Exercise Groups

Christine Gruwez

Exercise Group (German)

Discovering the Logos in us

The faculty of attention can manifest itself in various forms and conditions. Only this attention, which I create out of my own being, testifies of the activity of the Logos in me. Therefore, we can call attention a blessed gift, for we give attention.

Step by step we will discover the realm where the Logos is alive and active in us by learning to exercise and to recognize this wonderful faculty of giving attention.  

Short CV

Christine Gruwez, studied Philosophy, Classical & Iranian Languages and Linguistics at the University of Louvain, Belgium. She has been a teacher at the Waldorfschool and Docent at the Teachers Training Academy and at the Thomas More High School in Belgium. She has traveled and led seminars worldwide, with a focus on the Near and Middle East. Research themes are the challenges of the actual times, the historical Manichaeism and its intention to the future.

Author a.o. of: Walking With Your Time, Lulu.com, Die Wunde und das Recht auf Verletzlichkeit, Urachaus 2023. 

Michael Lipson

Exercise Group (English)

Introduction to the Logos World

The logos world is a world of beings, whose essential nature is invisible.  To find it requires certain preconditions on our side, for example an orientation toward the good and the meaningful, which is natural to small children and accessible to adults through practice.  A certain intentional innocence is also helpful, that has nothing to do with the absence of sin or wrongdoing.  We will engage in imaginations and meditations that lead us, step by step, into the logos world – this very known and unknown world of ours, newly experienced as a world of beings and meanings, not a world of meaningless objects.  

Short CV

Michael Lipson, PhD, has a private practice in psychotherapy in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  He studied literature at Harvard and Yale, but – after meeting Mother Theresa and Georg Kuehlewind in 1980 – he decided to work as a social worker. He translated many of Kuehlewind’s books into English, as well as R. Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom.  He teaches meditation groups in America and Europe. 

His books include: The Stairway of Surprise, Group Meditation, and BE: An Alphabet of Astonishment.

Hartwig Volbehr

Exercise Group (German)

Soft Will and inner presence

Soft will means to release and exit from our accustomed, self-related consciousness in regard to Regarding both our acting as well our inner presence, our presence of mind. Whereas in some areas (such as art and expressive gestures) soft will is used spontaneously, in other areas, it must be learned. Schooling of the soft will and inner presence includes exercises of attention, attentiveness and perceptions. Further, Ki- exercises (Ki: Japanese, means universal energy). This schooling – Georg Kuehlewind was convinces of this – is today, in a time of growing egoistic hardening, more necessary than ever.

Short CV

Dr. Hartwig Volbehr worked as psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Meeting Georg Kuehlewind in 1984 opened him the way to meditation and to the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. This gave fully new impulses to his medical activities. Since 25 years he devotes himself to therapeutic pedagogy, in particular to autism. He gives seminars and lectures in and outside Germany.

Author of: Was die Welt zusammenhält – ein grundlegender Dialog über Materie und Geist, 2014.

Sebastian Elsaesser

Exercise Group (German)

Concentration – meditation – contemplation

In the short time we have we create an excercise path from concentrating to meditating. With different forms of attention, we deepen our perception, feeling and cognition. Through the process of subtraction, we approach empty attention. In contemplating the empty consciousness becomes the basis of the true Self or the “I am” experience.

Short CV

Sebastian Elsaesser has been working as a psychotherapist for over 40 years. He mainly practiced Gestalt therapy, family therapy, process-oriented Psychology and finally also as psychoanalyst. In 1981 he met Georg Kuehlewind, who invited him to a study and research group on meditation and psychology, with regular meetings until Kuehlewind’s death in 2006. Inspired by this collaboration, he worked in many countries as a researcher and teacher in the therapeutic arts, in the real meeting between cultures, with altered states of consciousness, in community building and in the renewal of contemporary contemplative practice.

