Our Approach | ABIDING HEART EDU

The Abiding Heart Education™ Approach

Abiding Heart Education™️ offers a learning approach to kindergarten, primary (class 1-8) and high school (class 9-12) that embraces a contemplative path for developing wisdom and compassion. In this new, unique approach, all subjects taught from kindergarten through to class 12 are fully immersed within contemplative traditions view and meditation. The aim is to cultivate innate awareness, loving kindness, compassion and wisdom, and how that informs our everyday life activities and way of being.

The primary purpose of the Abiding Heart Education™️ approach is to (re)connect to our innate goodness according to each individual's capability. We are guided by contemplative traditions paths of personal development that are experiential and transformative. We do this through the content of our children’s curriculum, the teacher training courses, and the learning methodology. By immersing ourselves in this way of being and learning, teachers, and children alike, discover a space within themselves that is open, soft and radiant. The essence of this openness is love, which is at the core of all true awakening endeavour that, ultimately, transcends desire and concern for oneself. It is the very heart of enlightened wisdom.

This contemplative approach fosters a process of re-discovering our inner well-being. The path to such determination begins with understanding and deepens through direct experience. We learn to apply our insights, or heart understanding, in everyday life gradually forming new habits that are motivated by immeasurable love and compassion. This style of learning is in resonance with Dr Steiner pedagogy that engages the head, heart, and doing. It teaches us to learn about life from life as part of the journey beyond, towards self awakening.

The Abiding Heart Education™️ approach rests on the understanding that awakening means the spirit of enlightenment motivated by love and compassion for the individual, (for oneself and others), or by the power of innate goodness. Abiding Heart's learning integrates awareness and mindfulness together with engaging the head (understanding/contemplating and knowing) and the heart (experiential/meditation). Embodied understanding and experience naturally gives rise to healthy habits and ways of being in our everyday lives (application). True transformation occurs when our innate qualities of wisdom and compassion are fully expressed, enabling us to care deeply for ourselves, for each other, and for the world.

With the Abiding Heart's approach, the teacher is central to the quality and relevance of the education that a child receives. The process by which teachers are being prepared for this task is a critical indicator, not only of the future quality and depth of learning but the potential for self-transformation and healing. In this way, this education approach encourages accumulating merit with the heart's wish that the right causes and conditions allow children and teachers to remain and progress on the path to self awakening.

To support this, Abiding Heart’s learning approach and curriculum content encourage a celebration of our common humanity and inspires creativity, curiosity, kindness and self-reflection; all in the service of nurturing in children’s and teachers' inner awakening.

Keeping this close to our heart, students at Abiding Heart's teacher training courses are engaged in our approach to learning that is situated in: contemplative traditions' view and meditation practices; contemplative science, integrative therapeutic exercises; and connecting to sense of place and heritage. In our approach, the needs of the child are considered in relation to each phase of their development and supporting transformative learning suitable for each year group.

We used the Waldorf education framework together with understanding child development to process contemplative traditions and science to create our developmentally appropriate contemplative and healing curriculum.

The Waldorf transformational learning approach includes Dr Steiner’s insights into the child’s changing consciousness and how this knowledge is translated into a curriculum that in itself is healing. Such healing pedagogy deeply supports the child’s all round flourishing. It is centred on children's wholesome physical, socio-emotional, cognitive, healthy sense of self, and spiritual development. This is interlinked with Steiner’s methods for delivering the curriculum with the aim of supporting children reconnect with innate goodness or our awakened nature.

Education can be understood in relation to uncovering the very nature of our mind. Our innate goodness is not merely an empty vessel that requires filling with endless information. Rather, our innate goodness, replete with compassionate qualities and wisdom, is waiting to be expressed and to shine through the cracks in our (seemingly) solidified, hardened sense of self.

The Modality of the Abiding Heart Education™️ Approach