Presenters

With Guest Speaker

Anthony Mecca has been farming for 15 years, being introduced to biodynamics early on and working with many experienced farmers and mentors. He has worked in market gardening, small grains, and perennial crops including berries and tree fruit. For 8 years, he managed his own diversified CSA farm. He has also cared for a variety of animals, including the use of draft horses as the main source of power, a 15 cow herd on his diversified CSA farm, and more recently working on a raw milk dairy.

The farm and garden as a center of community life is pivotal in his work. Bringing people into relationship with the wonder, beauty, and nourishment a biodynamic farm can provide, and seeing them grow and develop through this relationship individually and in community over the years has inspired his work.

Anthony has recently developed a year-long course on Biodynamic Agriculture and Nutrition (link is external) available through EduCareDo (link is external) and through the Biodynamic Association’s Development Year Farmer Training Program. In addition to this course and his farmer training work with the BDA, he offers workshops, mentorship, training, and consulting near his home in the Hudson Valley of NY and beyond, in person and remotely, and would love to support biodynamic agriculture and nutrition developing on your farm, garden, or community.

Seth Jordan has been working with Steiner’s social ideas, often called “social threefolding,” for the last 14 years. Inspired by the deep clarity of insight that they contain, he has asked, How can we develop our social practice so that these insights become lived experience?

Seth co-founded and directed Think OutWord, a peer-led training for young adults in social threefolding that ran intensive workshops and conferences for 8 years. Seth has worked with various initiatives including Free Columbia (an arts initiative) and The Nature Institute (a natural science initiative). He has also worked with a number of musicians around the question of bringing support to culture and the arts.

Other significant experiences include organizing around Nicanor Perlas’ 2010 presidential campaign in the Philippines, participating in Occupy Wall Street, and completing a research residency with the social science section at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Seth has written many articles on social and cultural topics as well as given talks, workshops, and courses in the US and around the world. Most recently, as a part of the EduCareDo initiative in long-distance, self-directed learning, he has authored a course of 12 practice-based lessons on threefolding called Transforming Society. It can be found at www.educaredo.org/transforming-society (link is external).

Lisa Romero is an author of inner development books, a complementary health practitioner and an adult educator who has been offering healthcare and education enriched with anthroposophy since 1993.

From 2006 the primary focus of her work has been on teaching inner development and anthroposophical meditation. Through the Inner Work Path Lisa offers lectures, courses and retreats for personal and professional development, in communities and schools worldwide. Inner Work Books has published; ‘The Inner Work Path’ focusing on meditation practice, ‘Developing the Self’ written after years of working with Waldorf teachers to support their inner work and pedagogical understanding of child development, ‘Living Inner Development’ offering an understanding of the inner experiences and results of various inner development exercises, ‘Sex Education and The Spirit’ to help awaken an understanding of our communal responsibility for the healthy development of gender and sexuality within society, and “Spirit-led Community” which introduces spiritually healthy guidelines for lessening the negative influence of technology on the inner life.  In 2019 “A Bridge to Spirit – Understanding conscious self-development and consciousness-altering substances” was published.  Lisa most recently offers a year-long course Inner Development for World Development (link is external) through EduCareDo. (link is external)

For several years Lisa was the lecturer of Health & Nutrition and Gender studies at Sydney Rudolf Steiner College, where she continues to give lectures to the tutors on inner development. Since 1999 she has been presenting on the subject of gender, sexuality and spiritual life. She has been working with Waldorf schools as a part of their health and wellbeing curriculum, working directly with the students, teachers and parents on this theme. Lisa has contributed to and is an adviser on Health and Personal Development for the Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework. She has developed training courses, and facilitates professional development on this subject for teachers and health professionals.  Lisa designed and facilitated EduCareDo ‘Towards Health and Healing’ which has offered 8 year-long courses focused on working with therapists from all modalities, as well as Waldorf teachers, toward cultivating the depth of anthroposophical insight through practical applications of therapeutic and pedagogical methods.  Lisa is a contributor, tutor and director of Inner Work Path (link is external), EduCareDo (link is external), Developing the Self Developing the World (link is external) and the Y Project. (link is external)

Developing the Self Developing the World delivers community education, and the Y Project supports the bridging of young people into healthy community life.  Lisa’s capacity to deliver esoteric wisdom with insight and understanding allows her to meet the diverse needs of a range of communities and professions. Essentially, her work springs from the inner work, meditation and exercises, together with a dedication to the path of unfolding consciousness.