Ervin Fenyő

Exercise Group (Hungarian)

Teaching for the poor, the sinful and the sick

Georg Kuehlewind writes that spiritual science is for those who are poor, sinful and sick. This is the starting point of the seminar. We deal with the question with the help of John’s Gospel.  

Short CV

Dr. Ervin Fenyő studied 1967-71 acting at the High School of Theatre and Film in Budapest, later literature at the University of Budapest, ELTE. He finished his doctorate in 2007. He worked as a teacher in several schools, among others the High School for Waldorf Teachers. He has been practicing spiritual schooling for many years. He writes about himself: “The central subject of my activities was always the literature, more exactly, the question, how can we understand literature well, how can we find the meaning behind the signs? For this a witness, a human being in charge is necessary” 

József Pál

Exercise Group (Hungarian)

Attention is the substance of the Self

From the hidden subject to the real Self. The role of attention in perception. Meditations for the „Servants of the Logos” on the way to a new „spiritual community”.

Short CV

József Pál is mechanical engineer and president of the Georg Kühlewind Foundation. He encountered first the teachings of György Székely in 1971. At that time, he attended his group’s weekly meetings. Since a while, he leads such a group as well. Within the Foundation, he also works on preserving Georg Kuehlewind’s spiritual legacy.

Zsuzsa Uray

Exercise Group (Hungarian)

First steps in schooling of the consciousness

Why do we need exercises of the consciousness? What do they do with us, what do they build in us? How should we start? May we, should we have expectations with regards to results? Difficulties. Exercises made together.

Short CV

Zsuzsa Uray studied chemistry and mechanical engineering, later literature. Since 1995 she teaches free religion in different Waldorf schools. She writes about herself: “I was acquainted with anthroposophy at the end of the sixties, but I learned exercises of the consciousness only 20 years later, as – together with my husband – we started to visit the group of Georg Kuehlewind. At this time, my husband, György Uray, founded a small group of his students as well. As my husband is not among us since 25 years, I am leading this group, but in reality, we are all as equal partners in the work.”

István Székely

Exercise Group (Hungarian and German)

Consciousness Exercises and Modern Pedagogy

Concentration, observation and meditation exercises to support pedagogical methodology as well as child’s observation.  

Short CV

István Székely works as professor for a teacher training college called ‘The Workshop of Anthroposophical Pedagogy‘ in Budapest, the partner institution of the Academy of Anthroposophical Pedagogy in Dornach, Switzerland. He writes articles for journals as well as books on anthroposophical topics. He has been working both as a technical editor and as a book cover designer for the Hungarian publishing houses Genius and Kláris. Moreover he regularly holds lectures and seminars for the members of the Kühlewind Circle, for Waldorf pedagogues, Religion teachers of Waldorf schools, and pedagogues of Waldorf kindergartens in and outside Hungary.

His books published so far are the following:

Két tudás 2014, Kláris Kiadó, Budapest — Zweierlei Wissen 2022, Edition Immanente, Berlin – Douã moduri de a şti nu nui, 2021, Univers Enciclopedic, Bukarest, 

Szabad figyelem (Freie Aufmerksamkeit), 2021, Kláris Kiadó.

Böszörményi László

Exercise Group (Hungarian)

Resurrection of the consciousness

The everyday consciousness is dead, because it wakes up only on its past. In the seminar we will do together relatively simple exercises of concentration and meditation. If this happens with a sufficient level of concentration then we can experience the revival of consciousness, or, at least, we come in touch with the Life at the boundary of consciousness.

Short CV

Laszlo Böszörmenyi, PhD, 1992-2017 was a professor of computer science at the University Klagenfurt. He was for nearly thirty years friend and scholar of Georg Kuehlewind. He gives seminars and lectures on spiritual schooling.

He is author of a number of papers and two books on this topic: Mondenlicht – Sonnenlicht. Die Umkehr zur Quelle der wissenschaftlichen Denkweise (Info3-Verlag, 2020) and Georg Kühlewind – Ein Diener des Logos (Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 2023)