren 2024.

Well, walking and keeping in close touch with Nature are not very common anymore. I walked daily to school as a child, 25 minutes or so, back and forth. It was common for my generation. But most children now, I dare say, come to school on school buses, in private family cars, or on public transport.

Very few are still privileged to be walking to school, and I believe they don’t necessarily think themselves very privileged! More than half of the world’s population already live in cities, big cities, or huge cities. The constant flow from rural areas to urban centres has already gone so far! Thus most children of the world start their day with the sounds of droning engines, with the jerky movement of cars, and some fall back asleep – or semi-sleep – the air is artificial rather than fresh – a real climate! So their limbs don’t meet the ground, their lungs don’t get real air, their will is not active, their breathing is very shallow. “From bed to class”! – this is the new style!

For many children, the afternoon hours will also be very limited in terms of movement or use of bodily skills. Whether it is screen time, pandemic restrictions, or security issues – all “good” reasons at our present time for less movement, less bodily skills, and less education for the lower senses – it is a modern reality that allows hours of sitting, a culture of sitting, an out-of-body, out-of-limbs lifestyle.

It is a great breeding ground for the blossoming of fears, anxieties, etc, and a massive weakness of the will. 

We have reached a time when we need to take up what was so natural a generation or two ago into our educational awareness, into our pedagogical consideration. We need to update our duty! We need to ensure we take special care of the healthy development of the body and the senses, so the body can become a home – home for the spirit, a homeland, from which body intelligence can transform into spiritual intelligence, into thinking, later in life; A place where the four lower bodily senses mature and transform into the four higher senses, the social senses – the profound call of our time!

I chose to focus not so much on rhythmical movement in the classroom or on free play in kindergarten, which we all know so well and perhaps need to tune a little better under the circumstances – but on the aspect of walking, especially walking in nature, climbing trees and rocks, allowing children to have safe, confident, and kind encounters with animals – insects, lizards, birds, or mammals; letting them experience the breath of wind, the direct warmth of the sun, fresh flowing water and the earth, the soil, the land!

Walking is rhythmical! It deepens breathing, it quickens the blood circulation, it allows warmth and balance, just like Richard Burton advocated good manners, better spirit, open heart …

And walking takes time! Therefore, it can gently correct three major errors or dangers of our technological age:

1. The error of time – You need time to go from one place to another – uphill or downhill through the valley or up a steep mountain. No jumps, no separate, accelerated, dissected shots of a camera in movie or TikTok style. Real steps, covering real distance – it takes time, effort, patience, and perseverance! A deep wordless education of what a process is, and what a process takes!
2. The error of space – The width and length of space, the vastness of space, can be experienced for real, the full volume of it, let alone the beauty of it. Now it is not shrunken or blurred by high speed, or distanced by a camera. There is nothing theoretical about walking: it takes place on the Earth, with a sensation of solid rock or crumbling sand beneath your sandals or boots! It is the smell of a herd of goats nearby, the smoke of a shepherd’s bonfire, and the warmth of the sun on your shoulder – solid foundations!
3. The error of the body – When walking, bent backs might become more upright, the chest is lifted and becomes more open, muscles grow stronger, and the whole movement becomes more agile and beautiful! You’ll find your feet, literally, and learn to rely on them, on your own physical body! You learn to trust!

Walking is a precondition – first walking, then comes speaking, and thinking follows.

A young boy who struggled with fears and anxiety on a daily basis, found it very difficult to cross the gap between home and school. Every morning! It was a daily struggle – unless we walked together for a while. For 15 minutes, sometimes a little longer, we walked together. It helped him get into his rhythmical system and find his feet, his limbs. His pale face turned a little rosy, his frightened eyes became friendly and trusting – he was no longer trapped in his head, generating fears, but finally in his body. Now he could start his morning: “The sun with loving light …”

The beloved Wangari Maathai, whom we love to call “the woman who planted trees”, at a time of a terrible crisis in her life, experiencing utter despair and a feeling of being lost, helpless and hopeless, was reminded of her walks, very long walks to school. On her way from her village to school she walked past the big fig tree, and every morning this big motherly fig tree witnessed her walk – they saw and witnessed one another. At the darkest hour of her biography, at the age of 40, the memory of that tree and its being emerged in her soul and was the direct inspiration, the answer for her new aim and goal in life. She rose from her ashes knowing she should start planting trees in Kenya – it was the Green Belt Project, for which she won the Nobel prize.

