Over the last several months, our campuses at The Camphill School, Camphill Village Copake, Camphill Communities California, and Camphill Village Kimberton Hills have all hosted retreats and workshops on the inner life for students in the Foundation Studies programs.
Inner work—our constant and conscious growth as human beings, educators, colleagues, friends, and community members—holds a strong place in anthroposophical work broadly. But inner work also holds a special place for the Camphill movement in particular. Karl Konig highlighted inner work as one of the “Three Essentials” of the Camphill movement, which he describes in his seminal essay of the same name.
Inner work or inner schooling is no mere memorization of concepts or the application of techniques or methods to get some prescribed outcome. Rather, as Konig describes in the early Camphill trainings, “[it] is not mere knowledge that is given to our students. They learn to kindle their creative forces and to make them into a continuous source of strength and sacrifice.” The Camphill Academy strives to continue this tradition of helping students to kindle their own creative forces, and students across the region started on their own path in the retreats that were held over the last several months.
