Download the article: Working with the 12 Senses
by Jeff Tunkey

Published in the Association for Healing Education Newsletter, September, 2013

Touch, Health, Movement and Balance as a Foundation for Academic Progress
A helpful lens on human development was provided by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf education movement which now numbers some 1000 schools worldwide. We work with the picture that we have much more than the five traditional senses... in fact, twelve! If you’re like most people, you might initially have a mystified or puzzled reaction to hearing someone say humans have twelve senses—not just the five that science usually describes. However, the twelve senses approach – first described by Rudolf Steiner 90 years ago – is similar in many ways to the “Multiple Intelligences” education theory popularized by Harvard professor Howard Gardner in the 1990s. In any event, the idea of the 12 senses isn’t meant to be analyzed in a literal or scientific way, but rather to be carried as a picture that might shine new light on how parents and teachers can contribute to the healthy growth of children. The particular definitions for the capacities to be described as the spectrum of 12 interrelated senses, can be quickly grasped by placing them in the light of ‘common sense’ everyday expressions.

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Download the article: Fever

The anthroposophical approach to fever is different then what I was taught during my
residency. In anthroposophical medicine, a fever is seen as good because it actually strengthens the child's immune system and helps a child get further into their physical body.

Download the article: You Cannot Pick a Dandelion

Published in Education as an Art Vol. 25, #1 - Autumn 1965

"Isn't it wonderful," said the teacher, "when you go out into the woods and fields, to see what strange and beautiful things are coming up out of the ground! Trees and flowers, grass and bushes, and all kinds of plants, no two alike, with all sorts of different shapes and colors - have you looked closely at some of these?"

Certainly they had. They were normal youngsters, nine-, ten-, and eleven-year olds, naturally interested in anything they could push, pull, touch, lift, examine, taste, hear, or smell.

"Tell me what you have seen," said the teacher. In no time they had recalled berry-bushes, Indian pipes, Jack-in-the-pulpits, many kinds of trees with commentary on which were best for climbing -and a variety of field flowers and stinging nettles.

"Well," said the teacher, 'I wonder if any of you know about something I saw the other day. If you know the name of it, don't say it, but raise your hand if you think you know. Walking across a field I saw a slender stem coming up about nine or ten inches from a small plant, and on top of the stem a little ball of white, fluffy stars. If you pick the stem and blow, whoof, they scatter into a whole galaxy of stars." There were shining eyes and eager hands raised -