Finding one’s feet means finding one’s own 
destiny.

Læs den fulde udgave af artiklen her:

Joy and Confidence in the Physical Body – A Solid Ground for the Future

Michal Ben Shalom 

Dornach, Easter 2023

World Teachers Conference

Dear friends and colleagues,

I’d rather start at the end!

No need for a slow build-up, no need for careful selection of facts and quotes – let’s go straight to the point!

The point or aim of my lecture is to say: 

Nature! And walking in Nature! 

Or: Walk with children, practice daily or weekly walks with your classes, and do it – if possible – in Nature!

Now that I’ve said it, now that it’s before you – I can go back to the beginning, and start in a responsible manner with facts and quotes… In other words – order!

It is from spiritual science that we know, that it is through and with the physical body that the human spirit has to develop here on Earth. It is a unique situation! A spiritual being – a child, a human being – in a physical body. A being who belongs to eternity, a timeless being, in a body that belongs to time and succumbs to the laws of matter. No other being practices this condition – neither the higher beings above us, who do not have a physical-mineral existence or organ, nor the three kingdoms of Nature below us, where the spirit, the individual spirit, is never incarnated.

We are dwellers of both lands, of Spirit-land and of Matter-land – of both worlds – and we have to achieve our further development, our future development, with and through our physical mineral body. We have to establish a deep relationship with our body and with Planet Earth – on the physical plane! To make it a home, and a good one! Childhood is the golden time for this! Especially, as we all know, the first seven years, and the second seven-year period as well, albeit in a different way!

To contribute something to this vital theme – in an age where so much is being done to make us forget our true human image – I would like to share 4-5 short stories with you – shorter than short, mere snippets, in fact! – Or even better, I’d like to mail you 5 glossy postcards to watch and take in, postcards, old-school postcards, hoping you’ll take a moment, a good moment, to look at them.

1^st Postcard

There is a circle of young children in the woods – Class 2. They shout and scream with excitement and joy. I think there is something in the middle of the circle that they are all looking at…

I join them a little later, as I have been walking hand in hand with a boy who found it rather difficult to leave school for our weekly outing due to fears, anxiety, difficulties, and the like… I stayed behind with him, while the rest of the group ran confidently to the woods. I promised him my help, support, and protective attention. He felt somewhat relieved. The excited circle ahead of us caught his attention as well as mine. He got curious, his heavy gait became lighter, he let go of my hand, joined the rest of the class, and was wholly transformed! He was beaming, waving his hand to me: “Come, come, quickly! A chameleon!”

The children, dancing and prancing around the chameleon – and he is part of the circle. Fears, anxiety – out. Joy – in. 

2^nd Postcard

It is a hot day in May, class 1. We walk out of the school grounds and take the path leading down the valley to the spring. It is a very warm day, a nice walk, yet the children must make an effort to adjust to the rocky, irregular path, keep together, help one another, and carry on… we arrive at the spring – a nice freshwater pool! The children have been walking for some 50 minutes, they are all sweaty. With cries of joy and excitement, they take off their clothes, as they have not yet fully eaten the apple from the tree of knowledge, nearly naked, boys and girls. They jump into the water, splashing, laughing, and swimming. Paradise. 

3^rd Postcard

It is class 7. They are 13 years old, it is already the third day of a desert trek. We arrive at a pond. There is plenty of clay around it, some of it dry, cracked, and rugged, some wet and soft. Good desert clay. Some children start touching it, playing with it – a discovery, and nice cool sensation on their fingers, curiously dry, wet, one can see their faces change. They make little balls, the clay balls become figures. Some more children join in, they mold, they sculpt – for nearly an hour they create beautiful clay-modeling scenes, they work together, letting their fingers follow their imagination. There is shared creativity and adventure – an art session in the desert.

4^th Postcard

It is class 6, early morning, they all arrive at school every morning in school buses or their parents’ cars. The class teacher tells me they are tired and sleepy, openly yawning. They cannot start their main lesson, they have not yet become present in their bodies. She tells them to follow her, they go out of the school gate and walk, they walk … it is a quiet road among old orange Groves, and they walk.

