Chapter Two: Flow
“Meeting” Steiner while in this hilltop home felt a little like a `coming-home’ — an uncanny resonance, maybe it was a memory from long ago that drew me further in. Even as the words in the book opened tiny cracks in my inner realm, I wanted to enter this world more fully — not only through words. I soon found that Waldorf education is a powerful (and practical) culmination of anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner’s work.
Education. In my late teens, I had worked fleetingly in a Montessori school, before beginning my long tryst with films. As much as I adored being with the children, I could not make room for the routine and rhythm of a teacher. The ambitious, feverish persona of my youth was slowly getting addicted to the frenzied, unpredictable, bohemian filmmaker life. And just like that, I allowed myself to be swallowed whole, consumed by an industry that inspired, excited and exhausted me for the next two decades.
Reading about Waldorf Education now, as I breathed in the fresh mountain air, I felt the echo of my youth — sans the breathless frenzy. Still, years of an erratic lifestyle had become part of my cellular being. ‘I’m not cut out for teaching’ I thought. `Not enough patience, not enough rhythm and routine’. After working half my life in films, I didn’t think there was anything else I could do. But I did feel the tug of anthroposophy. I wanted to know more and engage deeper, and Waldorf seemed to be the most viable, comprehensive path.
I googled Waldorf teacher training courses in Mumbai. There were two courses — both typically begin in July every year, and I was sitting at the far end of August. I wanted it sooner than that.
But, wait. Had I fully disengaged from my filmmaker life? Three months of a Sabbatical, and I was flirting with the idea of a teacher training course. Am I not being just a trifle too impulsive? And, just like that, the question within reflected without. As I sipped a steaming thukpa at a Tibetan cafe, my phone rang. It was a call for a job. I was offered a profile I had been desperately vying for in the last months before I left for Manali. A part of me (or was it all of me?) froze. I was not ready to re-engage with the world of official meetings and deadlines, excel sheets and presentations — a world that included other people! Maybe not ever, but definitely not yet!
Still, I dialogued on — negotiating money, working hours, and other such inanities. I ran out of reasons to refuse the job. I returned to Mumbai, a wee bit weighed down with the anxiety of returning to work; still, the lightness of my `sadhana’ over the last three months held me in my centre.
I soon started to see why I had been led here. This was closure — a chance to re-look at what I was choosing to let go. I had signed up for the most ideal assignment of my 20-year career — regular hours with weekends, office close to home, socially relevant work, a feeling of fulfilment that I’m making a difference. I worked with a deep presence — my biggest gift of my time in the mountains. I was able to switch off from work at the end of the day and plug into me — something I had never managed in all my working life.
Still, at the end of the (very successful) stint, I knew I had to pick up where I left off — even when I was offered a big promotion, and the possibility to work with the best in the business internationally.
Nine months had passed, but the calling to pursue the Waldorf way had not. A part of me could have quite easily slipped back into the all-too-familiar life that seemed to be beckoning me, but a strong and insistent voice within summoned my attention. `If you don’t walk that way, you’ll never know.’ And so, once again, I stepped away and walked towards another type of `unknown’.
I registered for the Teacher Training course at a Waldorf school in Mumbai. Even then, I didn’t think I’d be a teacher. I had deemed myself irreversibly unfit. I was just enrolling to deeper engage with anthroposophy — the spiritual system that is the foundation of the pedagogy.
As I dipped into this Waldorf world, bit by bit I was drawn in and engaged. That year (from July 2018 to May 2019), I soaked myself in all things Waldorf and anthroposophical, and each exploration brought me closer home — within and without.
The fundamental premise of Waldorf education — that we are beings of head, heart and hands (thinking, feeling and willing) — made me navigate my own relationship with those aspects of myself. For much of my life, I had lived mostly in my head — thoughts, ideas, intellectual connections. It had not served me to live this way. As I encountered different aspects of Waldorf, I saw my feeling and will life being enlivened too.
I began to see that my training is more a nurturance of my soul life, than an intellectual study of pedagogical texts. It is not what I teach, but who I am that matters. This struck a deep chord in me — to continue working on your inner life, as part of your work in the world. I wanted to continue on my learning journey, simply out of a thirst for deeper inner work.
And, so I did. I started doing painting sessions with an anthroposophical art therapist in Mumbai. I became part of a reading circle for Steiner texts, often sharing our bewilderment over cups of tea. I attended teacher conferences and teacher trainings. My fingers fumbled with knitting needles, and feet fell over each other practicing movement. I explored the possibility of working in art therapy and special education. I engaged with Biography Life work, and deeper understood my own life journey and this most peculiar point in my life journey.
And, all through this year, I didn’t know where I was going with any of this exploration. There wasn’t a plan, there wasn’t a goal. I was simply heady with this new world I had encountered.
Friends from my filmmaking days thought I was having some form of a mid-life crisis and that I would be back to making movies soon enough. I avoided social hangouts, and slinked away if I saw someone familiar discussing a film project at a coffee shop. I protected this world staunchly. And, yet, I could not authentically answer that hackneyed greeting, “What’s up?” I could not say `what was up’ for me. I had surrendered to an unspoken flow, an unarticulated longing that was leading me I-knew-not-where. Sometimes I felt like I walked gingerly on thin ice. What if I started questioning this flow? What if I started to “take charge” and drew out a “life plan”? There was something indescribably magical about this journey and its unknowingness, and I didn’t want anyone to impede it — least of all me.