It begins with moaning, groaning, and complaining, but then they become quiet for a while. After some time, I observe that their walking has changed, and became more agile. They walk a bit more upright. Some start little conversations, the teacher takes the chance to talk a little to this or that pupil. Three boys ask for permission to run. They have warmed up. She says, “Yes, you may,” and more children join them.

After 40 minutes they are back in the classroom. Breathing deeply, red cheeks, joyful eyes, awake. They can start with their morning verse: “I look into the world…”



“Walking” is a book written by Henry David Thoreau, an American Nature philosopher. In this book, he wrote as follows:

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.”¹

He also wrote:

“… You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.”²

Thoreau is hinting here at a deep inner activity when walking: Ruminating, metaphorically ruminating… reflecting, brooding, re-thinking, digesting and re-digesting, over and over again.

He wrote that once, when a passer-bye stopped near the home of Wordsworth, the English poet, he approached the servant and asked her to show him the poet’s study, the place where he wrote his poetry – his holy of holies… And she took him outside and said: ‘Here! Outside! In the open air!’

H.D. Thoreau thought so highly of walking that he had a dream, a wish, to start a new modern knighthood: no armour, no horses, no weapons – a walking knighthood!

In Thoreau’s rediscovered last manuscript, “Wild Fruits”, he pleads Nature’s cause with the following moving words:

“For all [of] Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. […] Nature is but another name for health.”³

In his library, Henry David Thoreau kept a book – “First Steps in East Africa” – written by R.F. Burton (1821–1890). Now, Burton – who discovered the source of the Blue Nile (and the lost Dr. Livingstone…) – certainly knew something about walking, and he wrote in his book, that when walking, your mood, your spirit, improves greatly. You become open-hearted, your good manners shine, you are focused. Or, in his words:

“Your MORALE improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded….”

In a little book called “In Praise of Walking”, British author Sir Leslie Stephen (the father of the famous Virginia Woolf!) wrote:

“The day on which I was fully initiated into the mysteries of walking is marked by a white stone. […] Then I first knew the delightful sensation of independence and detachment enjoyed during a walking tour. […] You trust your own legs, stop when you please, diverge into any track that takes your fancy, and drop in upon some quaint variety of human life at every inn where you put up for the night.”⁴

William Shakespeare set himself a rule, and “consciously observed his own maxim, ‘jog on, jog on, the footpath way'” – this was his way of saying, “I must walk daily”. And he did. And even Aristotle used to teach his pupils while walking with them!

Well, walking and keeping in close touch with Nature are not very common anymore. I walked daily to school as a child, 25 minutes or so, back and forth. It was common for my generation. But most children now, I dare say, come to school on school buses, in private family cars, or on public transport.

Very few are still privileged to be walking to school, and I believe they don’t necessarily think themselves very privileged! More than half of the world’s population already live in cities, big cities, or huge cities. The constant flow from rural areas to urban centres has already gone so far! Thus most children of the world start their day with the sounds of droning engines, with the jerky movement of cars, and some fall back asleep – or semi-sleep – the air is artificial rather than fresh – a real climate! So their limbs don’t meet the ground, their lungs don’t get real air, their will is not active, their breathing is very shallow. “From bed to class”! – this is the new style!

For many children, the afternoon hours will also be very limited in terms of movement or use of bodily skills. Whether it is screen time, pandemic restrictions, or security issues – all “good” reasons at our present time for less movement, less bodily skills, and less education for the lower senses – it is a modern reality that allows hours of sitting, a culture of sitting, an out-of-body, out-of-limbs lifestyle.

It is a great breeding ground for the blossoming of fears, anxieties, etc, and a massive weakness of the will. 

We have reached a time when we need to take up what was so natural a generation or two ago into our educational awareness, into our pedagogical consideration. We need to update our duty! We need to ensure we take special care of the healthy development of the body and the senses, so the body can become a home – home for the spirit, a homeland, from which body intelligence can transform into spiritual intelligence, into thinking, later in life; A place where the four lower bodily senses mature and transform into the four higher senses, the social senses – the profound call of our time!

I chose to focus not so much on rhythmical movement in the classroom or on free play in kindergarten, which we all know so well and perhaps need to tune a little better under the circumstances – but on the aspect of walking, especially walking in nature, climbing trees and rocks, allowing children to have safe, confident, and kind encounters with animals – insects, lizards, birds, or mammals; letting them experience the breath of wind, the direct warmth of the sun, fresh flowing water and the earth, the soil, the land!

Walking is rhythmical! It deepens breathing, it quickens the blood circulation, it allows warmth and balance, just like Richard Burton advocated good manners, better spirit, open heart…

And walking takes time! Therefore, it can gently correct three major errors or dangers of our technological age:

1. The error of time – You need time to go from one place to another – uphill or downhill through the valley or up a steep mountain. No jumps, no separate, accelerated, dissected shots of a camera in movie or TikTok style. Real steps, covering real distance – it takes time, effort, patience, and perseverance! A deep wordless education of what a process is, and what a process takes!

2. The error of space – The width and length of space, the vastness of space, can be experienced for real, the full volume of it, let alone the beauty of it. Now it is not shrunken or blurred by high speed, or distanced by a camera. There is nothing theoretical about walking: it takes place on the Earth, with a sensation of solid rock or crumbling sand beneath your sandals or boots! It is the smell of a herd of goats nearby, the smoke of a shepherd’s bonfire, and the warmth of the sun on your shoulder – solid foundations!

3. The error of the body – When walking, bent backs might become more upright, the chest is lifted and becomes more open, muscles grow stronger, and the whole movement becomes more agile and beautiful! You’ll find your feet, literally, and learn to rely on them, on your own physical body! You learn to trust!

Walking is a precondition – first walking, then comes speaking, and thinking follows.

A young boy who struggled with fears and anxiety on a daily basis, found it very difficult to cross the gap between home and school. Every morning! It was a daily struggle – unless we walked together for a while. For 15 minutes, sometimes a little longer, we walked together. It helped him get into his rhythmical system and find his feet, his limbs. His pale face turned a little rosy, his frightened eyes became friendly and trusting – he was no longer trapped in his head, generating fears, but finally in his body. Now he could start his morning: “The sun with loving light…”

The beloved Wangari Maathai, whom we love to call “the woman who planted trees”, at a time of a terrible crisis in her life, experiencing utter despair and a feeling of being lost, helpless and hopeless, was reminded of her walks, very long walks to school. On her way from her village to school she walked past the big fig tree, and every morning this big motherly fig tree witnessed her walk – they saw and witnessed one another. At the darkest hour of her biography, at the age of 40, the memory of that tree and its being emerged in her soul and was the direct inspiration, the answer for her new aim and goal in life. She rose from her ashes knowing she should start planting trees in Kenya – it was the Green Belt Project, for which she won the Nobel prize.

Finding one’s feet means finding one’s own destiny.

I shall conclude by mailing you now something I owe you – my last postcard.

5^th Episode

It is class 6. We are about to travel to the South, a 4-day walk, crossing one of the desert craters. It is springtime – nothing could be more beautiful! A boy, who joined our class only last year, is very reluctant to go. He has many reasons and excuses for not traveling with us, he cannot face the conditions of the trek – no shower, sleeping bags in the middle of nowhere, cooking on an open fire… we talk a lot, and I try to find ways to make it possible for him to join us, which in the end, he does. The first day is difficult for him. He keeps himself very clean, reserved, and a bit isolated. Then, on the second morning, he looks a bit different, he gets better by the hour, he is a bit dirty, he laughs with a free open voice, getting softer and more handsome than he normally is. It seems as though he is shedding off unnecessary layers, but surprisingly, he does not appear smaller or thinner, but rather bigger! fuller! More himself!

The end of the trek. The bus is waiting to take us back home. It is sunset and time to leave. It is a long drive ahead of us.

Everyone is on the bus, and I see the boy going to the back of the bus, opening the baggage trunk for a minute, then closing it and approaching me. 

“There is some food left,” he says. “Yes, are you hungry?” I ask. 

“No,” says he, “there is food left… it means that we have everything we need and can stay here for one or two more days, can’t we?”

~~~~~~~~~~

1 H. D. Thoreau, Walking, Chump Change, 1851.

2 Ibid.

3 H. D. Thoreau, Wild Fruits, Pp. 238–39.

4 Leslie Stephen, Studies of a Biographer, “In Praise of Walking”, Library of Alexandria, 2016.

Michal Ben Shalom 

Grunnlegger av den første 
steinerskolen i Israel, steiner­skolelærer og foredragsholder.